Wednesday Reading Meme
Jan. 12th, 2022 08:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
I have finished Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword and thereby COMPLETED the Newbery Honor books of the 1980s! I’m sorry to say that the book never grew on me (I’ve always been very hit or miss with McKinley’s work), but it is DONE.
Last week I said that once I finished The Blue Sword I would take a break from Newbery books, but in fact I went on instantly to Bernard Marshall’s Cedric the Forester, a Newbery Honor book from the 1920s, notable for the fact that it delivers the least slashy possible rendition of an extremely slashy premise. Our hero, Dickon of Mountjoy, makes the humble yeoman Cedric his squire after Cedric saves his life, and the two become inseparable friends who fight many battles, and neither of them ever get a love interest, and Dickon occasionally pauses to muse admiringly on Cedric’s broad shoulders and sinewy thighs… and STILL they feel completely unshippable. It’s quite impressive really.
What the book does deliver is a picaresque series of medieval adventures - castles besieged, attacks from robbers in the woods, etc. - culminating in our heroes helping to write the Magna Carta. (This is the only book I’ve ever read set during the reign of Prince John in which Robin Hood does not appear even once.) Cedric is the one who insists that the document should guarantee not merely the rights of barons but all free men of England. I checked to see if this has any basis in fact, but as far as I can tell it’s all made up: Marshall just thought the Magna Carta would be a better story if it wasn’t all barons, all the time. Indeed, who among us would NOT like a doughty yeoman to have been involved?
I also finished Spike Carlsen’s A Walk around the Block: Stoplight Secrets, Mischievous Squirrels, Manhole Mysteries & Other Stuff You See Every Day (and Know Nothing About).asakiyume, this book includes a chapter about graffiti! The author does some graffiti with a Parisian graffiti artist, which sounds… pretty illegal actually so I am not suggesting that you try it out… but on the other hand, there’s nothing like on the spot research!
What I’m Reading Now
Back on track with Alex Beam! I’ve set the Joseph Smith book aside for now (might pick it up again later? Might not, though) and taken up Broken Glass: Mies van der Rohe, Edith Farnsworth, and the Fight over a Modernist Masterpiece, which is much lighter and therefore much more my speed. You will be shocked - shocked, I’m sure! - to hear that a mid-twentieth century architectural genius was also a complete asshole.
Atsovay’s behest, I’ve begun Eloise Jarvis McGraw’s Sawdust in His Shoes. We got one (1) chapter of good circus action, but then Joe’s father the lion tamer died (exactly how you’d expect a lion tamer to die) and now Joe has been sent to an industrial training school, which he has ESCAPED, intent on rejoining the circus! Will there be more circus action?? Right now he has been taken in by a kindly farm family who have received far too much characterization to be a mere short sojourn in this book.
What I Plan to Read Next
Contemplating whether to read Beam’s Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America’s Premier Mental Hospital. I like Beam’s work, and this book about McLean Hospital will provide a star-studded history of American mental health treatment from the early nineteenth century up through the twentieth century… But do I feel like tackling a history of American mental health treatment right at this moment? Eeeeeh.
I have finished Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword and thereby COMPLETED the Newbery Honor books of the 1980s! I’m sorry to say that the book never grew on me (I’ve always been very hit or miss with McKinley’s work), but it is DONE.
Last week I said that once I finished The Blue Sword I would take a break from Newbery books, but in fact I went on instantly to Bernard Marshall’s Cedric the Forester, a Newbery Honor book from the 1920s, notable for the fact that it delivers the least slashy possible rendition of an extremely slashy premise. Our hero, Dickon of Mountjoy, makes the humble yeoman Cedric his squire after Cedric saves his life, and the two become inseparable friends who fight many battles, and neither of them ever get a love interest, and Dickon occasionally pauses to muse admiringly on Cedric’s broad shoulders and sinewy thighs… and STILL they feel completely unshippable. It’s quite impressive really.
