calandrahunter

Still working on my reviews for the movies I saw over spring break! In my defense, we saw many movies - and it still wasn’t as many as I would have liked, as we only managed to hit up one of the films in the Kate the Great film festival at the Brattle.

However, that film was Holiday, starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, one of the all-time great Golden Age of Hollywood screen pairings. Genuinely shocked that I never saw or even heard of this movie before, given how much I love both of the stars.

However, this is perhaps just as well, since it was wonderful to see it for the first time on the big screen. Cary Grant is Johnny Case, a cheerful businessman who just got engaged to Julia, a girl he met a couple weeks ago at a ski resort. Katherine Hepburn is Julia’s disaffected little sister Linda, who Johnny meets for the first time when he visits Julia’s home… which happens to be the family mansion in the heart of Manhattan.

Yes, Johnny Case has been Crazy Rich Asianed. Going home to meet his fiancee’s family, he discovers they’re richer than God. After some initial doubts, however, the patriarch takes to Johnny, an up-and-coming one man with an extremely lucrative business deal in the pipeline. But then Johnny lets slip his true plan. Once he makes his packet, he plans to quit business and spend a few years traveling the world and finding himself.

Julia and father are appalled. What’s the point of making a huge amount of money except to use it to make yet huger amounts of money? But Linda, who is utterly miserable in her gilded cage, is fascinated. Here’s someone who really wants to live!

You can more or less guess the plot from there, but it’s still a delightful ride, with many excellent side characters. Linda and Julia’s drunk gay brother, like Linda miserable and unable to see a route to escape. Johnny’s friends the eccentric professor and his equally eccentric wife, a double act who easily morph into a triple act when Johnny’s on the scene. There’s a delightful moment when they’re singing “Camptown Races” with Linda, having a real good time in the attic while people pretend to have a good time at the huge stuffy engagement/New Year’s Eve party downstairs.

For a movie called Holiday, this is probably one of the least holiday-aesthetic Christmas/New Year’s movies I’ve ever seen. The characters keep commenting on the unusually warm weather they’re having, presumably to try to cover the fact that they are very obviously filming in southern California, and there’s very little in the way of Christmas trees or other decorations either.

However, as long as you don’t go into the movie expecting to get your Christmas on, it’s a fantastic time. Great chemistry between the leads, fantastic family dynamics, some more serious discussions about money and the meaning of life which give a bit of ballast to the levity. Just a jolly good all around time.

sholio

1. New Dungeon Crawler Carl book comes out in just a month! I'm wondering if I should reread the previous book before it drops, because these books have about a zillion characters and I'm confident that I have forgotten most of what happened in it.

2. The thing which happened to me on Tumblr today was so weird that I'm going to describe it under the cut even though I already complained privately to friends. (Murderbot fandom is so freakin' weird. Seriously.)

( Awkward! )

3. Speaking of Space Swap, they are still looking for some pinch hitters!

rachelmanija

18-year-old Evelyn is on a plane, transporting her father's ashes, when there's an announcement of turbulence. A passenger gets up from her seat, then collapses in the aisle. The plane begins to nosedive, and everything goes white. Then Evelyn is back on the plane, which is no longer nosediving. There's an announcement of turbulence. A passenger gets up from her seat, then collapses in the aisle. The plane begins to nosedive...

Evelyn quickly realizes that she's in a 29-minute time loop. She tries to figure out why the plane is crashing and how to stop it, but gets absolutely nowhere. She talks to other passengers. She steals their food and eats it. She watches every movie on the plane. She learns everything about everyone, except the handsome sleeping teenage boy who never wakes up during the loop. She goes through 400 loops and almost loses her mind. And then, on one loop, the boy wakes up. And on the next loop, he also realizes that he's in a loop...

