Wednesday Reading Meme
Feb. 24th, 2021 07:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
In Northern Ireland, peace has such a bad name that in order to achieve it they will have to call it something else.
Sally Belfrage’s Living with War: A Belfast Year is about, well, Belfrage’s year in Belfast, speaking to people on both sides of the conflict (this was in the 1980s, during the Troubles). What struck me as I was reading is, how shall I put this, the mind-boggling denseness of the assumed reader - the kind of person who cares enough to read a whole book about the Troubles, but approaches the whole thing with a wrinkled brow and the plaintive, baffled question, “But what are they fighting about?”
I say this not as a criticism of Belfrage, who is trying very hard to break through that willful obtuseness. But the intellectual climate that produces a whole contingent of cultured, literary, presumably intelligent people who look at conflicts and wonder Why We Just Can’t Get Along? strikes me as very characteristic of a certain kind of 80s/90s smug complacent liberalism that eventually found its apotheosis in The West Wing.
I also finished Elizabeth Wein’s The Enigma Game, which I think made a mistake in having a fifteen-year-old narrator. The book keeps having to twist itself into a pretzel to justify Louisa’s presence at scenes where a civilian child’s presence makes no sense. Louisa should have been a few years older and connected in some official capacity to the airbase.
But that wouldn’t solve my biggest problem with the book, which is that Our Heroes got their mitts on an Enigma machine and then just… kept it for their own use for months? I can see why Louisa might think this was a good idea (she’s only fifteen!), but it seems so wildly irresponsible when the intelligence services could be using the machine to save thousands of lives. I just can’t buy that Jamie and Ellen would agree to this plan.
What I’m Reading Now
Gerald Durrell’s Two in the Bush. I was delighted to discover that this Gerald Durrell book takes the reader to New Zealand (that’s the part I’m at) and points beyond. Durrell has just watched penguin hopping from rock to rock, apparently for no other reason than rock-hopping is fun, and it sounds like the cutest thing.
And I’m going onward in Wilkie Collins’ Armadale. Lydia Gwilt is ON THE CUSP of arriving at Thorpe Ambrose, in the guise of Miss Milroy’s governess, in order to win Allan Armadale’s heart (the Allan Armadale who actually uses the name Allan Armadale, to clarify) and thereby secure Allan's fortune!
Am I rooting for her to succeed in this nefarious plot? IDK, kind of, I must admit that I find Allan Armadale kind of annoying (he’s SO careless, he LOST a BOAT because he forgot to tie it properly, my inner Swallows & Amazons is APPALLED). But on the other hand it might bring pain to Ozias Midwinter, the woobiest woobie to ever woobie (he loves Allan because Allan is the FIRST PERSON who was EVER NICE TO HIM, oh my God) and I just can’t be having with that.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve put on hold a lot of the Irish books recommended in my last post (plus Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, which, like so many books, I’ve meant to read for years). What better time of year to do it, with St. Patrick’s Day coming?
In Northern Ireland, peace has such a bad name that in order to achieve it they will have to call it something else.
Sally Belfrage’s Living with War: A Belfast Year is about, well, Belfrage’s year in Belfast, speaking to people on both sides of the conflict (this was in the 1980s, during the Troubles). What struck me as I was reading is, how shall I put this, the mind-boggling denseness of the assumed reader - the kind of person who cares enough to read a whole book about the Troubles, but approaches the whole thing with a wrinkled brow and the plaintive, baffled question, “But what are they fighting about?”
I say this not as a criticism of Belfrage, who is trying very hard to break through that willful obtuseness. But the intellectual climate that produces a whole contingent of cultured, literary, presumably intelligent people who look at conflicts and wonder Why We Just Can’t Get Along? strikes me as very characteristic of a certain kind of 80s/90s smug complacent liberalism that eventually found its apotheosis in The West Wing.
I also finished Elizabeth Wein’s The Enigma Game, which I think made a mistake in having a fifteen-year-old narrator. The book keeps having to twist itself into a pretzel to justify Louisa’s presence at scenes where a civilian child’s presence makes no sense. Louisa should have been a few years older and connected in some official capacity to the airbase.
But that wouldn’t solve my biggest problem with the book, which is that Our Heroes got their mitts on an Enigma machine and then just… kept it for their own use for months? I can see why Louisa might think this was a good idea (she’s only fifteen!), but it seems so wildly irresponsible when the intelligence services could be using the machine to save thousands of lives. I just can’t buy that Jamie and Ellen would agree to this plan.
What I’m Reading Now
Gerald Durrell’s Two in the Bush. I was delighted to discover that this Gerald Durrell book takes the reader to New Zealand (that’s the part I’m at) and points beyond. Durrell has just watched penguin hopping from rock to rock, apparently for no other reason than rock-hopping is fun, and it sounds like the cutest thing.
And I’m going onward in Wilkie Collins’ Armadale. Lydia Gwilt is ON THE CUSP of arriving at Thorpe Ambrose, in the guise of Miss Milroy’s governess, in order to win Allan Armadale’s heart (the Allan Armadale who actually uses the name Allan Armadale, to clarify) and thereby secure Allan's fortune!
Am I rooting for her to succeed in this nefarious plot? IDK, kind of, I must admit that I find Allan Armadale kind of annoying (he’s SO careless, he LOST a BOAT because he forgot to tie it properly, my inner Swallows & Amazons is APPALLED). But on the other hand it might bring pain to Ozias Midwinter, the woobiest woobie to ever woobie (he loves Allan because Allan is the FIRST PERSON who was EVER NICE TO HIM, oh my God) and I just can’t be having with that.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve put on hold a lot of the Irish books recommended in my last post (plus Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, which, like so many books, I’ve meant to read for years). What better time of year to do it, with St. Patrick’s Day coming?
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Date: 2021-02-24 05:11 pm (UTC)I'm laughing at this because REASONS. XD
It is hard not to root for Lydia, really. Wilkie Collins and his villains = ♥ whether it's of the kind where you cheer them on (Lydia), where you enjoy them as OTT villainy (Count Fosco), or where they're just appalling, like Godgfrey and Percival Glyde. And of course the super creepy Mrs Whatsit in No Name who just hangs around being the most sinister person ever merely by having a pet frog and exuding menace (as far as I can recall, it's been a while since No Name).
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Date: 2021-02-26 11:14 am (UTC)I'm HORRIFIED!
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