Wednesday Reading Meme
Apr. 6th, 2022 07:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
On Sunday I visited friends in Bloomington and we went to the used bookstore Caveat Emptor, where I found none of the books I was looking for but two books I didn’t know to look for, which is, I believe, the highest calling of a used bookstore.
One of them was Edward Ormondroyd’s David and the Phoenix, a charming mid-century children’s fantasy. Climbing the mountain behind his new home, David meets a pompous but well-meaning phoenix, who agrees to give David an education, by which of course I mean “take David on magical adventures.” They meet a cranky griffin, a sea monster with war nerves, a playful faun… and an interfering scientist who yearns to add the Phoenix to his collection. Delightful.
What I’m Reading Now
The other book I found at Caveat Emptor, Margery Sharp’s Miss Bianca, one of the books on which the Disney movie The Rescuers was based. Miss Bianca has enlisted the Ladies Auxiliary to rescue a little girl - and roped in the male mice to provide the refreshments at the post-rescue celebration!
I’m also reading Della Lutes’ My Boy in Khaki, which is about Lutes’ experience of sending her son off to fight in World War I. I was previously familiar with Lutes’ work from The Country Kitchen, a food memoir about her childhood in Michigan in the 1870s. This is very different (no food descriptions at all!), but super interesting as an on-the-spot homefront memoir; it was published in 1918.
Lutes, naturally enough, is concerned about venereal disease, but her son assures her, “Anything like that disgusts me so it makes me sick.” And Lutes muses, “That, I believe, is the natural and normal attitude of all boys who are rightly taught and who have the right home background. The foolish old hearsay that ‘boys will be boys’ and must, therefore, necessarily ‘sow their wild oats’ and reap a harvest of disease and remorse, has always made me mad…” (48)
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve got MANY books on the boil right now, so before I start anything new I’d better buckle down and finish a few! James Herriot’s All Things Bright and Beautiful... Bruce Catton’s A Stillness at Appomattox... Violet Jacob’s Flemington… not to mention Angela Brazil’s A Patriotic Schoolgirl and E. Anthony Rotundo’s American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era.
On Sunday I visited friends in Bloomington and we went to the used bookstore Caveat Emptor, where I found none of the books I was looking for but two books I didn’t know to look for, which is, I believe, the highest calling of a used bookstore.
One of them was Edward Ormondroyd’s David and the Phoenix, a charming mid-century children’s fantasy. Climbing the mountain behind his new home, David meets a pompous but well-meaning phoenix, who agrees to give David an education, by which of course I mean “take David on magical adventures.” They meet a cranky griffin, a sea monster with war nerves, a playful faun… and an interfering scientist who yearns to add the Phoenix to his collection. Delightful.
What I’m Reading Now
The other book I found at Caveat Emptor, Margery Sharp’s Miss Bianca, one of the books on which the Disney movie The Rescuers was based. Miss Bianca has enlisted the Ladies Auxiliary to rescue a little girl - and roped in the male mice to provide the refreshments at the post-rescue celebration!
I’m also reading Della Lutes’ My Boy in Khaki, which is about Lutes’ experience of sending her son off to fight in World War I. I was previously familiar with Lutes’ work from The Country Kitchen, a food memoir about her childhood in Michigan in the 1870s. This is very different (no food descriptions at all!), but super interesting as an on-the-spot homefront memoir; it was published in 1918.
Lutes, naturally enough, is concerned about venereal disease, but her son assures her, “Anything like that disgusts me so it makes me sick.” And Lutes muses, “That, I believe, is the natural and normal attitude of all boys who are rightly taught and who have the right home background. The foolish old hearsay that ‘boys will be boys’ and must, therefore, necessarily ‘sow their wild oats’ and reap a harvest of disease and remorse, has always made me mad…” (48)
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve got MANY books on the boil right now, so before I start anything new I’d better buckle down and finish a few! James Herriot’s All Things Bright and Beautiful... Bruce Catton’s A Stillness at Appomattox... Violet Jacob’s Flemington… not to mention Angela Brazil’s A Patriotic Schoolgirl and E. Anthony Rotundo’s American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era.
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Date: 2022-04-06 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-06 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-07 06:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-06 02:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-06 06:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-06 05:16 pm (UTC)... and your description of David and the Phoenix makes me think that possibly I encountered it in the library as a kid, though I don't feel like I actually read it.
What is it exactly that disgusts Lutes's son? Is it sex in general? Sex with a prostitute? Venereal disease?
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Date: 2022-04-06 06:09 pm (UTC)You have basically as much information about Lutes's son as I do, although I believe from context that he means sex with prostitutes. It just struck me as a sign that The Times They Are A-Changin' that Lutes reports "sex! disgusting!" as the reaction of any normal, healthy American boy, whereas I'm pretty sure any normal healthy American boy nowadays would probably hedge this around with caveats that he is, of course, like any manly man, all about sex! Woot woot sex! Sex for days! Only not sex with the prostitutes because (1) well, you know, syphilis, Mom, and (2) he is saving himself for his true love.
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Date: 2022-04-06 06:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-06 08:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-06 09:31 pm (UTC)However, she did have another son who died in a shooting accident as a small child. The book doesn't go into detail, but it's something that comes up - you can imagine how sending another boy off to get shot at on purpose would stir up memories.