Like the last novel I read by Reiss (Out of Air, the one with the teenage scuba divers), this book has a great premise. I enjoyed how Evelyn makes herself free with everything on the plane while trapped, and I also enjoyed how she and Rion, the sleeping boy, work together once he wakes up to figure out what's going on. However, it had an issue that more-or-less ruined the book for me. Rion suggests something that somehow Evelyn failed to try in 400 loops, which is to follow one person on the plane at a time, and observe everything they do. It never occurred to Evelyn to watch the flight attendants, and watching one of them reveals exactly what's causing the crash. They try to prevent it in several ways that don't work. Then Rion figures out a clever plan that saves the plane and fixes the loop.

The author clearly wanted to have Evelyn be alone in the loop for a long time. I can see why she wanted that - we get a vivid sense of her frustration and despair - but it makes Evelyn seem useless when she spends ages watching movies and so forth, and then Rion figures everything out almost immediately. This is exacerbated when Rion also comes up with the plan to fix things. This wouldn't have been a problem if they'd been in the loop together much earlier - then they could have bonded while investigating, taken breaks and done the fun stuff that she did alone, and mutually figured stuff out. It would have been more fun to read and felt less sexist, which I'm sure was unintentional but is inevitable when the girl fails at everything for ages, then a boy shows up and both solves the mystery and fixes the problem.

I'll be interested to see if Reiss's third book also has a three word title that rhymes with "care."

osprey_archer

Onward I sail in my Hornblower movie adventures! Five and six are a pair, based on Lieutenant Hornblower, which features a mad captain who is convinced that his lieutenants are plotting to take over his ship. His lieutenants, in increasing fear for their lives, conclude that they’d better take over the ship.

It’s interesting to watch these so soon after reading the books, because you read the books and it seems like there’s plenty of dramatic incident, and then you watch the movies and you go “Ah, the producers decided they needed to juice this up a bit.” Example: in the movies, the entire action is framed by the lieutenants’ trial for mutiny. If they are found guilty they will be HANGED.

Example two: in the book, Captain Sawyer falls down the hatchway, hits his head, and basically is incapacitated ever after. In the movie, he still falls from the hatchway (obviously we’re not going to let go of the question “did Hornblower push him?”), but he recovers! retakes the ship! and then promptly sails it directly under the guns of a Spanish fort, which forces the lieutenants to take action to remove him from power!

While I was reading Lieutenant Hornblower, I entertained myself greatly with the speculation that Hornblower DID push Captain Sawyer. However, upon reflection I’ve decided that if he had pushed Captain Sawyer, literally every promotion would be accompanied by the reflection “This is only happening because I MURDERED my CAPTAIN, truly I am the WORST.” On the other hand, this might explain the great increase in neuroticism between Mr. Midshipman Hornblower and our return to Hornblower POV in Hornblower and the Hotspur? Feels so guilty he can’t even name his guilt…

Okay no, I really think that if Hornblower were guilty he would be naming his guilt to himself incessantly. Maybe he’s just more neurotic because of the stress of serving under mad Captain Sawyer who was convinced that all his lieutenants and especially Hornblower were plotting against him.

ANYWAY. Getting back to the movie adaptations. I can see why these films must have made Bush/Hornblower fans Big Mad. Bush is at long last introduced - and then he’s upstaged at every turn by established movie fan favorite Lt. Kennedy.

Kennedy, not Bush, is the one who is nice to young Wellard after Captain Sawyer whips him for no reason.

When Bush is wounded, Hornblower briefly cradles his head, then the doctor is like “Go away, there’s nothing you can do here,” and Hornblower’s like “okay” and drops Bush like a hot potato. He hotfoots it off to have a chat with Kennedy, who tells him unsteadily that the prisoners have been dealt with… “Is that your blood?” Hornblower asks.

Kennedy mumbles something about how he’s fine.

“IS THAT YOUR BLOOD?”

Kennedy lets his jacket fall open and we see that his white shirt is SOAKED in blood. END OF SCENE.

And then of course Kennedy dies for Hornblower! Shambles into a court, barely able to stand upright on account of his wounds, and insists that he’s the one who pushed Captain Sawyer down the hatch! (As we have seen in endless flashbacks, he wasn’t even in the vicinity.)

