Wednesday Reading Meme
Jul. 27th, 2022 07:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
DELIGHTED to inform you that fadedpage.com now has W. E. Johns’ fifth Worrals book, Worrals Goes East, both for its own sake and because it suggests that someone is systematically adding the Worrals books one by one and we will someday have all ten. THANK YOU MYSTERY PERSON, YOU ARE A SCHOLAR AND A GENTLEMAN.
Less delighted by the fact that this is set in Syria and the author is not very racially sensitive (although he DOES kindly inform us that his Evil Tribe, the Zogorites, are Not Real Arabs, both in the sense of being Bad and in the sense that he made them up for this book), but this is just what you get when you read old books.
I am however continually delighted by how wholeheartedly Johns took up the “Biggles but girls” premise. Not only are Worrals and Frecks exactly the sort of resourceful, venturesome lasses you’d want on an adventure, but they tackle male chauvinism head on. “If we’ve to start fighting male prejudice as well as the Nazis, then we are in for a tough time,” Worrals comments, and when (in classic adventure hero fashion) they’re forced to strike out on their own without informing the Authorities, it’s in part because they know these particular Authorities won’t let them take the necessary risks because they’re girls.
I also read Newbery Honor book Ramona and Her Father, which I may have read before? I know I read some Ramona books as a child, but the only one I know for sure is Ramona’s World, and that’s because it disappointed me. (It came out when I was in fourth grade, and Ramona was also in fourth grade, and IIRC I felt that Ramona was Out of Touch with the experience of fourth grade in the 1990s.)
Anyway, this is fun! I particularly enjoyed the sequence where Ramona’s big sister interviews an elderly neighbor about games she used to play, and the neighbor mentions making tin-can stilts (out of big two-pound coffee cans, not your average itty-bitty can) and Ramona and her friend Howie make some and tromp around the neighborhood singing “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall!” at the top of their lungs.
What I’m Reading Now
Moving right along with the Newbery Honor books of the 1970s! I’m listening to James Lincoln Collier & Christopher Collier’s My Brother Sam Is Dead. I saw this book on the bookshelves MANY times as a child and never read it because, well, that title. Possibly too much truth in advertising! Anyway, Sam is not quite dead yet, but he HAS stolen his father’s gun and run off to fight in the Revolutionary War, so no doubt it is coming.
In Dracula news, Renfield has eaten all his birds, feathers and all (gross, Renfield), Lucy is walking in her sleep (I’m sure it’s nothing! Everything is fine!), and we have had no news of Jonathan Harker for some weeks. Probably fell off the castle while trying to escape and we shall ne’er see him more. :( :( :(
What I Plan to Read Next
Laurence Yep’s Dragonwings, yet another Newbery book from the 1970s. Distrait to learn that if I am going to finish the Newbery Honor project I will have to interlibrary loan… seventy-two books… Okay MAYBE it won’t be that many, because by the time I reach the 1930s some of those books may be out of copyright and therefore available online, but STILL. SO MANY.
DELIGHTED to inform you that fadedpage.com now has W. E. Johns’ fifth Worrals book, Worrals Goes East, both for its own sake and because it suggests that someone is systematically adding the Worrals books one by one and we will someday have all ten. THANK YOU MYSTERY PERSON, YOU ARE A SCHOLAR AND A GENTLEMAN.
Less delighted by the fact that this is set in Syria and the author is not very racially sensitive (although he DOES kindly inform us that his Evil Tribe, the Zogorites, are Not Real Arabs, both in the sense of being Bad and in the sense that he made them up for this book), but this is just what you get when you read old books.
I am however continually delighted by how wholeheartedly Johns took up the “Biggles but girls” premise. Not only are Worrals and Frecks exactly the sort of resourceful, venturesome lasses you’d want on an adventure, but they tackle male chauvinism head on. “If we’ve to start fighting male prejudice as well as the Nazis, then we are in for a tough time,” Worrals comments, and when (in classic adventure hero fashion) they’re forced to strike out on their own without informing the Authorities, it’s in part because they know these particular Authorities won’t let them take the necessary risks because they’re girls.
I also read Newbery Honor book Ramona and Her Father, which I may have read before? I know I read some Ramona books as a child, but the only one I know for sure is Ramona’s World, and that’s because it disappointed me. (It came out when I was in fourth grade, and Ramona was also in fourth grade, and IIRC I felt that Ramona was Out of Touch with the experience of fourth grade in the 1990s.)
Anyway, this is fun! I particularly enjoyed the sequence where Ramona’s big sister interviews an elderly neighbor about games she used to play, and the neighbor mentions making tin-can stilts (out of big two-pound coffee cans, not your average itty-bitty can) and Ramona and her friend Howie make some and tromp around the neighborhood singing “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall!” at the top of their lungs.
What I’m Reading Now
Moving right along with the Newbery Honor books of the 1970s! I’m listening to James Lincoln Collier & Christopher Collier’s My Brother Sam Is Dead. I saw this book on the bookshelves MANY times as a child and never read it because, well, that title. Possibly too much truth in advertising! Anyway, Sam is not quite dead yet, but he HAS stolen his father’s gun and run off to fight in the Revolutionary War, so no doubt it is coming.
In Dracula news, Renfield has eaten all his birds, feathers and all (gross, Renfield), Lucy is walking in her sleep (I’m sure it’s nothing! Everything is fine!), and we have had no news of Jonathan Harker for some weeks. Probably fell off the castle while trying to escape and we shall ne’er see him more. :( :( :(
What I Plan to Read Next
Laurence Yep’s Dragonwings, yet another Newbery book from the 1970s. Distrait to learn that if I am going to finish the Newbery Honor project I will have to interlibrary loan… seventy-two books… Okay MAYBE it won’t be that many, because by the time I reach the 1930s some of those books may be out of copyright and therefore available online, but STILL. SO MANY.
