osprey_archer | Entries tagged with author: hilary mckay

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Hilary McKay’s excellent collection of fairy-tale retellings, Straw into Gold: Fairy Tales Re-spun. This last batch included “What I Did in the Holidays and Why Hansel’s Jacket Is So Tight (by Gretel, aged 10),” an extremely funny Hansel and Gretel retelling in the form of a “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” essay. An excellent collection overall if you’re fond of fairytales.

I also finished D. E. Stevenson’s Mrs. Tim Christie, an omnibus of the two books originally published as Mrs. Tim of the Regiment (Mrs. Tim’s everyday life as the wife of an officer in a Highland regiment) and Golden Days (Mrs. Tim goes on a Highland holiday). The first book is based on Stevenson’s real-life diary as an officer’s wife, which may go some way to explaining why I found it hard to get into: as in a real life diary, you are pelted with a plethora of names, often with little to no context, so it’s sometimes difficult to follow just who is who and what’s going on.

But the second half of the book was written from the outset as a novel in diary form, and has all the charm of Stevenson’s other novels. I do particularly enjoy her Scotland novels: there’s just something special about her feeling for the countryside.

What I’m Reading Now

Barbara Leonie Picard’s The Lady of the Linden Tree. I had mixed feelings about Picard’s One Is One, but nonetheless leaped at this fairy tale collection when I saw her name on the spine. So far the stories are pleasant but not greatly memorable.

What I Plan to Read Next

Inspired by the book list at the back of Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry, I’ve acquired two more items from the New York Review Children’s Collection: Russell Hoban’s The Marzipan Pig (you may know him for the Frances books, as in Bread and Jam for Frances) and Palmer Brown’s Beyond the Pawpaw Trees (fantasy? Maybe? I got this one entirely because the title intrigued me).

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Abbie Farwell Brown wrote twee children’s books in the early twentieth century, and every once in a while in a certain mood, I read one. My latest venture was Friends and Cousins, in which two children go to their island holiday house, befriend some local children, pretend to be pirates (with the addition of their newly arrived cousin), and then one of the local children saves one of the visitors (I think; I must confess I never fully sorted out who was who) when she is about to drown, and the book ends abruptly.

Now, when one selects a book in full knowledge of the author’s twee tendencies, one cannot then complain that the book is flimsy. But I did feel that there was just a bit more substance to John of the Woods and The Lonesomest Doll.

I also read Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Magic Nation Thing. In general, I feel that Snyder’s earlier books are stronger than her later ones, and this book fits firmly into that trend. A lot of the book is Snyder summarizing what happened rather than actually letting it happen on the page. Moreover, although the heroine Abby clearly has a psychic ability to see things by touching objects belonging to people, from the beginning of the book to the very end, she’s still trying to convince herself that this ability is imaginary. One, if you’re going to do a “magic or not?” plotline, both options need to be plausible; and two, when it clearly IS magic, the heroine ought to accept it as such, at least by the very last page!

Finally, however, a charmer! Rosalie K. Fry’s Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry has been making the rounds of DW lately, and I picked it up because who am I to resist the book that inspired The Secret of Roan Inish? (Do I actually remember anything about The Secret of Roan Inish? No. Am I in fact 100% sure that I ever watched The Secret of Roan Inish? Also no. But I looked at it longingly in the video store, which is just about the same thing, right?)

Anyway. Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry is a delightfully atmospheric book set in the Western Isles of Scotland, a modern-day tale of selkies featuring ( spoilers )

What I’m Reading Now

Almost done with Hilary McKay’s Straw into Gold! This week my favorite was the Snow White story, where a little girl finds a razor-sharp shard of mirror and starts asking everyone if she’s the prettiest in the land. “There’s no more a prettiest girl than a prettiest buttercup,” her grandmother replies, and tells her a story about an evil queen, long ago, who had a magic mirror, and tried to kill her stepdaughter when the mirror said that the stepdaughter was the fairest in the land…

I also loved the Princess and the Pea story, where the prince was cursed as a baby: if he doesn't marry a true princess, his castle will fall down! "So what?" says a visiting princess, when she learns that the prince's true love is the maid, and the prince and the maid get married and live happily in the stables after the castle falls.