Hornblower is not in court that morning, having been decoyed away, which upon reflection doesn’t quite make sense: surely he has to be in attendance at his own capital trial? But obviously we can’t have Hornblower spoiling Kennedy’s dramatic gesture by popping up to yell “That’s a lie! I pushed Captain Sawyer!” (Possibly no one pushed Captain Sawyer! Maybe he just fell! Those hatches have no safety rails. Absolute death traps.)

Anyway, Kennedy is duly sentenced to death. But before they can hang him, he dies of his wounds. Hornblower, of course, is at Kennedy’s bedside, holding his hand as he dies.

One presumes that sometime in the final two movies, Bush will at last have a chance to repair to his sickbed, where Hornblower will tenderly brush his hair from his forehead. But even then, how can he compete with the guy who sacrificed his life for Hornblower? The filmmakers clearly decided to ride the good ship Hornblower/Kennedy into the sunset.

osprey_archer

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Carol Ryrie Brink’s Mademoiselle Misfortune, a charming book from the 1930s. Young Alice is the oldest of six look-alike sisters in Paris, and one day overhears the landlady sighing that the girls are six misfortunes for their family: imagine having to pay six dowries! But soon after, a crotchety American lady (the sister of a friend of the family’s) asks Alice to accompany her on a trip through France as her interpreter, in which position Alice comes into her own as a person. Delightful illustrations by Kate Seredy.

I realize there’s no guarantee that an author will ever meet her illustrator, but I hope Brink and Seredy did come to know each other, as based purely on their books I think they could have been besties.

What I’m Reading Now

Frolicking through E. M. Delafield’s The Provincial Lady in America. No deep thoughts, just enjoying this whirlwind tour of the American literary world in the 1930s. Apparently everyone who was anyone was reading Anthony Adverse, except for our narrator who keeps having to duck conversations about the book.

What I Plan to Read Next

lucymonster and

troisoiseaux have convinced me to read some existentialists, so I’m starting with Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea because I figure that if I start with Camus, then Camus is where I will also end.

sholio

I finished edits on Luke over the weekend (Westerly Cove 4). Feel free to grab a copy 'til it goes live on Amazon on April 17!

book cover with a bear framed against a sunset

Get it on Bookfunnel:
https://dl.bookfunnel.com/30s06n16u7

(Blurb is still a work in progress.)

osprey_archer

There are so few Easter books that I don’t usually bother with any special Easter reading, but I stumbled upon a couple while I was hunting down all those Christmas books for Picture Book Advent. So this Easter morning, I made a cup of the very fancy hot chocolate from Burdick’s (really should have bought more) and read my Easter books.

The first was Tasha Tudor’s A Tale for Easter, which is about a little girl’s Easter. It’s hard to remember when Easter is (so true), but when Mama makes hot cross buns for tea on Good Friday, you know it’s just around the corner… and that’s when you have your Easter dream of riding a fawn to meet baby bunnies and ducklings!

The second was Jan Brett’s The Easter Egg. Every Easter, all the bunnies make beautiful eggs, because the maker of the most gorgeous egg gets to ride with the Easter Bunny as he makes his rounds. There are dyed eggs that have been turned into flower pots, carved wooden eggs, luscious chocolate eggs, classic psyanki eggs, even a mechanical egg… An explosion of delicious detail that really plays to Brett’s strengths as an illustrator.

I was also completely charmed by the borders on this one. Each page is bordered with branches of pussy willow, which over the course of the book swell from tiny buds to full pussy willows - and then on the last page, each pussy willow bud is a tiny bunny! It’s subtle enough that most people won’t notice, but it’s just delightful when you see it.

rachelmanija

Click on my Ruth Chew tag to see what sort of books she's known for: small-scale children's fantasies focusing on magic-infused everyday objects and creatures in Brooklyn. This is her hard-to-find first book, which is not a fantasy.

