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Recent Reading
I figure whenever I reach five books read, I'll make a post to keep track of them. These will be old books, mostly obscure as hell, so I doubt anyone on my list would ever care but click for spoilers and snark.
The Eighteenth Summer - Lillie Holland (1973)
A rather dimwitted eighteen year old is caught in the middle of a mysterious family feud when she's mysteriously hired as a wealthy woman's companion. She was born in the local village, but her family took her away as an infant, and she's So Confused why this elderly woman with no heirs has sent for a nobody like her. She settles into her role as a terrible employee, sneaking out every afternoon to canoodle with the odd but charming scion of the feuding family. Of course, she would be less inclined to bad decision-making if anyone in this story told her what the context of the feud was, or if she had the gumption to deliberately eavesdrop, but the entire moral of the piece is that (paraphrasing) "Truly refined people do not gossip, even if the nearest neighbors are Tragically Cursed with Madness." The entire plot would have been over in three pages if anyone had alerted our heroine to this little fact. Instead she stumbles into red flags and extremely obvious revelations, but she's a wealthy woman in the end, so bully for her.
The Family at Tammerton (An Inspector Finch Mystery) - Margaret Erskine (1965)
Most typos I've ever seen in an old paperback. Dropped letters, doubled words, the works. An ad for Kent cigarettes in the middle of the book. It's a bizarre genre mashup between English country house murder mystery and romantic suspense, via switching perspectives between the detective and the nurse hired by the central family. The obvious original suspect turns out to be the villain in a weak attempt at a double-twist and the rich central family end up surrounded by dead neighbors (along with their own dear cousin, whose weak heart gives out in the shock of discovering she married the murderer). The surviving family look at each other and shrug. "Well, I guess you never do know other people," they say philosophically, and the book ends. Meanwhile, Inspector Finch keeps assigning watchmen who keep getting knocked out at key moments, and is not responsible for saving anyone. I wouldn't want to depend on Inspector Finch.
Both of the above gothics have the heroines take note of the "mullioned windows" at the rich houses they arrive to work in, so I guess those were an especially luxuriant detail at midcentury.
Gentle Ben - Walt Morey (1965)
I kept making soft strangled sounds throughout this old school children's classic, as the boy constantly pets, hugs and handfeeds a brown bear. It is absolutely horrifying to picture, and the book acknowledges the risk constantly, even while underscoring how different Ben is, and it was a tense reading experience. Generally, I enjoy old animal stories (the ones where the animal survives the text, anyway) and find them relaxing, but this was truly a breed apart. It had an appreciably happy ending, and only one bear mauling. The entire central family were well sketched and the descriptions of Alaskan landscape and fishing village lifestyles were quality stuff. I'm glad I read it but I think I'm equally glad it's the only famous "boy and his bear" book and I can go back to the safety of dogs and ponies from now on.
Footprints - Denise Levertov (1972)
I saved this from a dumpster of books on their way to be pulped, and it's sat on my shelves for years. I thought I'd give it a quick read and send it out the door, as I tend to struggle with recent eras of poetry, but the deeper I got into this slim volume, the more it started to win me over. In particular, the pastoral verse resonated, especially when read outdoors in the sunshine. This book is a vibe, and it works very well in proper circumstance. So I guess I'll be hanging on to it after all.
Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman - E.W. Hornung (1899)
The sardonic adventures of a reckless gentleman thief and his weak-willed Boswell. I had early hopes of being inspired to do a Highlander crossover with this, and it's a shame none appear to exist... but I must leave that potential to someone who actually likes these characters. Raffles and Bunny are a classic slash pairing, for barely subtextual reasons, but I couldn't stand either of them. They stand prepared to murder witnesses on several occasions. Of particular note are when Bunny has to get called off in a panicked haze from throttling a schoolboy and when Raffles leaves a bushwhacked Australian relative to his fate so he can rip off the man's place of work (the man survives, no thanks to his kinsman).
Raffles takes wild risks purely for the thrill, struggling to fence or profit from the ostentatious jewels he covets. His dapper life at the Albany is destroyed halfway through the book, and he cripples himself into the role of an invalid rather than give up England for a fresh start elsewhere. Bunny is clearly smitten, and his sluggish conscience offers only feeble protest to a life of crime. He becomes increasingly fond of drink, and Raffles occasionally leverages that weakness (among others) while Bunny seethes whenever Raffles pays attention to women. It's all more than a little pathetic from first page to last - aside from a bizarre genre swerve in the middle where larceny is forgotten and it veers into proto-Fu Manchu pulp territory with Raffles getting on the bad side of an foreign crime syndicate with a fondness for elaborate death traps (the Neapolitans rather than the Chinese), with a side dose of fridging. This syndicate defeated, Raffles returns to his addictive schemes for self-destruction like nothing happened. The whole thing reads more like a deconstruction of this debonair genre than a pioneer of the same. However, the elegant Victorian prose enlivened proceedings, and I zipped through it greatly entertained.
