A Certain Slant of Light

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

The Wind in the Willows, which is really more bunch of vaguely connected short stories, than a novel, because not only is there not much plot, but the Mole & Ratty sections have a completely different feel to them than the Mr. Toad sections. (I much prefer the Mole & Ratty sections; they're so nice to each other, while Mr. Toad is really a jerk to everyone.)

Many of the stories themselves don’t have much of a plot: they exist more to paint word pictures than to tell stories.

“And the talk, the wonderful talk flowed on - or was it speech entirely, or did it pass at times into song - chanty of the sailors weighing the dripping anchor, sonorous hum of the shrouds in a tearing North-Easter, ballad of the fisherman hauling his nets at sundown against an apricot sky, chords of guitar and mandoline from gondola or caique?”

Hauling his nets at sundown against an apricot sky. Isn’t that a beautiful image?

What I’m Reading Now

Madeleine L’Engle’s And Both Were Young, which I am enjoying a lot. L'Engle portrays Flip with great sympathy, but without ever letting that sympathy blind her to Flip's flaws.

And the mist-wreathed Swiss Alps and ruined chateaus and hot chocolate warming in copper pots by the side of grand fireplaces are all so atmospheric.

What I Plan to Read Next

Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin, I think. It’s been sitting on my shelf for more than a year, so I really ought to get around to it.

Oh, oh! And I have a couple of Rumer Godden's books on hold at the university library. They're hard to get a hold of, so I figured I should take advantage of the university's massive holdings while I still can. I should see if they have any Sutcliffs lying around, too...

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Robin McKinley’s Rose Daughter, which I enjoyed even more than Beauty - I think you can really see how much she grew as a writer between the two retellings, because Rose Daughter is much more airy and at the same time far more gothic. The characterization is stronger, too: Beauty’s two sisters are much more strongly differentiated, as is the Beast. And the ending doesn’t feel as rushed.

H. G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, which is super fun in the same “Victorian thought experiment” way that The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is super fun. They, along with Frankenstein, teach an important lesson: Friends don’t let friends do science alone. It always ends badly.

And finally - I’ve totally been procrastinating this week, can you tell? - P. G. Wodehouse’s Psmith in the City, which is delightful to the end. Although I suspect having a friend pay for your education with the goal of making you a factotum on his estate would be a bit more awkward than Mike seems to feel about it, even if Psmith is his bestest best friend ever.

What I’m Reading Now

Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child. The first two thirds are delightful: it tells the story of a middle-aged couple, recently moved to Alaska (in 1920), who meet a strange little girl who lives in the wilderness with lichen and birch bark tangled in her hair. It’s a mixture of darkness - literal darkness; a lot of the book takes place during the Alaskan winter, and kicks off with the heroine walking out on the ice in a half-hearted attempt at suicide - and this eerie half-fairy tale feeling. Odd but effective.

The last third, which I’ve just started, bids fair to be a tale of Young Love, which - judging by the epigraph - will end with the wild girl becoming far less wild. I may decide that the last third never actually happened...

Also The Wind in the Willows, although I’m going to have to find a non-annotated edition, because the annotations are terribly distracting and often not very to the point. No, I don’t really care to know that the annotator thinks Otter is a member of the nobility and the rabbits are the teeming lower classes and the whole thing is an allegory for the English social structure. Even if Graham meant it that way I don’t want to know, because it rather detracts from it as a story.

In the meantime, I’ve laid The Wind in the Willows aside to start Selma Lagerlof’s The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, which I’ve been meaning to read since I was approximately eight. If there has been a theme to this year’s reading, it has been “finally getting around to all those books I’ve been meaning to read for ages.”

What I Plan to Read Next

Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South. ladyherenya has said so many nice things about the miniseries, clearly I need to get around to seeing it, which of course means I must read the book.

I’m also thinking about reading more McKinley. I’ve already read Sunshine (this seems to be everyone’s go-to McKinley rec), and I’ve heard that I have to read Pegasus. How do people like her other fairytale retellings? I’m intrigued by Spindle’s End but feel dubious about Deerskin, which looks pretty hardcore.