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Wednesday Reading Meme
Oct. 28th, 2020 08:00 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
I had osmosed that John Knowles’ A Separate Peace is a slashy dark academia boarding school story, and I am happy to report that for once osmosis was ABSOLUTELY CORRECT: this is exactly what the book is, and it does it very well, so if that is the sort of thing you like you will like this book.
It’s certainly the sort of thing I like, so I gobbled it up like candy. The scene where Phineas cajoles Gene (our narrator, who feels toward Phineas a jealous love-hate attraction) into bicycling out to the beach with him, and Phineas buys Gene a hot dog and tells Gene he’s his best pal (Gene is appalled: in the shark tank atmosphere of Devon, this counts as goopy sentiment) and they sleep on the sand under the stars? Beautiful. A++. No wonder Gene feels the need to ward off his own goopy sentiments toward Phineas by manufacturing an intense one-sided rivalry that ends in tragedy.
As an added bonus, the book has an extremely vivid sense of time (World War II America) and place (a New Hampshire boarding school, heavily based on the author’s alma mater, Phillips Exeter). The winter scenes in particular are so vivid that I was surprised to raise my eyes from the book and see golden leaves on the trees, instead of boughs weighted with snow.
I found George MacDonald’s Phantastes less intrinsically delightful (although it was one of C. S. Lewis’s favorite novels ever, so obviously this varies by reader), but I’m glad to have read it, if only because the approach is so different from modern fantasy. MacDonald clearly doesn’t give a hoot about internal consistency, or having any kind of underlying rules to his magic; Phantastes hangs together entirely by dream or fairy-tale logic.
What I’m Reading Now
Lucy Sussex’s The Scarlet Rider has been on my TBR for four years, ever since someone mentioned it in a post about A. S. Byatt’s Possession as another book about literary research. As this has become The Year of Reading Books that I Have Long Meant to Read, I’ve been reading it; it’s a somewhat baggy book, trying to do a lot of things at once: literary research, including excerpts from a supposed 19th century novel plus various other primary source materials our heroine uncovers! Australian history! Our heroine’s complicated family history and interpersonal drama with her boyfriend and flatmate! Possibly a new love interest?? It’s interesting reading, but I’m not sure it’s all going to come together at the end.
Continuing on in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Catriona. David Balfour has spent a remarkable amount of time visiting lawyers and a little bit of time chatting with Catriona (clearly destined to be his ladylove) and no time at all having adventures and/or hanging out with Alan Breck Stewart. Stevenson, no one is reading your action-adventure-romance for the interminable lawyer action!
I’ve also begun Toni Morrison’s Sula, which is a portrait of two girls’ best friendship (poised to go wrong as they grow into women, according to the back cover copy, but I haven’t gotten to that part yet), but even more so a portrait of the families that shaped both of the girls and the Black community in the Ohio hills to which they belong. Enjoying it so far - the language is beautiful - and it’s not as devastating as The Bluest Eye, yet, although I expect it will get there by and by.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve had Nancy Farmer’s The House of the Scorpion on my list for AGES and when I read it I will have knocked off the last of the Newbery Honor books from the 2000s, so I’ve decided to bite the bullet and get ‘er done.
I had osmosed that John Knowles’ A Separate Peace is a slashy dark academia boarding school story, and I am happy to report that for once osmosis was ABSOLUTELY CORRECT: this is exactly what the book is, and it does it very well, so if that is the sort of thing you like you will like this book.
It’s certainly the sort of thing I like, so I gobbled it up like candy. The scene where Phineas cajoles Gene (our narrator, who feels toward Phineas a jealous love-hate attraction) into bicycling out to the beach with him, and Phineas buys Gene a hot dog and tells Gene he’s his best pal (Gene is appalled: in the shark tank atmosphere of Devon, this counts as goopy sentiment) and they sleep on the sand under the stars? Beautiful. A++. No wonder Gene feels the need to ward off his own goopy sentiments toward Phineas by manufacturing an intense one-sided rivalry that ends in tragedy.
As an added bonus, the book has an extremely vivid sense of time (World War II America) and place (a New Hampshire boarding school, heavily based on the author’s alma mater, Phillips Exeter). The winter scenes in particular are so vivid that I was surprised to raise my eyes from the book and see golden leaves on the trees, instead of boughs weighted with snow.
I found George MacDonald’s Phantastes less intrinsically delightful (although it was one of C. S. Lewis’s favorite novels ever, so obviously this varies by reader), but I’m glad to have read it, if only because the approach is so different from modern fantasy. MacDonald clearly doesn’t give a hoot about internal consistency, or having any kind of underlying rules to his magic; Phantastes hangs together entirely by dream or fairy-tale logic.
What I’m Reading Now
Lucy Sussex’s The Scarlet Rider has been on my TBR for four years, ever since someone mentioned it in a post about A. S. Byatt’s Possession as another book about literary research. As this has become The Year of Reading Books that I Have Long Meant to Read, I’ve been reading it; it’s a somewhat baggy book, trying to do a lot of things at once: literary research, including excerpts from a supposed 19th century novel plus various other primary source materials our heroine uncovers! Australian history! Our heroine’s complicated family history and interpersonal drama with her boyfriend and flatmate! Possibly a new love interest?? It’s interesting reading, but I’m not sure it’s all going to come together at the end.
Continuing on in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Catriona. David Balfour has spent a remarkable amount of time visiting lawyers and a little bit of time chatting with Catriona (clearly destined to be his ladylove) and no time at all having adventures and/or hanging out with Alan Breck Stewart. Stevenson, no one is reading your action-adventure-romance for the interminable lawyer action!
I’ve also begun Toni Morrison’s Sula, which is a portrait of two girls’ best friendship (poised to go wrong as they grow into women, according to the back cover copy, but I haven’t gotten to that part yet), but even more so a portrait of the families that shaped both of the girls and the Black community in the Ohio hills to which they belong. Enjoying it so far - the language is beautiful - and it’s not as devastating as The Bluest Eye, yet, although I expect it will get there by and by.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve had Nancy Farmer’s The House of the Scorpion on my list for AGES and when I read it I will have knocked off the last of the Newbery Honor books from the 2000s, so I’ve decided to bite the bullet and get ‘er done.
