Wednesday Reading Meme
May. 25th, 2022 07:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’m Just Finished Reading
As a traveling companion for The Once and Future Kingskygiants kindly sent Fay Grissom’s Portrait in Jigsaw, a gothic novel from 1975 which is simply A Lot. After the death of our heroine Alisdair’s mother, Alisdair’s grim father had Alisdair raised in seclusion on a remote Scottish estate. But when Alisdair emerges for her debut on her twenty-first birthday, she discovers that her mother Mai is not dead! And in fact is an internationally famous modernist novelist! Whose brilliant novels won a Nobel prize! And also she’s a Thai princess!!!
I kept expecting this last thing to turn into a trainwreck, and there’s definitely a classic 1970s “is this an attempt to critique racism or just plain racism?” moment (which is a huge and intensely convoluted spoiler), but for the most part Mai is a riff on Bohemian Writer of Modernist Novels tropes and generally the best part of the book.
I also read Mary Stewart’s Airs above the Ground, an enchanting book about Austria, and particularly about Lipizzaner horses. (The titular “airs above the ground” refer to certain maneuvers that the horses do: rearing like cavalry statues, jumping in the air and seeming to float, etc.) As is customary with a Mary Stewart book I now desperately want to visit Austria and see the Lipizzaners and try the sachertorte.
As is less customary, we start the book with the heroine already married! She and her husband start the book at odds but swiftly join forces and realize that they have each married someone even cooler than they initially realized.
It was perhaps unfair to Rebecca Serle’s One Italian Summer to read it so close to a Mary Stewart book, because while Serle’s book is a perfectly serviceable novel/travel book, it doesn’t quite achieve the “I want to pack my bags and go there NOW” that Stewart’s books manage so effortlessly. (Or rather, it looks effortless. I’m sure Stewart worked at it quite hard, actually.)
Serle’s book is packed with delicious food descriptions, AND it has a Petite Maman style plot where our heroine Katy meets her own mother from the past, so I expected to love it. But somehow the book as a whole ended up feeling like something less than the sum of its parts for me.
AND FINALLY, after leaving it to languish for a month, I finished Bruce Catton’s A Stillness at Appomattox. The secret seems to lie in NOT reading the book in small pieces, as it is hard to pick back up when I know that we’re going right back to, say, wounded men burning to death in the Wilderness, but to read it in big gulps.
Contemplating whether to have Russell's cavalry unit ride with Sheridan, as opposed to taking part in Sherman's March to the Sea. Sheridan seems to have been one of the few Union officers the men hero-worshipped (the literally turned around a battle by appearing at a propitious moment) and I feel like that would be an interesting phenomena to explain to college boys in the 1960s - in particular, I think it might be good for Russell to have one epic mancrush that is genuinely platonic. However, perhaps this is overegging the pudding...
What I’m Reading Now
rachelmanija kindly linked W. E. Johns page on Faded Page, which has a somewhat random selection of Biggles (read: none of the books that I’ve seen described as particularly slashy), BUT ALSO has the first four books of the Worrals series, about a plucky W.A.A.F. girl pilot Worrals and her stalwart sidekick Frecks. Worrals has been CAPTURED and Frecks is attempting a RESCUE!
What I Plan to Read Next
The next three Worrals books!
As a traveling companion for The Once and Future King
skygiants kindly sent Fay Grissom’s Portrait in Jigsaw, a gothic novel from 1975 which is simply A Lot. After the death of our heroine Alisdair’s mother, Alisdair’s grim father had Alisdair raised in seclusion on a remote Scottish estate. But when Alisdair emerges for her debut on her twenty-first birthday, she discovers that her mother Mai is not dead! And in fact is an internationally famous modernist novelist! Whose brilliant novels won a Nobel prize! And also she’s a Thai princess!!!I kept expecting this last thing to turn into a trainwreck, and there’s definitely a classic 1970s “is this an attempt to critique racism or just plain racism?” moment (which is a huge and intensely convoluted spoiler), but for the most part Mai is a riff on Bohemian Writer of Modernist Novels tropes and generally the best part of the book.
I also read Mary Stewart’s Airs above the Ground, an enchanting book about Austria, and particularly about Lipizzaner horses. (The titular “airs above the ground” refer to certain maneuvers that the horses do: rearing like cavalry statues, jumping in the air and seeming to float, etc.) As is customary with a Mary Stewart book I now desperately want to visit Austria and see the Lipizzaners and try the sachertorte.
As is less customary, we start the book with the heroine already married! She and her husband start the book at odds but swiftly join forces and realize that they have each married someone even cooler than they initially realized.
It was perhaps unfair to Rebecca Serle’s One Italian Summer to read it so close to a Mary Stewart book, because while Serle’s book is a perfectly serviceable novel/travel book, it doesn’t quite achieve the “I want to pack my bags and go there NOW” that Stewart’s books manage so effortlessly. (Or rather, it looks effortless. I’m sure Stewart worked at it quite hard, actually.)
Serle’s book is packed with delicious food descriptions, AND it has a Petite Maman style plot where our heroine Katy meets her own mother from the past, so I expected to love it. But somehow the book as a whole ended up feeling like something less than the sum of its parts for me.
AND FINALLY, after leaving it to languish for a month, I finished Bruce Catton’s A Stillness at Appomattox. The secret seems to lie in NOT reading the book in small pieces, as it is hard to pick back up when I know that we’re going right back to, say, wounded men burning to death in the Wilderness, but to read it in big gulps.
