Wednesday Reading Meme
Mar. 22nd, 2023 07:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
I finished D. K. Broster’s The Yellow Poppy! GODDAMMIT BROSTER. I saw it coming but I refused to believe it was coming. Not only did Napoleon violate the sanctity of the Duc’s military safe-conduct to arrest him, he had the Duc shot in front of Mirabel, the Trelan’s ancestral home.
And Broster had spent the previous few chapters setting up a rescue attempt that was to be disguised as a transfer to another prison, so when the executioners first arrived to take the Duc to Mirabel, I thought it was the rescue! The raising of hope only to crush it to a powder… truly brutal. And we end on the duchesse in the chapel of Mirabel, kneeling by the Duc’s body, weeping as the dried petals of the yellow poppy that he enclosed in his last letter fall on his ever-stilled breast… MY GOD BROSTER.
littlerhymes and I finished Alan Garner’s Elidor, a portal fantasy in which the children are only in the fantasy world for, like, four chapters. They spend the rest of the book home in Manchester trying to protect the magical Treasures that their liaison in Elidor entrusted to them. Garner never does quite what you expect! Although he is very predictable in the sense that the endings always seem to cut off abruptly about two sentences after the climax.
I also read Carol Ryrie Brink’s The Highly Trained Dogs of Professor Petit, which is about a showman whose troop of highly trained dogs are under threat from an unscrupulous competitor who lures in the crowds with his tiger act! Short and cute.
And I read Jennie D. Lindquist’s The Little Silver House, a sequel to her exquisite The Golden Name Day, and just as good as the first book. These books are about happy Swedish-American children having good times and enjoying the fun traditions of their Swedish heritage, like having a picnic at dawn to sing and watch the sun come up.
What I’m Reading Now
My St. Patrick Day reads have been derailed slightly by illness, but I am nonetheless traipsing ahead. In R. A. MacAvoy’s The Grey Horse, Ruairi just rescued the runaway son of the local landowner, and also murdered the Crown agent that said landowner had called in to investigate local Nationalist unrest.
Meanwhile, in Maeve Binchy’s Circle of Friends.... Oh gosh so much is happening in this book. DELIGHTED that Benny finally managed to run the Uriah-Heepish Sean Walsh out of her father’s clothing store. LESS delighted that Sean Walsh proposed marriage to the rich widow who owns the hotel across the street and was immediately accepted, not despite but because of the fact that Mrs. Healy knows all about his crimes. “This will make it easy to keep him under my thumb!” Mrs. Healy thinks. WILL IT, MRS. HEALY? I mean, maybe it will. Mrs. Healy certainly has a spine of steel and a heart to match, so really she and Sean are made for each other.
What I Plan to Read Next
Jennie D. Lindquist’s The Crystal Tree, the third and last book in her trilogy. These appear to be the only books she ever wrote, but WHAT a set of books.
Also, I want to add a Maeve Binchy to my St. Patrick’s Day list for next year. Any suggestions?
I finished D. K. Broster’s The Yellow Poppy! GODDAMMIT BROSTER. I saw it coming but I refused to believe it was coming. Not only did Napoleon violate the sanctity of the Duc’s military safe-conduct to arrest him, he had the Duc shot in front of Mirabel, the Trelan’s ancestral home.
And Broster had spent the previous few chapters setting up a rescue attempt that was to be disguised as a transfer to another prison, so when the executioners first arrived to take the Duc to Mirabel, I thought it was the rescue! The raising of hope only to crush it to a powder… truly brutal. And we end on the duchesse in the chapel of Mirabel, kneeling by the Duc’s body, weeping as the dried petals of the yellow poppy that he enclosed in his last letter fall on his ever-stilled breast… MY GOD BROSTER.
littlerhymes and I finished Alan Garner’s Elidor, a portal fantasy in which the children are only in the fantasy world for, like, four chapters. They spend the rest of the book home in Manchester trying to protect the magical Treasures that their liaison in Elidor entrusted to them. Garner never does quite what you expect! Although he is very predictable in the sense that the endings always seem to cut off abruptly about two sentences after the climax. I also read Carol Ryrie Brink’s The Highly Trained Dogs of Professor Petit, which is about a showman whose troop of highly trained dogs are under threat from an unscrupulous competitor who lures in the crowds with his tiger act! Short and cute.
And I read Jennie D. Lindquist’s The Little Silver House, a sequel to her exquisite The Golden Name Day, and just as good as the first book. These books are about happy Swedish-American children having good times and enjoying the fun traditions of their Swedish heritage, like having a picnic at dawn to sing and watch the sun come up.
