Wednesday Reading Meme
Aug. 23rd, 2023 08:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Lindsey Fitzharris’s The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I, a fascinating read if you’re interested in medical history. Definitely more about surgical history than the experience of being a WWI soldier with a face wound, but that’s probably obvious from the title if you’re not reading it from a place of “Hey, this might be useful for my book about the World War I veteran with a disfiguring facial injury!”
Although now that I’ve read The Facemaker, I think it might require more research than I want to put into it to do that idea justice. Sorry, Kip and Alec! Maybe someday your time will come.
I also finished Barbara Leonie Picard’s One Is One, which takes its title and also its mood from the line in the folksong, “One is one and all alone and evermore shall be so.” Which is to say: this book is so whumpy! Soooooo whumpy.
Stephen is the son of a medieval lord who has no use for a shy, anxious boy. His cousins and half-siblings constantly torment him about his fear of dogs. Over the course of the story, he makes friends - in fact, each section of the book is devoted to a friend - only for each friend to be wrenched away from him by traumatic death.
I read this because someone told me this was slashy, and it is, kind of, if you accept “artistic” as an analogy for “gay” - certainly Stephen is very intense about his friends, and never shows any interest in girls. And, as one of those friends tells him (on the cusp of his tragic death, of course), “Always be yourself. Do not be afraid to do what you want to do, so long as it hurts no one else. We are each of us as God made us, and if God has seen fit to make you in an uncommon mode, be brave enough to be different.”
What I’m Reading Now
Peter Hart’s Aces Falling: War Above the Trenches, 1918. Hart’s style might be described as workmanlike, but the book is studded with first-hand accounts of aerial warfare during World War I, so I will stick around a while to see if it's worth it.
Also sticking with E. F. Benson’s David Blaize at King’s for a bit to see if that’s worth it. This book is a sequel to David Blaize, the slashiest Edwardian boarding school novel in the world, which is a delight all the way through, so it’s puzzling that the follow-up should feel so inert. It begins with a charming reunion between David and Frank, then instantly flounders into a dull rugby scene and an even duller birthday party, with no sign of stumbling back out of the marshes anytime soon.
And finally, Monica Dickens’ Mariana, a welcome respite from the other two, as I’m enjoying it. This is a semi-autobiographical novel (only semi-autobiographical, as Mariana, unlike Monica, is not the granddaughter of the most famous author in Victorian England) about growing up in England in the 1920s and 30s. Currently, young Mariana is in her mid-teens and breathlessly in love with her cousin Denys.
What I Plan to Read Next
I have loaded many books on my Kindle for my journey! ALL the Biggles/Von Stalhein books, as compiled byphilomytha in this helpful post; Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, at the suggestion of skygiants; Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, at the suggestion of littlerhymes; and William John Locke’s The Beloved Vagabond, at the suggestion of Betsy Warrington Ray in Betsy and the Great World.
Lindsey Fitzharris’s The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I, a fascinating read if you’re interested in medical history. Definitely more about surgical history than the experience of being a WWI soldier with a face wound, but that’s probably obvious from the title if you’re not reading it from a place of “Hey, this might be useful for my book about the World War I veteran with a disfiguring facial injury!”
Although now that I’ve read The Facemaker, I think it might require more research than I want to put into it to do that idea justice. Sorry, Kip and Alec! Maybe someday your time will come.
I also finished Barbara Leonie Picard’s One Is One, which takes its title and also its mood from the line in the folksong, “One is one and all alone and evermore shall be so.” Which is to say: this book is so whumpy! Soooooo whumpy.
Stephen is the son of a medieval lord who has no use for a shy, anxious boy. His cousins and half-siblings constantly torment him about his fear of dogs. Over the course of the story, he makes friends - in fact, each section of the book is devoted to a friend - only for each friend to be wrenched away from him by traumatic death.
I read this because someone told me this was slashy, and it is, kind of, if you accept “artistic” as an analogy for “gay” - certainly Stephen is very intense about his friends, and never shows any interest in girls. And, as one of those friends tells him (on the cusp of his tragic death, of course), “Always be yourself. Do not be afraid to do what you want to do, so long as it hurts no one else. We are each of us as God made us, and if God has seen fit to make you in an uncommon mode, be brave enough to be different.”
What I’m Reading Now
Peter Hart’s Aces Falling: War Above the Trenches, 1918. Hart’s style might be described as workmanlike, but the book is studded with first-hand accounts of aerial warfare during World War I, so I will stick around a while to see if it's worth it.
Also sticking with E. F. Benson’s David Blaize at King’s for a bit to see if that’s worth it. This book is a sequel to David Blaize, the slashiest Edwardian boarding school novel in the world, which is a delight all the way through, so it’s puzzling that the follow-up should feel so inert. It begins with a charming reunion between David and Frank, then instantly flounders into a dull rugby scene and an even duller birthday party, with no sign of stumbling back out of the marshes anytime soon.
And finally, Monica Dickens’ Mariana, a welcome respite from the other two, as I’m enjoying it. This is a semi-autobiographical novel (only semi-autobiographical, as Mariana, unlike Monica, is not the granddaughter of the most famous author in Victorian England) about growing up in England in the 1920s and 30s. Currently, young Mariana is in her mid-teens and breathlessly in love with her cousin Denys.
What I Plan to Read Next
I have loaded many books on my Kindle for my journey! ALL the Biggles/Von Stalhein books, as compiled by
philomytha in this helpful post; Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, at the suggestion of skygiants; Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, at the suggestion of littlerhymes; and William John Locke’s The Beloved Vagabond, at the suggestion of Betsy Warrington Ray in Betsy and the Great World.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-23 07:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-23 09:52 pm (UTC)