A Certain Slant of Light

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

D. E. Stevenson’s Mrs. Tim Carries On, in which World War II begins, and Mrs. Tim tries to keep on keeping on even while worrying about air raids, the beginning of rationing, and most of all her husband who didn’t make it back to England during the evacuation of Dunkirk… A bit heavier than some of Stevenson’s other works but still full of her gentle charm.

I’m surprised this book wasn’t reprinted during the rash of D. E. Stevenson reprints a few years ago – there’s a big market for World War II fiction and I think modern readers would enjoy it.

I also finished John Le Carre’s Smiley’s People, in which ( spoilers )

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve stolen genarti’s New Year’s Resolution to read at least one unread book that I already own each month, so this month I’m reading a book about the history of servants in England in the 19th and early 20th centuries. (Actually it seems to be mostly Edwardian with a few forays earlier.) Very interesting!

What I Plan to Read Next

After years of procrastination, I’m going to read Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Elizabeth Wein’s The Pearl Thief, which features ( exuberant spoilers )

What I’m Reading Now

At last I started The Ordinary Acrobat and I’m quite enjoying it! I had not realized that a memoir about attending a circus school was a thing that I wanted in my life, but it totally is and it’s just as fascinating as it sounds. And also it has made me want to learn how to juggle.

I found myself pining for the bucolic world of Miss Read, so I went ahead and borrowed the last two Miss Reads in my mother’s collection: Thrush Green and Winter in Thrush Green. Will I be forced to turn to the library to supplement my Miss Read needs? Perhaps! Although probably I should give James Herriot a try first - I think he’s got a similar thing going on in his tales of life as a country vet, in the quirkily amusing yet tranquil English countryside.

What I Plan to Read Next

Now that I’ve almost finished reading down my pile of books-I-own-but-haven’t-read, I’ve decided that it’s time to make some serious progress on my to-read list. Perhaps Emily Arsenault’s The Leaf Reader? I quite enjoyed her earlier novelThe Broken Teaglass, and it sent me on a fruitful search for more mystery novels about unraveling literary puzzles. Or maybe some more Jon Krakauer…

I’ve already borrowed Sara Pennypacker’s Summer of the Gypsy Moths from the library, though, so probably I will read that first.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

A couple of Unread Book Club books: G. Clifton Wisler’s Red Cap, which is far less emotionally moving than one might expect of a book set largely in Andersonville prison (the largest and deadliest Confederate prison in the American Civil War). Ah well. They can’t all be winners, I guess.

And also Ann Turner’s Elfsong, which sounds like it ought to be a thing I like: a girl who accidentally meets an elf while out searching for her lost cat, which the elf has enticed away to be his new mount, what could go wrong?

But I felt it was trying too hard to awaken a sense of wonder. The elves can hear the songs of all the things on earth, and pass this ability on to Maddy and her grandfather. And these are not just regular birdsong or the pleasant plash of a brook or whatever, but songs with words, so wherever you go you’ll be surrounded by baby mice singing

My place, mine
my turn, mine

or rocks rumbling

We were here before you.
We were a river of fire,
then a river of stone.

Which would be delightful and magical - I rather like the little poems - if you could make it stop. But it sounds like Maddy is going to surrounded by a constant inescapable din for the rest of her life and that sounds dreadful.

What I’m Reading Now

Sheila O’Conner’s Sparrow Road, which I plucked from a Little Free Library a few months back purely because the cover seemed promising - and I was right! So far it is atmospheric and mysterious and there are possible ghost orphans (I think they’re metaphorical rather than real ghosts but still) and I’m feeling it.

I’ve also begun Kate Seredy’s The Chestry Oak, which kicks off with a Hungarian prince in his castle listening to planes pass overhead during early World War II… and I can already tell this is going to be a tale of woe and disaster and I’m sort of dreading it honestly.

Also Isabel R. Marvin’s A Bride for Anna’s Papa, which gets points for being set in a Minnesota iron mining camp, just because I’ve never read a book set in such a place before. Have only just started this one. Will let you know how it goes!

What I Plan to Read Next

I need to decide what to read for this month’s reading challenge, “a book published before you were born.” The Chestry Oak fits the bill, but I was planning to read that anyway, so maybe I ought to branch out.

