(Re)reading for Oct/Nov
Dec. 1st, 2020 09:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnOctober: (aside from finally finishing the Oster Wilhelmine bio for fandom, and Yuletide canon review)
-Le Petit Prince, read in French and (reread in) English to anticipate French-reading-group someday in the near future. If I had stayed at my first high school (with Awesome French Teacher) I would have read it as part of the third-year French curriculum (which is probably why I have my copy at all); as it was, this was the first time I'd read it in French. I have read that book enough times in English that for large portions of it I barely had to consult the translation. (Hmm, maybe I should try this for The Dark Is Rising series; I bet I also have large swathes of those books all but memorized.) This book is -- well, it's about a lot of things (and, okay, I gotta confess that the Prince/rose relationship is not my favorite), but at its heart it's about love and about grief, and about how love and grief are entwined. I think I saw some of that, dimly, as a child, but I didn't understand it, and I wouldn't have been able to articulate it at all. I love this book so much.
-Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs, Emily's Quest - Another reread. It struck me on this reread that Dean Priest is really skeevy, which apparently I'd failed to wholly pick up as a kid -- that is, I never liked him much, and I definitely never forgave him for what he said about Emily's book, but I don't remember actually recoiling from the page like I did this time. Like, he meets Emily when she's... thirteen? twelve? He was a FRIEND OF HER FATHER'S. And he says -- this is a literal quote -- "I think I'll wait for you." (And he, of course, does.) AUGH.
The perennial question for Emily's Quest is, who do you ship Emily with? (Which in and of itself tells you why it's my least favorite of the three.) In that elementary-to-high-school-ish period, I shipped a lot of people in various books -- Will/Jane in The Dark is Rising was always my ship, I was firmly on the side of Jo/Bhaer at the time -- I think this may have been my first experience with a book where I never did ship Emily with anyone in the book, really. She ends up with Teddy, but he's pretty... boring and just not that great. Perry isn't boring and I like him rather better than Teddy, but Emily just seems so uninterested in him! (Of course, an AU would be interesting...) Dean is Right Out, of course.
November: my concentration, attention span, and available time are pretty much totally shot until... Christmas :P But I did a lot of rereading, at least.
-Uhura's Song (Kagan) - I'd forgotten how good this is, how good the worldbuilding is and how much I adore that a large part of the conflict and plot devices have to do with interpersonal and cultural relations, including music <3 It actually impressed me more on this reread than when I first read it (though I obviously liked it when I first read it as well). Though... maybe this year was not the right time to reread a book about a plague... that jumps from one species to another and has a really long incubation period that allows it to spread rapidly out of quarantine... and which hits some people much harder than others... which all would have been okay with me except that pretty much everyone in the book basically is trying their hardest to help even when it conflicts with their cultural preferences, and that just kinda made me upset. (Not at the book, obviously; the book was great!) Also, Dr. Evan Wilson and Spock are the best! Anyway, maybe I should reread Hellspark.
-The Gift of Wings - 3+/5. The one book that wasn't a reread was this bio of L.M. Montgomery which was really interesting! The author had edited Montgomery's journals and relied heavily on them, but not solely -- she also pointed out that on one hand the journals were snapshots so might not be a complete picture, and on the other hand Montgomery actually edited the journals, so she had a conscious story she was trying to tell.
I'd known before that Montgomery's husband suffered from depression and that her journals often painted a bleak picture, but it was interesting to read about how her life went. Her husband seems to have had more good points than I'd previously been aware of (he was kind and low-key), but certainly depression and over-medication took their toll, along with probably some feelings of inferiority. Apparently Montgomery carries on the tradition of women writers writing perceptively about wonderful families but whose children feel... rather more ambiguously... about their mothers :P Though in Montgomery's case at least she didn't write her kids into her books as angelic boys who never grew up, so there's that. One of her two children turned out really well and the other seems to have had a good deal of difficulty both in relating to people and in impulse control, leading him to get into a great deal of trouble as a child, adolescent, and adult; of course at this remove it's hard to tell whether it was undiagnosed/untreated ASD/ADHD or something else (and the author does not speculate on this), but it does seem to have been something present his whole life.
The author also makes a good case (as far as I can tell) that both Montgomery and her husband were suffering from over-medication and severe medication side effects for much of their later lives. Also I did not know before reading this that there is something of a case to be made that Montgomery committed suicide; the author does not herself think it was suicide, but sets forth why the various parties involved thought it was.
