Wednesday Reading Meme
May. 11th, 2022 07:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
The Diary of a Goose Girl by Kate Douglas Wiggin, a hilarious little wisp of a book. A society maiden retires to bucolic Thornycroft Farm, where she becomes deeply involved in the lives of the resident poultry. She also spares some attention for the resident humans, particularly Phoebe, a girl of eighteen, whose musings on a rejected suitor lead our Goose Girl to muse, “I can understand that, for I once met the man I nearly promised years before to marry, and we both experienced such a sense of relief at being free instead of bound that we came near falling in love for sheer joy.”
There is a little wisp of a romantic plot - our heroine has repaired Thornycroft as part of a complicated courtship scheme - but it appears to exist mainly so Wiggin can bring the book to a tidy end. Otherwise how could she ever decide it was time to stop her fascinating and funny observations of the social lives of geese, ducks, and hens?
I also finished John McPhee’s Oranges, also a delight, as full of interesting facts as an orange is of juice. Have you ever wondered why those oranges with the easily-removed skin are variously called mandarins or tangerines or clementines? It turns out that mandarin is the name for all oranges with this “zipper skin,” while tangerines, clementines, satsumas, etc. are simply the names of specific varieties.
What I’m Reading Now
I have succumbed to peer pressure and signed up for Dracula Daily, which sends you the diary entries/letters/newspaper clippings/etc that make up Dracula on the day that they are dated. I have read this book, but AGES ago in high school (my teacher made us chicken paprikash so we could get a taste of Jonathan Harker’s travels), so it will be interesting to revisit. So far Jonathan Harker has arrived in a gloomy castle in the middle of nowhere, where he has realized he is a PRISONER!
What I Plan to Read Next
Trying to decide whether to read Yone Noguchi’s The American Diary of a Japanese Girl. It’s been on my list for so long! and the idea of a novel written by a Japanese man in English for an American audience in 1904 is so interesting! and also Noguchi apparently had an affair with Charles Warren Stoddard. (You may remember Stoddard as William Dean Howells’ flirty penpal, as well as the man who broke Francis Davis Millet’s HEART. He was 65 when he met the 22-year-old Noguchi. Clearly a man who got around.) But then I actually started to read the book and…
It’s ALL like this. Most of the paragraphs are single sentences, the sentences are all in this highly ornate style, and the opinions expressed are all Like That. Maybe the book I truly want to read is Amy Sueyoshi’s Queer Compulsions: Race, Nation, and Sexuality in the Affairs of Yone Noguchi.
The Diary of a Goose Girl by Kate Douglas Wiggin, a hilarious little wisp of a book. A society maiden retires to bucolic Thornycroft Farm, where she becomes deeply involved in the lives of the resident poultry. She also spares some attention for the resident humans, particularly Phoebe, a girl of eighteen, whose musings on a rejected suitor lead our Goose Girl to muse, “I can understand that, for I once met the man I nearly promised years before to marry, and we both experienced such a sense of relief at being free instead of bound that we came near falling in love for sheer joy.”
There is a little wisp of a romantic plot - our heroine has repaired Thornycroft as part of a complicated courtship scheme - but it appears to exist mainly so Wiggin can bring the book to a tidy end. Otherwise how could she ever decide it was time to stop her fascinating and funny observations of the social lives of geese, ducks, and hens?
I also finished John McPhee’s Oranges, also a delight, as full of interesting facts as an orange is of juice. Have you ever wondered why those oranges with the easily-removed skin are variously called mandarins or tangerines or clementines? It turns out that mandarin is the name for all oranges with this “zipper skin,” while tangerines, clementines, satsumas, etc. are simply the names of specific varieties.
What I’m Reading Now
I have succumbed to peer pressure and signed up for Dracula Daily, which sends you the diary entries/letters/newspaper clippings/etc that make up Dracula on the day that they are dated. I have read this book, but AGES ago in high school (my teacher made us chicken paprikash so we could get a taste of Jonathan Harker’s travels), so it will be interesting to revisit. So far Jonathan Harker has arrived in a gloomy castle in the middle of nowhere, where he has realized he is a PRISONER!
What I Plan to Read Next
Trying to decide whether to read Yone Noguchi’s The American Diary of a Japanese Girl. It’s been on my list for so long! and the idea of a novel written by a Japanese man in English for an American audience in 1904 is so interesting! and also Noguchi apparently had an affair with Charles Warren Stoddard. (You may remember Stoddard as William Dean Howells’ flirty penpal, as well as the man who broke Francis Davis Millet’s HEART. He was 65 when he met the 22-year-old Noguchi. Clearly a man who got around.) But then I actually started to read the book and…
Without beauty woman is nothing. Face is the whole soul. I prefer death if I am not given a pair of dark velvety eyes.
What a shame even woman must grow old!
One stupid wrinkle on my face would be enough to stun me.
My pride is in my slim fingers of satin skin.
I’ll carefully clean my roseate finger-nails before I’ll land in America.
It’s ALL like this. Most of the paragraphs are single sentences, the sentences are all in this highly ornate style, and the opinions expressed are all Like That. Maybe the book I truly want to read is Amy Sueyoshi’s Queer Compulsions: Race, Nation, and Sexuality in the Affairs of Yone Noguchi.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-11 04:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-11 04:31 pm (UTC)The nice part about descriptions like "of noble width and depth" is that the reader can fill in the measurements they personally find most pleasing. There's a lot to be said for inexactitude!
no subject
Date: 2022-05-11 08:14 pm (UTC)It's been wild reading this book as someone with no knowledge of the actual plot of Dracula but a 21st century pop culture knowledge of vampires. Like, I'm sitting here like oh HO, there are no MIRRORS! but also I have NO idea where the actual story is going to go, especially now that new characters (Mina, Lucy) have been introduced. I have osmosised that a cowboy shows up, eventually?
no subject
Date: 2022-05-11 08:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-12 01:38 pm (UTC)That is AMAZING.
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Date: 2022-05-12 07:22 pm (UTC)I recollect that none of us found the chicken paprikash nearly as spicy as Jonathan Harker did. England of the 1890s must have been a land of pretty low-spiced food.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-13 08:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-13 01:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-13 03:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-13 03:43 pm (UTC)