Reading Wednesday
Apr. 15th, 2020 07:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troisoiseaux Recently read
I finished Douglas Adams' Life, the Universe, and Everything. I take it back, this might actually be my favorite book in the series. I particularly loved Trillian getting to save the day! Almost makes up for the fact I could count the named female characters in this series on one hand even if I lost a couple of fingers. (Almost.)
There are more than a few jokes in the series that hit differently, reading them in March 2020— especially the joke in Restaurant about how including telephone disinfectors among the "useless" Golgafrinchans ended up wiping out the homeworld Golgafrinchans due to infectious disease, and in this one, the joke about a particularly violent alien species for whom jobs that require carrying a weapon include policemen, security guards... and primary school teachers. Not to mention the running joke about how no one who wants to be - and can get themselves elected as - the president of the universe should hold any sort of power.
Read Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, by Casey Cep. The book is something of three mini-biographies, tied together by an overarching story: Reverend Willie Maxwell, an African-American preacher and businessman who, in the 1970s, murdered five family members in the space of three years for the insurance money and ended up being murdered himself at the funeral of his final victim; Tom Radney, the lawyer and one-time progressive candidate for Alabama's governor who defended both Maxwell and the man who shot him; and To Kill A Mockingbird author Nelle Harper Lee, who - after years of struggling to write a second novel, and having assisted Truman Capote with the research for In Cold Blood - set out to write her own true crime book, about the murder of a murderer in small-town Alabama. Cep occasionally pulls away from her main narrative to provide historical background on everything from life insurance to voodoo to crime reporting, which was fascinating in itself. (Things I did not expect to learn from this book: one of the first insurance companies - which provided home insurance and a private-sector firefighting force after the Great Fire of London in 1666 - was started by a man named Nicholas If-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barebone.) Overall, 10/10, would recommend.
Obviously, I then had to re-read Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird. I've read it several times - both before and after it was assigned in my 7th grade (?) English class - but it's been years since my last re-read. It was interesting to revisit with more of a background on Harper Lee's life and the writing of the book; the fact that Dill is based off of Truman Capote is... a lot.
Read D-Day Girls by Sarah Rose, about the women recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to serve as undercover agents in Nazi-occupied France during WWII. I was, to my own surprise, already familiar with a lot of the broader details through - I kid you not - a Chronicles of Narnia fanfic I'd read back in high school, featuring Susan Pevensie as an SOE agent,* but it was cool to learn the individual stories of the real-life women (and men) of the SOE and the French resistance.
* Rat and Sword Go to War, part of rthstewart's fantastic series The Stone Gryphon, which I cannot recommend highly enough. You don't even need to be super familiar with the Narnia series to enjoy it— I've only seen, like, one and a half of the movies, myself.
Currently reading
Just started Panchinko by Min Jin Lee, a (I've been warned) extremely depressing novel about a Korean family that immigrates to Japan in the early 20th century and the subsequent generations that grow up there.
To read next
Furious Hours made me curious about Harper Lee's posthumously-published Go Set A Watchman, so that's on my list.
I finished Douglas Adams' Life, the Universe, and Everything. I take it back, this might actually be my favorite book in the series. I particularly loved Trillian getting to save the day! Almost makes up for the fact I could count the named female characters in this series on one hand even if I lost a couple of fingers. (Almost.)
There are more than a few jokes in the series that hit differently, reading them in March 2020— especially the joke in Restaurant about how including telephone disinfectors among the "useless" Golgafrinchans ended up wiping out the homeworld Golgafrinchans due to infectious disease, and in this one, the joke about a particularly violent alien species for whom jobs that require carrying a weapon include policemen, security guards... and primary school teachers. Not to mention the running joke about how no one who wants to be - and can get themselves elected as - the president of the universe should hold any sort of power.
Read Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, by Casey Cep. The book is something of three mini-biographies, tied together by an overarching story: Reverend Willie Maxwell, an African-American preacher and businessman who, in the 1970s, murdered five family members in the space of three years for the insurance money and ended up being murdered himself at the funeral of his final victim; Tom Radney, the lawyer and one-time progressive candidate for Alabama's governor who defended both Maxwell and the man who shot him; and To Kill A Mockingbird author Nelle Harper Lee, who - after years of struggling to write a second novel, and having assisted Truman Capote with the research for In Cold Blood - set out to write her own true crime book, about the murder of a murderer in small-town Alabama. Cep occasionally pulls away from her main narrative to provide historical background on everything from life insurance to voodoo to crime reporting, which was fascinating in itself. (Things I did not expect to learn from this book: one of the first insurance companies - which provided home insurance and a private-sector firefighting force after the Great Fire of London in 1666 - was started by a man named Nicholas If-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barebone.) Overall, 10/10, would recommend.
Obviously, I then had to re-read Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird. I've read it several times - both before and after it was assigned in my 7th grade (?) English class - but it's been years since my last re-read. It was interesting to revisit with more of a background on Harper Lee's life and the writing of the book; the fact that Dill is based off of Truman Capote is... a lot.
Read D-Day Girls by Sarah Rose, about the women recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to serve as undercover agents in Nazi-occupied France during WWII. I was, to my own surprise, already familiar with a lot of the broader details through - I kid you not - a Chronicles of Narnia fanfic I'd read back in high school, featuring Susan Pevensie as an SOE agent,* but it was cool to learn the individual stories of the real-life women (and men) of the SOE and the French resistance.
* Rat and Sword Go to War, part of rthstewart's fantastic series The Stone Gryphon, which I cannot recommend highly enough. You don't even need to be super familiar with the Narnia series to enjoy it— I've only seen, like, one and a half of the movies, myself.
Currently reading
Just started Panchinko by Min Jin Lee, a (I've been warned) extremely depressing novel about a Korean family that immigrates to Japan in the early 20th century and the subsequent generations that grow up there.
To read next
Furious Hours made me curious about Harper Lee's posthumously-published Go Set A Watchman, so that's on my list.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-15 01:08 pm (UTC)There's also a children's novel based on Harper Lee and Truman Capote's friendship, which I keep meaning to read.
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Date: 2020-04-15 02:36 pm (UTC)Ooh, I haven't heard of that, but I would be interested in checking it out. What's it called?
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Date: 2020-04-15 02:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-15 03:19 pm (UTC)Edit: It doesn't. :/
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Date: 2020-04-16 01:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-16 11:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-22 08:03 pm (UTC)I knew the existence of the name, but I did not know the man it belonged to sold some of the first insurance!
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Date: 2020-04-22 11:10 pm (UTC)I'm not 100% of the veracity, because Twitter, but apparently Nicholas "was the son of Praise-God Barebone and nephew of Fear-God and Jesus-Christ-Came-Into-The-World-To-Save Barebones." (via) It must have taken FOREVER to ask someone to pass the soup at family dinners! :P
no subject
Date: 2020-04-23 12:04 am (UTC)Those are hardcore even for excessive Puritan names.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-23 12:29 am (UTC)