What Are You Reading Wednesday
Feb. 26th, 2014 11:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricWhat Are You Reading Wednesday:
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?
What are you currently reading? Hey this changed this week! I started a collection of Katherine Mansfield short stories, and am enjoying them thoroughly. They're giving me an odd sort of sideways homesickness - it has been too long since I was last in New Zealand. I'm also making further headway with Lina et le foret des sortileges, and I started Beowulf again - working from Liuzza's // text, with no gloss, for added amusement! I'm following the MA Beowulf seminar, you see. My Hons Beowulf seminar was definitely higher expectation than these, in terms of language at least.
What did you recently finish reading? Finally finished off Arthour and Merlin. Very long, mostly battles. Reread the Miller's Tale for the first time in a long while, much fun therein. And also I read most of an edited collection of essays called The English Loathly Lady Tales, which was fantastic and thought-provoking.
I finished a leisure book, too!
Susannah Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell: Ahaha oh wow. It took me quite some time to get into this book, despite my love of victoriana and footnotes. It was hard to get past my dislike of Norrell as POV protagonist - as soon as the book turned to Strange I fell in love with it. Norrell I liked a lot better later in the book, when I had more sympathy for him and his predicament.
And the secondary characters! Clarke handles them very well, IMHO - this is *not* the sort of historical fiction/fantasy in which members of the lower classes are flat bit-parts. Also ladies fulfilling typical roles for the period and yet not being boring! I liked Flora especially, with her dedication to her task and her eventual devotion to Arabella - it was an interesting choice *not* to tell her story through her POV (compare, say, Childermass or even Lascelles), and I think watching her through her father and aunts' eyes highlighted the stubborn determination and in some way the great importance of small people doing small tasks in a much greater picture.
I remain perplexed as to what John Uskglass was supposedly planning, unless he wanted the silver-haired fairy overthrown and what we saw was all a mere side plot to that end. Stephen was pretty awesome, and I was amused to see that *he* ended up being the one to achieve the critical victory - which no one ever found out about, not even Arabella.
What do you think you will read next? Hard to say, hard to say. I have to get my head into the 'zone' for my next chunk of academic writing; I have some essays on mysticism to read; and I plan on reading the Katherine Group saints' lives. For fun... it will be a toss-up between a light bit of modern Arthuriana from the to-read list, and 'Dear John, I Love Jane', a collection of essays about women leaving men for women.
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?
What are you currently reading? Hey this changed this week! I started a collection of Katherine Mansfield short stories, and am enjoying them thoroughly. They're giving me an odd sort of sideways homesickness - it has been too long since I was last in New Zealand. I'm also making further headway with Lina et le foret des sortileges, and I started Beowulf again - working from Liuzza's // text, with no gloss, for added amusement! I'm following the MA Beowulf seminar, you see. My Hons Beowulf seminar was definitely higher expectation than these, in terms of language at least.
What did you recently finish reading? Finally finished off Arthour and Merlin. Very long, mostly battles. Reread the Miller's Tale for the first time in a long while, much fun therein. And also I read most of an edited collection of essays called The English Loathly Lady Tales, which was fantastic and thought-provoking.
I finished a leisure book, too!
Susannah Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell: Ahaha oh wow. It took me quite some time to get into this book, despite my love of victoriana and footnotes. It was hard to get past my dislike of Norrell as POV protagonist - as soon as the book turned to Strange I fell in love with it. Norrell I liked a lot better later in the book, when I had more sympathy for him and his predicament.
And the secondary characters! Clarke handles them very well, IMHO - this is *not* the sort of historical fiction/fantasy in which members of the lower classes are flat bit-parts. Also ladies fulfilling typical roles for the period and yet not being boring! I liked Flora especially, with her dedication to her task and her eventual devotion to Arabella - it was an interesting choice *not* to tell her story through her POV (compare, say, Childermass or even Lascelles), and I think watching her through her father and aunts' eyes highlighted the stubborn determination and in some way the great importance of small people doing small tasks in a much greater picture.
I remain perplexed as to what John Uskglass was supposedly planning, unless he wanted the silver-haired fairy overthrown and what we saw was all a mere side plot to that end. Stephen was pretty awesome, and I was amused to see that *he* ended up being the one to achieve the critical victory - which no one ever found out about, not even Arabella.
What do you think you will read next? Hard to say, hard to say. I have to get my head into the 'zone' for my next chunk of academic writing; I have some essays on mysticism to read; and I plan on reading the Katherine Group saints' lives. For fun... it will be a toss-up between a light bit of modern Arthuriana from the to-read list, and 'Dear John, I Love Jane', a collection of essays about women leaving men for women.