What I’ve Been Reading

What I’ve Been Reading

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Jan 9, 2018 in What I've Been Reading | 0 comments

Melissa Sweet’s exquisite biography of E.B. White, Some Writer! E. B. White would have been proud–not a word or a line out of place. “Gem” is an overused description, but we should have been saving it for this book all along, with its rich colors and tender insights into what it means to love words, and animals, and children.

“Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth….Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net.”

–E.B. White, via Melissa Sweet

What I’ve Been Reading

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Nov 10, 2017 in What I've Been Reading | 0 comments

If you get bold enough to read 1984, of course you’ve got to follow it up with Brave New World. Which I must say I liked significantly less.

I get Huxley’s point, I really do, warning us that human beings don’t need a totalitarian system to crush the our spirit into sand….we can entertain ourselves into dumbness and passivity and inert happiness. Can’t argue with that. But the sour and savage distaste for the female body in this book–either as a voluptuous, pneumatic instrument of seduction and promiscuity and more of that mindless pleasure that’s going to ruin us all, or as a fat (horrors!), filthy, weak, flabby embodiment (literally) of mortality and corruption–well, that made it hard to appreciate the savage satiric genius. I could see that the genius was there, but I couldn’t much enjoy it.

And it’s not just the body, it’s the human spirit that is rendered disgusting in Huxley’s antiseptically clean prose. 1984 made me feel that the humanity was at risk, but still precious. Brave New World made me feel that the human spirit wasn’t worth the struggle. Might as will take a gram of soma and go to the feelies and watch it disintegrate.

What I’ve Been Reading

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Nov 10, 2017 in What I've Been Reading | 0 comments

The remarkable Love and First Sight by Josh Sundquist. Will Porter, blind since birth, experiences sight for the first time after a corneal transplant. Wonderful, right? A miracle of modern medicine, right? Not exactly.

The ending is a bit rushed, which is a real shame, because the book up until this is a fascinating and entertaining musing on honesty, beauty, and the many different types of perception. Sharp, funny, not in the least sentimental, and guaranteed to make you think.

What I’ve Been Reading

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Jul 26, 2017 in What I've Been Reading | 0 comments

Delightful fan art of Monty and the love of his life, Percy.

Or rather, listening to–a stunning audiobook, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue (such a great title) by Mackenzi Lee, and narrated superbly by Christian Coulson.

It’s the 1700s, and Lord Henry Montague–Monty to his friends, of which he has many–is a rake. A charming and delightful rake, who loves wine and cards and women and boys and who won’t let anything, including his stern father, get in the way of a good time. Especially if the good time involves his best friend, Percy.

Monty and Percy are off on their grand tour of Europe, and Monty is determined to make Percy fall in love with him by the time they head back to England. Events intervene, of course, as they always do, and there’s a villainous French duke and a spooky Catalan alchemist and some truly marvelous pirates, plus a tender and hilarious love story. The ending contains some supernatural elements that I had a bit of a hard time with–I was quite prepared to accept that these 18th century characters believe in alchemy, but startled to discover that alchemy actually works. Still, I’d forgive any author anything for the relationship between these two boys, who flirt and fight and break each other’s hearts from England to France to Spain to Italy. Can’t wait to listen to it all over again.