What I Plan to Read Next

Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry was reprinted as part of the New York Review Children’s Collection. Most of the titles I haven’t heard of, but the few that I have were all excellent (Penelope Farmer’s Charlotte Sometimes; Rumer Godden’s Mouse House), so I’m contemplating exploring the list further… Particularly drawn to Russell Hoban’s The Marzipan Pig, as Hoban’s Frances books were one of the obsessions of my childhood.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

A couple of books, but I’m planning to write full-length reviews of them both. Oh, and Sorche Nic Leodhas’s All in the Morning Early (illustrated by Evaline Ness), a picture book about a boy who heads off for the mill early in the morning and picks up a piper, a pair of shorn sheep, four farmers, six rabbits hirpling in the heather… One of those songs that builds on itself, like “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” don’t you know.

What I’m Reading Now

Still traipsing through Hilary McKay’s Straw into Gold. Quite liked the story where Cinderella captures the prince’s heart at the ball by cheerfully telling him about her day-to-day life in the scullery! Now that’s a take I haven’t seen before: usually she has to conceal the lowly state to which she has fallen.

What I Plan to Read Next

Still attempting to read my massive pile of library books under control, a hopeless task when I keep adding new books to the pile… But I ask you, how was I supposed to resist Colin Jones’ The Fall of Robespierre: 24 Hours in Revolutionary Paris? A little light reading to prepare for my trip to France!

Wednesday Reading Meme on Tuesday again! Partly for reasons of timing but also because the "What I've Just Finished Reading" section was getting overstuffed as it was...

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

A bonanza of books this week! Mostly because I’ve finally got around to finishing some of those books I swore I would finish these last couple of weeks.

First of all, I finished the last two stories in Women’s Weird: Strange Stories by Women, 1890-1940. I didn’t find Mary Butts’ “With and Without Buttons” (a tale of mysteriously appearing gloves) quite as creepy as many of the others in the collection, but D. K. Broster’s “Couching at the Door” was a wonderful character study of a selfish aesthetic poet who, after a sexual encounter of an unspecified occult nature, is haunted by an affectionate fur boa that pops up wherever he goes and wants to snuggle up to him at night like a cat. Somehow the cuteness makes the haunting more horrifying.

Creeping forward in the Newbery project, I finished Elizabeth Janet Gray’s Meggy MacIntosh, which is a book about a Scottish girl who runs away to America on the cusp of the Revolutionary War. She is seeking her heroine Flora MacDonald, who saved Bonnie Prince Charlie after the ’45, and is now raising troops to fight in the war… on King George’s side.

I liked Meggy, but it was Flora MacDonald who really fascinated me—a sentiment in which Meggy agrees with me completely! Though Meggy eventually comes down on the Patriot side, her admiration for Flora MacDonald never flags, for she can see that Flora is trying to do what she thinks is right. After all, she and many of the Highlanders who rally to her call took an Oath of Allegiance to the king, and to them that’s a serious thing; and perhaps they simply can’t imagine that this rebellion won’t end in another Culloden. And if that’s so, then surely the best thing to do is to put it down quickly

I also finished Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s Fool’s Gold, which I got stuck on because it’s a phobia book (this is a genre that may have died since the 1990s?), which is to say that it’s a book where the protagonist has a phobia which he will, of course, heroically overcome at the climax of the novel, probably while saving someone’s life. This is in fact exactly what happens, but despite my griping along the way I ended up getting invested in the characters, particular our hero Rudy, a class clown with a boundless curiosity who starts to see how fear shapes many people’s behavior after he begins to grapple with his own claustrophobia. And the early 1990s setting (contemporary when the book was written, of course) was such a nostalgia trip for me.

