Wednesday Reading Meme
Jun. 22nd, 2022 08:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
We think, therefore we sort.
Judith Flanders tucks this gem near the end of A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order, which is not merely a history of alphabetical order but touches on many different sorting methods, such as the history of file folders (hanging folders weren’t invented till the 1890s), with excursions into all sorts of fascinating historical tidbits. Did you know that in medieval times, hours expanded and contracted with the seasons? There were always twelve hours of night and twelve hours of day, but a summer day hour was perforce much longer than a winter day hour.
In other news! I’ve finally taken the plunge on Biggles with Biggles Learns to Fly! This is one of the earliest Biggles books and perhaps a little different than later books in the series, which I believe are sheer action adventure with spies, secret island bases, Noble Enemies, tentacle monsters etc. Biggles Learns to Fly is a more serious war story (though not serious to the extent that it isn’t also an action-adventure yarn): characters die, there is some musing on the horror of the blighted countryside, Biggles’ best friend is maimed off screen by a perfidious German pilot who shoots his plane after it is on the ground. This unsporting behavior shocks all the British pilots to their core and Biggles vows VENGEANCE, and because at the end of the day this IS an adventure novel and not Serious War fiction, he not only achieves it but it actually makes him feel better.
What I’m Reading Now
After an eight-year-hiatus following Pippa Passes, I’ve tentatively returned to Rumer Godden with Black Narcissus, asrachelmanija promised me it is a book about NUNS. Currently the nuns are establishing a nunnery in an old palace in rural India.
I’m also reading Kim Todd’s Sensational: The Hidden History of America’s “Girl Stunt Reporters”, which I’m enjoying, although I must admit my most powerful reaction so far has been a burning desire to read Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Mad-House. Conveniently, it’s available on gutenberg.org! Perhaps I will put that next in queue after I finish Frances Hodgson Burnett’s T. Tembarom...
Speaking of T. Tembarom, things are heating up! After an initial period of distrust, the neighborhood has welcomed Tembarom with open arms, largely because the local duke (an aging bon vivant) found Tembarom’s New York manners a breath of fresh air and novelty after years of tedious country living. The ongoing culture clash between New York bootblack-turned-newspaperman Tembarom and the English gentry is fascinating, and Hodgson is just the woman to write it: she grew up in England but moved to America as a girl, and captures both cultures so perfectly that she makes it look easy.
Although clearly it was NOT, because as we will see when we finally get to the Quentin parts in Dracula, your average English writer at this time really struggled to reproduce the American vernacular.
Speaking of Dracula! At last we have news! Jonathan Harker LIVES, but remains in dire straits. Dr. Seward notes that his patient Renfield has begun collecting spiders, to which he has fed most of his previous fly collection, which I’m sure is not alarming foreshadowing in any way.
What I Plan to Read Next
I decided it’s been too long since I’ve let Mary Renault wreck a train through my life, so I’m going to read Promise of Love (the US title of Purposes of Love). I would say “Wish me luck” but TBH anyone who reads a Mary Renault novel on purpose is spitting in the face of luck to begin with.
We think, therefore we sort.
Judith Flanders tucks this gem near the end of A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order, which is not merely a history of alphabetical order but touches on many different sorting methods, such as the history of file folders (hanging folders weren’t invented till the 1890s), with excursions into all sorts of fascinating historical tidbits. Did you know that in medieval times, hours expanded and contracted with the seasons? There were always twelve hours of night and twelve hours of day, but a summer day hour was perforce much longer than a winter day hour.
In other news! I’ve finally taken the plunge on Biggles with Biggles Learns to Fly! This is one of the earliest Biggles books and perhaps a little different than later books in the series, which I believe are sheer action adventure with spies, secret island bases, Noble Enemies, tentacle monsters etc. Biggles Learns to Fly is a more serious war story (though not serious to the extent that it isn’t also an action-adventure yarn): characters die, there is some musing on the horror of the blighted countryside, Biggles’ best friend is maimed off screen by a perfidious German pilot who shoots his plane after it is on the ground. This unsporting behavior shocks all the British pilots to their core and Biggles vows VENGEANCE, and because at the end of the day this IS an adventure novel and not Serious War fiction, he not only achieves it but it actually makes him feel better.
