Post-Trip Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

I am returned from Massachusetts! As I was busy visiting Louisa May Alcott’s house, eating lobster rolls, plundering the bookstore at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art etc., I didn’t do a whole lot of reading on the trip, but I thought I would go ahead and post about what reading I did.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Delighted to inform you that in Concord (at Barrow Books, a delightful bookshop) I did indeed find one of Jane Langton’s Hall Family Chronicles - moreover, one I’ve never gotten my hands on before, The Swing in the Summerhouse! Happily I informed the bookseller that I had just that morning recreated Georgie’s walk from her house (based on an actual ornate Victorian house in Concord, 148 Walden Street!) to Walden Pond, (actually I did it backward, starting at Walden Pond and working my way in), and she gave me $10 off the purchase price and also a cup of tea.

This series is so variable. As a kid I loved and reread over and over The Diamond in the Window and The Fledgling, and although I didn’t find The Fragile Flag till after college, I remember it very well. Yet twice I’ve read books in this series and then entirely forgotten them: The Time Bike and The Astonishing Stereoscope (the book I was so pleased to find a few weeks ago!) completely slipped out of my head.

I suspect that The Swing in the Summerhouse might fall into this category, although on the other hand I may remember it because of the unforgettable tale of its acquisition.

I also listened to Ursula K. Le Guin’s Tehanu on audiobook! I understand that the main pairing in this book is controversial, but as littlerhymes can attest, I started calling Ged “dungeon boyfriend” the moment he showed up in The Tombs of Atuan, so all in all I was delighted by this turn of events.

Last but assuredly not least! My long Dracula journey is over, as Dracula Daily has come to an end. (It turns out that the ending is a trifle anticlimactic when you stretch it out over a week, but IIRC I found the ending abrupt in high school too, so perhaps it’s just like that always.) I am pining slightly, but I’ve signed up for Whale Weekly (a three-year odyssey through Moby-Dick) AND regular installments of Sherlock Holmes in 2023, so perhaps those will fill the Dracula Daily hole in my heart.

What I’m Reading Now

skygiants gave me Phyllis Ann Karr’s At Amberleaf Fair, and I’ve gotten just a few chapters into it, so I’m still sorting out the quirkily elaborate worldbuilding. Our hero has just had a chat with a toy that he accidentally brought to life, an incident that seems to encapsulate the atmosphere of the book in miniature.

And at Commonwealth Books, genarti recommended Ruth Goodman’s The Domestic Revolution: How the Introduction of Coal into Victorian Homes Changed Everything, one of those fascinating nonfiction books with a subtitle completely at odds with the book’s actual thesis! Goodman is in fact writing about the introduction of coal into homes in Elizabethan London, and her argument is that Londoners’ familiarity with coal as a domestic product helped kickstart the Industrial Revolution; coal did of course eventually reach the rest of England (and thence the world), but the part that changed everything is way before the Victorian era. I suppose the publishers couldn’t stand to put the word “Elizabethan” in the title of a book about coal.

What I Plan to Read Next

I’ve figured out how to get my paws on the final two books in the Hall Family Chronicles, The Mysterious Circus and The Dragon Tree, and I’ve decided I owe it to myself to finish up the series.

Comments

[troisoiseaux]

skygiants gave me Phyllis Ann Karr’s At Amberleaf Fair, and I’ve gotten just a few chapters into it, so I’m still sorting out the quirkily elaborate worldbuilding.

Oooooh, I look forward to your thoughts!

I'm glad you had a great trip! I hadn't heard of the Eric Carle Museum, but it sounds delightful.

[osprey_archer]

Have you read that one yet? Might send it to you when I'm done if you have not.

The Eric Carle Museum is one of my favorite museums in the world and I highly recommend it if you ever find yourself in the Northampton/Amherst area! It's right across the street from the Yiddish Book Center and in the general vicinity of Emily Dickinson's house.

[troisoiseaux]

Have you read that one yet?

No, I haven't!

[osprey_archer]

I'm also contemplating sending you Cherith Baldry's Exiled from Camelot, although I understand if you just can't with the sheer density of woobie in that book.

[troisoiseaux]

YES PLEASE. I've actually been keeping an eye out for that one!

[osprey_archer]

YES, the book will continue its journeyings! The chain goes ever on and on!

You understand of course that you are being bequeathed with a solemn duty to pass the book on should you find a worthy recipient.

[troisoiseaux]

*salute emoji*

Tangentially, that reminds me of the copy of Anthony Burgess' Napoleon Symphony that was circulated among my entire friend group in college, mostly because the spine had a half-image of Napoleon on it that would stare into your soul no matter where in the room you put the book and no one wanted to keep it. I think we eventually packed it off with a friend who was studying abroad. (That was more of a "cursed object" situation, though.)

[osprey_archer]

I bet that copy of Napoleon Symphony is still circulating in hostels somewhere in deepest Tuscany. People keep trying to get it away from them and the cycle just repeats itself!

[skygiants]

yessss I am so glad the book will continue its journeyings!

[rachelmanija]

Me too!

It's actually not the pairing in Tehanu that's the controversial part - at least, not in my experience. It's other stuff that you'll get to later on.