And finally, I zipped through Hilary McKay’s Lulu and the Hamster in the Night, the last of the six Lulu books. I haven’t posted about most of them because there is not much to say except that they are delightful, but they are delightful and if you have an animal-loving early reader in your life they would be a wonderful gift – or, if you happen to love children’s books about pets and friendship, a wonderful gift for yourself.

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve begun Hilary McKay’s Straw into Gold, a collection of fairy tale retellings, or perhaps more accurately remixes. (Usually I am not big on short stories but this year I seem to have gone all out for them.) The first is set after the main action of Rapunzel, and is a slantwise look at Rapunzel growing accustomed over the years to the wide world outside her tower.

What I Plan to Read Next

So many reading plans! Colette's Claudine novels! John Le Carre's Our Game! (I thought perhaps better to start with a standalone than dive right into the Smileys.) Rosalie K. Fry's Secret of Ron Mor Skerry has arrived! We shall see what reading is in fact accomplished.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Sorche Nic Leodhas’s Gaelic Ghosts, a collection of Scottish ghost stories. The preface is as charming as the stories themselves, for Nic Leodhas reminisces about where she learned the stories: this tale of a ghost dog from an uncle, the tale of the Lady’s Loaf-Field from a great aunt… a peek into an oral tradition.

Also D. E. Stevenson’s Amberwell, a family saga that starts in the 1920s and stretches till just after World War II. Amberwell is the name of the family estate, and Stevenson is so good at writing about places in a way that makes you see them; and so good, too, at writing characters who feel like real people, some of them nice and some of them dreadful (the parents in this book! Their motto is “never explain,” which tells you just about everything you need to know about their parenting style), but vivid and lively and a pleasure to spend time with. Reading her books is like going on a visit.

And also Hilary McKay’s Lulu and the Dog from the Sea. One of the delightful things about deciding to read through an author’s entire catalog is that it leads you to wonderful finds, like this series of easy readers about Lulu and her cousin (and best friend) Mellie, who are always getting into scrapes on account of Lulu’s love of animals. I don’t usually read easy readers, but McKay combines a simple writing style with a cracking good story about befriending a stray dog on a seaside holiday. Highly recommended as a present for a child learning to read, especially if the child loves animals.

What I’m Reading Now

This week in Sir Isumbras at the Ford, I’ve reached the end of book two. ( Spoilers )

Also continuing on in E. B. White’s One Man’s Meat. We’re in May 1939 now (these essays were originally written as columns for Harper’s) and the threat of war hangs in the air like a fog, its tendrils winding through the cracks even into White’s chicken coop.

What I Plan to Read Next

The sequel to Amberwell, Summerhills. I shall have to put an interlibrary loan on it, so it will be a bit... but on the other hand the Purdue interlibrary loan office was EXTREMELY on the ball with Mary Stolz's Go and Catch a Flying Fish (about which more anon!), so perhaps it will be here soon!

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Lisa See’s On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of a Chinese-American Family, which is part family history, part history of Chinese immigration to America, and part (a rather smaller part) a history of modern China. I’ve been meaning to read this for years, and I’m glad I finally got around to it, because it’s fascinating. I can also see shadows of See’s later book Shanghai Girls, which draws on a lot of this research, and as I enjoyed Shanghai Girls, this adds an extra layer of pleasure to On Gold Mountain for me.

(As much as I enjoyed Shanghai Girls, I can’t recommend it because ending is completely inconclusive, and the sequel, Dreams of Joy, is not nearly as good. It feels much thinner, less lived-in, Pearl and May spend most of the book apart - and their relationship is really the driving force in Shanghai Girls - and Joy is not nearly as interesting as her mother and aunt. Of course, it’s probably unfair to expect a single person to be as interesting as two people put together...but still.)

