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Wednesday Reading Meme
Aug. 29th, 2018 12:12 pmWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Deborah Ellis’s My Name is Parvana, the final Breadwinner book. In some ways I didn’t think it was quite as good as the others - the construction is a little shakier - but on the other hand it was just so satisfying to see ( Spoilers ), and it has completely the perfect last line, so.
And Jewell Parker Rhodes Sugar, which is part of her Louisiana Girls trilogy along with Bayou Magic. I therefore expected it to have magic too, but it doesn’t, unless the magic of interracial friendship counts… which actually it might in a novel set in 1870.
It’s been five years since slavery ended, but Sugar and her mama remained on the old sugar plantation, waiting for Sugar’s daddy to come home. But now Sugar’s mama is dead, and most of the other young families have moved away, which leaves only Sugar and a bunch of old people to bring in the sugar harvest until the plantation owner sends out to hire Chinese workers.
Now on the one hand, I suspect this book offers a fairly rosy view of race relations. But on the other, it’s totally charming to watch Sugar win over everyone (the plantation owner’s son, the Chinese workers, eventually to a certain extent the plantation owner and his wife) through sheer force of personality and chutzpah. I particularly liked the scene where one of the Chinese workers teaches Sugar how to write her name in Chinese.
I also read Madeleine L’Engle’s Friends for the Journey, which I enjoyed, but much more mildly than I expected; it didn’t go nearly as deep into the topic as many of her other books do, possibly because it was co-written with her friend Luci Shaw. Although from a certain point of view, you might expect that to make it deeper? But no.
What I’m Reading Now
I'm almost done with Adeline Dutton Whitney’s A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite’s Life, in which young Leslie spends the summer at a mountain resort and learns important lessons about how to live a good life pleasing to God. (I realize this makes it sound completely airless but I promise it is not Elsie Dinsmore: The Yankee Mountain Edition.)
Along the way, Leslie reforms Sin (short for Asenath) Saxon, a mischievous high-spirited boarding school girl who has been using her sparkling wit to tease the good-hearted spinster next door. Naturally, by the end of the book she has realized that the kindly spinster is actually a wonderful person, and it’s better to use your wit to make people happy than torment the life out of them (although said spinster has actually found Sin’s antics enormously amusing; still, the next one might not be so understanding), and arranges a pleasure jaunt for a pair of sisters who have been much left out of the social life at the hotel that summer.
I have noticed that in nineteenth-century literature buoyant tomboyish girls generally stand a better chance of redemption than the girls who are “too girly” - that is, too interested in clothes and being seen in the right society and, worst of all, boys. The tomboys reform but the snobs remain snobs till the end, gently sighed at by the narrative but generally unrepentant.
And I’m still reading Paula McLain’s Love and Ruin. I’ve gotten to the Love part: Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway have fallen into each other’s arms during the Spanish Civil War. I figure we’ve got maybe a hundred pages before Ruin sets in hardcore, although both Gellhorn and Hemingway can already see its shadow even at the dawn of their relationship.
What I Plan to Read Next
My reading challenge for September is “a book recommended by a librarian or indie bookseller,” so I’d better have a chat with one of my coworkers about that.
Deborah Ellis’s My Name is Parvana, the final Breadwinner book. In some ways I didn’t think it was quite as good as the others - the construction is a little shakier - but on the other hand it was just so satisfying to see ( Spoilers ), and it has completely the perfect last line, so.
And Jewell Parker Rhodes Sugar, which is part of her Louisiana Girls trilogy along with Bayou Magic. I therefore expected it to have magic too, but it doesn’t, unless the magic of interracial friendship counts… which actually it might in a novel set in 1870.
It’s been five years since slavery ended, but Sugar and her mama remained on the old sugar plantation, waiting for Sugar’s daddy to come home. But now Sugar’s mama is dead, and most of the other young families have moved away, which leaves only Sugar and a bunch of old people to bring in the sugar harvest until the plantation owner sends out to hire Chinese workers.
Now on the one hand, I suspect this book offers a fairly rosy view of race relations. But on the other, it’s totally charming to watch Sugar win over everyone (the plantation owner’s son, the Chinese workers, eventually to a certain extent the plantation owner and his wife) through sheer force of personality and chutzpah. I particularly liked the scene where one of the Chinese workers teaches Sugar how to write her name in Chinese.
I also read Madeleine L’Engle’s Friends for the Journey, which I enjoyed, but much more mildly than I expected; it didn’t go nearly as deep into the topic as many of her other books do, possibly because it was co-written with her friend Luci Shaw. Although from a certain point of view, you might expect that to make it deeper? But no.
What I’m Reading Now
I'm almost done with Adeline Dutton Whitney’s A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite’s Life, in which young Leslie spends the summer at a mountain resort and learns important lessons about how to live a good life pleasing to God. (I realize this makes it sound completely airless but I promise it is not Elsie Dinsmore: The Yankee Mountain Edition.)
Along the way, Leslie reforms Sin (short for Asenath) Saxon, a mischievous high-spirited boarding school girl who has been using her sparkling wit to tease the good-hearted spinster next door. Naturally, by the end of the book she has realized that the kindly spinster is actually a wonderful person, and it’s better to use your wit to make people happy than torment the life out of them (although said spinster has actually found Sin’s antics enormously amusing; still, the next one might not be so understanding), and arranges a pleasure jaunt for a pair of sisters who have been much left out of the social life at the hotel that summer.
I have noticed that in nineteenth-century literature buoyant tomboyish girls generally stand a better chance of redemption than the girls who are “too girly” - that is, too interested in clothes and being seen in the right society and, worst of all, boys. The tomboys reform but the snobs remain snobs till the end, gently sighed at by the narrative but generally unrepentant.
And I’m still reading Paula McLain’s Love and Ruin. I’ve gotten to the Love part: Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway have fallen into each other’s arms during the Spanish Civil War. I figure we’ve got maybe a hundred pages before Ruin sets in hardcore, although both Gellhorn and Hemingway can already see its shadow even at the dawn of their relationship.
What I Plan to Read Next
My reading challenge for September is “a book recommended by a librarian or indie bookseller,” so I’d better have a chat with one of my coworkers about that.
