Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

For as long as I knew the sky and the clouds, we lived in our white stucco house in the Armenian quarter of Azizya, in Turkey, but when the great dome of Heaven cracked and shattered over our lives, and we were abandoned by the sun and blown like scattered seed across the Arabian desert, none returned but me, and my Azizya, my precious home, was made to crumble and fall and forever disappear from my life.

David Kherdian’s The Road from Home: The Story of an Armenian Girl, the 1980 Newbery Honor winner, is sometimes shelved as biography and sometimes as a novel. It’s based on Veron’s memories of fleeing the Armenian massacres as a girl in what was then the Ottoman Empire, and told in the first person as if narrated by Veron, but given that Veron’s original narrative only filled eleven pages, her son must have added to it considerably.

Still, it’s a fascinating book, and very informative if (like me) you didn’t know a whole lot about the Armenian genocide. I was particularly distressed to learn that smaller massacres continued for years after 1916, which I’ve generally seen listed as the end date for the genocide. Veron nearly dies in a massacre in Smyrna in 1922.

There are definitely distressing parts of the book, but overall I didn’t find it a distressing read. As one of Veron’s teachers tells her, Veron is blessed with a good disposition, which gives her the ability to focus on whatever is good in the current situation instead of dwelling on the tragedies of the past.

I continued the Newbery Honor theme with Ellen Raskin’s Figgs & Phantoms and Fred Gipson’s Old Yeller. I know lots of people love Raskin’s work (particularly The Westing Game, so I was hoping that this book might prove my entry point into her oeuvre, but alas, I still find her writing style distancing. This book is trying to be whimsical and serious at the same time and the balance just doesn’t work for me.

Old Yeller I didn’t expect to enjoy, but actually I quite liked it! It tells you right on the first page that the hero’s going to have to shoot the dog in the end, which I feel is a good place to give readers a chance to bail out, and I enjoyed all the adventures where the hero and his folks nearly get killed by one wild animal or another. (As littlerhymes and I have remarked many times while reading the Little House series, it's amazing anyone survived the nineteenth century.)

Moving off the Newbery theme (this week has been a bonanza of books), I finished Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s And Condors Danced. It has certain charming and Snyder-typical qualities (the California setting; the imaginative heroine), but I can see why it’s not one of her better-known books, because the dog dies. Now, if I had read the back cover I would have been forewarned, as the description mentions that Carly’s dog gets bitten by a rabid coyote, and I know what THAT means in a 1980s children’s book… But I was so excited to find a new-to-me ZKS book that I snapped it up without actually looking at anything but the author's name.

Oh well. As far as I can remember this is the only ZKS book where the dog dies, and maybe she just needed to get it out of her system. I guess in every life a few dead dog books must fall. (I actually read this book before Old Yeller, and decided I might as well get Old Yeller out of the way too, it being well known as a dead dog book.)

Last but not least! I finished Agatha Christie’s The Man in the Brown Suit, a rollicking, tongue-in-cheek adventure novel with a plucky heroine and an EXTREMELY 1920s romance, with a hero who is repeatedly compared to a caveman. Nothing says “I love you” like the possibility of thunking your girl over the head and dragging her off to your cave, I guess! Normally I find these romances aggravating, but here it was oddly charming, perhaps because Christie seems perfectly aware that it’s ridiculous and is revelling in the ridiculousness of it all.

Although about half the book takes place in Rhodesia, our heroine Anne Beddingfield informs us rather warmly that there will be NO local color in this book, and she’s absolutely right; there’s a whole entire background revolution in which the book has no interest at all. My impression is that this is and remains about par for the course in Christie’s handling of race throughout her career, so I may henceforth confine myself to her books about people dying in that most deadly of English customs, the country house party.

What I’m Reading Now

Approaching the end of Anthony Beevor’s Stalingrad. This week in petty Nazi fuckery, when the Nazis realized that they were about to lose the battle, they gave their soldiers one last chance to write home - then destroyed the letters. The only reason Beevor can quote the letters at all is that they were originally quoted in some bureaucrat’s “We should destroy these letters! They’ll be bad for homefront morale!” report.

