Wednesday Reading Meme
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Alethia Kontis’s Enchanted. I seem to be in some kind of reading rut, because this is yet another book that I didn’t enjoy nearly as much as I expected to. I think there’s a critical mass of fairytales that you can cram into one novel and maintain coherence, and Kontis clearly surpassed it.
Or perhaps that’s not the problem, exactly. I felt like Kontis didn’t really have anything to say about any of the fairy tales. They’re there so the reader can squeal upon noticing the fairy tale allusion, but there’s really nothing more to it: the stories have no thematic resonance.
And there are really only so many times I can read the hero and heroine sigh about how they love each other so so so much (but can’t be together because once he’s in prince form he refuses to tell her he’s the frog she fell in love with, WTF dude) before I want to knock both their heads together and scream.
On the other hand, I’ve also just finished an excellent book, Peter Carlson’s Junius and Albert’s Adventures in the Confederacy, which is about a couple of Union reporters who got captured by Confederate troops, paroled, and were supposed to be sent home...except they got sucked into the Confederate prison archipelago and ended up spending nearly two years there.
This is pretty grim stuff, and both Junius and Albert occasionally give into black despair (Junius is particularly prone to flinging himself on the floor and attempting to give himself up to the sweet liberty of death), but Carlson manages it with a light touch: he shows not only their despair, but the dark and sometimes goofy humor with which they tried to keep up not only their own spirits but those of their fellow prisoners. Everyone seems very human in his history books, which I think is why I like them so much.
(Carlson also wrote K Blows Top: A Cold War Comic Interlude, Starring Nikita Khrushchev, America’s Most Unlikely Tourist, one of my favorite nonfiction books of all time. K Blows Top has been optioned for a feature film. I WANT THAT MOVIE SO MUCH.)
What I’m Reading Now
Hilary McKay’s Caddy Ever After. I’ve been spacing out the Casson family books because I enjoy them so much and want them to last forever, and this one is just as lovely so far as the ones before. I love the way McKay writes Rose, especially, because she is so very much herself, stubborn and passionate and artistic and stubborn. Very stubborn. Darling Rose!
Also Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Shield Ring, because I am about to move away from the library that has it and there’s no telling when I’ll have access to another copy.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve just discovered the Hilary McKay wrote a sequel to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Prince, focusing on what happens at the boarding school after Sara leaves, for Ermengarde particularly. Should I read it? On the one hand, I always have wondered what happened to Ermengarde. On the other hand, sequels to beloved books are always dangerous, perhaps particularly when they’re written by a different author (although being written by the same author often doesn’t seem to help).
Alethia Kontis’s Enchanted. I seem to be in some kind of reading rut, because this is yet another book that I didn’t enjoy nearly as much as I expected to. I think there’s a critical mass of fairytales that you can cram into one novel and maintain coherence, and Kontis clearly surpassed it.
Or perhaps that’s not the problem, exactly. I felt like Kontis didn’t really have anything to say about any of the fairy tales. They’re there so the reader can squeal upon noticing the fairy tale allusion, but there’s really nothing more to it: the stories have no thematic resonance.
And there are really only so many times I can read the hero and heroine sigh about how they love each other so so so much (but can’t be together because once he’s in prince form he refuses to tell her he’s the frog she fell in love with, WTF dude) before I want to knock both their heads together and scream.
On the other hand, I’ve also just finished an excellent book, Peter Carlson’s Junius and Albert’s Adventures in the Confederacy, which is about a couple of Union reporters who got captured by Confederate troops, paroled, and were supposed to be sent home...except they got sucked into the Confederate prison archipelago and ended up spending nearly two years there.
This is pretty grim stuff, and both Junius and Albert occasionally give into black despair (Junius is particularly prone to flinging himself on the floor and attempting to give himself up to the sweet liberty of death), but Carlson manages it with a light touch: he shows not only their despair, but the dark and sometimes goofy humor with which they tried to keep up not only their own spirits but those of their fellow prisoners. Everyone seems very human in his history books, which I think is why I like them so much.
(Carlson also wrote K Blows Top: A Cold War Comic Interlude, Starring Nikita Khrushchev, America’s Most Unlikely Tourist, one of my favorite nonfiction books of all time. K Blows Top has been optioned for a feature film. I WANT THAT MOVIE SO MUCH.)
What I’m Reading Now
Hilary McKay’s Caddy Ever After. I’ve been spacing out the Casson family books because I enjoy them so much and want them to last forever, and this one is just as lovely so far as the ones before. I love the way McKay writes Rose, especially, because she is so very much herself, stubborn and passionate and artistic and stubborn. Very stubborn. Darling Rose!
Also Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Shield Ring, because I am about to move away from the library that has it and there’s no telling when I’ll have access to another copy.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve just discovered the Hilary McKay wrote a sequel to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Prince, focusing on what happens at the boarding school after Sara leaves, for Ermengarde particularly. Should I read it? On the one hand, I always have wondered what happened to Ermengarde. On the other hand, sequels to beloved books are always dangerous, perhaps particularly when they’re written by a different author (although being written by the same author often doesn’t seem to help).