Wednesday Reading Meme
Nov. 16th, 2022 08:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerA wild entry of Books I Have Abandoned appears! In the interests of completism I decided to read Mary Renault’s North Face, which I have heard is her weakest book, and on the basis of the fact that I barely dragged myself through two chapters, I certainly agree. I skimmed the rest, and it appears to tell the story of two middle-aged women competing over a sad mountaineer, who is so utterly indifferent to their interest in him that at the end of the book he and his dishy young lover agree to invite them to the wedding, as they’ll surely take an interest!
The joke being of course that these women will both be crushed, only our lovers are too indifferent to realize. It seems mean-spirited and curiously airless - as much minute psychological detail about every chess move in every conversation as a Henry James novel.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
I’ve gotten my sticky paws on another William Heyliger novel! For those of you who were not yet around for previous installments of the Great Heyliger Quest, William Heyliger was a writer for boys in the first half of the twentieth century who wrote epically earnest sports stories, Boy Scout stories, and stories about boys trying to find their vocation, as in today’s book Quinby and Son, wherein young Bert, dissatisfied with working at his father’s clothing store, tries to start a new store with his father’s clerk (a steadfast disciple of the book The Secrets of Business Success), only to swiftly find himself in far over his head.
Generally I think Heyliger’s school sports and Boy Scout stories are stronger, but I did enjoy the subplot about Bert’s friend Bill, who loses his leg while jumping the trains on a lark, but discovers a path forward in life as an artist of natural history sketches.
What I’m Reading Now
I made the grave mistake of reading through Dracula Daily’s list of other books that are being serialized on email, and now on top of Whale Weekly (a weekly installment of Moby-Dick in your inbox!) and Letters from Watson (the Sherlock Holmes short stories, in roughly chronological order), I’ve signed up for Literary Letters, which serializes obscure epistolary novels of the past, starting with The Lightning Conductor: The Strange Adventures of a Motor Car. As you know, I can’t resist an obscure old book…
Our heroine Molly (with Aunt Mary breathlessly in tow) has just descended on England, bought a motor-car from a Gorgeous Man (capitalization in the original; I bet he is either the villain or the romantic lead or possibly both), acquired a chauffeur named Rattray, and attempted to learn how to drive… only to promptly crash into a haberdashery! All in just three letters. Delighted with the heroine’s voice: like a particularly flighty Jean Webster heroine.
What I Plan to Read Next
DELIGHTED BEYOND RECKONING to find that archive.org has a treasure trove of William Heyliger books, including the long-yearned-for The Spirit of a Leader, a book about high school student government, an excerpt of which was my Heyliger gateway drug! At last I can read the whole story.
ALSO delighted to inform you that I found an article about William Heyliger, in which I discovered that he also wrote a few books under the pseudonym Hawley Williams, including Batter Up!, which is available as a Google book! The article (it begins on page 15) includes a lengthy quote from an autobiographical sketch by Heyliger, with this passage which captures for me the appeal of his books: “I have tried, to the limits of my particular craft, to be a romantic realist. I am never particularly interested in what my characters do; I am always interested in why they do it. My stories do not move in the sense of physical action; they do move thru the medium of psychological action.”
The joke being of course that these women will both be crushed, only our lovers are too indifferent to realize. It seems mean-spirited and curiously airless - as much minute psychological detail about every chess move in every conversation as a Henry James novel.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
I’ve gotten my sticky paws on another William Heyliger novel! For those of you who were not yet around for previous installments of the Great Heyliger Quest, William Heyliger was a writer for boys in the first half of the twentieth century who wrote epically earnest sports stories, Boy Scout stories, and stories about boys trying to find their vocation, as in today’s book Quinby and Son, wherein young Bert, dissatisfied with working at his father’s clothing store, tries to start a new store with his father’s clerk (a steadfast disciple of the book The Secrets of Business Success), only to swiftly find himself in far over his head.
Generally I think Heyliger’s school sports and Boy Scout stories are stronger, but I did enjoy the subplot about Bert’s friend Bill, who loses his leg while jumping the trains on a lark, but discovers a path forward in life as an artist of natural history sketches.
What I’m Reading Now
I made the grave mistake of reading through Dracula Daily’s list of other books that are being serialized on email, and now on top of Whale Weekly (a weekly installment of Moby-Dick in your inbox!) and Letters from Watson (the Sherlock Holmes short stories, in roughly chronological order), I’ve signed up for Literary Letters, which serializes obscure epistolary novels of the past, starting with The Lightning Conductor: The Strange Adventures of a Motor Car. As you know, I can’t resist an obscure old book…
Our heroine Molly (with Aunt Mary breathlessly in tow) has just descended on England, bought a motor-car from a Gorgeous Man (capitalization in the original; I bet he is either the villain or the romantic lead or possibly both), acquired a chauffeur named Rattray, and attempted to learn how to drive… only to promptly crash into a haberdashery! All in just three letters. Delighted with the heroine’s voice: like a particularly flighty Jean Webster heroine.
What I Plan to Read Next
DELIGHTED BEYOND RECKONING to find that archive.org has a treasure trove of William Heyliger books, including the long-yearned-for The Spirit of a Leader, a book about high school student government, an excerpt of which was my Heyliger gateway drug! At last I can read the whole story.
ALSO delighted to inform you that I found an article about William Heyliger, in which I discovered that he also wrote a few books under the pseudonym Hawley Williams, including Batter Up!, which is available as a Google book! The article (it begins on page 15) includes a lengthy quote from an autobiographical sketch by Heyliger, with this passage which captures for me the appeal of his books: “I have tried, to the limits of my particular craft, to be a romantic realist. I am never particularly interested in what my characters do; I am always interested in why they do it. My stories do not move in the sense of physical action; they do move thru the medium of psychological action.”