Contemplating whether to have Russell's cavalry unit ride with Sheridan, as opposed to taking part in Sherman's March to the Sea. Sheridan seems to have been one of the few Union officers the men hero-worshipped (the literally turned around a battle by appearing at a propitious moment) and I feel like that would be an interesting phenomena to explain to college boys in the 1960s - in particular, I think it might be good for Russell to have one epic mancrush that is genuinely platonic. However, perhaps this is overegging the pudding...
What I’m Reading Now
rachelmanija kindly linked W. E. Johns page on Faded Page, which has a somewhat random selection of Biggles (read: none of the books that I’ve seen described as particularly slashy), BUT ALSO has the first four books of the Worrals series, about a plucky W.A.A.F. girl pilot Worrals and her stalwart sidekick Frecks. Worrals has been CAPTURED and Frecks is attempting a RESCUE!What I Plan to Read Next
The next three Worrals books!
no subject
Date: 2022-05-25 01:40 pm (UTC)And that is a very random selection of Biggles books! Of that list, there's Learns to Fly which I adore, and Camel Squadron which will be fun WW1 adventures, and In the Orient which as the title suggests is a bit heavier on the period-typical attitudes, but it's a really good WW2 mystery adventure with tons of h/c, I would recommend it warts and all. The only one on that list which is slashy is In the Blue, which is extremely slashy but also reads as if Johns decided he was going to try to get every possible racist stereotype he could think of into it, so.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-25 03:44 pm (UTC)I really feel that I owe it to myself to read some Biggles books! Biggles Learns to Fly surely counts as World War I research, am I right?
I posted this entry RIGHT before I saw your post about slashy Biggles books, and I thank you for providing us all with this excellent resource. Perhaps eventually some kind soul will upload more of the appropriate Biggles books to Faded Page, or I will track them down elsenet... Actually I think
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Date: 2022-05-25 04:03 pm (UTC)And the WW1 ones actually are good research for the period! A lot of the things that happen or get mentioned in Biggles come up in the proper histories of WW1 aviation I've read, especially in some of the smaller details like flying in your pyjamas or the written authorisation you need to carry balloon-strafing bullets in case you get shot down and the Germans consider your special incendiary bullets to be ungentlemanly.
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Date: 2022-05-25 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-25 05:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-25 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-25 01:43 pm (UTC)We had a picture book showing types of horses, when I was a kid, and I remember seeing the Lippizaners. Am I right in remembering they start out dark-colored and get white as they grow up?
Regarding effortlessly or not-so-effortlessly inducing you to want to visit Austria, are you able to dissect what makes the Mary Stewart book produce that feeling more than the Serle book does? I suppose different details would do it for different readers, but can you identify what produces that effect in you? ... I 'm trying to think, for myself, but I'm having a hard time with cause and effect.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-25 04:09 pm (UTC)Alisdair is aware that she looks Different but apparently never thinks "Hmm, perhaps my mother was Foreign." I found this a bit of a stretch to be honest, especially given that later on someone recognizes her based on the resemblance, but also people can be quite stupid about things if no one has mentioned that such a thing is a possibility? It just seems surprising that no one had made such a comment on her looks, ever - she's isolated but not a princess in a tower.
I don't remember if Stewart mentioned re: Lipizzaner foals, but I looked it up online and YES. They are SO dark - it's so striking next to the white grown-up horses.
I'm contemplating your last question, and I'm not sure. Obviously vivid and enticing descriptions are important to create this effect, but on their own they don't tip the scales. Maybe vivid and enticing descriptions plus an immersive story? Not that I expect that I'm going to stumble upon the Mystery of the Stolen Lipizzaner like the heroine, but it feels like something exciting COULD happen.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-25 07:38 pm (UTC)I'm still curious.
Airs Above the Ground is one of my favorite Mary Stewarts.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-25 07:44 pm (UTC)It turns out that Mai really HAS been dead all along, and her place has been taken by her devoted cousin/secretary/general dogsbody, who bears a familial resemblance but is not (the book carefully assures us) identical to Mai.
Actually the book goes to some length to explain why no one noticed: soon after taking Mai's place, fake!Mai ran away to the Antipodes and became a recluse, and also quarreled with all of Mai's friends by letter (she was already typing many of Mai's letters as part of her secretarial work, so she knew the addresses and could mimic Mai's voice) so no one would try to visit. But right after the real Mai's disappearance, fake!Mai definitely did run into some people who wanted to meet real!Mai who took her for Mai because they didn't know Mai in person and also had perhaps had never met another Thai person.
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Date: 2022-05-25 07:47 pm (UTC)That is A Lot.
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Date: 2022-05-25 10:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-26 01:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-26 10:41 am (UTC)I feel it is probably the latter but I like to think there's a Habsburg scion out there somewhere who has some sort of disparaged boring but at least slightly worthy job, and once a year they travel back to Vienna to taste the chocolate and issue Letters Patent or stamp an imperial warrant on something.
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Date: 2022-05-26 01:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-27 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-27 03:17 pm (UTC)Given that neither of these books will exist, I say we go for broke and yearn for both.
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Date: 2022-06-04 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-28 03:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-28 03:17 pm (UTC)ETA: I must sadly report that my library does not have this book and I don't care QUITE enough to interlibrary loan it. Nonetheless it has brightened my day to know that it exists!
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Date: 2022-05-28 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-26 02:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-26 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-30 01:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-30 01:35 pm (UTC)