Post-Trip Reading Meme
Nov. 11th, 2022 03:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI 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 aslittlerhymes 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.
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.
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Date: 2022-11-11 11:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-11-12 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-11-12 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-11-12 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-11-12 07:48 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2022-11-12 09:27 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2022-11-12 09:31 pm (UTC)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.