But on the other hand I may not get through it without the additional incentive of fulfilling my reading challenge. It will probably not be that harrowing, self, there is no reason to believe that this is Grave of the Fireflies: If It Were a Book Set in Hungary.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Pierrepont Noyes’ My Father’s House: An Oneida Childhood, which I liked very much; although of course I would, being fond of a) childhood memoirs (I tend to agree with C. S. Lewis that “I never read an autobiography in which the parts devoted to the earlier years were not far the most interesting”), b) memoirs about cults (really anything about cults), and c) the nineteenth century.

But even if you are interested in only one of those things, this is an engaging book; much recommended. The one thing it will not give you is a clear description of the Oneida Community’s collapse: Noyes was ten at the time and found the whole thing ominous but fuzzy.

I also finished rereading A Wrinkle in Time. I’m glad I reread it because I no longer feel that vague gnawing sense that I just didn’t get it - but at the same time, it’s a bit sad to reread it and realize that I’m just never going to love that book the way that some people do.

What I’m Reading Now

Kidnapped! I only intended to begin it, but somehow I ended up halfway through the book already. It’s such a cracking good adventure yarn, it’s very hard to put down!

I have begun Jane Langton’s The Astonishing Stereoscope! It’s early days yet, but I have high hopes that it will live up to the other books in the series - or at least the early books in the series; I hold a real grudge against Time Bike for being so dreadful that it stopped my exploration of the Hall Family Chronicles, even though I adored both The Diamond in the Window and The Fledgling. But fortunately the good books in the series are the kind that are just as good if you read them first as an adult.

What I Plan to Read Next

The Railway Children, which I also intended to read next last week, but I bought Noyes’ memoir at the museum and it simply had to take precedence, so… But this week I am quite determined! Railway Children or bust! Unless I find something simply irresistible in Amherst.

A most successful hunt through the bookstores yesterday! Although amusingly I got the most books at a bookstore I had not realized existed: I stopped in the library for a drink of water, and there was the Friends of the Library bookstore, and I found TWO books there, hooray!

I also found a copy of E. Nesbit's The Railway Children, which I have long intended to read, in a Little Free Library, which is the first time I have found something I really wanted in a Little Free Library and marks an epoch in my life.

( The Little Free Library! )

And eventually it grew too hot for traipsing from bookstore to bookstore, so I stopped at a cafe for a lemon bar and finished Strong Poison (v. much approve, have already started Have His Carcase, Peter has proposed to Harriet approximately five times including by telegram:

FOLLOWING RAZOR CLUE TO STAMFORD REFUSE RESEMBLE THRILLER HERO WHO HANGS ROUND HEROINE TO NEGLECT OF DUTY BUT WILL YOU MARRY ME - PETER

I feel that this persistence ought to be annoying but instead I find it weirdly charming.)

The cafe also had this delightful little door in the wall.

( The fairy door )

I have always loved stories about tiny people who live in the walls. In fact when I was in kindergarten I invented a long one to amuse myself at school. The Paintwater Witches lived in the drains in the back of the classroom and used all the dirty paint water we poured down in their potions. Clearly the tiny people living in a cafe can expect far more gourmet fare!

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

”But you mustn’t say what you wished,” said Mr. Grant. “You don’t get it if you do.”

“Don’t you?” said Mrs. Brandon. “What did you wish?”

“I can’t tell you,” said Mr. Grant; and truly; for his incoherent and jumbled wish had been entirely a prayer to be allowed to die some violent and heroic death while saving Mrs. Brandon from something or somebody, to have her holding his chill hand, and perhaps letting her cheek rest for a moment against his as his gallant spirit fled, all with a kind of unspoken understanding that he should not be really hurt and should somehow go on living very comfortably in spite of being heroically dead.

Angela Thirkell’s The Brandons is a joy and a delight if you like 1930s British novels in the vein of D. E. Stevenson’s Miss Buncle’s Book or Stella Gibbons’ Nightingale Wood. It is perhaps less accessible than either of those two novels - I found myself stumbling repeatedly on who was who in the ever-growing cast of characters - but the passages about the exigencies of calf love, or the gruesome interest that people take in an impending death, are well-observed and very funny.

Two more books down in the Unread Book Club! I finished Scott O’Dell’s Sarah Bishop, which changes from a tale of historical fiction into a “surviving in the semi-wilderness” story like a darker “my whole family is dead” version of My Side of the Mountain. This is one of my favorite kinds of stories, so this caused a certain amount of seal-clapping. Yes, Sarah Bishop! You move into that cave and smoke fish for the winter and built your very own dugout canoe!

