Wednesday Reading Meme
Jun. 8th, 2022 08:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Finished Reading
Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s Season of Ponies begins more strongly than it ends, alas. It’s hard to beat a set-up like “magical colorful ponies appear from the mist to befriend our lonely heroine,” but some of the later magical pony adventures are only related in summary (perhaps Snyder was coming up against the word count?), and there’s also a chapter inspired by Circe that seems to come out of left field. Nothing against sorceresses who turn men into pigs! They just seem like an odd fit with the magical ponies.
I also zoomed through Captain W. E. Johns’ Worrals on the War-path, in which Worrals and Frecks set up a temporary British airbase in the remote mountainous Cevennes region of France, which Worrals just happened to explore a few years before the war began! Through a series of difficulties, Worrals also ends up in the Camargue, a fascinating brine lagoon region. The action is excellent as always, and I REALLY enjoyed the landscape description in this one - so vivid and specific. I wonder if Johns had visited the Cevennes and the Camargue himself.
This is the last of the Worrals books currently available on fadedpage.com, but I live in hope there will be more. (TBH I think reading all ten in one go might have given me the literary equivalent of a stomach ache anyway, so perhaps it is just as well I have to pause here!)
I also finished Kassia St. Clair’s The Secret Lives of Color. I would have preferred a less bitty approach - the book is a collection of short essays about many, many colors, and IMO it would have been stronger if it dug deeper - but it is full of fascinating tidbits. For instance, apparently medieval artists considered the mixing of colors morally suspect. Who knew?
What I’m Reading Now
Many books in various stages of progress: Bruce Catton’s The Coming Fury, Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s The Bent Twig, William Bowen’s Philip and the Faun (astute readers may recall Bowen as the author of zany 1922 Newbery Honor winner The Old Tobacco Shop), Teresa Lust’s Pass the Polenta: And Other Writings from the Kitchen, and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s T. Tembarom, which I have just realized that I’ve been spelling incorrectly for weeks. It is Tembarom, with an M at the end.
Only the briefest of Dracula updates this week! Dr. Seward notes that one of the patients in his asylum is acting unusually odd. No news from Jonathan Harker, which is OMINOUS. Has Dracula discovered his hidden diary and taken it away from him?
What I Plan to Read Next
No plans to start anything new till I’ve wrapped up a few of the many books in progress!
Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s Season of Ponies begins more strongly than it ends, alas. It’s hard to beat a set-up like “magical colorful ponies appear from the mist to befriend our lonely heroine,” but some of the later magical pony adventures are only related in summary (perhaps Snyder was coming up against the word count?), and there’s also a chapter inspired by Circe that seems to come out of left field. Nothing against sorceresses who turn men into pigs! They just seem like an odd fit with the magical ponies.
I also zoomed through Captain W. E. Johns’ Worrals on the War-path, in which Worrals and Frecks set up a temporary British airbase in the remote mountainous Cevennes region of France, which Worrals just happened to explore a few years before the war began! Through a series of difficulties, Worrals also ends up in the Camargue, a fascinating brine lagoon region. The action is excellent as always, and I REALLY enjoyed the landscape description in this one - so vivid and specific. I wonder if Johns had visited the Cevennes and the Camargue himself.
This is the last of the Worrals books currently available on fadedpage.com, but I live in hope there will be more. (TBH I think reading all ten in one go might have given me the literary equivalent of a stomach ache anyway, so perhaps it is just as well I have to pause here!)
I also finished Kassia St. Clair’s The Secret Lives of Color. I would have preferred a less bitty approach - the book is a collection of short essays about many, many colors, and IMO it would have been stronger if it dug deeper - but it is full of fascinating tidbits. For instance, apparently medieval artists considered the mixing of colors morally suspect. Who knew?
What I’m Reading Now
Many books in various stages of progress: Bruce Catton’s The Coming Fury, Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s The Bent Twig, William Bowen’s Philip and the Faun (astute readers may recall Bowen as the author of zany 1922 Newbery Honor winner The Old Tobacco Shop), Teresa Lust’s Pass the Polenta: And Other Writings from the Kitchen, and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s T. Tembarom, which I have just realized that I’ve been spelling incorrectly for weeks. It is Tembarom, with an M at the end.
Only the briefest of Dracula updates this week! Dr. Seward notes that one of the patients in his asylum is acting unusually odd. No news from Jonathan Harker, which is OMINOUS. Has Dracula discovered his hidden diary and taken it away from him?
What I Plan to Read Next
No plans to start anything new till I’ve wrapped up a few of the many books in progress!