The main characters are a brother and sister who were left, along with their never-seen younger brother and sister, in the care of their grandmother who feeds them canned tomatoes - yuck! They leave a note saying they're doing a long sleepover at a friend's house, then run away to the site where they often went camping, buy a cheap boat, and live on an island.

This is entertaining enough on its own, but mostly of interest because it shows how she course-corrected in her fantasy books: the flaws in this book are corrected, and she melds its strengths (likable kid characters, a focus on the practicalities and small details of both the human and natural worlds, a friendly old woman) with excellent small-scale magic. In all the rest of her books, there are just two kids - no unnecessary and off-page younger siblings. There are no mean kids or bullying (this book has two mean bullies who just drop out of the story). The parents are around but the kids' adventures take place out of sight, so there's no implausible runaway plots. And the old ladies are witches, which makes them even better!

osprey_archer

I was very excited to read R. M. Ballantyne’s The Robber Kitten at the archive, because how could you go wrong with a title like that? And the cover seems promising: it features a kitten all dressed up like a highwayman, plumed hat and pistols and all.

Alas, the story is a morality tale, in which a kitten Goes to the Bad (led astray by bad company, we are told, although we never meet a single companion, evil or otherwise), realizes that wickedness has made it wretched, and returns to its grieving mother, who has been crying her heart out over her robber son. Now do any of us really believe that a mother cat would be sorry one of her kittens took to a life a crime?

However, Ballantyne frequently seems to forget that his characters are cats. Item: the robber kitten has to remind himself not to feel afraid as the sun sinks low. SIR you are a CAT you can SEE IN THE DARK. Item: the robber kitten falls out of a try onto his head. SIR you are a CAT you famously LAND ON YOUR FEET. Such a disappointment.

However, by fortunate coincidence I’m reading another book about a larcenous cat, Katherine Applegate’s Pocket Bear, which is narrated by the cat Zephyrina. Until recently a stray, Zephyrina has graciously consented to accept a home with Dasha and her mother Elizaveta, recent refugees from the war in Ukraine. To show her appreciation, she likes to bring back interesting finds that she has scavenged, especially toys for Dasha’s Second Chances Home for the Tossed and Treasured.

This has resulted in a wagon in front of the Second Chances Home for the Tossed and Treasures, full of Zephyrina’s recent finds, with an apologetic sign saying “Our Cat Is a Burglar,” to which Zephyrina objects. One: our cat? She is her own cat, thank you very much. Two: a burglar? What a way to refer to the Robin Hood of felines.

Zephyina is a deliciously recognizable type of cat, the previous stray who proudly believes that she is BAD! BAD TO THE BONE! but actually is a not-so-secret softie. In Zephyrina’s case, that softness manifests first with her friendship with Pocket Bear, a tiny teddy first sewn during World War I to accompany a soldier to war in his pocket.

Now over a hundred years old, Pocket Bear still remembers that formative military service. He calls the other toys in the Second Chance Home his troops, and worries over them like a kindly general. He calls Zephyrina “Corporal Z.” She cheekily sketches a salute and brings home more liberated-not-stolen toys.

The story kicks off when she brings home an old bear from a trash can. A very old bear; a possible antique, which might bring in a lot of money, which Dasha and Elizaveta desperately need to establish a new life in the United States. But can they get Dasha and Elizaveta the money they need and also find the old bear a loving home…?

sholio

Apparently Warner Brothers decided that they are not, in fact, putting B5 on Youtube, and pulled it a few episodes in.

https://cordcuttersnews.com/warner-bros-discovery-removes-babylon-5-from-youtube-after-brief-free-run/

I discovered this because I was curious how many episodes they were up to, and found the old links were dead. So I was curious what was up with that, and did a bit of googling. Evidently the messaging on this was basically terrible; they just yanked it without warning.

