Wednesday Reading Meme
Mar. 1st, 2023 09:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
I enjoyed Nicholas Best’s The Greatest Day in History so much that I followed it up with his companion piece about the final days of World War II, Five Days that Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End of World War II.
The Greatest Day in History is a structural tour de force, drawing together disparate voices all over Europe to provide a multifaceted view of the same event: the armistice that ended World War I. Five Days that Shocked the World, although full of similarly fascinating detail, is more diffuse, and therefore feels less than the sum of its parts rather than more.
It actually ends a week before V-E Day, so although all the different threads are moving together, they don’t quite tie up in the end. Instead you’ve got separate stories: Mussolini’s execution in Italy, British and American forces discovering Bergen-Belsen and Dachau, Hitler’s suicide in Berlin and the consequent rush of all the Nazi higher-ups to get away and backstab each other…
What I’m Reading Now
In The Yellow Poppy, the Duc de Trelan is going to surrender to Napoleon’s Republican forces under a safe conduct pass… only the Republicans have secretly rescinded the safe conduct, so when the Duc goes to surrender he will be in grave danger!!! The Duc’s erstwhile enemy/romantic rival de Brencourt rushed to the Duc to tell him of these rescinded passes, only for the Duc to contemptuously brush aside his warning (can’t blame him; earlier in the story, de Brencourt know the Duc’s supposedly dead wife was alive and didn’t tell the Duc), and is riding directly into danger!
What I Plan to Read Next
Time to start my Irish books for St. Patrick’s Day! I’m especially looking forward to Seamus O’Reilly’s Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? (I know this was recced by someone on my flist… I think maybe especially in audiobook form? If this was you, please advise!)
I enjoyed Nicholas Best’s The Greatest Day in History so much that I followed it up with his companion piece about the final days of World War II, Five Days that Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End of World War II.
The Greatest Day in History is a structural tour de force, drawing together disparate voices all over Europe to provide a multifaceted view of the same event: the armistice that ended World War I. Five Days that Shocked the World, although full of similarly fascinating detail, is more diffuse, and therefore feels less than the sum of its parts rather than more.
It actually ends a week before V-E Day, so although all the different threads are moving together, they don’t quite tie up in the end. Instead you’ve got separate stories: Mussolini’s execution in Italy, British and American forces discovering Bergen-Belsen and Dachau, Hitler’s suicide in Berlin and the consequent rush of all the Nazi higher-ups to get away and backstab each other…
What I’m Reading Now
In The Yellow Poppy, the Duc de Trelan is going to surrender to Napoleon’s Republican forces under a safe conduct pass… only the Republicans have secretly rescinded the safe conduct, so when the Duc goes to surrender he will be in grave danger!!! The Duc’s erstwhile enemy/romantic rival de Brencourt rushed to the Duc to tell him of these rescinded passes, only for the Duc to contemptuously brush aside his warning (can’t blame him; earlier in the story, de Brencourt know the Duc’s supposedly dead wife was alive and didn’t tell the Duc), and is riding directly into danger!
What I Plan to Read Next
Time to start my Irish books for St. Patrick’s Day! I’m especially looking forward to Seamus O’Reilly’s Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? (I know this was recced by someone on my flist… I think maybe especially in audiobook form? If this was you, please advise!)
no subject
Date: 2023-03-01 04:38 pm (UTC)I read/posted about/would highly recommend Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?, although I can't speak to its merits as an audiobook.
Have you read anything of Michelle Gallen's? Her Factory Girls might be of interest.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-01 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-01 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-01 09:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-02 02:24 am (UTC)It’s a shame your latest Best foray didn’t live up to the last! Five Things is a great way to structure fanfic, but maybe not so much a full-length historical work?
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Date: 2023-03-04 03:46 pm (UTC)