Wednesday Reading Meme
Mar. 31st, 2021 08:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
I love childhood memoirs, so whenasakiyume wrote about Little White Duck: A Childhood in China, a graphic novel memoir about the author’s childhood in China in the late seventies, of course I had to read it. It’s a short book with a distinctive artistic style (it reminds me a little bit of propaganda posters from the time period) and a child’s-eye-view of a distinctive moment in history - super interesting, although if you are especially sensitive about animal harm, there’s a chapter in which schoolchildren are assigned to Do Their Part in eliminating the Four Pests (mice, cockroaches, mosquitos, and… I forget the fourth one… this is after sparrows had been taken off the list).
I also finished Maeve Binchy’s Evening Class!skygiants, thank you for reccing this one. The book introduces such an interesting and wide-ranging panoply of characters, all with such interest and care that I really enjoyed getting to know them all, even though I also spent a good portion of this book arguing with its attitudes about love. (Should you stay with someone who makes you miserable just because you love them? Should you really?) But it was a productive and thought-provoking disagreement rather than an exasperating one.
I also read Jacqueline Woodson’s Before the Ever After, a novel in verse about a boy whose football player father is suffering from memory loss and mood swings caused by repeated head trauma. It’s less depressing than this description makes it sound - ZJ’s three close friends are a source of light and happiness as his father’s worsening health casts a heavy cloud of worry over his family life - but still very sad.
And I read the latest Baby-sitters Little Sister graphic novel, Karen’s Worst Day because apparently I am going to read all the Little Sister graphic novels as they come out. Maybe I will eventually Stockholm syndrome myself into an appreciation for Karen Brewer?
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve just finished part four in Wilkie Collins’ Armadale, and Lydia Gwilt’s plan to pass herself off as Allan Armadale’s widow has run into difficulties when Allan Armadale turned up ALIVE after his yacht supposedly wrecked at sea. Will Lydia and her confederates manage to intercept him and stash him in an asylum before he makes his continued existence known to his lawyers? Will Lydia’s actual husband, the OTHER Allan Armadale, realize Lydia’s perfidious scheme before it’s too late to save his friend? TUNE IN NEXT WEEK TO FIND OUT.
What I Plan to Read Next
The combined enthusiasm of the entire internet has finally battered me into putting a hold on the first Murderbot novella, All Systems Red.
I love childhood memoirs, so when
asakiyume wrote about Little White Duck: A Childhood in China, a graphic novel memoir about the author’s childhood in China in the late seventies, of course I had to read it. It’s a short book with a distinctive artistic style (it reminds me a little bit of propaganda posters from the time period) and a child’s-eye-view of a distinctive moment in history - super interesting, although if you are especially sensitive about animal harm, there’s a chapter in which schoolchildren are assigned to Do Their Part in eliminating the Four Pests (mice, cockroaches, mosquitos, and… I forget the fourth one… this is after sparrows had been taken off the list). I also finished Maeve Binchy’s Evening Class!
skygiants, thank you for reccing this one. The book introduces such an interesting and wide-ranging panoply of characters, all with such interest and care that I really enjoyed getting to know them all, even though I also spent a good portion of this book arguing with its attitudes about love. (Should you stay with someone who makes you miserable just because you love them? Should you really?) But it was a productive and thought-provoking disagreement rather than an exasperating one.I also read Jacqueline Woodson’s Before the Ever After, a novel in verse about a boy whose football player father is suffering from memory loss and mood swings caused by repeated head trauma. It’s less depressing than this description makes it sound - ZJ’s three close friends are a source of light and happiness as his father’s worsening health casts a heavy cloud of worry over his family life - but still very sad.
And I read the latest Baby-sitters Little Sister graphic novel, Karen’s Worst Day because apparently I am going to read all the Little Sister graphic novels as they come out. Maybe I will eventually Stockholm syndrome myself into an appreciation for Karen Brewer?
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve just finished part four in Wilkie Collins’ Armadale, and Lydia Gwilt’s plan to pass herself off as Allan Armadale’s widow has run into difficulties when Allan Armadale turned up ALIVE after his yacht supposedly wrecked at sea. Will Lydia and her confederates manage to intercept him and stash him in an asylum before he makes his continued existence known to his lawyers? Will Lydia’s actual husband, the OTHER Allan Armadale, realize Lydia’s perfidious scheme before it’s too late to save his friend? TUNE IN NEXT WEEK TO FIND OUT.
What I Plan to Read Next
The combined enthusiasm of the entire internet has finally battered me into putting a hold on the first Murderbot novella, All Systems Red.
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Date: 2021-03-31 12:54 pm (UTC)I can only sincerely hope for the latter ;-) (But will be interested in your thoughts regardless)
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Date: 2021-03-31 12:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-03-31 12:59 pm (UTC)"OH FINE, I LOVE IT, OKAY?"
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Date: 2021-03-31 01:02 pm (UTC)At least this time I'm reading Murderbot while everyone else still loves Murderbot? The Hunger Games ship had mostly sailed by the time I got around to it.
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Date: 2021-03-31 01:23 pm (UTC)That would be extremely thematically appropriate for this particular series, just saying ...
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Date: 2021-03-31 01:30 pm (UTC)ps
Date: 2021-03-31 12:55 pm (UTC)Re: ps
Date: 2021-03-31 12:58 pm (UTC)I definitely facepalmed when reading the little explanatory note about the Four Pests that explained that the mass sparrow murder actually resulted in an exponential explosion of the grain-eating bug population, which ate massively more grain than the sparrows ever had.
Re: ps
Date: 2021-03-31 01:04 pm (UTC)GOD.
But hello 1930s dust bowl, the US had better not get on too high a horse regarding environmental degradation...
Re: ps
Date: 2021-03-31 01:24 pm (UTC)I remember reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder book a while back, which delves into American homesteading policies. Scientists at the time explained to Congress that the land in the area around Oklahoma wasn't suitable for the kind of intensive farming homesteaders would do on their 160 acres... and Congress basically went "lol" and extended the act anyway and lo! the top soil all blew away in the dust bowl.
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Date: 2021-04-01 08:26 am (UTC)The paths of an adventuress are fraught with difficulty!
It has been so long since I read Armadale that all the actual details are completely hazy at this point, but you write stuff and I nod and am all, I love Wilkie Collins for a reason.
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Date: 2021-04-01 08:10 pm (UTC)If only Lydia could have found a hobby to occupy herself while he's busy! I bet she could have written some good sensation novels, by the by. Maybe they could have been happy together.
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Date: 2021-04-02 08:13 am (UTC)(Lydia!! We could all have been happy! But NO.)
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Date: 2021-04-02 11:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-03 07:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-05 04:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-05 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-06 10:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-06 11:09 pm (UTC)