It looks like it's permanently off Tubi, despite having not gone ahead with the Youtube plan, but the article says that it is streaming free with ads on Roku's website, which I checked and it does seem to be true. FOR NOW. (They also have the movies, which I still haven't seen other than "In the Beginning." I don't think Tubi had those.)

osprey_archer

I happened to be in Boston while the Harvard Film Archive was putting on a series of movies on the theme “The Woman and the Typewriter,” and you’d better bet we were on that like white on rice. We managed to hit up two of the three films, and the third was The Hudsucker Proxy which I’m sure is just fine but not old enough to interest me.

The first was Meet John Doe, Frank Capra’s dark mirror of his earlier film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Barbara Stanwyck is about to lose her job at the newspaper, so she fires off one last inflammatory article: a fabricated letter that claims to come from a man calling himself John Doe, who says he’s going to jump off City Hall in protest against the prevailing conditions of society.

The article causes a huge furor, so Barbara Stanwyck is called back to the newspaper. To keep the uproar going, the newspaper casts a man as the “writer” of the letter: Gary Cooper, an out-of-work ballplayer who finds himself thrust in the limelight as he travels the country giving speeches to the John Doe Clubs that keep popping up, filled with everyday ordinary people who are sick and tired of the way things are and have decided to move forward on a small, local scale, helping their neighbors. Their only rule? No politicians!

But of course the politicians want to get their grubby fingers on this rapidly growing movement. Edward Arnold (who played the sleazy politician in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) is back as an even sleazier politician, who hopes to use the John Doe Clubs to facilitate the fascist takeover of the United States!

I must confess I felt that this plan was half-baked, which indeed is how I felt about the John Doe Clubs in the first place. Then the movie steps back from the tragic ending that it seems to have been building toward, which undermines the story still more. ( spoilers )

The second movie was His Girl Friday, an all-time fave which I’ve seen at least twice before. Star reporter Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell), dressed in an iconic diagonally striped hat and suit, comes back to the paper to tell her former boss (and ex-husband) Walter Burns (Cary Grant) that she’s getting married again. Walter Burns at once sets out to stop the marriage, getting Hildy’s new fiance arrested at least four times in one night, while also enticing Hildy back into the newspaper business with a humdinger of a story: a man on death row whose execution in the morning has become a political hot potato.

Do Hildy Johnson and Walter Burns have a healthy relationship? Absolutely not. Will their inevitable remarriage at the end of the movie end up lasting more than six months? Absolutely not. Does any of this matter to me as Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell exchange barbs at top top TOP speed? Also absolutely not. Shine on, you crazy diamonds! You are terrible for each other and I love that for me.

sholio

1. My snowy spring icons are generally an accurate image of how spring is going around here, but this year perhaps more than most. It isn't even supposed to be above freezing today. By the end of the week we may finally start getting some 40-ish temperatures. The entire month of March has been absolutely frigid - many low temperature records were set - and we still have 3 feet of snow. SPRING WHEN???

2. I realized how much I miss fandom bingo cards when I discovered a new one at

whatif_au, which is taking requests for cards. (Full list of AUs at the link; you can veto up to 3, and you can request a 3x3 or 5x5 card. Note that you WILL have to join the comm to post a request.)

So anyway I requested a card.

Sentinel/Guide	Treasure Hunter	Holiday Mythology
Robot	WILD CARD	Decade Specific
People with Disabilities	Fake Relationship	Cowboy

Will I do anything with this? who knows. But it's fun to have a bingo card again! (Biggles cowboy AU immediately came to mind because it would be hilarious.)

3.

unconventionalcourtship is back for another round. You pick a Harlequin/Mills & Boon book blurb and write a fic based on it. I don't recall that I've ever officially done this, but it's always fun to see what people come up with. List of blurbs here and also a plot generator which allows you to put in character names. (I recall having fun with this in the past.)

I'm not sure that this is something I actually want to write, but I can't help thinking how much Londo & G'Kar would loathe being in a Harlequin/Mills & Boon plot, and no one around them would be having any fun at all, either.

osprey_archer

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I went to the library to get one of the 2026 Newbery books, but instead got ambushed by Kate DiCamillo’s Lost Evangeline, which features a TINY GIRL standing on a SPOOL OF THREAD. How was I to resist?

