A Certain Slant of Light

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I finished the last Edward Eager book! WHAT WILL I DO WITHOUT MORE EDWARD EAGER TO LOOK FORWARD TO? Read E. Nesbit, probably, which is what Edward Eager would have wanted anyway.

But still it’s rather sad, because he died of lung cancer not long after finishing his final book, and from hints dropped in the book itself I think he was planning a crossover between Seven-Day Magic (in which five children borrow a magic book from the library, which among other things sends them on an crossover with Eager’s Half Magic) and Magic or Not?, my very favorite of Eager book, in which it is not clear… whether there is magic occuring or not. But in a way that is totally mysterious and charming, not the annoying way where the reader can definitely tell that it is magic (or isn’t magic) and the protagonists are just confused.

In particular, Laura from Magic or Not? deserves an unambiguously magical adventure and it’s just sad Eager’s death prevented it, and also prevented him from continuing to develop as a writer, because he’s one of those writers where there’s a definite arc of improvement as he continues and… oh well. Don’t smoke, kids! It might cut your writing career short at the worst possible moment!

I also read Adeline Dutton Train Whitney’s We Girls, which was so popular in the nineteenth century that Susan Coolidge mentions it in one of her books as a novel that the heroine is particular pleased to receive… But I must confess that I found it strangely hard to follow. I’m pretty sure it’s the sequel to something and the author expected me to have a prior familiarity with many of the characters, which probably didn’t help.

What I’m Reading Now

I picked up Sheila Turnage’s Three Times Lucky without much interest, solely because it’s on my Newbery Honor list… but actually I’m really enjoying it! It’s nice when it works out like that. It’s a mystery set in the small town of Tupelo Landing in North Carolina, starring a girl named Moses because the river washed her into town during a hurricane when she was a baby, and Mo and her friend Dale want to solve the mystery of her parentage and also a MURDER.

For the same project, I also got Stephanie Tolan’s Surviving the Applewhites, but it’s about a juvenile delinquent and I can’t bear juvenile delinquents (this is why I didn’t read this book during my big Stephanie Tolan kick when I was in junior high) so I’ve stalled a couple of chapters in.

I’m also reading Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, but verrrrry slowly, just a few pages a night. I like to think I’m being meditative about it but really I just can’t read very much nature writing at one go.

What I Plan to Read Next

THE LIBRARY FINALLY BROUGHT ME CLOUDS OF WITNESS. I was saving it with the idea that I should read it as a reward when I finish writing Iced Coffee Dreams - I’m only a chapter and a half from the end! But I have no idea how to fix one of those chapters! - so I may give into temptation and read it right away instead.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Nothing very recently; it’s been a busy week. Nothing since Edward Eager’s Knight’s Castle, when a group of kids magically visit Ivanhoe (and one of them unwisely explains the whole plot of the book to the villains, who promptly change their plans and spin the story off in strange directions).

I thought Knight’s Castle was a bit unfair to Rowena - she is not stunningly written in Ivanhoe, but she does have the virtue of constancy - but otherwise it’s a hoot. Clearly I’ll have to read more of Eager’s books.

What I’m Reading Now

Sarah Addison Allen’s Lost Lake. Allen’s books are a bit of a guilty pleasure, because I wouldn’t exactly call them good, but I like their sense of atmosphere and keep reading them as soon as the copies hit the library.

Evan S. Connell’s Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn, because truepenny gave it a good review, and her nonfiction reviews are dependably incisive and insightful. (She has a masterlist of book reviews here, which is useful.)

I’m reading Son of the Morning Star in bits, because everyone keeps behaving badly (as one might expect) and there is only so much human cruelty and folly I can take at one sitting. But it’s very interesting: I didn’t know much about Little Bighorn or about the 19th century US military or about the Sioux or the Cheyenne or the various other tribes he references, so I’m learning a lot.

G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who was Thursday. I strongly suspect ( possible spoilers ), but we’ll see. It’s an interestingly trippy read.

What I’ve Reading Next

Barbara Hambly’s A Free Man of Color, the first of her series of mysteries set in 1830s New Orleans with a detective who is, in fact, a free man of color. I’ve seen multiple recs for this series, so I’m hoping it will be good.