Once the battle was lost, the Red Army captured twenty-two German commanders, including one who had ordered his soldiers to fight “to the last cartridge but one” (the last bullet of course is meant for the stalwart warrior to kill himself at the last: death before surrender!). The other generals are ribbing him about it and he’s all, well I tried to kill myself but my chief of staff prevented me. SIR. Do you think the stalwart warriors of old let their chiefs of staff get in the way?

What I Plan to Read Next

I’m coming up on Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan on my Newbery list. Do I need to read A Wizard of Earthsea first? (I tried to read A Wizard of Earthsea in my youth and Did Not Care For It, but I suppose by now I might have outgrown that aversion.)

Comments

[troisoiseaux]

Old Yeller I didn’t expect to enjoy, but actually I quite liked it!

I had to read Old Yeller in middle school and was highly resentful about it.

It truly is amazing that anyone survived the nineteenth century, or frankly, any century before that.

[osprey_archer]

I think Old Yeller is one of those books that only work if you CAN, in fact, tap out on the first page once it tells you that it's going to end with the dog dying. Some things are simply not meant to be assigned reading!

[kore]

I refused to read Old Yeller in school and got in trouble for it, lol. The bargain they struck with me was I had to read and report on two books instead of my own choosing, which was not exactly a punishment.

[troisoiseaux]

I mostly remember Old Yeller because we had to do skits. You get three guesses for which chapter my group got assigned, and the first two don't count...

[kore]

Why do teachers think doing shit like that is educational? Why, why?

//violently hated skits in school AND THEN I had to do them at one job as part of a "retreat"

[troisoiseaux]

To be fair, I generally enjoyed doing skits - or making little movies - as school assignments! I have fond memories of writing and filming a very, very short adaption of Edgar Allen Poe's Masque of the Red Death in my 7th grade English class.

[yatima]

I loved the Earthsea (then) trilogy as a kid and The Tombs of Atuan was my favorite. I think you can absolutely read it as a standalone.

[osprey_archer]

I think I probably ought to read A Wizard of Earthsea on general principles, but if I'm still not feeling it after the first two I will just stop with the series.

[luzula]

Hmm. Do you remember what it was you disliked about A Wizard of Earthsea? You can read The Tombs of Atuan as a standalone, though.

[osprey_archer]

Oh, gracious, it's been so long. I think I bounced off the writing style, which might not be a problem now that I've had more experience reading older books (not that Earthsea is that old, but IIRC Le Guin is riffing off older styles) - but it might also be an Ellen Raskin situation where I didn't gel with her style then and I still don't now. I guess I'll just have to try the book and see.

[luzula]

Trying again sounds good--it's always hard to know what has changed or not about one's tastes! But then again, I love Le Guin so I'm biased. : )

[oracne]

Tombs of Atuan can stand alone.

[osprey_archer]

This seems to be the general consensus!

[rmc28]

Going to add my voice to the chorus that The Tombs of Atuan can stand alone. Also it's my favourite of the Earthsea books, and now I have a sudden urge to reread it.

[osprey_archer]

Always a good time to reread a favorite book!

[landofnowhere]

Figgs & Phantoms is my least favorite Raskin, though I only read it once. It's possible that her writing style just isn't for you, but I'd recommend The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues as another entry point -- the plot is kind of an absurdist parody of the mystery genre, but it has some moments that stuck with me.

In general I'd say that the recurrent theme of her work is about processing grief through absurdism, which can be very YMMV -- The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) is the one that meant the most to me growing up, but I think it's best met as an early elementary schooler with a love of wordplay.

[kore]

I agree re Figgs and Phantoms -- it's kind of mannered -- Tattooed Potato would be a very good intro work, altho of course everything is probably second after Westing Game. Tattooed Potato is the book other than TWG of hers I've reread several times.

[osprey_archer]

To be honest, absurdism very rarely works for me. It's funny, because I often do enjoy literary nonsense, but I guess absurdism just comes from a slightly different angle that I usually don't mesh with.

[landofnowhere]

You might still like The Tattooed Potato for its take on being an artist, but expect the detective story angle to disappoint.

[kore]

Tombs of Atuan is a definite standalone, and it's much less stiff than Wizard of Earthsea, which I bounced off until fairly recently. It has one of Le Guin's best heroines in it to boot.

[osprey_archer]

Maybe I'll just read Tombs of Atuan and if I REALLY like it, I'll give Wizard of Earthsea a try.