Sadly the book did not focus on tiny Evangeline repurposing objects for her tiny world: spool of thread as stool, etc. But it DID feature a scene where Evangeline rides a cat, which seems like atonement for Kate DiCamillo’s The Tiger Rising where there’s a girl riding a tiger on the cover and then no one rides a tiger in the book at all, except in a dream which I think we can all agree does NOT count.

littlerhymes and I have also finished H.M.S. Surprise! (How many “surprise” puns did we make while reading this book? Many.) Jack does indeed start the book by losing the massive fortune from the Spanish treasure ships, although the Admiralty gives him nearly ten thousand pounds to make up, which would be a pretty tidy fortune in itself if (a) one were not comparing itself to hundreds of thousands of pounds of prize money, and (b) it didn’t all go to pay off Jack’s eleven thousand pounds of debt.

So he and Sophia STILL can’t marry, and indeed even though Jack has made another fortune by the end of this book, it ends with them still unwed… The next book had better open with a wedding, my god.

In news of Stephen’s matrimonial endeavors, Diana Villiers almost promises to marry him, then elopes with a rich American. Stephen is heartbroken but tbh I think Jack has a point when he says that this is the best thing that could have happened to Stephen, given that the man fights a duel for her in this book and would inevitably have to fight many more should they ever wed.

I see this is the book where the movie got the scene of Stephen operating on himself, which in the book occurs even though there are other surgeons available. Stephen doesn’t trust them! (Probably fair.) He will operate on himself in the mirror, moving his own ribs aside to get out the bullet lodged in his chest! Agonizing. This man is so metal. I could never.

What I’m Reading Now

Mikhail Zygar’s The Empire Must Die: Russia’s Revolutionary Collapse, 1900-1917, which I found on my Kindle marked as unread but clearly did read at some point, because I marked the passage where a young Nicholas II (not yet Nicholas II as his father is still alive) attempts to say something about politics at the dinner table, only for said father to start throwing bread rolls at him. Ah, the perfect way to train the heir to an empire: discourage any and all attempts to take an interest in politics.

Anyway, since I’m enjoying the book and have clearly forgotten it completely, I’m traipsing through it again. The defunct Narodniks, now regrouped as the SRs (Socialist Revolutionaries), have begun assassinating ministers again.

What I Plan to Read Next

Yesterday at the library I was simply unable to resist Katherine Applegate’s Pocket Bear.

rachelmanija

Camille is a tradwife influencer, living in near-total isolation from all humans but her awful and mostly absent husband Graham and her nosy neighbor Renee. She directs her own life like it's a perfect Instagram post, constantly obsessing over the perfect shade of beige and how her followers will react if she disagrees with a more successful tradwife influencer's insistence on a folic acid-free diet. The best way to get followers is to get pregnant, and she and Graham haven't managed that yet. But there's something lurking in the dark, deep well near the dark, deep woods that might be able to solve that problem for her.

The first quarter or so of this book is so repetitive and anvillicious that I might have DNF'd it if I hadn't been reading it for the horror book club. However, it picks up once Camille has sex with the creature in the well. (Camille tells herself it's an angel but can't stop calling it "the creature;" its actual nature is pleasingly ambiguous.) Her extremely weird pregnancy and increasingly desperate efforts to conceal its weirdnesses from Graham, Renee, and her online followers had me glued to the pages, and once her baby is born, I went from being entertained to actively loving the story. I don't want to give away too much about the baby, but I think it's the first time I have ever gotten deeply attached to a fictional baby. Of course, it helps that the baby isn't quite human...

The story is predictable but in a good way once you're past the interminable first quarter; you can't wait for certain things to happen. It gets increasingly batshit and darkly, gleefully funny as it goes along. It's a good female rage book, and has some quality monsterfucking scenes. Despite the rough start I really enjoyed this.

( Read more... )

Content notes: Very gory.

