Wednesday Reading Meme
Jun. 30th, 2021 08:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Finished Reading
At long last I have finished Richard Rubin’s Back Over There: One American Time-Traveler, 100 Years Since the Great War, 500 Miles of Battle-Scarred French Countryside, and Too Many Trenches, Shells, Legends, and Ghosts to Count! I started reading this… over a year ago… it’s one of those books that is interesting while you’re reading it, but eminently easy not to pick back up once you’ve put it down.
It was particularly interesting for its depiction of the physical toll the war took on the French countryside: the farm fields that still turn out ordinance every time they’re plowed, the blockhouses that litter the countryside and are sometimes used as garages or garden sheds, the trenches still visible in the earth…
I also learned that the Germans made their trenches out of concrete. With drainage. I feel the British and the French could have emulated this technological advance with great profit, instead of making their troops wade through mucky dirt trenches for weeks on end till their feet started to rot.
What I’m Reading Now
Onward in Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s School Days! Tom and his chums are being forced to do chores (fagged) by the fifth-formers, when only the sixth-formers are allowed to fag the lower forms, but the current sixth-formers have abdicated their duties and allowed the fifth form to run rampant… so Tom and his friend East have barricaded themselves in their study in revolt, and the biggest bullies of the fifth form are currently breaking the door down. Ah, schoolboy larks!
I’m also reading Elizabeth Brooks’ The Whispering House, which feels sort of like something Mary Stewart might write if she were still writing books today. You’ve got the gothic English country house with the mysterious family, the plucky first person girl narrator who is going to explore mysteries! fall in love! and maybe narrowly escape murder! (I’m not far enough in the book to be sure of that one, but I’m getting some vibes.)
It’s a little more “literary” than Stewart - alternating POVs, and the heroine is perhaps a little more mired in grief than a Stewart heroine ever gets about her dead family members. But still, as I said: there are vibes.
What I Plan to Read Next
Last week I vowed to make progress on my books in progress, and have I? Well, I guess finishing Back Over There counts, but for the most part, no. No I have not!
At long last I have finished Richard Rubin’s Back Over There: One American Time-Traveler, 100 Years Since the Great War, 500 Miles of Battle-Scarred French Countryside, and Too Many Trenches, Shells, Legends, and Ghosts to Count! I started reading this… over a year ago… it’s one of those books that is interesting while you’re reading it, but eminently easy not to pick back up once you’ve put it down.
It was particularly interesting for its depiction of the physical toll the war took on the French countryside: the farm fields that still turn out ordinance every time they’re plowed, the blockhouses that litter the countryside and are sometimes used as garages or garden sheds, the trenches still visible in the earth…
I also learned that the Germans made their trenches out of concrete. With drainage. I feel the British and the French could have emulated this technological advance with great profit, instead of making their troops wade through mucky dirt trenches for weeks on end till their feet started to rot.
What I’m Reading Now
Onward in Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s School Days! Tom and his chums are being forced to do chores (fagged) by the fifth-formers, when only the sixth-formers are allowed to fag the lower forms, but the current sixth-formers have abdicated their duties and allowed the fifth form to run rampant… so Tom and his friend East have barricaded themselves in their study in revolt, and the biggest bullies of the fifth form are currently breaking the door down. Ah, schoolboy larks!
I’m also reading Elizabeth Brooks’ The Whispering House, which feels sort of like something Mary Stewart might write if she were still writing books today. You’ve got the gothic English country house with the mysterious family, the plucky first person girl narrator who is going to explore mysteries! fall in love! and maybe narrowly escape murder! (I’m not far enough in the book to be sure of that one, but I’m getting some vibes.)
It’s a little more “literary” than Stewart - alternating POVs, and the heroine is perhaps a little more mired in grief than a Stewart heroine ever gets about her dead family members. But still, as I said: there are vibes.
What I Plan to Read Next
Last week I vowed to make progress on my books in progress, and have I? Well, I guess finishing Back Over There counts, but for the most part, no. No I have not!
no subject
Date: 2021-06-30 06:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-06-30 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-06-30 09:00 pm (UTC).... *guilty shoves A Tale of Two Cities under the pile of other books I've started/finished while ignoring it*
Ah, schoolboy larks!
HOO BOY.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-01 07:57 pm (UTC)