What I’m Reading Now
After an eight-year-hiatus following Pippa Passes, I’ve tentatively returned to Rumer Godden with Black Narcissus, as
rachelmanija promised me it is a book about NUNS. Currently the nuns are establishing a nunnery in an old palace in rural India.I’m also reading Kim Todd’s Sensational: The Hidden History of America’s “Girl Stunt Reporters”, which I’m enjoying, although I must admit my most powerful reaction so far has been a burning desire to read Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Mad-House. Conveniently, it’s available on gutenberg.org! Perhaps I will put that next in queue after I finish Frances Hodgson Burnett’s T. Tembarom...
Speaking of T. Tembarom, things are heating up! After an initial period of distrust, the neighborhood has welcomed Tembarom with open arms, largely because the local duke (an aging bon vivant) found Tembarom’s New York manners a breath of fresh air and novelty after years of tedious country living. The ongoing culture clash between New York bootblack-turned-newspaperman Tembarom and the English gentry is fascinating, and Hodgson is just the woman to write it: she grew up in England but moved to America as a girl, and captures both cultures so perfectly that she makes it look easy.
Although clearly it was NOT, because as we will see when we finally get to the Quentin parts in Dracula, your average English writer at this time really struggled to reproduce the American vernacular.
Speaking of Dracula! At last we have news! Jonathan Harker LIVES, but remains in dire straits. Dr. Seward notes that his patient Renfield has begun collecting spiders, to which he has fed most of his previous fly collection, which I’m sure is not alarming foreshadowing in any way.
What I Plan to Read Next
I decided it’s been too long since I’ve let Mary Renault wreck a train through my life, so I’m going to read Promise of Love (the US title of Purposes of Love). I would say “Wish me luck” but TBH anyone who reads a Mary Renault novel on purpose is spitting in the face of luck to begin with.
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Date: 2022-06-22 12:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-22 01:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-22 03:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-22 01:57 pm (UTC)And that's fascinating about the length of hours changing! I'd wondered that because of reading historical novels where there seemed to always be the same number of hours between sunrise and noon despite that not being reasonable in England.
The American-British thing that Hodgson does so well is one of the reasons I really enjoy her books, being an American born but living most of my life in England. I thought it was very good in The Shuttle too.
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Date: 2022-06-22 02:56 pm (UTC)Flanders suggests that it was the advent of clocks that really solidified the idea that all hours are exactly the same length. I feel like there must have been some movement in that direction before or no one would have thought to make clocks in the first place? But often social change is uneven and intermittent - maybe the idea took a while to really take hold.
The "American displaced in Britain" theme showed up in Hodgson's A Fair Barbarian, too, although that's not one of the more memorable of her books. (I say this because I don't remember it well...) Clearly a theme she returned to again and again, as well she should, being uniquely positioned to write it!
I haven't yet read The Shuttle, but I will someday. I am slowly (verrrry slowly) working my way through Hodgson's oeuvre, which is VERY large. She is one of those authors who often seems to channel directly from her id, which doesn't always overlap with my id, but it does mean her books are always a ride.
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Date: 2022-06-22 06:31 pm (UTC)I re-read that one recently! It occasioned me to yell about it even more!
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Date: 2022-06-22 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-23 12:02 am (UTC)Makes sense to me.
I do recommend The Mask of Apollo (1966) almost without reservation, and the reservation I do have is that our understanding of the mechanics of fourth-century Greek tragedy has changed considerably since it was published, which is a very different problem than her ususal.
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Date: 2022-06-22 06:42 pm (UTC)After an eight-year-hiatus following Pippa Passes
I feel like this happened to a lot of people. Looking forward to your thoughts on Black Narcissus.
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Date: 2022-06-22 11:50 pm (UTC)We all need recovery time after Pippa Passes...
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Date: 2022-06-23 02:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-23 02:33 am (UTC)Your comment about books that are in-library-access-only reminds me that the art library (within my own library system!!!) did not respond to my email politely requesting an appointment to look at The Ransom of Russian Art. I suppose the next step is to call them...
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Date: 2022-06-23 10:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-23 01:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-23 02:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-23 05:32 pm (UTC)