Incidentally, there are at least three novels called Trad Wife or Tradwife released this year. One by Sarah Langan is coming out in September.

osprey_archer

It’s been a long time since I posted about writing, because it’s been a long time since I’ve written very much, but visiting

skygiants and

genarti and

asakiyume inspired me to get back in harness. I am working very slowly on a secondary world fantasy novelette involving a princess in a tower and a magical paper bird and a sorceress’s apprentice.

If this sounds familiar, this story has been in the works for about 15 years. This time I’m going to finish it, though! I finally know what happens!

I also published Diary of a Cranky Bookworm this month, and since it’s basically not selling, I’ve decided that in the future I’ll continue to self pub m/m and m/m/f but will look for trad pub options for anything else. Or might just not write anything but m/m, at least at novel length. The m/m has made 15 times more money than all my other books combined.

I have however accrued a small stable of short stories, mostly fantasy, mostly not romantic, many possibly not publishable. (I know there are readers for a story about a tiny person who lives in a library, but are there venues?) (The one story about the grizzled warrior who falls in love with the magical coffee shop she manages is a shoe-in for publication somewhere, though.). My goal is to submit at least one story each month. May they come back with their pockets full of gold!

osprey_archer

I haven’t quite finished the 2017 books yet, but I had some extra time at work Friday and what better use of that time than to go through my 2019 reading list and decide which authors to revisit? So here we are.

Katherine Applegate - Pocket Bear

Grace Lin - Chinese Menu: The History, Myths, and Legends Behind Your Favorite Foods

Shaun Tan - The Arrival. I read Tales of the City in 2019 and found it pretty downbeat, but

littlerhymes clued me in that Tan also wrote picture books so of course I have to give those a try.

C. S. Lewis - considering The World’s Last Night and Other Essays, although I’m also interested in Studies in Words

Toni Morrison - Beloved

Ben MacIntyre - Agent Sonya: Moscow’s Most Daring Wartime Spy

Lisa See - Daughters of the Sun and Moon. Her newest book! Not yet out, in fact.

Jacqueline Woodson

Penelope Farmer - the university library has Eve: Her Story, but also a book called Soumchi which appears to be written by an Israeli writer named Amos Oz, but nonetheless has Farmer’s name attached in the catalog. Did she translate? Or write the preface? May check it out just to solve the mystery.

Dorothy Gilman

George Gissing - Demos. After New Grub Street, I felt I had to explore Gissing further, and according to Wikipedia, George Orwell thought Demos was one of Gissing’s best novels.

E. M. Delafield - The Provincial Lady in Wartime

George Orwell - The Road to Wigan Pier

Vivien Alcock - A Kind of Thief. I found this book at a used bookstore so it has become my next Alcock

William Dean Howells - Their Wedding Journey

Booth Tarkington - Penrod. I’ve meant to explore more Booth Tarkington since I read Seventeen. At last I’m getting around to it!

Barbara Cooney - Letting Swift River Go. When I visited

asakiyume we went to the Quabbin on a foggy day, and

asakiyume mentioned that Cooney illustrated a book about the building of the Quabbin, so of course that's next on my list.

Susan Cooper - torn between Dreams and Wishes: Essays on Writing for Children and Green Boy

William Bowen - Merrimeg. Bowen was a children’s fantasy author in the 1920s. I’d really like to read his book The Enchanted Forest, but it doesn’t appear to be on Gutenberg or FadedPage, so I’ll content myself with Merrimeg for now.

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Reading

Holiday

A few fandom things

Seconds to Spare, by Rachel Reiss

Hornblower movies 5 & 6

Wednesday Reading Meme

The latest book

Easter Books

Baked Beans for Breakfast AKA The Secret Summer, by Ruth Chew

Robber Cats

Well, that didn't last long

Meet John Doe and His Girl Friday

April 1, no fooling

Wednesday Reading Meme

Trad Wife, by Saratoga Schaefer

March Writing and April Goals

Revisiting My 2019 Reading List

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April 2026

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