Wednesday Reading Meme
Oct. 19th, 2022 08:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
This week’s Wednesday Reading Meme brought to you bylittlerhymes! We have finished Mary Stewart’s The Hollow Hills! I enjoyed it more than The Crystal Cave: Merlin spends way less time getting kicked in the face by life, and everything bucks up once young Arthur appears on the scene. Love his friend Bedwyr with his little crush on Arthur! (You really don’t see much of Bedwyr in most recent adaptations. Is it because the name Bedwyr sounds goofy to modern ears?)
littlerhymes also sent me Christine Pullein-Thompson’s Stolen Ponies, a pony book from the 1970s in which the five children set out to find out who is stealing the ponies on the moors… only for one of the children to get dreadfully lost, which takes up most of the rest of the book, until he stumbles on the pony thief by accident! The plotting is odd and meandering and the characterization not very sharp - especially for the ponies, who are interchangeable as bicycles.
What I’m Reading Now
littlerhymes and I have begun The Last Enchantments! We have concluded that the entire fall of Camelot could have been avoided if Merlin had kidnapped Mordred and had him raised by some kindly country squire, rather like Arthur himself. Alas there is no way to communicate this conclusion to Merlin himself, so unfortunately he’s still on a collision course to maybe attempting to drown a baby.
In The Wounded Name, Aymar has been reunited with his cousin/ladylove, whom he insists on not explaining the true reason for his disgrace, as it occurred in part because he thought she was in danger of being executed as a spy! I’m sure this will not backfire on him in any way.
Things have been pretty quiet on the Dracula front - the calm before the storm, of course - which has given me time to reflect that when I first read this in high school I thought it was a typical Victorian novel. Reading it now, with greater understanding of Victorian literature, I can see that while none of the details specifically are atypical, the sheer density of Stalwart Manhood is a lot even by Victorian standards.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve been writing up a storm this month, which doesn’t leave much time for reading, so I’ve jettisoned my goal of clearing off my TBR shelf before I head to Massachusetts at the beginning of November. My new goal is to polish off the books I’ve got out from the library: Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road, Elizabeth Seeger’s The Pageant of Chinese History (last of the Newbery Honors for a while!), and Mary Renault’s North Face.
This week’s Wednesday Reading Meme brought to you by
littlerhymes! We have finished Mary Stewart’s The Hollow Hills! I enjoyed it more than The Crystal Cave: Merlin spends way less time getting kicked in the face by life, and everything bucks up once young Arthur appears on the scene. Love his friend Bedwyr with his little crush on Arthur! (You really don’t see much of Bedwyr in most recent adaptations. Is it because the name Bedwyr sounds goofy to modern ears?)littlerhymes also sent me Christine Pullein-Thompson’s Stolen Ponies, a pony book from the 1970s in which the five children set out to find out who is stealing the ponies on the moors… only for one of the children to get dreadfully lost, which takes up most of the rest of the book, until he stumbles on the pony thief by accident! The plotting is odd and meandering and the characterization not very sharp - especially for the ponies, who are interchangeable as bicycles. What I’m Reading Now
littlerhymes and I have begun The Last Enchantments! We have concluded that the entire fall of Camelot could have been avoided if Merlin had kidnapped Mordred and had him raised by some kindly country squire, rather like Arthur himself. Alas there is no way to communicate this conclusion to Merlin himself, so unfortunately he’s still on a collision course to maybe attempting to drown a baby.In The Wounded Name, Aymar has been reunited with his cousin/ladylove, whom he insists on not explaining the true reason for his disgrace, as it occurred in part because he thought she was in danger of being executed as a spy! I’m sure this will not backfire on him in any way.
Things have been pretty quiet on the Dracula front - the calm before the storm, of course - which has given me time to reflect that when I first read this in high school I thought it was a typical Victorian novel. Reading it now, with greater understanding of Victorian literature, I can see that while none of the details specifically are atypical, the sheer density of Stalwart Manhood is a lot even by Victorian standards.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve been writing up a storm this month, which doesn’t leave much time for reading, so I’ve jettisoned my goal of clearing off my TBR shelf before I head to Massachusetts at the beginning of November. My new goal is to polish off the books I’ve got out from the library: Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road, Elizabeth Seeger’s The Pageant of Chinese History (last of the Newbery Honors for a while!), and Mary Renault’s North Face.
no subject
Date: 2022-10-20 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-20 07:39 pm (UTC)I have still never come around to loving The Last Enchantment, but The Crystal Cave holds up as of this summer and I liked The Hollow Hills better this time around. (Besides the relationship of Merlin and Arthur, the sword of Macsen Wledig and the very clever reworking of the fisher king are the points in its favor for me.)