I also finished Hilary McKay's Caddy's World, and am moping slightly at having no more Casson books to read. I love the Casson family, which is so odd and disorganized and yet very, very functional: the children are encouraged to do what they loved, and they know that they are loved, not only by their parents (particularly their mother) but by their siblings.

What I’m Reading Now

Maria Thompson Daviess’s Rose of Old Harpeth, to which I give props for having a romantic heroine who is already thirty... although I also take some away because Rose Mary often acts so head-in-the-clouds as to make Anne of Green Gables look like a grounded and level-headed person.

Thinking about this a bit more - I think the difference lies not so much in the quality of their musings, but in the fact that Anne has a fully functional set of emotions, including anger and misery, while Rose Mary seems to have excised anger and sadness from her emotional repertoire. It makes her feel insubstantial.

I’m beginning to think that Phyllis, the first Daviess book I read, was probably her best - or perhaps I should say, was most suited to my personal tastes - because neither this one nor The Golden Bird really grabbed me.

I'm also reading Jaleigh Johnson's The Mark of the Dragonfly, because I was charmed by the title and the giant dragonfly on the cover. This is a somewhat dangerous method of book selection, but so far (I'm only about twenty pages or so in) I'm enjoying it. Our heroine, Piper, lives in a town of scrappers, people who make their living by collecting the debris from other worlds that falls from the sky on the nights of the full moon...and something is clearly about to happen which will turn her life upside down, but I haven't gotten that far yet.

What I Plan to Read Next

William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. I am girding my loins for this one.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Emily Arsenault’s The Broken Teaglass, which I read all in one evening because I needed so much to know what happened happened next. It reminded me a bit of Barbara Michaels’ Houses of Stone, because both books are above all mysteries about texts - texts that ultimately lead back to a dead body, but the corpse remains secondary to the text. (It occurs to me that there is something of this quality in The Silkworm, too.)

This has rapidly become my very favorite type of mystery, and I have probably read the only two in existence. WOE.

I also read Oliver James’ Affluenza, because read the first couple of chapters and the conclusion in a bookstore in London. Having now read the bits in the middle as well, I can testify that the first couple of chapters and the conclusion are all anyone really needs. James has his thesis: that the modern obsession with celebrity and wealth, downgrading of the importance of emotional ties, and the concomitant belief in watered-down Social Darwinism, are causing a rise in mental health problems among people in the developed world (particularly in countries with an ideological commitment to the American vision of capitalism).

And that is pretty much all he has. The middle part of the book is mostly portraits of people and cultures that he met in his travels, which all seem to fold neatly back into his thesis - even if they seem to fly in the face of it, he always seemed to be able to rationalize them back within his theoretical apparatus. I began to get the feeling no facts would dent his belief in his thesis, which undermined his credibility.

And, finally, William Deresiewicz’s A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me about Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter, largely because I liked his article The Ivy League, Mental Illness, and the Meaning of Life - which, by the by, puts forth a similar argument to Affluena, although Deresiewicz focuses on the negative effects of the sense that love is conditional on achievement (and the perfectionism that results from that sense), rather than consumerism.

Most of his portraits of Austen’s characters are spot-on. I do think he’s a little too hard on Fanny Price and Elinor Dashwood, but then I realize my feelings about them are out of sync with everyone else’s, and generally the book is a pleasure to read. But I don’t think I learned anything really new about Austen’s novels - certainly not like I did from John Mullen’s What Matters in Austen?, which I recommend. I don’t always agree with Mullen’s character judgments (I think he’s too hard on Mr. Woodhouse, for instance), but he makes his points so thoughtfully that it makes me think about why I disagree.

What I’m Reading Now

Hilary McKay’s Caddy’s World, which - woe! - is the last of the Casson books currently published. What will I do without my Casson family fix?? Perhaps another one will come out. But in the meantime I am reading this one a chapter a day, to savor it.

What I Plan to Read Next

I’m thinking about reading William Deresiewicz’s Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life, although it’s possible that he summarized the whole thing in the above-linked article and I needn’t read it in book form. On the other hand, if there were ever a time to really dig into the path to a meaningful life, now is probably it.

