Wednesday Reading Meme
Aug. 11th, 2021 08:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Took a little break from the Great War to read Nghi Vo’s The Empress of Salt and Fortune. I really enjoyed the way that the story spun itself out from objects - a set of fortune-telling sticks sets off one set of reminiscences, tokens from temple visits another, etc. It reminded me in a way of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s The Age of Homespun, although of course it’s the fictional history of an empire instead of a nonfiction book exploring women’s lives in preindustrial America; but the books share both an interest in women’s lives and this structure of spinning off the story from material objects.
I also read Darcie Little Badger’s Elatsoe. Our heroine, Ellie, is a Lipan Apache girl with a knack for summoning dead animals (dead people invariably Come Back Wrong and are better left alone), which she needs to put to good use when her cousin dies in mysterious circumstances. This is marketed as YA but really reads more middle grade, which is a puzzling marketing decision but an asset for me personally, as I love middle grade books. But although I enjoyed this book, I also felt it needed a bit more oomph.
What I’m Reading Now
You will be thrilled to know that I’ve started Mary Renault’s Fire from Heaven and it kicks off with four-year-old Alexander the Great telling his mother that he wants to marry her. I realize this is a thing that small children sometimes do, but there is a way to do it so it’s a cute kid thing and then there’s a way to do it as an Oedipal Moment (Alexander even thinks about killing his dad!), Full of Sensuality and Portent, and Renault went all out for the latter. I guess it’s nice that she so fully embraced her Oedipus complex kink.
Still working (slowly) on Nick Lloyd’s The Western Front: A History of the Great War, 1914-1918. I’m in 1916 and it’s a little bit like watching an avalanche: even kings and presidents and generals have very little control over what is happening, and keep attempting to strike what they devoutly hope will be knockout blows… only the other side just won’t say die.
What I Plan to Read Next
GUESS WHOSE FUCKING INTERLIBRARY LOAN ON D. K. BROSTER’S FLIGHT OF THE HERON JUST ARRIVED.
Took a little break from the Great War to read Nghi Vo’s The Empress of Salt and Fortune. I really enjoyed the way that the story spun itself out from objects - a set of fortune-telling sticks sets off one set of reminiscences, tokens from temple visits another, etc. It reminded me in a way of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s The Age of Homespun, although of course it’s the fictional history of an empire instead of a nonfiction book exploring women’s lives in preindustrial America; but the books share both an interest in women’s lives and this structure of spinning off the story from material objects.
I also read Darcie Little Badger’s Elatsoe. Our heroine, Ellie, is a Lipan Apache girl with a knack for summoning dead animals (dead people invariably Come Back Wrong and are better left alone), which she needs to put to good use when her cousin dies in mysterious circumstances. This is marketed as YA but really reads more middle grade, which is a puzzling marketing decision but an asset for me personally, as I love middle grade books. But although I enjoyed this book, I also felt it needed a bit more oomph.
What I’m Reading Now
You will be thrilled to know that I’ve started Mary Renault’s Fire from Heaven and it kicks off with four-year-old Alexander the Great telling his mother that he wants to marry her. I realize this is a thing that small children sometimes do, but there is a way to do it so it’s a cute kid thing and then there’s a way to do it as an Oedipal Moment (Alexander even thinks about killing his dad!), Full of Sensuality and Portent, and Renault went all out for the latter. I guess it’s nice that she so fully embraced her Oedipus complex kink.
Still working (slowly) on Nick Lloyd’s The Western Front: A History of the Great War, 1914-1918. I’m in 1916 and it’s a little bit like watching an avalanche: even kings and presidents and generals have very little control over what is happening, and keep attempting to strike what they devoutly hope will be knockout blows… only the other side just won’t say die.
What I Plan to Read Next
GUESS WHOSE FUCKING INTERLIBRARY LOAN ON D. K. BROSTER’S FLIGHT OF THE HERON JUST ARRIVED.