[kore]

As a kid, I found Tombs first through the Santa Fe Public Library recommended reading list for kids, reread it so many times I lost count, reread the third book several times, and I don't think I read the first one all the way through for years, LOL

[littlerhymes]

"Does the dog die" is the most important content warning there can possibly be.

The Tombs of Atuan was one of my favourite books as a child, I read it numerous times. Wizard of Earthsea I liked when I was older, but I did and do love Tombs of Atuan.

[osprey_archer]

There's a whole website devoted to the "does the dog die" question!

[asakiyume]

Echoing what everyone else has said about The Tombs of Atuan. I actively liked the book as a kid, whereas I was kind of meh on Wizard of Earthsea (mainly just wanted to look at the woodcuts at the top of each chapter in the edition I had) and never finished The Farthest Shore. And it can absolutely stand on its own.

I was thinking about The Dog Dies and why it's a thing in juvenile fiction and I guess--WARNING: ACHINGLY OBVIOUS REALIZATION AHEAD--it's a way of dealing with death that isn't a human death? Not because dogs are lesser: almost the contrary. You can go into grief and loss and somehow have it be less tainted/muddled/confusing/mixed than it is with human deaths. So it lets you explore this very important reality in a story for kids, but without getting into all the complications that go along with human death. ... This makes it sound like I'm championing dog death stories, and no, not in the least. It's just, there has to be a reason why they keep turning up.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I think that's the theory behind Dead Dog stories, although clearly in practice it doesn't work for a lot of people! I was going to say "I think it's often a bad idea for a story to climax in a death," but then you have something like Charlotte's Web, which absolutely does put Charlotte's death near the end, and it works... I realize Charlotte is a spider, not a dog, but a very PERSONABLE spider, so I don't think it's the species difference that makes her death more acceptable to readers.

[asakiyume]

And actually, Charlotte's death is more of an argument for letting stories treat messy awkward human deaths as opposed to putting it all on dogs. Charlotte talks to people: she's essentially a person (as are all the animals). She grows old, and her time is up, and that's part of what that *is* in the story. But when you have dog deaths, it's just this poor, soulful creature, and the death just descends on them UGH

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I think the fact that Charlotte dies a natural death absolutely helps. She doesn't get bitten by a rabid coyote while heroically protecting Wilbur and then have to be put down as a direct result of her heroism; her time is just up, and she goes, and the narrative presents it quietly and without undo pathos.

[kore]

I think maybe with Charlotte, she's presented as having had a full life and being happy -- it's sad, but not a tragedy. She saved Wilbur's life, and she's part of the cycle of life with her own babies and Wilbur saves her egg sac and the little spiders stay on the farm. Dead dogges (or PONIES, kthnx Steinbeck) always seem like tragedies, and like asakiyume said, kind of practice runs for Dealing with Death but the death is almost never natural. White's books are all about nature, and death is just a part of that, not the ending. And the last line of the book is about her gifts for writing and friendship -- how Wilbur (and the reader!) will remember her.

(I have been arachnaphobic all my days and I still love Charlotte!)

[osprey_archer]

OMG The Red Pony is just So Much. The book ought to be called The Dead Ponies. There are at least three horse deaths and possibly more? I may have blocked some of them out of my brain in sheer self-defense.

[kore]

MY DAD GAVE ME THAT ONE
AS A PRESENT

He also read me Of Mice and Men. He loved Steinbeck. Somehow, I went on to love Steinbeck too in spite of this introduction.

[lokifan]

I was particularly distressed to learn that smaller massacres continued for years after 1916, which I’ve generally seen listed as the end date for the genocide

I didn't know that either, how awful.

when the Nazis realized that they were about to lose the battle, they gave their soldiers one last chance to write home - then destroyed the letters.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[osprey_archer]

The Nazi leadership also gave out that every last soldier in the Sixth Army had died heroically resisting Soviet forces, leaving the families of those soldiers to discover the actual whereabouts of their loved ones when the Soviets dropped propaganda leaflets listing the names of all the captured soldiers. German soldiers on the front would send news to the families, unsigned, because they weren't supposed to be reading the leaflets at all let alone let the families know "Hans is now in prison camp outside Moscow!" or whatever.