Reading Wednesday 9/01
Jan. 9th, 2019 07:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livUsually Christmas involves everybody giving everybody else lots of books. But this year we mostly focused on non-book presents.
Recently acquired: From Benedict, my partners' eldest, Team-ups of the Brave and the Bold, by J Michael Straczynski, illustrated by Jesus Saiz. This is a DC comic book, which is a part of culture I don't know much about. So far, the illustrations are absolutely gorgeous, but I've read two stories I hugely disagree with philosophically. One where the death of a bum and petty thief is celebrated because his life wasn't worth much anyway and at least he got the chance to be a hero, and one where a superhero time-travels back to WW2 and relaxes his principle against killing others because he's also a patriotic American with a duty to fight for his country. I need to read this more carefully, I think.
Recently given: Only one book Christmas present: The Book of Lights, by Chaim Potok, forcjwatson. One of my formative books as a teenager, and it is very Jewish, like all of Potok's stuff, but I hope there's enough in it that's interesting to a non-Jewish reader. It's about Kabalah and Jewish identity, yes, but it's also about the Korean war and the atom bomb.
Recently read: As promised, What Katy did next by Susan Coolidge. Originally published 1886, ebook obtained from the lovely Guenberg project. I read this on the plane to Nice, where about the middle third of the book is set. I had totally forgotten the children in this book; I remembered Katy and Polly and the mean girl and the love interest, but not the little boy with scarlet fever at the beginning, or Amy accompanying the two young women on their travels, and her equally dramatic illness. But actually, Coolidge, for all her Victorian sentimentality, is quite good at children, both from child POV as in the original What Katy did, and from adult POV in this.
Another thing that struck me about this book which wasn't notable at all when I was a child, is that it's very pre-internet. It keeps on about how it's important to do all your reading before you travel, otherwise you're stuck in a foreign country knowing nothing about the culture. And you don't expect to have any contact with people back home while you're travelling. Which was still basically true when I first read this 100 years after its publication, but isn't at all true any more.
It turns out that Katy doesn't do all that much in Nice. She sits by the sea and looks at Corsica, which we did. She stays in a Pension, which is probably the 19th century equivalent of the holiday apartment we booked. She walks along the Promenade, which we did. Other than that, it's mostly focused on her relationships, so we weren't able to do as much following in Katy's footsteps as we'd hoped. But still, it was a lovely nostalgic reread on the flight over.
Some interesting DW posts, while I'm here:
Adapting a medieval recipe, by ursula, who's working through a really interesting January Journal based mostly on SCA-related themes.
So another Jack Lewis thing happened by legionseagle, with some real insight into the Problem of Susan in historical context. Great discussion in the comments, as well. Everybody has lots of opinions about Lewis.
slashmarks is coming out with a lot of really interesting posts lately, mostly book reviews. This discussion of Literacy in the Ottoman Empire is from a few weeks ago, and absolutely fascinating.
Up next: Dunno. I'm poking at my tottering to-read pile and not pouncing on anything much. A skinful of shadows by Frances Hardinge is probably looking the most tempting.
Recently acquired: From Benedict, my partners' eldest, Team-ups of the Brave and the Bold, by J Michael Straczynski, illustrated by Jesus Saiz. This is a DC comic book, which is a part of culture I don't know much about. So far, the illustrations are absolutely gorgeous, but I've read two stories I hugely disagree with philosophically. One where the death of a bum and petty thief is celebrated because his life wasn't worth much anyway and at least he got the chance to be a hero, and one where a superhero time-travels back to WW2 and relaxes his principle against killing others because he's also a patriotic American with a duty to fight for his country. I need to read this more carefully, I think.
Recently given: Only one book Christmas present: The Book of Lights, by Chaim Potok, for
cjwatson. One of my formative books as a teenager, and it is very Jewish, like all of Potok's stuff, but I hope there's enough in it that's interesting to a non-Jewish reader. It's about Kabalah and Jewish identity, yes, but it's also about the Korean war and the atom bomb. Recently read: As promised, What Katy did next by Susan Coolidge. Originally published 1886, ebook obtained from the lovely Guenberg project. I read this on the plane to Nice, where about the middle third of the book is set. I had totally forgotten the children in this book; I remembered Katy and Polly and the mean girl and the love interest, but not the little boy with scarlet fever at the beginning, or Amy accompanying the two young women on their travels, and her equally dramatic illness. But actually, Coolidge, for all her Victorian sentimentality, is quite good at children, both from child POV as in the original What Katy did, and from adult POV in this.
Another thing that struck me about this book which wasn't notable at all when I was a child, is that it's very pre-internet. It keeps on about how it's important to do all your reading before you travel, otherwise you're stuck in a foreign country knowing nothing about the culture. And you don't expect to have any contact with people back home while you're travelling. Which was still basically true when I first read this 100 years after its publication, but isn't at all true any more.
It turns out that Katy doesn't do all that much in Nice. She sits by the sea and looks at Corsica, which we did. She stays in a Pension, which is probably the 19th century equivalent of the holiday apartment we booked. She walks along the Promenade, which we did. Other than that, it's mostly focused on her relationships, so we weren't able to do as much following in Katy's footsteps as we'd hoped. But still, it was a lovely nostalgic reread on the flight over.
Some interesting DW posts, while I'm here:
ursula, who's working through a really interesting January Journal based mostly on SCA-related themes.legionseagle, with some real insight into the Problem of Susan in historical context. Great discussion in the comments, as well. Everybody has lots of opinions about Lewis.slashmarks is coming out with a lot of really interesting posts lately, mostly book reviews. This discussion of Literacy in the Ottoman Empire is from a few weeks ago, and absolutely fascinating.Up next: Dunno. I'm poking at my tottering to-read pile and not pouncing on anything much. A skinful of shadows by Frances Hardinge is probably looking the most tempting.
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Date: 2019-01-11 10:36 am (UTC)Now, of course I do it on my phone. Which can also translate from German just by looking at some printed material.
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Date: 2019-01-13 10:46 pm (UTC)