Wednesday Reading Meme
Dec. 1st, 2021 08:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
“What was it all about?” muses Walt Boomer. “It bothers me that we didn’t learn a lot. If we had, we would not have invaded Iraq.”
Thus ends Max Hastings’ Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975, a book that absolutely lives up to its subtitle. I think the absolute nadir was the part where Lt. Calley (of My Lai massacre fame) got arrested for war crimes and the White House was inundated with indignant messages demanding why he was being prosecuted for doing his duty, by God, although the absolute cynicism of Nixon and Kissinger’s plans for withdrawal from Vietnam also harrowed the tattered shreds of my faith in humanity.
Despite protestations to the contrary, they knew very well that the government of South Vietnam would fall to the North soon after US withdrawal. All they cared about was making sure it happened “a decent interval” (they repeated this phrase over and over) after the US left, because they figured that the American people would forget all about Vietnam in a year or two, on the usually safe grounds that the American people have the attention span of hamsters. However, as it turned out the American people ABSOLUTELY remembered Vietnam when Saigon fell, but by then Nixon was out of office anyway so for his purposes it didn’t matter.
As Hastings notes, however, Vietnam was always a game where the US’s only winning move was not to play. By the time Nixon inherited the conflict, the ending was always going to be messy, and almost certainly going to end with the government of South Vietnam falling, because it had no credibility with the vast majority of people in Vietnam. “In the absence of credible local governance, winning firefights was, and always will be, meaningless,” Hastings notes.
I also read Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House, a memoir about Machado’s emotionally abusive ex-girlfriend, told in vignettes with titles like “Dream House as Gothic Fiction” or “Dream House as Creature Feature,” some of which are straight up memoir, some of which are musings about abusive relationships in fiction (Gaslight, that one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Picard gets tortured), a whole Choose Your Own Adventure section where the reader navigates a morning with the girlfriend who has woken up Cranky because the narrator flailed in her sleep…
I picked this up on a whim when it came in at the library and it’s REALLY effective. I dipped into it at the desk reading bits and pieces, and then read it straight through that evening. Trigger warnings out the wazoo, of course.
On a lighter note, I read Nancy and Plum, written by Betty MacDonald (author of the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books), a delightful tale of two plucky orphans who escape their deliciously Dickensian orphanage after much travail and many sassy exchanges with the cruel keeper of the orphanage and her spoiled tattletale niece Marybelle.
This is based on the bedtime stories that MacDonald told her sisters when they were all little, and although it’s clearly been streamlined from its original form (bedtime stories having the tendency to wander off on tangents like “What if Nancy and Plum entered the Olympics/got kidnapped by pirates/ran away to the Yukon?”) some of that original madcap bedtime story energy remains.
What I’m Reading Now
Absolutely delighted to inform you that Nancy and Plum includes a scene where Nancy and Plum’s librarian friend shares the titles of ALL her favorite books when she was a girl, many of which I had already read, but I noted down the ones I hadn’t and now I have a thrilling list of twentieth century children’s books to check out! Options include Timothy’s Quest by Kate Douglas Wiggin (always glad for recommendations of books by the author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm!) and Toby Tyler; or, Ten Weeks with a Circus. Circus!!!
Among this smorgasbord I lighted on Carroll Watson Rankin’s Dandelion Cottage as my first treat. (These are all available on Gutenberg.org, by the way.) Four girls have come into possession of a semi-derelict cottage and are making it their very own, and I strongly suspect they will accidentally matchmake their kindly landlord Mr. Black with their sweet neighbor, the widowed Mrs. Crane.
What I Plan to Read Next
The forward in Nancy and Plum noted that MacDonald’s sister Mary Bard ALSO wrote books, most notably a Best Friend trilogy, and as I LOVE best friends I have of course put the first book (Best Friends) on hold.
“What was it all about?” muses Walt Boomer. “It bothers me that we didn’t learn a lot. If we had, we would not have invaded Iraq.”