I should say that there are certainly times when the author gets caught up in her own theories. There's a random guy who shows up in one of the chapters who she tries her best to convince us was very important to Montgomery, the evidence being... that... he doesn't show up in the diaries very much?? Yeah, I didn't buy it either :P (That he may have made it into one of her books as part of a love interest's character, sure! Why not? But that doesn't mean anything.)
-Rainbow Valley and Rilla of Ingleside (L.M. Montgomery) - Reading the bio made me interested in reading these later Anne books (though I did not succeed in reading the earlier Anne books). Rilla particularly, as Montgomery meant it as an adult book about World War I rather than a kid's book (although of course I read it as a child). I am also shocked that Rilla was written before Rainbow, because the two books go together so perfectly.
I was not expecting to basically cry all the way through Rilla. I don't think I would have reading it any other year, but it just struck me, how at first everything's normal and gradually (though very quickly) it becomes very obvious that WWI is very serious. And of course all the men going off to fight -- but it's not their story. It's the story of the women staying home and doing the best they can and having to deal with all kinds of things that they would probably not have had to deal with if they hadn't happened to live during a world war, and also all the uncertainty; having to wait and not knowing how long it was going to last, and all the little sacrifices that don't seem very big compared to what people on the front lines are going through and in fact really aren't compared to that, but which are still sacrifices. It hit me pretty hard, anyway, reading it at this moment in time.
Interestingly, I'd always liked the Emily books more than the Anne books, but this reread I think I like the later Anne books best. Perhaps because they were written later in Montgomery's life and now I'm older?
-Darkspell (Kerr) - I have this problem with Kerr's Deverry books that Darkspell always starts off so enticingly, and Jill is my fave, and I'm burning through the pages and am like "hey, this time maybe I'll read the series through!" and then by halfway through Daggerspell I'm kind of like, well, that was worth reading through, I guess, but I don't really feel like reading any further. On this reread, it was interesting to see how much Kerr sees that women are trapped in their lives, which I don't think I picked up as a kid. (I mean, it's pretty blatant! I was just really not observant.)
-Le Petit Prince, read in French and (reread in) English to anticipate French-reading-group someday in the near future. If I had stayed at my first high school (with Awesome French Teacher) I would have read it as part of the third-year French curriculum (which is probably why I have my copy at all); as it was, this was the first time I'd read it in French. I have read that book enough times in English that for large portions of it I barely had to consult the translation. (Hmm, maybe I should try this for The Dark Is Rising series; I bet I also have large swathes of those books all but memorized.) This book is -- well, it's about a lot of things (and, okay, I gotta confess that the Prince/rose relationship is not my favorite), but at its heart it's about love and about grief, and about how love and grief are entwined. I think I saw some of that, dimly, as a child, but I didn't understand it, and I wouldn't have been able to articulate it at all. I love this book so much.
So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near--One reads that and it's immediately clear... this guy knows.
"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."
"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . ."
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"Then it has done you no good at all!"
"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields."
-Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs, Emily's Quest - Another reread. It struck me on this reread that Dean Priest is really skeevy, which apparently I'd failed to wholly pick up as a kid -- that is, I never liked him much, and I definitely never forgave him for what he said about Emily's book, but I don't remember actually recoiling from the page like I did this time. Like, he meets Emily when she's... thirteen? twelve? He was a FRIEND OF HER FATHER'S. And he says -- this is a literal quote -- "I think I'll wait for you." (And he, of course, does.) AUGH.
The perennial question for Emily's Quest is, who do you ship Emily with? (Which in and of itself tells you why it's my least favorite of the three.) In that elementary-to-high-school-ish period, I shipped a lot of people in various books -- Will/Jane in The Dark is Rising was always my ship, I was firmly on the side of Jo/Bhaer at the time -- I think this may have been my first experience with a book where I never did ship Emily with anyone in the book, really. She ends up with Teddy, but he's pretty... boring and just not that great. Perry isn't boring and I like him rather better than Teddy, but Emily just seems so uninterested in him! (Of course, an AU would be interesting...) Dean is Right Out, of course.
November: my concentration, attention span, and available time are pretty much totally shot until... Christmas :P But I did a lot of rereading, at least.