I’ve also put holds on William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, on the theory that six years have passed since I’ve read Faulkner so maybe I will appreciate him more now; and Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor, which I tried to read earlier this summer and stalled out on. Maybe it will go better this time around.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

By popular demand, I read Hilary McKay’s A Little Princess sequel, Wishing for Tomorrow, and I’m happy to say I quite enjoyed it! I read the whole thing in one evening: the narrative force tugged me along so fiercely that I almost forwent an ice cream excursion because I wanted so much to keep reading.

I don’t know that it’s quite the future Frances Hodgson Burnett would have given these characters (in particular, I strongly suspect that McKay is more forgiving toward Lavinia and Miss Minchin than Burnett might have been). But McKay’s interpretations are all reasonable extrapolations from the characters’ portrayals in A Little Princess - it fits with the other book (in a way that Maleficent, for instance, doesn’t fit with Sleeping Beauty). And I think McKay did a beautiful job showing that Ermengarde feels lonely and abandoned after Sara left, without villainizing Sara.

My only quibble is that I am pretty sure no one in A Little Princess ever called Ermengarde “Ermie,” and I disapprove very much of the fact that McKay inflicted such an awful nickname on her. Doesn’t Ermengarde have enough troubles without a nickname that rhymes with wormy?

Also Rachel Bertsche’s Jennifer, Gwyneth, and Me: The Pursuit of Happiness, One Celebrity at a Time. I really loved Bertsche’s earlier book, MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend, partly because Bertsche is a very personable writer, but also because I really connected with her topic: making friends is something I struggle with, and it is so validating to read this book and realize that my standards for friendship really aren’t impossibly high.

Anyway. Bertsche is still a very personable writer in Jennifer, Gwyneth, and Me, so I did enjoy the book, but I didn’t connect to it on the same personal level as MWF Seeking BFF. But probably I’ll read her next book when it comes out. (Especially given that the next book might be a parenting book. I have a strange weakness for parenting books.)

What I’m Reading Now

Hilary McKay’s Forever Rose, which is the fifth Casson Family book and is...not quite as charming as the earlier books. I really enjoyed the ensemble aspect of the earlier books, but this one is more all Rose all the time, and while I like Rose...that is really too much Rose.

Also Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Shield Ring. I think I should put Operation Read All the Sutcliff on hold, because I am really struggling to get through this book, and I think perhaps I’m just too accustomed to her narrative tics.

What I Plan to Read Next

I have gone on a Kindle binge in anticipation of my upcoming trip. I have Lia Silver’s Prisoner, and also a whole slew of ancient (well, pre-1923) books that are FREEEEEE. I'm also thinking about getting E. F. Benson’s David Blaize, but it is not FREEEEE, so I’m waffling. Has anyone read it?

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Alethia Kontis’s Enchanted. I seem to be in some kind of reading rut, because this is yet another book that I didn’t enjoy nearly as much as I expected to. I think there’s a critical mass of fairytales that you can cram into one novel and maintain coherence, and Kontis clearly surpassed it.

Or perhaps that’s not the problem, exactly. I felt like Kontis didn’t really have anything to say about any of the fairy tales. They’re there so the reader can squeal upon noticing the fairy tale allusion, but there’s really nothing more to it: the stories have no thematic resonance.

And there are really only so many times I can read the hero and heroine sigh about how they love each other so so so much (but can’t be together because once he’s in prince form he refuses to tell her he’s the frog she fell in love with, WTF dude) before I want to knock both their heads together and scream.

On the other hand, I’ve also just finished an excellent book, Peter Carlson’s Junius and Albert’s Adventures in the Confederacy, which is about a couple of Union reporters who got captured by Confederate troops, paroled, and were supposed to be sent home...except they got sucked into the Confederate prison archipelago and ended up spending nearly two years there.