[osprey_archer]

Last time I posted about Earthsea, people complained about the pairing (discreetly, as I hadn't yet read Tehanu at the time), but I well believe that other parts might be controversial too. The audiobook had an afterward in which Le Guin commented that some people really hated the fact that Ged lost his powers in the book - viewed it as a feminist assault on their masculine power fantasy figure - and that other people really latched onto Tenar's witch friend's woo-woo mystical feminine view of witch powers, which was not what Le Guin had intended. Probably there are other divisive elements as well. A polarizing book, clearly.

[rachelmanija]

You are so right. I love the book in a lot of ways, but it has an aspect I hated that you didn't even mention!

[osprey_archer]

Now I'm curious! What aspect did you hate?

[rachelmanija]

Have you finished the book yet? It's extremely spoilery.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I finished it at the beginning of the trip actually! So spoil away.

[rachelmanija]

I didn't like that after the entire book being about how ordinary people without magic are important, and abused and disabled children are important exactly as they are, and Ged is no less of a person without magic, that the climax of the book was Therru turning out to be a magical dragon child who's the daughter of the greatest dragon ever, and Ged and Tenar being helpless in the face of magic and could only be saved by magic and dragons.

I wanted Therru and Ged and Tenar to be enough, even without special powers, after the entire book up to that point said they were.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I think that's a real weakness in the ending. It's thematically inconsistent, and it also opened up the question how Therru, daughter of the greatest dragon ever, ended up with those terrible people in the first place. Seems careless of the greatest dragon ever, really!

I wonder if Le Guin wrote herself into a corner and couldn't figure out another way to get Tenar and Ged out of their situation.

[rachelmanija]

I never really understood how Therru ended up where she did, or even what exactly it meant that she was Kalessin's daughter.

I'm not sure if Le Guin wrote herself into a corner, or if she really wanted to introduce the idea of dragon people and didn't think through the implications. A lot of her writing about the dragon people in books after this one is very beautiful but it has a lot of unfortunate implications that really bugged me. I wanted Therru to be an abused child and for that to be enough.

[landofnowhere]

Wow, your experience at Barrow Books sounds amazing! :-D

[osprey_archer]

It was delightful! A truly eclectic used book selection - I also found a copy of Vivien Alcock's The Mysterious Mr. Ross.

[cyphomandra]

There are some fantastic moments in The Swing in the Summerhouse. I agree with you that stereoscope & bike are forgettable (likewise tree) but Fledgling and Fragile Flag are so good! And I love Paper Chains (not a Hall book).

[osprey_archer]

Once I've read the last two I may make a Hall Family Chronicles post in an attempt to entice other people into the series (while simultaneously warning them off the ones that are less worth their time).

[littlerhymes]

DUNGEON BOYFRIEND makes a middle-aged comeback!! I love the idea of travelling as a kind of an extended book gathering and book discussing venture before one returns to one's domicile with the fruits of one's travels (more books).

[osprey_archer]

DUNGEON BOYFRIEND no longer in a dungeon at the heroine's complete and utter mercy which makes the set-up SLIGHTLY less idtastic, but still very nice.

And yes, what is the purpose of traveling but to hunt and gather new books to take back to one's cave! Not to mention delicious meals etc. (Did not do a lot of eating out this trip although we DID go to a restaurant that offered grilled cheese flights, an idea that I hope takes off, because there are many restaurants where I would enjoy trying all the available sandwiches on the menu.)

[brigid]

I'm very interested in the Goodman book and surprised that the title is so different from the subject matter. I wonder if that was an editorial decision? I'm going to see about getting that book, although I have so much I'm in the middle of reading right now.

And welcome home from your journey! It sounds awesome.

[osprey_archer]

I've found that a lot of nonfiction subtitles are inaccurate like this, I guess as the book equivalent of clickbait? "It's not an accurate reflection of the book's thesis but it WILL bring the readers to the yard," one imagines the vice president in charge of marketing saying, probably while smoking a cigar.

[asakiyume]

Why do publishers stick those subtitles on books when they're so off base? Mind boggling. But the book sounds fascinating.

[osprey_archer]

I think it's the book equivalent of clickbait, but you wonder if they ever stop to think that there might be consequences to misrepresenting the book like that! I remember reading one with a subtitle like "ancient wisdom of parenting" and inside the book the author patiently explained that these are actually parental techniques that many people around the world use today, at this very moment, often in highly technological societies much like America, so not really ancient at all!

[asakiyume]

LOL like calling eating berries a piece of ancient hunter-gatherer knowledge.

[genarti]

Every time I remember that The Domestic Revolution's subtitle mentions Victorian England it makes me want to bite things; I think my brain mentally revises it into 'Elizabethan' or 'Tudor' when I'm not paying attention. Because the whole point of the book is that this didn't start in the Victorian era, actually! (Well, no, there are several points of the book, but that's a core one.) Come ON, publishers! But I guess they felt that the Victorian era was what would get people picking up the book.

[osprey_archer]

Maybe they thought "Elizabethan" would sound too out there to people browsing in the bookstore. "ELIZABETHAN use of coal?" these hypothetical readers would scoff. "Everyone knows coal took off in the Victorian era! Pah!" Still exasperating though.

[superborb]

Whale Weekly! I did love Dracula Daily, and its abrupt ending has left me feeling like it shouldn't be over yet!

[osprey_archer]

Yes, it comes to an end so suddenly! "They killed the vampire, what else is there to say?" Bram Stoker demands indignantly. We could've at least buried Quincey, sir!