And also Natalie Kinsey-Warnock’s The Night the Bells Rang, which is, eh. Pretty mediocre. I kept thinking of other books that did the same thing better: Nekomah Creek for growing up & dealing with bullies, Miracles of Maple Hill for sugaring-off in Vermont (and if we take Vermont out of it, Little House in the Big Woods has an excellent sugaring-off too), Rascal for the end of World War I in small-town America.

What I’m Reading Now

Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, which is super dense. It’s so dense I’m not sure I’m going to read it, which is sad when I’ve had it on hold so long at the library, but it’s just exhausting.

I’ve also started Miriam Bat-Ami’s Two Suns in the Sky, which I won as an honorable mention prize from Cricket Magazine in my youth and did not read because I was cranky about only being an honorable mention.

What I Plan to Read Next

I have begun the happy business of contemplating what I ought to take along to read on my road trip! My musings have grown so long that I am going to make them a separate post.

In the meantime, I am also musing about what book I ought to read for my next bedtime story, as I have just about exhausted my stock of Miss Read books. I meant to move on to James Herriot, but upon reflection that’s really too similar, both cozy English countryside quasi-memoirs, and perhaps I ought to read something quite different as a palate cleanser first. But what?

I’ve been contemplating a reread of A Wrinkle in Time. Perhaps this is my chance.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I finished Esperanza Rising just in time to count it for this month’s book challenge (“an immigrant story”), although I must say the book felt mechanical, in a way: it never surprised me, never deviated from the expected emotional beats that the premise suggested. So that was a bit disappointing.

Unread Book Club progress: I finished Janice MacLeod’s Paris Letters, a memoir about MacLeod quitting her job, moving to Paris, falling for a Polish butcher (in Paris) and settling down there and supporting herself by selling illustrated letters from Paris on Etsy. The watercolor illustrated letters are gorgeous and filled me with the desire to paint letters myself, although like my youthful desire to illustrate my diary I suspect that this is a desire that will die stillborn. Painting is beautiful but writing is so much faster.

What I’m Reading Now

Emilie Buchwald’s Gildaen: The Heroic Adventures of a Most Unusual Rabbit, from the Unread Book Club. A brave rabbit in medieval times meets a shapeshifting magical person and sets out on adventures together! They have met the banished huntsman of the boy king who is being slowly corrupted by one of his advisors, and have set off to the palace to try to save the king and kingdom from this villainy.

What I Plan to Read Next

MY ENGLISH PENPAL SENT ME WHEN MARNIE WAS HERE!!! Naturally I shall take it with Miami with me and read it on the beach, which is not exactly the right kind of beach for When Marnie Was Here, but still the proximity of saltwater ought to be enough, don’t you think?

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I finished Mary Stewart’s A Walk in Wolf Wood, which Mom read to me when I was but a wee lassie and which I remembered really enjoying without remembering any of the details, but upon reread it is blazingly obvious that this book went directly to my giddy young id.

It begins with a man walking into the woods, weeping so hard that he barely seems aware of his surroundings - this is the kind of quality crying I want from my books! - and it only gets better from there. The weeping man has been sundered from his lord the duke to whom he swore a blood oath of brotherhood in their youth! They have been ripped apart by a foul enchantment that has made the weeping man a werewolf, while the enchanter takes his place in the castle and schemes to usurp the duke’s place!

There is definitely a scene where the werewolf lies at his lord’s feet in chains, waiting for the sun to rise so he’ll be changed back into a human being. The duke covers him with his ermine cloak so he won’t be totally naked when that happens. THE LOYALTY KINK. BE STILL MY BEATING HEART.

I also finished Gary Paulsen’s The Island, a quiet and thoughtful book that regularly surprised me, not perhaps because it’s so surprising in itself as because I was reading it as a Misfit Escapes Society and Finds Meaning Elsewhere book - possibly with a side order of But Then Meddlesome Humanity Destroys His Happiness and Solitude. I fully expected the media or the locals or the psychiatrist Wil’s parents hire to hound him off his happy island abode.

But in fact they come and poke around and decide this is all pretty stellar, really (except for the local dude Wil has to punch in the nose, but he’s a real bottom-feeder anyway) and, their curiosity satisfied, leave him alone. And Wil isn’t even a misfit in the first place, really; he’s about as normal as it is possible to be and still run away to an island to try to absorb the essential nature of the blue heron.

...which still kind of makes him a weirdo, let’s be real, but that’s the kind of weirdness that will probably get him a professorship someday.