Thus ends Max Hastings’ Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975, a book that absolutely lives up to its subtitle. I think the absolute nadir was the part where Lt. Calley (of My Lai massacre fame) got arrested for war crimes and the White House was inundated with indignant messages demanding why he was being prosecuted for doing his duty, by God, although the absolute cynicism of Nixon and Kissinger’s plans for withdrawal from Vietnam also harrowed the tattered shreds of my faith in humanity.
Despite protestations to the contrary, they knew very well that the government of South Vietnam would fall to the North soon after US withdrawal. All they cared about was making sure it happened “a decent interval” (they repeated this phrase over and over) after the US left, because they figured that the American people would forget all about Vietnam in a year or two, on the usually safe grounds that the American people have the attention span of hamsters. However, as it turned out the American people ABSOLUTELY remembered Vietnam when Saigon fell, but by then Nixon was out of office anyway so for his purposes it didn’t matter.
As Hastings notes, however, Vietnam was always a game where the US’s only winning move was not to play. By the time Nixon inherited the conflict, the ending was always going to be messy, and almost certainly going to end with the government of South Vietnam falling, because it had no credibility with the vast majority of people in Vietnam. “In the absence of credible local governance, winning firefights was, and always will be, meaningless,” Hastings notes.
I also read Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House, a memoir about Machado’s emotionally abusive ex-girlfriend, told in vignettes with titles like “Dream House as Gothic Fiction” or “Dream House as Creature Feature,” some of which are straight up memoir, some of which are musings about abusive relationships in fiction (Gaslight, that one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Picard gets tortured), a whole Choose Your Own Adventure section where the reader navigates a morning with the girlfriend who has woken up Cranky because the narrator flailed in her sleep…
I picked this up on a whim when it came in at the library and it’s REALLY effective. I dipped into it at the desk reading bits and pieces, and then read it straight through that evening. Trigger warnings out the wazoo, of course.
On a lighter note, I read Nancy and Plum, written by Betty MacDonald (author of the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books), a delightful tale of two plucky orphans who escape their deliciously Dickensian orphanage after much travail and many sassy exchanges with the cruel keeper of the orphanage and her spoiled tattletale niece Marybelle.
This is based on the bedtime stories that MacDonald told her sisters when they were all little, and although it’s clearly been streamlined from its original form (bedtime stories having the tendency to wander off on tangents like “What if Nancy and Plum entered the Olympics/got kidnapped by pirates/ran away to the Yukon?”) some of that original madcap bedtime story energy remains.
What I’m Reading Now
Absolutely delighted to inform you that Nancy and Plum includes a scene where Nancy and Plum’s librarian friend shares the titles of ALL her favorite books when she was a girl, many of which I had already read, but I noted down the ones I hadn’t and now I have a thrilling list of twentieth century children’s books to check out! Options include Timothy’s Quest by Kate Douglas Wiggin (always glad for recommendations of books by the author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm!) and Toby Tyler; or, Ten Weeks with a Circus. Circus!!!
Among this smorgasbord I lighted on Carroll Watson Rankin’s Dandelion Cottage as my first treat. (These are all available on Gutenberg.org, by the way.) Four girls have come into possession of a semi-derelict cottage and are making it their very own, and I strongly suspect they will accidentally matchmake their kindly landlord Mr. Black with their sweet neighbor, the widowed Mrs. Crane.
What I Plan to Read Next
The forward in Nancy and Plum noted that MacDonald’s sister Mary Bard ALSO wrote books, most notably a Best Friend trilogy, and as I LOVE best friends I have of course put the first book (Best Friends) on hold.
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Date: 2021-12-01 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-02 02:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-02 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-03 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-03 09:15 pm (UTC)When I was little, my dad entertained us with stories about the gerbil couple Sam and Beulah, their sons Roscoe and Tommy Boy, and their ever-expanding list of gerbil children (who rarely appeared in the stories, but my brother and I alternated naming a new one each night). I don't recall if there were pirates but the whole gerbil family DEFINITELY went to the Olympics.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-03 09:42 pm (UTC)