Wednesday Reading Meme
Mar. 2nd, 2022 08:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
I meant to read James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small a chapter at a time before bed, but I got so engaged in the book that I ended up zooming through it in a few days. This is a little puzzling because last time I tried to read it, I couldn’t get into it… but I guess soothing Yorkshire vet adventures is just exactly what I need right now. We’re all going to hell in a handbasket but at least we can hear some good dog stories as we go.
I also finished Rosemary Sullivan’s Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva, which overall I liked, although as I said last week I think it would have been a stronger book if Sullivan had spent less time drifting off in speculations about how Svetlana “must have” felt.
Elsewhere on DW last week I was discussing how the Taliesin Fellowship bilked Svetlana out of most of her money, and someone popped out of the woodwork to say, essentially, GOOD, Stalin’s daughter deserved to suffer… which illustrated in real time Sullivan’s point about how many people directed toward Svetlana the rage they felt toward her father. The sins of the father will be visited on the daughter.
What I’m Reading Now
Janet Flanner’s Paris Was Yesterday: 1925-1939, which is a collection of Flanner’s reports to the New Yorker about goings-on in Paris. They are interesting but very bitty, which perhaps I should have expected? Although it looks like they get longer and therefore, perhaps, more engrossing, as time goes on.
What I Plan to Read Next
It’s March, the month of St. Patrick’s Day, and you know what that means: time for some Irish books! I have a strong slate lined up this year: Siobhan Dowd’s A Swift Pure Cry, Maeve Binchy’s Circle of Friends, and Somerville & Ross’s Some Experiences of an Irish R.M..
I meant to read James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small a chapter at a time before bed, but I got so engaged in the book that I ended up zooming through it in a few days. This is a little puzzling because last time I tried to read it, I couldn’t get into it… but I guess soothing Yorkshire vet adventures is just exactly what I need right now. We’re all going to hell in a handbasket but at least we can hear some good dog stories as we go.
I also finished Rosemary Sullivan’s Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva, which overall I liked, although as I said last week I think it would have been a stronger book if Sullivan had spent less time drifting off in speculations about how Svetlana “must have” felt.
Elsewhere on DW last week I was discussing how the Taliesin Fellowship bilked Svetlana out of most of her money, and someone popped out of the woodwork to say, essentially, GOOD, Stalin’s daughter deserved to suffer… which illustrated in real time Sullivan’s point about how many people directed toward Svetlana the rage they felt toward her father. The sins of the father will be visited on the daughter.
What I’m Reading Now
Janet Flanner’s Paris Was Yesterday: 1925-1939, which is a collection of Flanner’s reports to the New Yorker about goings-on in Paris. They are interesting but very bitty, which perhaps I should have expected? Although it looks like they get longer and therefore, perhaps, more engrossing, as time goes on.
What I Plan to Read Next
It’s March, the month of St. Patrick’s Day, and you know what that means: time for some Irish books! I have a strong slate lined up this year: Siobhan Dowd’s A Swift Pure Cry, Maeve Binchy’s Circle of Friends, and Somerville & Ross’s Some Experiences of an Irish R.M..
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Date: 2022-03-02 05:25 pm (UTC)Not sure if, per your requirement, the book needs to be set in Ireland, but I read Naoise Dolan's Exciting Times some weeks ago and enjoyed it (although I never got around to writing it up).
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Date: 2022-03-02 05:41 pm (UTC)ETA: Svetlana Alliluyeva's Twenty Letters to a Friend arrived today! Looking forward to reading it.
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Date: 2022-03-02 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-02 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-02 07:17 pm (UTC)The Svetlana Alliluyeva books sounds fascinating.
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Date: 2022-03-02 07:33 pm (UTC)And the Svetlana book is fascinating! As a follow-up I've just gotten a copy of Svetlana's own book, Twenty Letters to a Friend - very excited to read it.
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Date: 2022-03-02 08:10 pm (UTC)someone popped out of the woodwork to say, essentially, GOOD, Stalin’s daughter deserved to suffer --it's always sobering to see people turn up and demonstrate something basic and not very pleasant about human nature, like guilt-by-blood.
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Date: 2022-03-02 08:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-02 08:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-02 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-02 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-02 08:57 pm (UTC)