Recent reading
Feb. 4th, 2024 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaThe Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker (2013)
Audiobook. I wanted to read the sequel, but didn't remember enough of the first book, and so I listened to this, having read it on paper back when it first came out. I still really like it! It has a good historical flavor and takes its time developing the characters and relationships, and I like the way it contrasts the nature of the two main characters. Someone on Goodreads calls it a romance, but nope, I really don't agree; but it is about two people (or beings, perhaps) making a connection, for sure.
Tramps and Vagabonds by Aster Glenn Gray (2022)
Oooh, this is so good! I can't decide whether this is now actually my favorite of the five books I've read by the author. Possibly I like it even more than Honeytrap, which was my previous favorite. It's about two young men just turning twenty (I think) who ride the rails in the Great Depression in the US, tramping about and having adventures and trying as best they can to scrounge a living, and also falling for each other. Somehow I wasn't expecting it to be from the more experienced character's POV, but that works great. The best things about the book are: 1) the vivid, immediate nature of the storytelling--you really feel how young they are! 2) the way it's rooted in historical understandings of sexuality--so interesting! 3) the progression from the happy, sunny summer to the increasing threat of winter, and the way that the stakes feel so high at the end. Also, the book feels just the right length to me, while I've previously felt that I wanted a little more relationship development from the author's shorter books.
I also got the complete letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague (1689-1762) from the university library in order to read her love letters to Francesco Algarotti and the fragments of letters between her and her friend John, Lord Hervey, who was also into Algarotti (and with more success?). There's a drawing of Algarotti and he does admittedly look hot. But I have to say that when I have been unrequitedly in love, I behaved with more, well, restraint. Restraint, however, is not for her!
But it's really the fragments between her and Hervey which are most interesting. Look at these tantalizing bits, for example...
I want much to know if the Friend [Algarotti] who inserted a Paragraph in your last two Letters has received one I wrote to him about you fortnight ago, conceived in terms of which, if it is fallen into any Hands but his own, I am sure will not be understood, but which are long much to have an answer to from him, so I whilst I am writing to him or to you I feel myself so cramp’d by prudential Views that it not only takes away the Freedom and Pleasure I should otherwise have in talking to you on Paper, but mortifies my Vanity to the last degree in making me the dullest and driest of all Correspondents where I had rather even be quite forgotten than remembered on such terms.
[…] I am in the most eager expectation of a third [letter] which you tell me is coming by my Son, as I expect there to find your thoughts (charming in any dress but most so undress’d) stripped of that useless load of Covering in which you are forced to wrap them when they come by the Post […].
Audiobook. I wanted to read the sequel, but didn't remember enough of the first book, and so I listened to this, having read it on paper back when it first came out. I still really like it! It has a good historical flavor and takes its time developing the characters and relationships, and I like the way it contrasts the nature of the two main characters. Someone on Goodreads calls it a romance, but nope, I really don't agree; but it is about two people (or beings, perhaps) making a connection, for sure.
Tramps and Vagabonds by Aster Glenn Gray (2022)
Oooh, this is so good! I can't decide whether this is now actually my favorite of the five books I've read by the author. Possibly I like it even more than Honeytrap, which was my previous favorite. It's about two young men just turning twenty (I think) who ride the rails in the Great Depression in the US, tramping about and having adventures and trying as best they can to scrounge a living, and also falling for each other. Somehow I wasn't expecting it to be from the more experienced character's POV, but that works great. The best things about the book are: 1) the vivid, immediate nature of the storytelling--you really feel how young they are! 2) the way it's rooted in historical understandings of sexuality--so interesting! 3) the progression from the happy, sunny summer to the increasing threat of winter, and the way that the stakes feel so high at the end. Also, the book feels just the right length to me, while I've previously felt that I wanted a little more relationship development from the author's shorter books.
I also got the complete letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague (1689-1762) from the university library in order to read her love letters to Francesco Algarotti and the fragments of letters between her and her friend John, Lord Hervey, who was also into Algarotti (and with more success?). There's a drawing of Algarotti and he does admittedly look hot. But I have to say that when I have been unrequitedly in love, I behaved with more, well, restraint. Restraint, however, is not for her!
But it's really the fragments between her and Hervey which are most interesting. Look at these tantalizing bits, for example...
I want much to know if the Friend [Algarotti] who inserted a Paragraph in your last two Letters has received one I wrote to him about you fortnight ago, conceived in terms of which, if it is fallen into any Hands but his own, I am sure will not be understood, but which are long much to have an answer to from him, so I whilst I am writing to him or to you I feel myself so cramp’d by prudential Views that it not only takes away the Freedom and Pleasure I should otherwise have in talking to you on Paper, but mortifies my Vanity to the last degree in making me the dullest and driest of all Correspondents where I had rather even be quite forgotten than remembered on such terms.
[…] I am in the most eager expectation of a third [letter] which you tell me is coming by my Son, as I expect there to find your thoughts (charming in any dress but most so undress’d) stripped of that useless load of Covering in which you are forced to wrap them when they come by the Post […].
(no subject)
Date: 2024-02-04 09:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-02-05 07:26 am (UTC)Both are narrated by
Date: 2024-02-06 07:35 pm (UTC)George Guidall
(no subject)
Date: 2024-02-05 03:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-02-05 07:28 am (UTC)Yes, I saw the vid, though I haven't watched it yet.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-02-05 03:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-02-05 05:22 pm (UTC)But I have to say that when I have been unrequitedly in love, I behaved with more, well, restraint. Restraint, however, is not for her!
LOLOLOLOL! I mean... quoted for truth!
Oh wow, that fragment is so interesting! I wonder if Lord Hervey's letters to her (with his undress'd thoughts!) have been saved anywhere...
(no subject)
Date: 2024-02-05 08:04 pm (UTC)I think either Selena or Mildred said (IIRC) that those letters are all we know of, alas. There are only a few tantalizing ones between her and Hervey.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-02-06 11:26 am (UTC)I mean, the whole reason we have Lady Mary's letters to Algarotti (and some of Hervey's to Algarotti) was that Algarotti wasn't equally considerate (from Lady Mary's pov) re: the future fate of those letters but left them in Venice when he died, where they were found a few decades later by none other than Lord Byron, who was a big Lady Mary fan (and also knew her family would destroy them, so sent them to his publisher instead).
(no subject)
Date: 2024-02-06 06:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-02-05 09:09 pm (UTC)Lord Hervey is often quoted in the history of the English Church in the 18th C I'm currently reading (by two self-righteous late 19th-C clergymen) but not as an expert on religion! His area of expertise, supposedly, is "lax morality" :D i.e. "if even Lord Hervey said the early 18th C theatre was a den of sin then it must have been really bad", "if even Lord Hervey could not find any Church abuses to expose, then that's proof that there were no such abuses", etc.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-02-06 11:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-02-06 07:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-02-07 08:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-02-08 07:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-02-08 11:38 am (UTC)