This is pretty grim stuff, and both Junius and Albert occasionally give into black despair (Junius is particularly prone to flinging himself on the floor and attempting to give himself up to the sweet liberty of death), but Carlson manages it with a light touch: he shows not only their despair, but the dark and sometimes goofy humor with which they tried to keep up not only their own spirits but those of their fellow prisoners. Everyone seems very human in his history books, which I think is why I like them so much.

(Carlson also wrote K Blows Top: A Cold War Comic Interlude, Starring Nikita Khrushchev, America’s Most Unlikely Tourist, one of my favorite nonfiction books of all time. K Blows Top has been optioned for a feature film. I WANT THAT MOVIE SO MUCH.)

What I’m Reading Now

Hilary McKay’s Caddy Ever After. I’ve been spacing out the Casson family books because I enjoy them so much and want them to last forever, and this one is just as lovely so far as the ones before. I love the way McKay writes Rose, especially, because she is so very much herself, stubborn and passionate and artistic and stubborn. Very stubborn. Darling Rose!

Also Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Shield Ring, because I am about to move away from the library that has it and there’s no telling when I’ll have access to another copy.

What I Plan to Read Next

I’ve just discovered the Hilary McKay wrote a sequel to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Prince, focusing on what happens at the boarding school after Sara leaves, for Ermengarde particularly. Should I read it? On the one hand, I always have wondered what happened to Ermengarde. On the other hand, sequels to beloved books are always dangerous, perhaps particularly when they’re written by a different author (although being written by the same author often doesn’t seem to help).

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Hilary McKay’s Permanent Rose, the sequel to Indigo’s Star (which is turn is the sequel to Saffy’s Angel). I’m enjoying these books more and more as they go on; it’s not so much that the books are getting better, but that they have this cumulative effect as you get to know more facets of the characters and see more of their lives.

I’m also really glad that the next book in the Casson family series is about Caddy, because she’s definitely the character with the most loose ends at this point.

What I’m Reading Now

Gail Carriger's Etiquette and Espionage, which unfortunately strikes me as somewhat mannered in the same way that I felt her Parasol Protectorate books were. The premise is really appealing - it's basically Victorian Gallagher Girls - but I feel like the prose is holding me at arms length from the characters, which isn't really my cup of tea.

I’m also still working on Will Grayson, Will Grayson. I’m glad I stuck with it because the Will Grayson that I loathed has been thoroughly pwned by life. I don’t think I was supposed to be cackling with evil emotional fulfillment as the bottom dropped out of his world, but I really was, because it was such karmic repayment of his jerktasticness.

What I Plan to Read Next

Still Rider on a White Horse. I’m going to get to it, I swear.

Also Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book, because

rachelmanija’s review of it made it sound irresistibly my thing: not much plot but lots of character, “filled with the closely observed details of a world familiar to the author but alien to many readers.” I’m looking forward to it.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Arika Oakrent’s In the Land of Invented Languages, which I very much enjoyed. It begins with a brisk summary of nine hundred or so years of the history of invented language, with tidbits like the fact that Hildegard von Bingen invented the first artificial language that we have a record of (yet another reason why Hildegard von Bingen is the bestest), then segues into chapters about individual languages. I particularly enjoyed the chapters about Esperanto, Klingon, and Blissymbols, which are a symbol system used in some schools so children who lack the motor skills to speak or use sign language can communicate.

The one frustrating thing, which is really not the book’s fault, is that most of these topics could easily fill books of their own, so I felt like I was getting a taste of something fascinating only to gallop away to a different topic altogether. I want to know more about Esperanto culture, dammit!

I’ve also finished Dorothy Sayers’ Whose Body?, the first Lord Peter Wimsey book, and feel underwhelmed. (However, I’ve been warned that the Lord Peter books don’t really take off until he meets Harriet Vane, so I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised.) I guessed who the murderer was fairly early on, not because of the evidence, but because there was no other reason for him to be so prominently present in the book, which seems to me a sign of a badly constructed mystery.

