Wednesday Reading Meme
Jun. 15th, 2022 11:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
William Bowen’s Philip and the Faun is a more straightforward fantasy than his novel The Old Tobacco Shop. Young Philip, camping in the sequoias with his father, meets a faun piping away below the trees. The faun is astounded that Philip can see him, and soon Philip and the faun and the nymph Arethusa set off on a quest: if they can find two other people who can see and hear these mythological folk, the creatures of Greek myth can leave their seclusion and come back to the world!
They go to San Francisco - never named, but recognizable for its cable cars and steep hills; impressive that the city has remained so unchanged a hundred years after the book was written. There they find these two people: a young man playing his oboe in the streets, and a young Chinese girl in Chinatown. (This sequence is about what you would expect from a book from 1926.) The young man and the girl each give a little bit of blood to the Cause of bringing the Greek myths back! But then the oboe man bows to his rich father’s entreaties to come home, thus introducing a tiny impurity into his blood, so the Greek myths do not return after all, ALAS.
Actually the nymphs and fauns etc. were feeling kind of bummed about leaving the sequoias, as who would not?? So they are far from sorry at the turn that this has taken. But nonetheless this seems like kind of a downer ending, and I for one would far rather have watched the Greek mythological creatures run riot through the streets of San Francisco, a la the ending of C. S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair.
I also finished Bruce Catton’s The Coming Fury! After how I struggled with the Army of the Potomac trilogy, I was surprised to zoom through this book - I think because it’s almost all about the immediate political background to the Civil War (it starts with the Democratic national convention of 1860, which ended up splitting between two regional candidates), rather than actual battles. Hopefully someday I can read about battles again…
Actually, the next book (this is ALSO a trilogy, the Centennial History of the Civil War) may include a lot of battles, as The Coming Fury ends with the Battle of Bull Run. So I may be about to find out.
I meant to read Teresa Lust’s Pass the Polenta: And Other Writings from the Kitchen one delectable essay at a time to truly savor it… but each essay was so interesting, a meditation on wine or heirloom apples or strawberry shortcake (or of course polenta), that I kept reading two or three instead. And now the book is all gone! Gobbled up like a slice of apple pie, when you only meant to have a bite…
What I’m Reading Now
Last week, I said I shouldn’t start any more books until I finished a few… then instantly checked out Judith Flanders’ A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order and Kim Todd’s Sensational: The Hidden History of America’s “Girl Stunt Reporters”. In my defense… I have no defense. I simply saw them and was overcome with lust.
I haven’t actually started Sensational yet, but I have begun A Place for Everything. You may be interested to learn that in the early days of organization, geographical and hierarchical orderings were often preferred to alphabetical - to the point that chroniclers who used alphabetical ordering sometimes apologized for its anarchic tendency to turn hierarchy topsy-turvy, for instance putting “angelus” (angels) before “Deus” (God).
No new Dracula. I fear we must give up our dear Jonathan Harker as Lost to the ravages of that rampaging count.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’m REALLY trying to focus on the physical books on my TBR shelf… and conveniently, I have Teresa Lust’s A Blissful Feast: Culinary Adventures in Italy’s Piedmont, Maremma, and La Marche! So I will be reading that.
William Bowen’s Philip and the Faun is a more straightforward fantasy than his novel The Old Tobacco Shop. Young Philip, camping in the sequoias with his father, meets a faun piping away below the trees. The faun is astounded that Philip can see him, and soon Philip and the faun and the nymph Arethusa set off on a quest: if they can find two other people who can see and hear these mythological folk, the creatures of Greek myth can leave their seclusion and come back to the world!
They go to San Francisco - never named, but recognizable for its cable cars and steep hills; impressive that the city has remained so unchanged a hundred years after the book was written. There they find these two people: a young man playing his oboe in the streets, and a young Chinese girl in Chinatown. (This sequence is about what you would expect from a book from 1926.) The young man and the girl each give a little bit of blood to the Cause of bringing the Greek myths back! But then the oboe man bows to his rich father’s entreaties to come home, thus introducing a tiny impurity into his blood, so the Greek myths do not return after all, ALAS.
Actually the nymphs and fauns etc. were feeling kind of bummed about leaving the sequoias, as who would not?? So they are far from sorry at the turn that this has taken. But nonetheless this seems like kind of a downer ending, and I for one would far rather have watched the Greek mythological creatures run riot through the streets of San Francisco, a la the ending of C. S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair.
I also finished Bruce Catton’s The Coming Fury! After how I struggled with the Army of the Potomac trilogy, I was surprised to zoom through this book - I think because it’s almost all about the immediate political background to the Civil War (it starts with the Democratic national convention of 1860, which ended up splitting between two regional candidates), rather than actual battles. Hopefully someday I can read about battles again…
Actually, the next book (this is ALSO a trilogy, the Centennial History of the Civil War) may include a lot of battles, as The Coming Fury ends with the Battle of Bull Run. So I may be about to find out.
I meant to read Teresa Lust’s Pass the Polenta: And Other Writings from the Kitchen one delectable essay at a time to truly savor it… but each essay was so interesting, a meditation on wine or heirloom apples or strawberry shortcake (or of course polenta), that I kept reading two or three instead. And now the book is all gone! Gobbled up like a slice of apple pie, when you only meant to have a bite…
What I’m Reading Now
Last week, I said I shouldn’t start any more books until I finished a few… then instantly checked out Judith Flanders’ A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order and Kim Todd’s Sensational: The Hidden History of America’s “Girl Stunt Reporters”. In my defense… I have no defense. I simply saw them and was overcome with lust.
I haven’t actually started Sensational yet, but I have begun A Place for Everything. You may be interested to learn that in the early days of organization, geographical and hierarchical orderings were often preferred to alphabetical - to the point that chroniclers who used alphabetical ordering sometimes apologized for its anarchic tendency to turn hierarchy topsy-turvy, for instance putting “angelus” (angels) before “Deus” (God).
No new Dracula. I fear we must give up our dear Jonathan Harker as Lost to the ravages of that rampaging count.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’m REALLY trying to focus on the physical books on my TBR shelf… and conveniently, I have Teresa Lust’s A Blissful Feast: Culinary Adventures in Italy’s Piedmont, Maremma, and La Marche! So I will be reading that.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-15 07:30 pm (UTC)I need to do that more. My TBR Challenge books are mostly from that bookshelf, but there are so many more....
no subject
Date: 2022-06-15 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-15 08:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-16 02:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-16 06:22 pm (UTC)...OTOH, do we really WANT to Greek gods coming back in the world? (And by extension the similarly frisky gods from many other mythologies.) Perhaps it is JUST AS WELL they are no longer here to cause mischief.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-16 06:31 pm (UTC)