Wednesday Reading Meme
Nov. 3rd, 2021 08:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Been Stymied in Reading
On Google Books, I tracked down volume 36 of The Atlantic Monthly, which has the first two numbers of William Dean Howells’ Private Theatricals. I wanted to compare the serial against the version published fifty years as Mrs. Farrell: Howells often revised his serials before publishing them as books, and I was super curious whether perhaps he toned down any of the gay bits for the 1921 audience. But actually, it seems that nothing changed but the title, which makes it easier to resign myself to the fact that volume 37 (which presumably holds the rest of the serial) does not appear to be available online.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Wikipedia claims that Mary Stewart’s novella The Wind Off the Small Isles was never published in the United States, but I managed to get a copy from Ohio through interlibrary loan, so perhaps some enterprising Ohio librarian imported a copy from Great Britain. I loved the Canary Islands setting, and there’s a wonderfully effective scene where the heroine gets trapped in a sea cave, but on the whole it does feel slighter than Stewart’s full-length novels - as if it’s a wonderfully detailed outline for a chunk of a novel, rather than quite a full thing in its own right.
I’ve also caught up on the latest BSC and BSC Little Sister graphic novels, Kristy and the Snobs and Karen’s Kittycat Club. Kristy and the Snobs turns out to be the origin story of Shannon Kilbourne, the associate member of the BSC, who as far as I was concerned parachuted into the club out of the ether. As it turns out, she got into the club after trying to sabotage Kristy’s baby-sitting efforts after Kristy moved onto Shannon’s baby-sitting turf! I kind of want to read the original novel now to see if it played up the mafia turf war aspect of this a bit more…
I surprised myself by quite enjoying Karen’s Kittycat Club! Perhaps I have at last seen the light on Karen Brewer? Perhaps I’m just easy for anything with such a high concentration of cats.
What I’m Reading Now
I picked up Max Hastings’ Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975 because I wanted to learn more about the evolution of the American public’s response to the Vietnam War over the 1960s, which in fact I don’t think this book deals with very much, but that’s all right: I’ve been meaning to learn more about Vietnam and the Vietnam War ever since I read Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out and Back Again. (However, I am in the market for a book that DOES focus on the American public’s response to the war, if anyone has a book to recommend.)
Anyway, the French have just created an isolated position at Dienbienphu which has no overland supply routes. They can only be resupplied by air, like the German forces when they were encircled at Stalingrad, except that the Germans got encircled because they overextended themselves whereas the French have put themselves in this precarious position on purpose. Truly human folly is boundless when people feel national prestige is on the line.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’m kicking myself slightly for not thinking of E. W. Hornung’s Witching Hill in October, but I don’t want to wait another year and early November still feels spooky, so I’m going to read it anyway.
On Google Books, I tracked down volume 36 of The Atlantic Monthly, which has the first two numbers of William Dean Howells’ Private Theatricals. I wanted to compare the serial against the version published fifty years as Mrs. Farrell: Howells often revised his serials before publishing them as books, and I was super curious whether perhaps he toned down any of the gay bits for the 1921 audience. But actually, it seems that nothing changed but the title, which makes it easier to resign myself to the fact that volume 37 (which presumably holds the rest of the serial) does not appear to be available online.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Wikipedia claims that Mary Stewart’s novella The Wind Off the Small Isles was never published in the United States, but I managed to get a copy from Ohio through interlibrary loan, so perhaps some enterprising Ohio librarian imported a copy from Great Britain. I loved the Canary Islands setting, and there’s a wonderfully effective scene where the heroine gets trapped in a sea cave, but on the whole it does feel slighter than Stewart’s full-length novels - as if it’s a wonderfully detailed outline for a chunk of a novel, rather than quite a full thing in its own right.
I’ve also caught up on the latest BSC and BSC Little Sister graphic novels, Kristy and the Snobs and Karen’s Kittycat Club. Kristy and the Snobs turns out to be the origin story of Shannon Kilbourne, the associate member of the BSC, who as far as I was concerned parachuted into the club out of the ether. As it turns out, she got into the club after trying to sabotage Kristy’s baby-sitting efforts after Kristy moved onto Shannon’s baby-sitting turf! I kind of want to read the original novel now to see if it played up the mafia turf war aspect of this a bit more…
I surprised myself by quite enjoying Karen’s Kittycat Club! Perhaps I have at last seen the light on Karen Brewer? Perhaps I’m just easy for anything with such a high concentration of cats.
What I’m Reading Now
I picked up Max Hastings’ Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975 because I wanted to learn more about the evolution of the American public’s response to the Vietnam War over the 1960s, which in fact I don’t think this book deals with very much, but that’s all right: I’ve been meaning to learn more about Vietnam and the Vietnam War ever since I read Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out and Back Again. (However, I am in the market for a book that DOES focus on the American public’s response to the war, if anyone has a book to recommend.)
Anyway, the French have just created an isolated position at Dienbienphu which has no overland supply routes. They can only be resupplied by air, like the German forces when they were encircled at Stalingrad, except that the Germans got encircled because they overextended themselves whereas the French have put themselves in this precarious position on purpose. Truly human folly is boundless when people feel national prestige is on the line.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’m kicking myself slightly for not thinking of E. W. Hornung’s Witching Hill in October, but I don’t want to wait another year and early November still feels spooky, so I’m going to read it anyway.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-03 05:13 pm (UTC)I'm now at the part where the Americans have more or less taken over from France, and I can't get over the way that official after official is like, "We shouldn't get involved with this, it will just mire us down in a war that we can't win," and then somehow a few pages later those self-same officials are urging the US government to invest ever higher amounts of money and materiel and troops. The sunk-cost fallacy in action!
no subject
Date: 2021-11-07 10:40 pm (UTC)