What I have been reading, July/August edition

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Books I read late July and August.

 

New books

At School With The Stanhopes by Gwendoline Courtney. If you follow my journal, you will sooner or later hear me talk about Stepmother by the same author. It’s one of my constant comfort reads, and has been since I was 10. But not until I was an adult did I realize that Courtney wrote a number of books in the 1940s and 50s, all geared towards teenage girls. Most of them have been out of print for decades, and being in Sweden has made it a bit of a hassle to buy them used. But now girls Gone by seems to republishing them, and I read II earlier this year. At School With The Stanhopes is about 16 year old Rosalind, whose guardian dies, forcing her to move in with her much older brother, whom she hardly knows. Neither of them are pleased with it, but I lifes becomes much less gloomy when her favorite teacher opens a school just down the lane. Especially as Miss Stanhope has a bevy of friendly younger sisters. It’s mostly a school story, but also about Rosalind and her brother building a relationship, and I enjoyed it enormously. I do wish I had been able to read this book in my early teens, though, because I can tell I would have loved it even more had I read it back then. 

Furstinnan (The Princess) by Eva Mattson. A biography of the 16th century Swedish queen Catherine Jagiellon. Sweden is pretty bad at noting women in history, and this is the first biography of a very interesting woman. Katarina Jagellonica, to use her Swedish name, was a Polish princess who rather surprisingly married Johan Vasa, the younger brother of the Swedish king at a time when the Vasa dynasty was seen as an upstart royal family. She was highly educated and educated, and it’s clear after reading this book that she had a lasting impact in how late 16th century Sweden was shaped. 

The Art of French Pastry by Jacqut Pfeiffer. I read a lot of cookbooks, but mostly just bits here and there, so never mention them in these posts. But this book was really interesting as it isn’t just recipes, but a thorough explanation of why a recipe looks the way it does, and also how it’s supposed to behave throughout. 

The Adventure of the Demonic Ox by Lois McMaster Bujold. The latest installment in the Penric and Desdemona series. It’s a series of fantasy novellas about a young man who accidently gets infested by a demon, something which makes him a sorcerer. As he doesn’t know how one is supposed to behave during those circumstances, he names the demon Desdemona, and they embark on a much more equal relationship. Bujold is one of my favourite authors, and the Penric and Desdemona novellas are bite-sized pieces of delight that together form a bigger whole. With that said this was probably one of the more lightweight installments in the series. 

 

Re-reads 

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop by Fannie Flagg. The first book has been a comfort read of mine since the early 90s, and I like the movie too. A couple of years ago it got a sequel. If Fried Green Tomatoes paints the past in very nostalgic shades, The Wonder Boy  feels like a fanfic, if one can say that an author can write that to their own work. Everyone is happy at the end of it, and if the bad guy in the first novel was a genuinely awful person, the villains in the latter are reduced to a man with murderous intent towards a cat, and an awful mother-in-law. But sometimes one is in the mood for a book where everything will be just fine. And then some. 

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I have always thought of this as a gothic novel for children. I mean, an orphaned heroine moving into an isolated mansion where she hears strange cries in the night, and there is a garden no one has been in for 10 years, and no one knows how to get into. I still remember how thrilled I was when I first read it as a kid. And I still love the description of the secret garden.

Comments

[greghousesgf]

I saw the movie Fried Green Tomatoes and liked it, never read the book.

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I like both. However, the movie ignore the parts of the book that is about the black family working at the cafe, which I would have loved to see included.

[author_by_night]

I read another Fannie Flagg book that was kind of like that. A character did die, but not a major one? TBH it was kind of annoying to me, just because every single potential note of conflict was resolved quickly, BUT I can see why some people would love it.

I will say that my aunt read the same book, and loved it; however, she felt it was very much for her generation (Boomer, though IIRC the characters would've been the Silent Generation - but Gen X stuff resonates with me even though I'm a Millennial, so).

I may have tried Fried Green Tomatoes?

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I never really felt compelled to read anything else by her, even if i love Fried Green Tomatoes. Which was the only reason I read the sequel.

[kitarella_imagines]

Oh I love The Secret Garden! (I tried reading it to my daughter however and I hadn't realised how gruesome the first chapter is.) But anyway, great story.

Now did you know there is a (kind of) sequel? An author called Noel Streatfeild wrote a popular book called Ballet Shoes about 3 adopted sisters who trained as ballerinas, in the 1930s I think. Fantastic book! Then she wrote a crossover called The Painted Garden where a family go to stay in America after WW2 and get involved in making a film of The Secret Garden- their daughter is asked to play Mary Lennox. The girls of Ballet Shoes are grown up now, living in America and they all meet up.

If you like The Secret Garden, you will probably like Ballet Shoes and The Painted Garden. You must read them in that order though: Secret, Ballet, Painted.

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Yes, the first chapter is really gruesome. Thankfully yje fact that Mary is alone in a house with the dead didn't sink in until I re-read it as an adult.

I haven't read that sequel, but it sounds like something I might like! I read one, that I forgot the name off, that I hated, with Mary, Colin and Dickon in a love triangle as adults.

[kitarella_imagines]

Same here! It didn't register when I was a child reading it, but I stopped pretty quickly when I read it to my daughter, she didn't like it. Same with Jane Eyre! I read that aged 12 and some of those chapters are gruesome when the schoolgirls get an illness- typhoid? TB? Cholera? and die one by one. I must have been a tough child to read all of that. That was life though until recently though wasn't it? There were epidemics and most people in the area died. Humanity is so lucky now with antibiotics and other treatments. They can even cure bubonic plague with antibiotics now!

Oh no it's nothing like a love triangle. Ballet Shoes is about the girls Pauline, Petrova and Posy as children, they are adults by the end of the book, they don't have boyfriends. The Painted Garden is about children too, one is the very difficult Jane who is ideal to play the very difficult Mary Lennox. I think you will enjoy the books, there's no romance or sexual stuff whatsoever.

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I read Jane Eyre at 14, and quite relished in the school scenes. XD So much drama. Thinking of it I read Jane Eyre for my sister when I was 17 and she was 12, and she loved it.

I think you will enjoy the books, there's no romance or sexual stuff whatsoever.

Oh, I don't mind sex and romance. But I'm not a fan od triangle drama, especially as one part almost always are vilified. Which happened in that book. I don't remember if it was Dickon of Colin who was made into a bad guy, which i don't think fir ether of them. Dickon is pure good, and Colin has already done a reddeming arc, so it just felt wrong.

[kitarella_imagines]

I really can't remember what I thought of the Jane Eyre school scenes as a 12 year old, I don't think they made much impression. But as an adult I found them gruesome.

The 3 books I recommended are basically for children, that's why there are no sex/romance scenes, so they might take you back to a more innocent time. They were childhood favourites of mine. Sometimes it's good to escape the modern world and all its difficulties.

That sounds really awful about the love triangle, I shall avoid that book if I see it.

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I can't remember the title, but I doubt it's in print anymore

[kitarella_imagines]

That sounds like a good thing! lol.

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Thank you!