What the book does deliver is a picaresque series of medieval adventures - castles besieged, attacks from robbers in the woods, etc. - culminating in our heroes helping to write the Magna Carta. (This is the only book I’ve ever read set during the reign of Prince John in which Robin Hood does not appear even once.) Cedric is the one who insists that the document should guarantee not merely the rights of barons but all free men of England. I checked to see if this has any basis in fact, but as far as I can tell it’s all made up: Marshall just thought the Magna Carta would be a better story if it wasn’t all barons, all the time. Indeed, who among us would NOT like a doughty yeoman to have been involved?
I also finished Spike Carlsen’s A Walk around the Block: Stoplight Secrets, Mischievous Squirrels, Manhole Mysteries & Other Stuff You See Every Day (and Know Nothing About).
asakiyume, this book includes a chapter about graffiti! The author does some graffiti with a Parisian graffiti artist, which sounds… pretty illegal actually so I am not suggesting that you try it out… but on the other hand, there’s nothing like on the spot research!What I’m Reading Now
Back on track with Alex Beam! I’ve set the Joseph Smith book aside for now (might pick it up again later? Might not, though) and taken up Broken Glass: Mies van der Rohe, Edith Farnsworth, and the Fight over a Modernist Masterpiece, which is much lighter and therefore much more my speed. You will be shocked - shocked, I’m sure! - to hear that a mid-twentieth century architectural genius was also a complete asshole.
At
sovay’s behest, I’ve begun Eloise Jarvis McGraw’s Sawdust in His Shoes. We got one (1) chapter of good circus action, but then Joe’s father the lion tamer died (exactly how you’d expect a lion tamer to die) and now Joe has been sent to an industrial training school, which he has ESCAPED, intent on rejoining the circus! Will there be more circus action?? Right now he has been taken in by a kindly farm family who have received far too much characterization to be a mere short sojourn in this book. What I Plan to Read Next
Contemplating whether to read Beam’s Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America’s Premier Mental Hospital. I like Beam’s work, and this book about McLean Hospital will provide a star-studded history of American mental health treatment from the early nineteenth century up through the twentieth century… But do I feel like tackling a history of American mental health treatment right at this moment? Eeeeeh.
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Date: 2022-01-12 01:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-12 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-12 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-12 05:56 pm (UTC)I am amazed that Cedric the Forester avoids being slashy given everything about it!
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Date: 2022-01-12 08:02 pm (UTC)Genuinely shocked by Cedric the Forester's feats of non-slashiness. It reminds me a bit of Swallows and Amazons in that this feels like a world where not only has no one ever had sex, but no one has ever fallen in love either. The main characters have parents, but presumably they had their children by holding hands and wishing real hard in a cabbage patch.
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Date: 2022-01-13 02:42 am (UTC)You’re right about how absolutely sexless Swallows and Amazons feels. Everyone definitely reproduces by budding, and then goes off to have Jolly Good Adventures with their Jolly Good Friends. But weirdly enough I don’t feel the same way about, like, Mallory Towers? Where I definitely think that Bill and Clarissa were in love, shacked up after school, ran a riding stables together, and had a very good sex life, even though I sort of feel like that should also be a sexless canon. Hmm. I wonder what the difference is to my brain.
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Date: 2022-01-13 03:59 pm (UTC)Mallory Towers definitely doesn't feel sexless in the same way. I think it's because the characters have Strong Feelings about each other, and also the yearning that the girls feel to find their own special friend, whereas the S&A kids are all content to pal around in one big group. There's no pairing off, even of the platonic friendship kind.
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Date: 2022-01-12 08:19 pm (UTC)I read The Blue Sword for the first time before I read a whole lot of, like, Kipling, and it definitely felt different re-reading afterward. The Hero and the Crown, not featuring an analogue for the British Empire and expanding the scope of Damar, does not have this problem.
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Date: 2022-01-13 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-12 08:20 pm (UTC)That's great, actually.
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Date: 2022-01-12 08:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-13 12:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-13 02:20 am (UTC)