osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2022-04-20 07:15 am
osprey_archer) wrote2022-04-20 07:15 am
Wednesday Reading Meme
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Susan Coolidge’s A Guernsey Lily; or, How the Feud Was Healed. The subtitle suggests a feud-forward story, but in fact it is 90% about the Wreford family traveling to the Channel Isles (for Mama’s health, you know!) with a little wisp of a feud that shows up about halfway through, about which Coolidge cares so little that she can’t even be bothered to marry the eldest daughter of one feuding family to the eldest son of the other.
Honestly Coolidge is 100% correct: I am down to read a travelog to the Channel Isles at any time. Bring on the ever-blooming flowers and the tidal cave alive with anemones! Also delighted by the fact that on Guernsey, the Wrefords rent their home from Mrs. Kempton (wife of a sailor constantly away on long voyages to South America) and her friend Elizabeth, who met in service, bought the house together for the purpose of renting it out, and as far as I can tell live there together as the landladies.
I also finished E. Anthony Rotundo’s American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era, which I must confess I bought mainly because it includes his article “Romantic Friendship: Male Intimacy and Middle-Class Youth in the Northern United States, 1800-1900” more or less unaltered. Sometimes you just want to read about early- to mid-nineteenth century youths sleeping in their BFF’s arms after a long intense chat about their feelings, you know?
(It’s always kind of weird reading straight men’s writings about this because you can kind of feel them vibrating with longing that never actually makes it on the page because there is no way to say “if only my BFF and I could snuggle and talk about our feelings” that will not sound gay to a modern audience.)
And I finished James Herriot’s All Things Bright and Beautiful, a lovely and soothing read as all James Herriot books are. I especially enjoy the dog and cat stories, possibly because I am familiar with dogs and cats but have never had the opportunity to become personally acquainted with a cow.
What I’m Reading Now
Bruce Catton’s A Stillness at Appomattox. Our boys in blue are marching into the Wilderness and the pages are thick with the promise of the horrible slaughter to come!
What I Plan to Read Next
In the afterword to The Friendly Young Ladies, Mary Renault scorned Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness as an excessively glum picture of lesbian life and recommended Compton Mackenzie’s Extraordinary Women instead, and after some resistance (is it really WISE to read a book recommended in The Friendly Young Ladies) I have succumbed and ordered Extraordinary Women through interlibrary loan.
(I really ought to read The Well of Loneliness at some point but everything I read about it suggests that it is indeed lugubrious, and ugh.)
Susan Coolidge’s A Guernsey Lily; or, How the Feud Was Healed. The subtitle suggests a feud-forward story, but in fact it is 90% about the Wreford family traveling to the Channel Isles (for Mama’s health, you know!) with a little wisp of a feud that shows up about halfway through, about which Coolidge cares so little that she can’t even be bothered to marry the eldest daughter of one feuding family to the eldest son of the other.
Honestly Coolidge is 100% correct: I am down to read a travelog to the Channel Isles at any time. Bring on the ever-blooming flowers and the tidal cave alive with anemones! Also delighted by the fact that on Guernsey, the Wrefords rent their home from Mrs. Kempton (wife of a sailor constantly away on long voyages to South America) and her friend Elizabeth, who met in service, bought the house together for the purpose of renting it out, and as far as I can tell live there together as the landladies.
I also finished E. Anthony Rotundo’s American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era, which I must confess I bought mainly because it includes his article “Romantic Friendship: Male Intimacy and Middle-Class Youth in the Northern United States, 1800-1900” more or less unaltered. Sometimes you just want to read about early- to mid-nineteenth century youths sleeping in their BFF’s arms after a long intense chat about their feelings, you know?
(It’s always kind of weird reading straight men’s writings about this because you can kind of feel them vibrating with longing that never actually makes it on the page because there is no way to say “if only my BFF and I could snuggle and talk about our feelings” that will not sound gay to a modern audience.)
And I finished James Herriot’s All Things Bright and Beautiful, a lovely and soothing read as all James Herriot books are. I especially enjoy the dog and cat stories, possibly because I am familiar with dogs and cats but have never had the opportunity to become personally acquainted with a cow.
What I’m Reading Now
Bruce Catton’s A Stillness at Appomattox. Our boys in blue are marching into the Wilderness and the pages are thick with the promise of the horrible slaughter to come!
What I Plan to Read Next
In the afterword to The Friendly Young Ladies, Mary Renault scorned Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness as an excessively glum picture of lesbian life and recommended Compton Mackenzie’s Extraordinary Women instead, and after some resistance (is it really WISE to read a book recommended in The Friendly Young Ladies) I have succumbed and ordered Extraordinary Women through interlibrary loan.
(I really ought to read The Well of Loneliness at some point but everything I read about it suggests that it is indeed lugubrious, and ugh.)