More fall reading!

Pandemic reading continues, but I did spur myself on to read two nonfiction books, as well as another five books of fiction.

 

Beijing:  From Imperial Capital to Olympic City by L. Li, A. Dray-Novey, and H. Kong was far more interesting than I expected it to be.  I admit that some of that is because I am fascinated by the Mongols and they had an important role in the city’s history.  Since I began with approximately zero knowledge of Chinese history, I learned a ton.  There was intrigue, adventure, and terror (Red Guard teens terrorizing anyone they didn’t like!).  I had not really considered, on a city scale, what preservation and restoration mean.  The primarily wooden architecture of the oldest parts of Beijing has not lasted like stone building would.  If it is restored, is it authentic?  If a structure that was famous as a “ruin” is to be restored, to what level does the restoration go?  (I encountered some variations on these ideas in Sweden at the Vasa museum, where the parts of the ship that were replaced were left a different color than the original bits brought up from the water, and in Sydney where much of the Barracks museum is devoted to the question of what a museum is, complete with wall areas that reveal layer upon layer of paint from different iterations of the building, but a whole city is so much larger…)  I can’t say that the book scratched the itch of wanting to travel—now I want to travel even more.

 

The Alice obsession led me to read Colin Gordon’s Beyond the Looking Glass:  Reflections of Alice and Her Family.  It’s an impressionistic book, based on the author’s access to a trove of Liddell family papers and other items.  I would not say that it shines any new light on the relation of Alice Liddell to Alice in Wonderland, but it does give an interesting amount of context to the world both person and book came from.  I liked the copious illustrations including sketches and painting and photos by and of Alice and her family, the well-chosen excerpts from a voluminous correspondence, and the overall picture of a changing world.  Definitely worth reading for the enthusiast, but probably not for anyone less obsessed than I am.

 

My progress through the collected works of Tamora Pierce led me to read Tempests and Slaughter, the first book in the Numair Chronicles.  It is good to know that her work is as compelling when the protagonist is a scrappy young man as it is when she writes about determined young women.  I like the backstory on where Numair came from and his complex relationships.  I still am not quite over the difficulty I have with what happens later in his story with the older man/young girl relationship thing, but that was a whole different book, so it may not be fair to let it color my experience of this one.

 

I’m also reading along in my Ursula Le Guin books.  This time, I read Buffalo Gals, which is a collection of short stories and poems.  I remain enchanted with her use of language and her ability to find unique perspectives on old problems.  I am glad I still have quite the stack of her work to read.

 

If it were not already clear, I’ve been working several obsessions at once here.  I read two short works from J.R.R. Tolkien, Famer Giles of Ham and Smith of Wooton Major.  Both were charming, often funny, smart, and satisfying.  I love his epic vein, but his mock-epic and humorous takes are often as nourishing to my soul.

 

Finally, something not attached to a current obsession.  I very much enjoyed Philippa Pearce’s book Tom’s Midnight Garden.  In these lonely times, finding a book about one loneliness finding comfort in another is a gift.  It is a lovely story.

 

Fall Reading to date:  31 books

2020 Reading to date:  100!