What I’m Reading Now
My St. Patrick Day reads have been derailed slightly by illness, but I am nonetheless traipsing ahead. In R. A. MacAvoy’s The Grey Horse, Ruairi just rescued the runaway son of the local landowner, and also murdered the Crown agent that said landowner had called in to investigate local Nationalist unrest.
Meanwhile, in Maeve Binchy’s Circle of Friends.... Oh gosh so much is happening in this book. DELIGHTED that Benny finally managed to run the Uriah-Heepish Sean Walsh out of her father’s clothing store. LESS delighted that Sean Walsh proposed marriage to the rich widow who owns the hotel across the street and was immediately accepted, not despite but because of the fact that Mrs. Healy knows all about his crimes. “This will make it easy to keep him under my thumb!” Mrs. Healy thinks. WILL IT, MRS. HEALY? I mean, maybe it will. Mrs. Healy certainly has a spine of steel and a heart to match, so really she and Sean are made for each other.
What I Plan to Read Next
Jennie D. Lindquist’s The Crystal Tree, the third and last book in her trilogy. These appear to be the only books she ever wrote, but WHAT a set of books.
Also, I want to add a Maeve Binchy to my St. Patrick’s Day list for next year. Any suggestions?
Maeve B
Date: 2023-03-22 11:33 am (UTC)Re: Maeve B
Date: 2023-03-22 06:31 pm (UTC)Re: Maeve B
Date: 2023-03-23 01:05 am (UTC)Re: Maeve B
Date: 2023-03-23 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-22 01:51 pm (UTC)enjoying the fun traditions of their Swedish heritage, like having a picnic at dawn to sing and watch the sun come up
That tradition is a new one for this Swedish person!
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Date: 2023-03-22 06:30 pm (UTC)Perhaps the dawn picnics were specifically a Lindquist family tradition!
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Date: 2023-03-23 08:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-23 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-24 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2023-03-22 03:11 pm (UTC)Alas!
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Date: 2023-03-22 06:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-22 08:01 pm (UTC)It is a beautiful ending—the tragedy so terribly inevitable and yet with hope raised just plausibly enough to make its crushing so powerful. I really think Broster is better at sad endings than happy ones, although she seems to have preferred happier endings later on.
I liked the contrast between mundane Manchester and the portal fantasy of Elidor, and especially how much attention is paid to the mundane world! I should re-read it sometimes. And yes, another typically Garner extremely abrupt ending.
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Date: 2023-03-22 08:21 pm (UTC)Elidor is a fascinating approach to a portal fantasy! I don't think I've ever seen one before were most of the book is actually in the mundane world with Things creeping in from the other side of the portal.
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Date: 2023-03-23 10:51 am (UTC)I cannot recommend a Maeve Binchy, but I remember the movie being a great favourite with my friends in high school. This is probably why I have such an attachment to Minnie Driver.
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Date: 2023-03-23 03:29 pm (UTC)They made a movie out of Circle of Friends? I should see that! ...oh I bet they had Benny and Jack get together at the end, though, didn't they. Hmmm.... maybe not...
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Date: 2023-03-25 03:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-23 09:07 pm (UTC)He really does! *shakes fist at him on behalf of my younger self* I was so enjoying Elidor until he just stopped before he was done like that. You're right, though: he certainly isn't boring.
I think I've read Circle of Friends and also one with a bus. It was fairly recently, so I'm slightly disturbed that I'm so woolly about it, but I definitely remember that thing with the awful Sean and the widow, so I think it must have been that one I read. Um. /o\ (It was fine! I would read another. But apparently not remember anything afterwards.)
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Date: 2023-03-23 11:33 pm (UTC)Technically Circle of Friends has a bus, but perhaps there is another Maeve Binchy with a yet more prominent bus?
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Date: 2023-03-24 09:37 am (UTC)And because Garner is Garner you can't even fanfic them, because who knows what he would have done! XD
Technically Circle of Friends has a bus, but perhaps there is another Maeve Binchy with a yet more prominent bus?
The bus in the bus one is so prominent it is called The Lilac Bus and is a much shorter one about a group of people who keep travelling on this little bus to Dublin and you get a segment for each of them. My Granny used to own the same edition I picked up, so I remember its cover distinctly at least!
I did read Circle of Friends as well - I knew I read one other, but I was very foggy on which one. Even though it was only last year or something. I expect I was tired. It was quite long and I probably just got vague and ME-y but wanted unwisely to finish it; never a good combination if I want to retain stuff from a book.
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Date: 2023-03-24 10:36 pm (UTC)