Wednesday Reading Meme
Mar. 27th, 2019 08:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
This week I zoomed through Andrea Cheng’s The Year of the Baby, The Year of the Fortune Cookie, and The Year of the Three Sisters, and I could have read the final book in the series (actually a prequel) The Year of the Garden except I wasn’t ready for it to be over yet. The books are about a Chinese-American girl growing up in Cincinnati and the ebb and flow of her friendships over the years: for instance, one of her friends starts going to a different school and their friendship suffers for the separation, even though they do remain friends. It’s such a realistic progression, but also one that books often don’t reflect.
I also finished Lisa See’s The Island of Sea Women, which frustrated me in exactly the same way as many of See’s other books, and yet this frustration has never dimmed my desire to read her new books as soon as they come out. There just aren’t that many adult historical fiction books centered on women’s friendships.
And I finished Dorothy Sayers’ Murder Must Advertise, which is a delight, because Sayers knows the advertising milieu so well because she worked in advertising herself - in fact she namechecks her own most successful campaign: Lord Peter’s Whifflets promotion will be “the biggest advertising stunt since the Mustard Club.” There’s also a self-insert in Miss Meteyard, the firm’s only female copywriter, who told an aspiring blackmailer to “publish and be damned” - which is just what Sayers told a man at her firm when he tried to blackmail her.
It occurs to me that in having the fictional blackmailer murdered, Sayers may have been enacting a little vicarious revenge on the man who tried to blackmail her. I wonder if he ever read her books and got a bit nervous at just how inventive she was with the murder weapons.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve started reading Annie Barrows’ Nothing, and I realize that the conceit of the book is that it’s a YA novel where nothing happens - no mystical powers, dystopias, dramatic love affairs, etc - but there are interesting ways to write stories about nothing much happening and three chapters in I’m not convinced that Barrows knows how to do this.
What I Plan to Read Next
The final book in the Anna Wang quintet, The Year of the Garden.
Also Elizabeth Wein’s A Thousand Sisters is on hold for me and the library says it should be here any day now and I soooo wanted it to come before I went on vacation, but it didn’t. :( But when I get back, it should be there!
This week I zoomed through Andrea Cheng’s The Year of the Baby, The Year of the Fortune Cookie, and The Year of the Three Sisters, and I could have read the final book in the series (actually a prequel) The Year of the Garden except I wasn’t ready for it to be over yet. The books are about a Chinese-American girl growing up in Cincinnati and the ebb and flow of her friendships over the years: for instance, one of her friends starts going to a different school and their friendship suffers for the separation, even though they do remain friends. It’s such a realistic progression, but also one that books often don’t reflect.
I also finished Lisa See’s The Island of Sea Women, which frustrated me in exactly the same way as many of See’s other books, and yet this frustration has never dimmed my desire to read her new books as soon as they come out. There just aren’t that many adult historical fiction books centered on women’s friendships.
And I finished Dorothy Sayers’ Murder Must Advertise, which is a delight, because Sayers knows the advertising milieu so well because she worked in advertising herself - in fact she namechecks her own most successful campaign: Lord Peter’s Whifflets promotion will be “the biggest advertising stunt since the Mustard Club.” There’s also a self-insert in Miss Meteyard, the firm’s only female copywriter, who told an aspiring blackmailer to “publish and be damned” - which is just what Sayers told a man at her firm when he tried to blackmail her.
It occurs to me that in having the fictional blackmailer murdered, Sayers may have been enacting a little vicarious revenge on the man who tried to blackmail her. I wonder if he ever read her books and got a bit nervous at just how inventive she was with the murder weapons.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve started reading Annie Barrows’ Nothing, and I realize that the conceit of the book is that it’s a YA novel where nothing happens - no mystical powers, dystopias, dramatic love affairs, etc - but there are interesting ways to write stories about nothing much happening and three chapters in I’m not convinced that Barrows knows how to do this.
What I Plan to Read Next
The final book in the Anna Wang quintet, The Year of the Garden.
Also Elizabeth Wein’s A Thousand Sisters is on hold for me and the library says it should be here any day now and I soooo wanted it to come before I went on vacation, but it didn’t. :( But when I get back, it should be there!
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Date: 2019-03-27 02:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-27 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-27 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-28 12:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-27 06:06 pm (UTC)It's a pretty young fandom, and fair enough, because the books are aimed at pre-teens and teenagers, and I guess some of them don't like the idea that they might grow away from the friends they have now--plus, if you're attached to the characters from the first series, I can see why you might be disappointed that they're not in the second series much. But it's not unrealistic, or like, flawed writing.
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Date: 2019-03-27 09:06 pm (UTC)But if, say, J. K. Rowling had broken up the Trio sometime over the course of the books and saddled Harry with new friends and said "Well, it's realistic!" I would have howled bloody murder because it's a literal magic school, once you've set that much realism aside then the mere fact that something is realistic is no longer enough by itself to justify doing something in a novel.
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Date: 2019-03-28 05:04 am (UTC)I don't know, to me (possibly as an older reader) it felt like a perfectly natural and not unsatisfying development--Percy and Grover both had their own stuff going on that the other one wasn't part of, and although Grover's stuff was mostly off screen, it felt like it was real and important to him. And they were still good bros, they just didn't see each other as often. But then, I really liked the new characters, so that helped.
And on the third hand, since you haven't read the books, it's a little hard to discuss them, so perhaps I'll stop now.
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Date: 2019-03-28 12:22 pm (UTC)Having never read Percy Jackson I don't know if it's that kind of book, but I think people will often read books this way - particularly for romances - even if the author telegraphs that it's not that kind of book.
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Date: 2019-03-28 12:35 pm (UTC)