Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Margery Sharp’s Miss Bianca, which was a delight. Through the power of her impeccable good manners and nerves of steel, the mouse Miss Bianca saves the little human girl Patience from the dread Diamond Palace where she is held in bondage as the Duchess’s maid-of-all-work. A lively fairy tale with a deliciously arch voice and beautiful illustrations by Garth Williams.

I also finished Violet Jacob’s Flemington, which alas I struggled to get into. The main relationship of the book is between characters who basically never see each other again after the first few chapters, and while this happens for extremely solid plot reasons, it meant that my attention kept wandering. (Oddly the only part of the book that gave me a really shippy vibe was the end, when Flemington turns himself in to Callandar… and requests that Callandar should be his jailer… and Flemington and Callandar play cards together every night, and Callandar is the man who orders the firing squad to fire…

Look, I’m just a sucker for this sort of thing, and for the “loyal soldier with a well-hidden sense of humor” type. Callandar is the Costis of the ‘45, is what I’m saying.

And I finished Angela Brazil’s A Patriotic Schoolgirl, in which patriotic schoolgirl Marjorie signally fails to catch the German spy right under her nose. She believes that the spy is her cranky form mistress, BUT IN FACT it’s her very own best friend, Chrissie Lang(e)!

Interesting both for its snapshot of Britain on the home front during the Great War and for Marjorie’s sensational ability to get crushes: “She had worshipped by turns her kindergarten teacher, a little curly-headed boy whom she met at dancing-class, her gymnasium mistress, at least ten separate form-mates, the Girl Guides' captain, and a friend of Nora's,” the narrator notes, and her schoolmates tease her for her ability to have multiple crushes going at once: "Marjorie is a pagan," laughed Rose Butler. "She bows down to many idols."

At this point in the book Marjorie’s idols include Chrissie Lang (not yet revealed as a spy, of course); the Head Girl, Winifrede; and a soldier she accidentally ran into in the train station, and then accidentally ran into AGAIN in the hospital, and then it turns out that he’s a friend of her brother’s so it is all right for her to crush on him, probably! But unlike the others, this crush is STRICTLY SECRET, because although the headmistress smiles on schoolgirl friendships (she “beamed rather than frowned on those who walked arm in arm”), the school frowns severely on girls having crushes on boys.

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve begun Frances Hodgson Burnett’s T. Tembaron. So far, she’s speedrun the hero’s entire hardscrabble orphan childhood in the first chapter, and now Mr. Tembaron has a crack at doing the society page for a newspaper in New York.

In The Last Hawk, Elizabeth Wein’s characters read and reread Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s memoir of his life as a pilot in the interwar years, Wind, Sand and Stars, and even though I am the only person alive who didn’t care for The Little Prince, their enthusiasm about this memoir made me want to read it myself. So far it seems promising!

What I Plan to Read Next

This is not high on my priority list, but if I happen across any of Margery Sharp’s other Miss Bianca books I’m definitely going to read them.

Comments

[philomytha]

I really enjoyed T. Tembaron, though I liked The Shuttle best of all the adult Burnetts I've read. And I never really got in with The Little Prince either. I know it has a lot of meaning for a lot of people, but it didn't click with me. But I think I'll look for the Brazil, that sounds like a lot of fun.

[osprey_archer]

I should read The Shuttle! I am (very slowly) working my way through Burnett's books, but she wrote SO many that it may be an unending task.

I've been hoping for a femslashy Brazil ever since I started reading her books, and I was glad to find one at last!

[luzula]

I too ship Flemington/Callandar! And I agree about the frustrating lack of further meetings between Flemington and Logie. As regshoe already said somewhere, perhaps Broster read it and was like, "I like the Hanoverian/Jacobite pairing, but what if we added a prophecy to make sure they had more meetings!"

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I can see it! Imagining a marginal note in Broster's copy: "Hanover/Jacobite GOOD but NEEDS MORE MEETINGS."

[sovay]

In The Last Hawk, Elizabeth Wein’s characters read and reread Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s memoir of his life as a pilot in the interwar years, Wind, Sand and Stars, and even though I am the only person alive who didn’t care for The Little Prince, their enthusiasm about this memoir made me want to read it myself. So far it seems promising!

My memories of this book are literally as old as elementary school, but I remember enjoying it then!

This is not high on my priority list, but if I happen across any of Margery Sharp’s other Miss Bianca books I’m definitely going to read them.

