Wednesday Reading Meme (on Thursday)

[osprey_archer]

I have been away these last few days on a camping trip to the Indiana Dunes with my father, during which it rained a good deal, so much reading has occurred!

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

W. E. Johns’s Biggles of 266, a set of short stories set in World War I. My favorite was the story where Biggles realizes that the higher-ups have sent them no turkey Christmas dinner, and decides that the obvious thing to do is to fly behind enemy lines and steal a turkey. This just seems peak Biggles.

Also E. W. Hornung’s Witching Hill, a series of interconnected short stories about odd happenings on the housing estate of Witching Hill! Our narrator Gillon works at the estate office; he befriends (or perhaps rather is befriended by) one of the tenants, Uvo Delavoye, a young man of lively imagination who believes or at least pretends to believe that his wicked ancestor, who once owned all the lands around, now haunts the residents and presses them to live out his own debaucheries.

Gillon is in the unenviable position of skeptic who refuses to believe Uvo’s theories even after the elderly spinster sister of the vicar somehow writes a story that reproduces exactly the wicked ancestor’s abduction of a virtuous milliner, despite never having heard the tale in her life. I might have become a bit less skeptical then! But nonetheless these are pleasant entertaining stories. Uvo and Gillon are not shippable like Raffles and Bunny but I did enjoy that the book ends with the two of them going away on holiday together, Uvo’s brief flirtation with heterosexuality routed (and perhaps only inspired by the Wicked Ancestor anyway).

Also Naomi Mitchison’s Travel Light, which I was looking forward to and then didn’t really enjoy. I think (perhaps led astray by the title) that I was expecting a lighter fantasy than it turned out to be, but fairly early on in the book our heroine Halla rushes out to protect her dragon guardian from a horde of evil heroes (Halla always uses the word “hero” as a negative descriptor: a nice touch), only to be summarily defeated and tied to a post by a hero who clearly intends to rape her, only she’s saved just in the nick of time by a dragon…

I mean I do enjoy the hero/dragon reversal. I just went into it expecting something light enough to have no attempted rape at all, whereas actually the book is a downbeat musing on the evils of empire and the unfortunate tendency of men to become dragonish and horde their gold.

Finally, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Farthest Shore. In which young Arren falls in love with the Archmage Ged (literally this is how it is described) and follows him to the ends of Earthsea to discover the source of the malaise that is stealing the wizards’ spells and the singers’ songs and the dragons’ speech! Delightful. Still not Tenar though.

What I’m Reading Now

In D. K. Broster’s The Wounded Name, I’ve just finished the part where Aymar tells Laurent about the misadventure that ended with Aymar branded a traitor. Even though I went into this knowing the basic details about what happened (after Aymar’s men were routed in a battle, Aymar was somehow branded the traitor who gave away their position to the enemy), it was surprisingly painful to read about poor Aymar rushing as fast as he could to try to warn his men… I knew already that he would be too late! Yet even so I hoped against hope that he might make it just in time.

In Dracula, we are in the lull before the storm. Our intrepid heroes have set out to Varna in hopes of vanquishing their foe, and we will perhaps hear naught of them until they arrive!

What I Plan to Read Next

Emily Tesh’s Silver in the Wood. I meant to read this on my trip (where better to read it than in the wood, am I right?) but somehow failed to actually fully download it. Well, this error has been CORRECTED, and I stand prepared to read this book during the appropriate autumn season!

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

Delightful. Still not Tenar though.

LOL. Yes, what was with that?! XD

[osprey_archer]

I did grow quite fond of Arren (and I really enjoyed the bit where Arren and Ged sojourn with the people who live almost all year round on rafts!) but, well. No one is quite like Tenar!

[kore]

I will be really interested to hear what you think of Tehanu.

[osprey_archer]

Confession time, I started calling Ged "dungeon boyfriend" the moment he appeared in Tombs of Atuan, so I am READY for Ged and Tenar to realize their love even though he is no longer totally at her mercy in a terrifying underground labyrinth

Actually not sure how I will feel about Tenar/Ged when Ged is NOT Tenar's prisoner? We shall see.

[black_bentley]

I finished The Wounded Name the other day and honestly felt like I needed to go for a lie down afterwards. It is A Lot, in the most utterly glorious way.

[osprey_archer]

That book is SO much. Genuinely believe that if Broster was alive today she would be writing epic hurt/comfort fic in some incredibly lucky fandom.

