Wednesday Reading Meme
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Joseph Krumgold’s And Now Miguel, winner of the Newbery Medal in 1954. I now have a mere twelve Newbery Medal winners to read! Five of which I can listen to as books on CD!
Books on CD are my latest discovery, you guys. Or rather rediscovery, because I used to listen to them on long car trips as a child (that’s how I first heard The Hobbit), but in the intervening years I had forgotten how much I enjoy being read to. Maybe once I finish all the Newbery books I’ll listen to some Dickens on CD; I’ve heard he’s much better read aloud.
I’m also hoping that if I can listen to a story while I’m cooking, I will a) cook more, and b) feel less novel-withdrawal once grad school starts up again and I don’t have time to read novels anymore. I read literally one novel last fall, and while that rather magnified the impact of the novel I did read (Code Name Verity - because that’s a novel that needs its impact magnified, am I right), it was pretty miserable otherwise.
Anyway. And Now Miguel is about a boy named Miguel who lives on a sheep ranch in New Mexico and yearns to go with the sheep to their summer pasture up in the mountains. There’s a lot of details about sheep and shepherding, which I found absolutely fascinating.
I spend a certain amount of time grousing about the Newbery winners, but here is one thing I like about them: the award tends to go to books with a strong sense of place, where the setting is not Everytown USA but a specific community, one that the hero is embedded in and shaped by.
What I’m Reading Now
Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop. I find that I like Dickens a lot more when I am not being frog-marched through it for high school English. Of course, it probably didn’t help that our high school English Dickens was Great Expectations...
Actually, there were parts of Great Expectations that I really enjoyed. If the book had focused entirely on Estella being mean to Pip and Miss Havisham being...well, Miss Havisham, then it would have been glorious. (We read Great Expectations after years of classic novels about women getting pregnant and suffering endlessly. Estella trampling on Pip’s self-esteem while he suffered endlessly seemed like poetic justice to me.)
But unfortunately a lot of the novel focused on Pip being the most boring person in the history of the universe, so those parts were rather a slog.
What I’m Reading Next
I’m going to be back at the library with Rose Daughter this week, so I’m finally going to read that.
Also, Charlotte Kandel’s The Scarlet Stockings, which is about an orphan who does ballet in the 1920s. I’ve never heard of it before; it just looked interesting on the library shelf. I almost never pick out books that way anymore, but I figured I’d give it a try; after all, I found the Montmaray books that way.
Joseph Krumgold’s And Now Miguel, winner of the Newbery Medal in 1954. I now have a mere twelve Newbery Medal winners to read! Five of which I can listen to as books on CD!
Books on CD are my latest discovery, you guys. Or rather rediscovery, because I used to listen to them on long car trips as a child (that’s how I first heard The Hobbit), but in the intervening years I had forgotten how much I enjoy being read to. Maybe once I finish all the Newbery books I’ll listen to some Dickens on CD; I’ve heard he’s much better read aloud.
I’m also hoping that if I can listen to a story while I’m cooking, I will a) cook more, and b) feel less novel-withdrawal once grad school starts up again and I don’t have time to read novels anymore. I read literally one novel last fall, and while that rather magnified the impact of the novel I did read (Code Name Verity - because that’s a novel that needs its impact magnified, am I right), it was pretty miserable otherwise.
Anyway. And Now Miguel is about a boy named Miguel who lives on a sheep ranch in New Mexico and yearns to go with the sheep to their summer pasture up in the mountains. There’s a lot of details about sheep and shepherding, which I found absolutely fascinating.
I spend a certain amount of time grousing about the Newbery winners, but here is one thing I like about them: the award tends to go to books with a strong sense of place, where the setting is not Everytown USA but a specific community, one that the hero is embedded in and shaped by.
What I’m Reading Now
Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop. I find that I like Dickens a lot more when I am not being frog-marched through it for high school English. Of course, it probably didn’t help that our high school English Dickens was Great Expectations...
Actually, there were parts of Great Expectations that I really enjoyed. If the book had focused entirely on Estella being mean to Pip and Miss Havisham being...well, Miss Havisham, then it would have been glorious. (We read Great Expectations after years of classic novels about women getting pregnant and suffering endlessly. Estella trampling on Pip’s self-esteem while he suffered endlessly seemed like poetic justice to me.)
But unfortunately a lot of the novel focused on Pip being the most boring person in the history of the universe, so those parts were rather a slog.
What I’m Reading Next
I’m going to be back at the library with Rose Daughter this week, so I’m finally going to read that.
Also, Charlotte Kandel’s The Scarlet Stockings, which is about an orphan who does ballet in the 1920s. I’ve never heard of it before; it just looked interesting on the library shelf. I almost never pick out books that way anymore, but I figured I’d give it a try; after all, I found the Montmaray books that way.