Recent reading:
- L. M. Montgomery, Rainbow Valley. Anne’s kids find new playmates. Overall, a bit better than Anne of Ingleside — the Blythe kids are more interesting in this book, and the Meredith children are a lot of fun. My one major gripe is Rev. John Meredith, the severely absent-minded minister father who supposedly loves his kids but who doesn’t notice their poor food and household conditions, and on the rare occasions where he wakes up enough to notice, he doesn’t do anything about it, until he finally gets married to a woman who’ll take care of all that. I don’t find him funny or endearing; I pity him, but I also find him criminally irresponsible. At the very least, he could apply to one of his neighbors for advice — the Blythes live quite nearby, for example — or he could shell out the money for a good housekeeper; there’s no hint that this would be impossibly expensive for him. He’s one of these people who would make a fabulous contemplative monk or celibate priest but who has no business being a family man.
- L. M. Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside. WWI hits. The young men of the town go off to war, some never to return, none to return unchanged. The book still has a lot of saccharine moments (Rilla’s Soul has been Honed by Tragedy and Work and is now that of a Woman, yeehaw), but the war keeps the book as a whole from being too cloying. (Tangent: World War I is a war that fascinates me — not so much for the military details themselves, which I’m woefully vague on, but for the effect it had on the participants. The Flanders Fields Museum in Ieper/Ypres was one of the most powerful museums I’ve ever visited.)
- P.C. Hodgell, God Stalk. Some year I’ll get her third and fourth books in this series, but overall I’m happy just reading this one over and over again. Jame tries to figure out how the gods work in Tai-Tastigon, while learning about its decidedly odd culture. Fascinating world and story, that takes several readings to absorb.
- Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls — yes, I got to borrow an advance reader’s copy! Ista, many-times bereaved, begins a search to find out what remains for her to do. And finds it. It’s been a long time since I read a scene in a book that made me cry.
- Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women who Run with the Wolves. Folktales as metaphors for women’s spiritual growth. It’s been a long time since I read this book; some of it resonates even more strongly now, and some I read and go “yeah, right.” It’ll stay on my shelf for now, but I’m less enthused by it than I was five years ago.