[black_bentley]

Absolutely. I may endeavour to Be More Broster in my own fic writing. Basically, when you hit the point that you think you've gone too far, kick it up a gear.

[osprey_archer]

The only way to write tbh!

[regshoe]

That is a very worthy goal! I'm certainly trying to keep Broster in mind in my writing these days :D

[luzula]

Aww, I'm sorry Travel Light didn't work for you! Yes, it's a serious book, but I love it--and the ending, to me, is not downbeat. But tastes vary, of course.

[osprey_archer]

It may have been simply the mismatch between expectation and reality! Sometimes going into a book with the wrong idea of what kind of book it is makes it hard to appreciate what the book is actually doing.

[asakiyume]

If you name your housing estate Witching Hill, I feel you need to expect things.

Wow, re: Travel Light I'm now totally confused! So this is NOT the book I was thinking it is... I thought this was the one Sovay had talked about with World War I and a subtle love triangle and hints of the supernatural but that most certainly must be a different title!

[osprey_archer]

Upon reflection I think Witching Hill MIGHT not be the official name, but something that the characters call it as a result of all this potentially supernatural tomfoolery.

World War I with a subtle love triangle and hints of the supernatural sounds like a book Naomi Mitchison might write! But if she did it was definitely a different book.

[regshoe]

Glad you enjoyed Witching Hill! I love that ending so much.

Travel Light is a bit of a weird book—I also found the attempted rape off-putting, though I liked the book a lot overall and appreciated the serious points it was making towards the end. But then I wasn't expecting something very different from what it was, which definitely matters!

Aargh, poor Aymar, I know... :(

[osprey_archer]

Aymar has the WORST luck and it's SO painful. Aymar and Laurent have now left the cave and run more or less instantly into a guy who mentions The Treachery of L'Oiseleur, which is apparently a well-known fact across the countryside, suggesting that Aymar will never escape the stain on his name! Genuinely concerned how Broster will wrap this up, because it's hard to imagine a satisfying end!

[luzula]

She totally pulls off a good ending! At least in my opinion. : D

[regshoe]

I don't love everything about the ending, but the resolution of the stain on Aymar's honour is brilliant, never fear :D

[kore]

I think Tenar gets ONE namecheck in this book ("I would see Tenar again," something like that). Adolescent Moi was sooo disappointed.

[osprey_archer]

There's also a bit where she's mentioned as one of the nine people who know Ged's name, but two mentions is simply NOT enough in the direct follow-up to The Tombs of Atuan!

[copperfyre]

I loved Silver in the Wood! (And then hated the sequel, which was very disappointing because I'd liked the first one so much.)

Biggles stealing a turkey to make sure they get Christmas dinner is truly the peakest of Biggles moves.

[osprey_archer]

I've been warned about the sequel! Reading the first book of the duology ONLY.

I shrieked when Biggles decided to go behind enemy lines to get a turkey. Absolute madness! But SO Biggles.

[littlerhymes]

I did not enjoy Travel Light much, though I admired bits of it? Sorry Naomi.

I definitely re-read Tombs of Atuan MULTIPLE times as a child while I'm fairly sure I only read The Farthest Shore once before adulthood. No doubt it was my disappointment in the lack of Tenar.

[osprey_archer]

The problem with an author with great range is that sometimes the author's range and mine only have a certain amount of overlap. The worst is when you love one book from an author, and you love it so much that you keep trying others, and NONE of them speak to you. I can't tell you how many Patrice Kindl books I read before concluding that she was never again going to write The Woman in the Wall...

Did you struggle with Travel Light for the same reasons I did, or were there others?

[littlerhymes]

I actually do not remember the attempted rape (it was a long while ago) but I do remember I found it tonally all over the place and I wanted something more whimsical than what it was giving...

[osprey_archer]

Yes! I expected whimsy! Probably this is misunderstanding of the title. There are whimsical bits but as a whole it's not whimsical.

[skygiants]

Witching Hill sounds like a lot of fun and I'm adding it to my book list! I look forward to your thoughts on Silver in the Wood :D

[osprey_archer]

Witching Hill is a delightful bit of fluff! Not particularly deep but some days you don't want deep.

Quite annoyed with myself over my Silver in the Wood download error, but I daresay it will still be good even if I don't manage to read it literally IN A WOOD. Although that would have been perfect.