Wednesday Reading Meme
May. 18th, 2022 07:26 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
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littlerhymes and I finished Margaret Mahy’s The Changeover, about which I had more mixed feelings than about The Haunting. It does many of the same things just as well as The Haunting: the family relationships (here, I particularly liked Laura’s relationship with her mother Kate), the uncanny magic. But it also has a romance that I can only describe as EXTREMELY 80s (the book was published in 1984), in which school prefect Sorenson backs our heroine Laura into a wall and fondles her breast and then they joke about whether this is sexual harrassment. I think in fact it is!
My theory is that Sorry (I also just can’t with this nickname) is trying to prove that, although he is a boy witch (which is quite rare; most witches are girls), he is a normal boy in OTHER ways. But for goodness sake, Sorry, couldn’t you overcompensate in a way that is NOT groping our heroine?
Edward Prime-Stevenson’s White Cockades confirmed my impression of Prime-Stevenson’s extremely moderate gifts as a writer of fiction. Prime-Stevenson wrote the book to be as slashy as possible (he later recommended it as a book with Uranian undertones in The Intersexes, a nonfiction book about what would eventually be called homosexuality, written under a different penname), and it’s got all the ingredients - the heroes are fascinated by each other at first meeting! And one gives the other a ring! And they swear “whither thou goest, I will go!” - but somehow it doesn’t achieve the depth of emotion of, say, Anne Shirley sobbing in the window seat because someday Diana will get married.
I also read Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention - and How to Think Deeply Again, which to be honest I found so depressing that I struggled to finish it. This is the result of an unfortunate collision between the book’s proposed systemic changes to fix some of the reasons why many people are finding it increasingly hard to focus nowadays (very short version: web designers designed many websites to be addictive and distracting because it maximizes their profits), and my current low-key despair about the US ever getting it together to ever make any systemic changes. Or at least any good ones.
What I’m Reading Now
Frances Hodgson Burnett’s T. Tembaron has become my “book to read on my cell phone when I am in line,” which means that progress is slow but ALSO means that every time I am in line I am all “YES, it’s Tembaron time!!!”, which means the slow progress is worth it.
Tembaron has acquired a friend with amnesia AND ALSO inherited a fortune! (Likelihood that the friend with amnesia is actually the lost heir to said fortune: low, but I wouldn’t put it past Burnett!) He is now on his way to England and I am VERY curious to see how English society feels about this slangy New York street urchin with a heart of gold.
In Dracula news, Jonathan Harker has been MENACED by three SEXY LADY VAMPIRES, only to be saved by Dracula who announced to the sexy lady vampires that Jonathan Harker is HIS and then bridal carrying Harker to his room. (I’m making an assumption re: bridal carry, as Harker swooned at the psychological moment.) This book is SO much.
What I Plan to Read Next
Will I finally start reading the physical books on my TBR shelf instead of checking yet more books out from the library? I’ve been meaning to do this for months now, but I keep getting seduced by just one more library book.
littlerhymes and I finished Margaret Mahy’s The Changeover, about which I had more mixed feelings than about The Haunting. It does many of the same things just as well as The Haunting: the family relationships (here, I particularly liked Laura’s relationship with her mother Kate), the uncanny magic. But it also has a romance that I can only describe as EXTREMELY 80s (the book was published in 1984), in which school prefect Sorenson backs our heroine Laura into a wall and fondles her breast and then they joke about whether this is sexual harrassment. I think in fact it is! My theory is that Sorry (I also just can’t with this nickname) is trying to prove that, although he is a boy witch (which is quite rare; most witches are girls), he is a normal boy in OTHER ways. But for goodness sake, Sorry, couldn’t you overcompensate in a way that is NOT groping our heroine?
Edward Prime-Stevenson’s White Cockades confirmed my impression of Prime-Stevenson’s extremely moderate gifts as a writer of fiction. Prime-Stevenson wrote the book to be as slashy as possible (he later recommended it as a book with Uranian undertones in The Intersexes, a nonfiction book about what would eventually be called homosexuality, written under a different penname), and it’s got all the ingredients - the heroes are fascinated by each other at first meeting! And one gives the other a ring! And they swear “whither thou goest, I will go!” - but somehow it doesn’t achieve the depth of emotion of, say, Anne Shirley sobbing in the window seat because someday Diana will get married.
I also read Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention - and How to Think Deeply Again, which to be honest I found so depressing that I struggled to finish it. This is the result of an unfortunate collision between the book’s proposed systemic changes to fix some of the reasons why many people are finding it increasingly hard to focus nowadays (very short version: web designers designed many websites to be addictive and distracting because it maximizes their profits), and my current low-key despair about the US ever getting it together to ever make any systemic changes. Or at least any good ones.
What I’m Reading Now
Frances Hodgson Burnett’s T. Tembaron has become my “book to read on my cell phone when I am in line,” which means that progress is slow but ALSO means that every time I am in line I am all “YES, it’s Tembaron time!!!”, which means the slow progress is worth it.
Tembaron has acquired a friend with amnesia AND ALSO inherited a fortune! (Likelihood that the friend with amnesia is actually the lost heir to said fortune: low, but I wouldn’t put it past Burnett!) He is now on his way to England and I am VERY curious to see how English society feels about this slangy New York street urchin with a heart of gold.
In Dracula news, Jonathan Harker has been MENACED by three SEXY LADY VAMPIRES, only to be saved by Dracula who announced to the sexy lady vampires that Jonathan Harker is HIS and then bridal carrying Harker to his room. (I’m making an assumption re: bridal carry, as Harker swooned at the psychological moment.) This book is SO much.
What I Plan to Read Next
Will I finally start reading the physical books on my TBR shelf instead of checking yet more books out from the library? I’ve been meaning to do this for months now, but I keep getting seduced by just one more library book.