Ditto, but ditto. I can remember some of the illustrations of different books vividly.

I haven't read the original 1944 novel, but the 1946 film of Cluny Brown is delightful. It was the last film directed by Ernst Lubitsch; it's about love and plumbing.

[osprey_archer]

None of Lubitsch's other films deal with plumbing as far as I can recall, and yet love and plumbing somehow seems like the perfect encapsulation of his oeuvre.

[kore]

I really liked Wind, Sand and Stars (and if you like it you might like Beryl Markham's memoir West With the Night, she was part of Isak Dinesen's circle in Africa and also knew S-E).

[osprey_archer]

I've read Beryl Markham's memoir! If the books are similar that's a high recommendation for Wind, Sand and Stars.

[regshoe]

I know, the lack of further meetings and interaction between Archie and James after that initial amazing significance is very frustrating! I love them, and am happy to imagine more and better things for them in AU fic, but it's definitely a weakness of the book (especially compared to Flight of the Heron...). And I also agree about the shippiness of Flemington/Callandar :D luzula has written an excellent Flemington/Callandar fic, if you're interested.

[osprey_archer]

I did indeed pop over to read the fic! It's so nice to see Archie getting this final moment of respite before the final doom... It's clearly a comfort to him (an odd comfort, to be sure!) that Callandar is the one in charge of his execution: I guess even being executed is easier if it's at the hands of someone who cares about you.

[luzula]

Oh hey, I forgot to say (and she was apparently too modest to do it) that regshoe wrote me a lovely James Logie/Archie Flemington fic for Yuletide, to remedy the lack of further canonical meetings! I feel that between us, we have supplied the minimum of fic that surely ought to exist for the fandom. : )

[rachelmanija]

I don't like The Little Prince. I find it creepy, twee, and unsettling. The illustrations are freaky. The whole thing makes me feel like I'm on a bad drug trip.

[osprey_archer]

I'm glad to find I'm not the only one! I took against him from the beginning when he gave up drawing because no one could decipher his picture of an elephant inside a boa constrictor, and the rest of the book never managed to redeem him.

[cyphomandra]

The Miss Bianca books!! I have not read those since I was small but I loved the ones we had in our library (I think the first four and possibly a later Bernard one?), especially the one where they rescue a prisoner from the salt mines, a concept I’d never heard of before then and then vaguely assumed was something all countries had tucked away in a corner somewhere. And Garth Williams’ illustrations are always so pettable.

I read the Little Prince and liked bits of it but the tone never worked for me.

(and I read a Brazil last year that was published in 1914 and had the teenage heroine triumphantly winning a music scholarship to study in Germany, which must have read quite differently when it came out. I do have many issues with EM Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School series but I do admire the way she managed to deal with having an international fictional school in Europe when WWII broke out in real life)

[osprey_archer]

Garth Williams' illustrations are so beautiful! The 20th century was such a golden age of illustration... Children's book are just not as profusely illustrated today.

Oh MY, imagine how Brazil must have felt when that book came out. Hopefully at least it came out before the war began? But still, reader satisfaction with the ending must have dropped off dramatically as soon as it did...

At some point I REALLY need to read Chalet School!

A Patriotic Schoolgirl

[asakiyume]

So now, the spy is another schoolgirl? Like, at Marjory's school? What is a schoolgirl-aged spy going to be able to find out? .... You know, that started as a semi rhetorical question, but now I'm wondering: maybe a teen spy could find out things? How does it work in the story?

Re: A Patriotic Schoolgirl

[osprey_archer]

I have read multiple WWI era books involving SPIES at a SCHOOL - well, okay, now that I think of it, maybe just two, but that still seems like more spies at schools than anyone would expect. Neither one of them answered this in a really satisfactory manner, as the real answer is "the author wanted to do a cool topical storyline involving spies and it had to fit in with their existing series and/or School Story schtick."

In the story, Chrissie's main goal is to free her brother (a German POW) from a nearby POW camp, which sort of makes sense.... except he doesn't arrive at that POW camp till halfway through the school year and how did she know beforehand that he was going to end up in THAT CAMP?

Re: A Patriotic Schoolgirl

[asakiyume]

I'm over here giggling at the thought of the author trying to retcon a reason why Chrissy was so clever.

"Well, you see ... she's clairvoyant, and..."