Wednesday Reading Meme
Mar. 17th, 2021 08:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Two picture books this week! I read the 2021 Caldecott winner, We are Water Protectors, which tells the story of the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline with Michaela Goade’s gorgeous, vibrant watercolor illustrations, all purples and blues and teals.
I also read Shirley Jackson’s Famous Sally, which Jackson actually wrote in collaboration with her young daughter Sally. Sally (the character) wants people all around the world to know her name, so she goes from city to city (Tall City, Small City, Soft City, etc) coming up with clever tactics to share her name with the locals. In Tall City, for instance, she flies it on a very high kite. A charming mid-twentieth-century picture book.
I’ve continued on with my Irish reading with Siobhan Dowd’s Bog Child. In 1981, a teenage boy finds a bog body on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This book has a LOT going on: bog bodies, young love, the Troubles, school leaving exams, the hunger strikes of 1981, intensely polite academic feuds between archaeologists… this last is very much a background detail, just in case anyone was perking up all “archaeologist feuds??” I sometimes worried it was too much for one book but Dowd juggles it well, and it ends up creating a richly textured snapshot of our protagonist’s complicated life.
I also read Joan Lingard’s The File on Fraulein Berg tells a story about three girls in Belfast during World War II, who decide that their new German teacher Fraulein Berg is a spy, and start to spy on her in turn. This is, of course, a boneheaded suspicion, but it’s boneheaded in exactly the way that young teenagers are often boneheaded: at a similar age my best friend and I enjoyed following people and suspecting them of nefarious designs, just the way the characters in this book do.
In general I thought the book did a marvelous job capturing the friendship dynamics and general ambiance of that awkward in-between age. I also really enjoyed the Belfast-eye-view of World War II; I’ve read a lot of World War II books, but never one from this point of view before. And I thought it was nice that the book has a frame story, years later, and we learn that Fraulein Berg found the girls’ suspicions annoying - she had of course noticed when they followed her for weeks on end - but she realized they were just schoolgirls being silly, and it caused her no lasting damage.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve set aside Armadale for the moment to focus on finishing Battle Cry of Freedom. I remain baffled that I put off reading Battle Cry of Freedom for so long. Did I just not realize that it might be useful to read an overview of the entire Civil War? Instead I nibbled away at the edges with more tightly focused books, many of which were excellent, but boy, I bet I could have gotten more out of them if I went into it already aware that, for instance, Antietam is in the eastern theater, not the western theater as I had so puckishly placed it in my mind.
What I Plan to Read Next
On the theory that I should learn from my mistakes, I’m looking for a good overview of World War I. Right now I’ve got my eye on Hew Strachan’s The First World War, but I’d be happy to hear about other books if people have suggestions.
Two picture books this week! I read the 2021 Caldecott winner, We are Water Protectors, which tells the story of the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline with Michaela Goade’s gorgeous, vibrant watercolor illustrations, all purples and blues and teals.
I also read Shirley Jackson’s Famous Sally, which Jackson actually wrote in collaboration with her young daughter Sally. Sally (the character) wants people all around the world to know her name, so she goes from city to city (Tall City, Small City, Soft City, etc) coming up with clever tactics to share her name with the locals. In Tall City, for instance, she flies it on a very high kite. A charming mid-twentieth-century picture book.
I’ve continued on with my Irish reading with Siobhan Dowd’s Bog Child. In 1981, a teenage boy finds a bog body on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This book has a LOT going on: bog bodies, young love, the Troubles, school leaving exams, the hunger strikes of 1981, intensely polite academic feuds between archaeologists… this last is very much a background detail, just in case anyone was perking up all “archaeologist feuds??” I sometimes worried it was too much for one book but Dowd juggles it well, and it ends up creating a richly textured snapshot of our protagonist’s complicated life.
I also read Joan Lingard’s The File on Fraulein Berg tells a story about three girls in Belfast during World War II, who decide that their new German teacher Fraulein Berg is a spy, and start to spy on her in turn. This is, of course, a boneheaded suspicion, but it’s boneheaded in exactly the way that young teenagers are often boneheaded: at a similar age my best friend and I enjoyed following people and suspecting them of nefarious designs, just the way the characters in this book do.
In general I thought the book did a marvelous job capturing the friendship dynamics and general ambiance of that awkward in-between age. I also really enjoyed the Belfast-eye-view of World War II; I’ve read a lot of World War II books, but never one from this point of view before. And I thought it was nice that the book has a frame story, years later, and we learn that Fraulein Berg found the girls’ suspicions annoying - she had of course noticed when they followed her for weeks on end - but she realized they were just schoolgirls being silly, and it caused her no lasting damage.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve set aside Armadale for the moment to focus on finishing Battle Cry of Freedom. I remain baffled that I put off reading Battle Cry of Freedom for so long. Did I just not realize that it might be useful to read an overview of the entire Civil War? Instead I nibbled away at the edges with more tightly focused books, many of which were excellent, but boy, I bet I could have gotten more out of them if I went into it already aware that, for instance, Antietam is in the eastern theater, not the western theater as I had so puckishly placed it in my mind.
What I Plan to Read Next
On the theory that I should learn from my mistakes, I’m looking for a good overview of World War I. Right now I’ve got my eye on Hew Strachan’s The First World War, but I’d be happy to hear about other books if people have suggestions.
