osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2022-10-13 09:36 pm
osprey_archer) wrote2022-10-13 09:36 pm
Wednesday Reading Meme (on Thursday)
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!
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.
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!