And finally, Hilary McKay’s Indigo’s Star, the second Casson family novel, which I enjoyed a great deal. (Clearly I will have to read the rest of the Casson family books. There are three more.) I like the weirdness of the Cassons; I like how they’re all very different and often rather odd, but nonetheless love each other very much and try in their odd ways to support each other. And I like the fact that they take in stray people and gently incorporate them into the family: there’s a sense in these books that they’re adopting the reader in the same way, which is cozy.

What I’m Reading Now

Sandra Cisneros’ Caramelo. In fact I’m listening to a version read by Cisneros herself, and really enjoying it so far: her writing has a rhythm to it which is even more accentuated in her speech.

Also, she likes making lists of things - to describe an apartment, for instance, by listing many of the things that are in it. I’m not sure why I find this so appealing, but I do.

I’ve also just started Jane Langton’s The Time Bike, which is part of a series of books about the magical adventures of the various members of the Hall family in Concord, Massachusetts. (It’s a bit like a magical American version of the Casson family series.) I do like series of interlinked books about the same family. Are there any other series like this that I ought to know about?

What I Plan to Read Next

Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor, which I have sitting on my shelf.

On a wider note, I want to read both Pamela Dean’s The Dubious Hills and Eva Ibbotson’s A Song for Summer before the end of the summer, because the local library has them and many other libraries don’t. Perhaps I should make a summer reading list like I did last year? That seems sensible.

Yesterday I dropped by the library to pick up a hold, only to notice that it was the last day of their book sale.

"I do not need any more books," I told myself firmly. "I will only need to pack them up in a few months when I move, and anyway I shouldn't be spending money."

Then I saw that the book sale was no longer a book sale, but in fact a book giveaway. They wanted to get rid of their overstock so badly that on the last day, they made the books free.

Reader, the flesh is weak. I could not restrain myself from going in to see their selection. The pickings were rather slim, but I found Hilary McKay's Indigo's Star and Jane Langton's The Time Bike, and have given them a new home on my shelves.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Susan Cooper’s Over Sea, Under Stone, the first book in the Dark is Rising sequence, which I actually quite enjoyed. I went into it with such low expectations that I was pleasantly surprised to find it a family adventure story, a la Narnia or Swallows and Amazons or even the Boxcar Children. And with a magical twist, to boot!

I am very fond of this sort of story, although it seems to have fallen out of fashion in recent years. There are Hilary McKay’s books - I adored The Amber Cat, though for whatever reason I’ve had trouble getting into her other books - and Jeanne Birdsall’s Penderwick series, which is absolutely charming. The fourth book should be coming out next year, I hope...they seem to come out at three-year intervals.

What I’m Reading Now

Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo, because I was feeling gigantic French novel withdrawal. So far, everyone is jealous of Dantes and scheming against him and he has just been taken to the police station (gendarmerie?) on suspicion of being a Bonapartist agent.

Also Jaclyn Moriarty’s I Had a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes, which I am struggling with, because I want to smack so many of the characters. Of the three main adult characters, one just embarked on an affair with a married man, one schemes vaguely about cheating on her boyfriend - even though she’s happy with him! - and one is pettily unhappy about little things her husband does.

I have to keep checking the cover to convince myself that this really is a Moriarty book. The characters in her teen novels are so much more grown up than this.

What I’m Reading Next

The rest of the Dark is Rising sequence.

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A Certain Slant of Light

otherwise known as Jin's journal

Entries tagged with author: hilary mckay

Wednesday Reading Meme

Wednesday Reading Meme

Wednesday Reading Meme

Wednesday Reading Meme on Tuesday

Wednesday Reading Meme

Wednesday Reading Meme (42. On Gold Mountain)

Wednesday Reading Meme

Wednesday Reading Meme

Wednesday Reading Meme

Wednesday Reading Meme

Wednesday Reading Meme

Library book giveaway

Wednesday Reading Meme

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May 2025

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