What I’m Reading Now

I finished Tolkien’s translation of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”! So I’m taking a small breather before diving into the next poem in this collection, “The Pearl.” I quite liked Gawain, but I’d read that story before in prose, whereas I haven’t read “The Pearl” (although Humphrey Carpenter discussed it at some length in his biography of Tolkien, so I know what happens), so I’m curious to see if that affects how I react to it.

I’m also reading Lorna Barrett’s Murder is Binding, a cozy mystery lent to me by a friend. I started this with some trepidation because I don’t usually like cozies - I think the inherent silliness of a cake baker! or bookseller! or librarian! or whatever who just sort of accidentally solves murders on the side gets to me - but actually this one seems tentatively fun. The heroine has a difficult relationship with her sister which they are trying to repair, which seems promising.

What I Plan to Read Next

I have to come up with a book about current events for next month’s reading challenge. This is my least favorite challenge on the list, but nonetheless I will persevere. Any suggestions?

I started the next member of the Unread Book Club: Sarah Dessen’s This Lullaby. I have long meant to read something by Dessen, but now that I’ve started This Lullaby I think it’s all right that I haven’t, actually, because I can’t remember the last time that I have so yearned for the heroine (Remy) to break the putative romantic hero’s fingers. In the first hundred pages, Dexter:

1. Sits beside Remy so enthusiastically when he introduces himself that he somehow manages to knock her against the wall. How is that even possible?

2. Insists that Remy give him a ride in her car. Remy tells him no but then just sits there when he lets himself in - she’s already in the car, by the way, she could have just driven off and left him, or run him over, or locked the doors, or done any number of things other than passively let him get in.

3. Then he drops food in her car. After she tells him not to bring food in her car in the first place. And I don’t mean he accidentally spills; I mean he gets a French fry out of his bag and purposefully drops it onto her gearshift while lecturing her about the importance of loosening up. This is when I decided that I wanted her to break his fucking fingers.

4. He also shows up randomly wherever Remy is, in a way that is probably meant to be romantic meet-cute but actually makes him seem like a stalker, especially when

5. Remy slaps a creepy guy in a club and Dexter shows up out of nowhere to save her from the bouncer by pretending to be her date. Because I guess “She’s with me” is a better defense than “I’m drunk and this random stranger is trying to drag me out of the club for nefarious purposes, so I slapped him.”

6. I have just gotten to the part where he climbs through Remy’s bedroom window. I hope she will suffocate him with a pillow and the rest of the book will be about how she gets rid of the body, but I can already tell that they’re going to get together and Remy is probably going to go skinny-dipping and track sand into her beloved car to show that she’s no longer “uptight.” For which read “possessed of reasonable boundaries.”

I think I should probably just quit while I’m ahead. Or at least less far behind than I could become if I keep reading this. Unless it actually does end with Remy snapping and running Dexter over with her car when he tries to forcibly cadge a ride with her yet again?

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Progress on the Unread Book Club! I finished reading The Collected Raffles, which turns out to be only the first three Raffles books, but fortuitously it turns out that the fourth is available freeeeeeeee on Kindle so of course I shall read that. I find these books awfully charming.

What I’m Reading Now

Still slogging through The Red Queen. Good news! Halfway through the book - this book, let me remind you, is 1100 pages long - Elspeth and company have finally started to move. If the pacing continues as it has been, then Carmody is going to have to cram Elspeth’s confrontation with Ariel into ten pages at the end.

I don’t know if I’ve been so disappointed in the conclusion of a much-loved series since Harry Potter. And in fact, this is giving me new appreciation for the seventh Harry Potter book: whatever flaws they have, at least they did not include Harry indulging in pages-long speculations about what might happen next, only to conclude with him abruptly ceasing to speculate on the grounds that it’s useless. YOU DON’T SAY.

I have also started my next Unread Book Club book, although as often happens this is more of a “I read this so long ago I no longer remember anything about it” book, Miracles on Maple Hill. Young Marly and her family are moving out to the old family farm in hopes that the fresh air, wide open spaces, and ability to avoid cranky-making strangers will help her irritable father recover from the trauma of being a POW in World War II. WILL IT? I think probably, although it did win the Newbery which also gave us the miseryfest of Out of the Dust, so who knows.

What I Plan to Read Next

Netgalley has come through for me with a book called Touring America by Automobile in the 1920s, which is a published diary about family road trips to the National Parks in the 1920s. Road trips! In the 1920s! On the mess of a road system then in existence! To the National Parks! Aaaaah I hope there are descriptions of campfire cooking and middle-of-nowhere diners with surprisingly good pie.