-Uhura's Song (Kagan) - I'd forgotten how good this is, how good the worldbuilding is and how much I adore that a large part of the conflict and plot devices have to do with interpersonal and cultural relations, including music <3 It actually impressed me more on this reread than when I first read it (though I obviously liked it when I first read it as well). Though... maybe this year was not the right time to reread a book about a plague... that jumps from one species to another and has a really long incubation period that allows it to spread rapidly out of quarantine... and which hits some people much harder than others... which all would have been okay with me except that pretty much everyone in the book basically is trying their hardest to help even when it conflicts with their cultural preferences, and that just kinda made me upset. (Not at the book, obviously; the book was great!) Also, Dr. Evan Wilson and Spock are the best! Anyway, maybe I should reread Hellspark.
-The Gift of Wings - 3+/5. The one book that wasn't a reread was this bio of L.M. Montgomery which was really interesting! The author had edited Montgomery's journals and relied heavily on them, but not solely -- she also pointed out that on one hand the journals were snapshots so might not be a complete picture, and on the other hand Montgomery actually edited the journals, so she had a conscious story she was trying to tell.
I'd known before that Montgomery's husband suffered from depression and that her journals often painted a bleak picture, but it was interesting to read about how her life went. Her husband seems to have had more good points than I'd previously been aware of (he was kind and low-key), but certainly depression and over-medication took their toll, along with probably some feelings of inferiority. Apparently Montgomery carries on the tradition of women writers writing perceptively about wonderful families but whose children feel... rather more ambiguously... about their mothers :P Though in Montgomery's case at least she didn't write her kids into her books as angelic boys who never grew up, so there's that. One of her two children turned out really well and the other seems to have had a good deal of difficulty both in relating to people and in impulse control, leading him to get into a great deal of trouble as a child, adolescent, and adult; of course at this remove it's hard to tell whether it was undiagnosed/untreated ASD/ADHD or something else (and the author does not speculate on this), but it does seem to have been something present his whole life.
The author also makes a good case (as far as I can tell) that both Montgomery and her husband were suffering from over-medication and severe medication side effects for much of their later lives. Also I did not know before reading this that there is something of a case to be made that Montgomery committed suicide; the author does not herself think it was suicide, but sets forth why the various parties involved thought it was.
I should say that there are certainly times when the author gets caught up in her own theories. There's a random guy who shows up in one of the chapters who she tries her best to convince us was very important to Montgomery, the evidence being... that... he doesn't show up in the diaries very much?? Yeah, I didn't buy it either :P (That he may have made it into one of her books as part of a love interest's character, sure! Why not? But that doesn't mean anything.)
-Rainbow Valley and Rilla of Ingleside (L.M. Montgomery) - Reading the bio made me interested in reading these later Anne books (though I did not succeed in reading the earlier Anne books). Rilla particularly, as Montgomery meant it as an adult book about World War I rather than a kid's book (although of course I read it as a child). I am also shocked that Rilla was written before Rainbow, because the two books go together so perfectly.
I was not expecting to basically cry all the way through Rilla. I don't think I would have reading it any other year, but it just struck me, how at first everything's normal and gradually (though very quickly) it becomes very obvious that WWI is very serious. And of course all the men going off to fight -- but it's not their story. It's the story of the women staying home and doing the best they can and having to deal with all kinds of things that they would probably not have had to deal with if they hadn't happened to live during a world war, and also all the uncertainty; having to wait and not knowing how long it was going to last, and all the little sacrifices that don't seem very big compared to what people on the front lines are going through and in fact really aren't compared to that, but which are still sacrifices. It hit me pretty hard, anyway, reading it at this moment in time.
Interestingly, I'd always liked the Emily books more than the Anne books, but this reread I think I like the later Anne books best. Perhaps because they were written later in Montgomery's life and now I'm older?
-Darkspell (Kerr) - I have this problem with Kerr's Deverry books that Darkspell always starts off so enticingly, and Jill is my fave, and I'm burning through the pages and am like "hey, this time maybe I'll read the series through!" and then by halfway through Daggerspell I'm kind of like, well, that was worth reading through, I guess, but I don't really feel like reading any further. On this reread, it was interesting to see how much Kerr sees that women are trapped in their lives, which I don't think I picked up as a kid. (I mean, it's pretty blatant! I was just really not observant.)