The Eighteenth Summer - Lillie Holland (1973)
A rather dimwitted eighteen year old is caught in the middle of a mysterious family feud when she's mysteriously hired as a wealthy woman's companion. She was born in the local village, but her family took her away as an infant, and she's So Confused why this elderly woman with no heirs has sent for a nobody like her. She settles into her role as a terrible employee, sneaking out every afternoon to canoodle with the odd but charming scion of the feuding family. Of course, she would be less inclined to bad decision-making if anyone in this story told her what the context of the feud was, or if she had the gumption to deliberately eavesdrop, but the entire moral of the piece is that (paraphrasing) "Truly refined people do not gossip, even if the nearest neighbors are Tragically Cursed with Madness." The entire plot would have been over in three pages if anyone had alerted our heroine to this little fact. Instead she stumbles into red flags and extremely obvious revelations, but she's a wealthy woman in the end, so bully for her.
The Family at Tammerton (An Inspector Finch Mystery) - Margaret Erskine (1965)
Most typos I've ever seen in an old paperback. Dropped letters, doubled words, the works. An ad for Kent cigarettes in the middle of the book. It's a bizarre genre mashup between English country house murder mystery and romantic suspense, via switching perspectives between the detective and the nurse hired by the central family. The obvious original suspect turns out to be the villain in a weak attempt at a double-twist and the rich central family end up surrounded by dead neighbors (along with their own dear cousin, whose weak heart gives out in the shock of discovering she married the murderer). The surviving family look at each other and shrug. "Well, I guess you never do know other people," they say philosophically, and the book ends. Meanwhile, Inspector Finch keeps assigning watchmen who keep getting knocked out at key moments, and is not responsible for saving anyone. I wouldn't want to depend on Inspector Finch.
Both of the above gothics have the heroines take note of the "mullioned windows" at the rich houses they arrive to work in, so I guess those were an especially luxuriant detail at midcentury.
Gentle Ben - Walt Morey (1965)
I kept making soft strangled sounds throughout this old school children's classic, as the boy constantly pets, hugs and handfeeds a brown bear. It is absolutely horrifying to picture, and the book acknowledges the risk constantly, even while underscoring how different Ben is, and it was a tense reading experience. Generally, I enjoy old animal stories (the ones where the animal survives the text, anyway) and find them relaxing, but this was truly a breed apart. It had an appreciably happy ending, and only one bear mauling. The entire central family were well sketched and the descriptions of Alaskan landscape and fishing village lifestyles were quality stuff. I'm glad I read it but I think I'm equally glad it's the only famous "boy and his bear" book and I can go back to the safety of dogs and ponies from now on.
Footprints - Denise Levertov (1972)
I saved this from a dumpster of books on their way to be pulped, and it's sat on my shelves for years. I thought I'd give it a quick read and send it out the door, as I tend to struggle with recent eras of poetry, but the deeper I got into this slim volume, the more it started to win me over. In particular, the pastoral verse resonated, especially when read outdoors in the sunshine. This book is a vibe, and it works very well in proper circumstance. So I guess I'll be hanging on to it after all.
Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman - E.W. Hornung (1899)
The sardonic adventures of a reckless gentleman thief and his weak-willed Boswell. I had early hopes of being inspired to do a Highlander crossover with this, and it's a shame none appear to exist... but I must leave that potential to someone who actually likes these characters. Raffles and Bunny are a classic slash pairing, for barely subtextual reasons, but I couldn't stand either of them. They stand prepared to murder witnesses on several occasions. Of particular note are when Bunny has to get called off in a panicked haze from throttling a schoolboy and when Raffles leaves a bushwhacked Australian relative to his fate so he can rip off the man's place of work (the man survives, no thanks to his kinsman).
Raffles takes wild risks purely for the thrill, struggling to fence or profit from the ostentatious jewels he covets. His dapper life at the Albany is destroyed halfway through the book, and he cripples himself into the role of an invalid rather than give up England for a fresh start elsewhere. Bunny is clearly smitten, and his sluggish conscience offers only feeble protest to a life of crime. He becomes increasingly fond of drink, and Raffles occasionally leverages that weakness (among others) while Bunny seethes whenever Raffles pays attention to women. It's all more than a little pathetic from first page to last - aside from a bizarre genre swerve in the middle where larceny is forgotten and it veers into proto-Fu Manchu pulp territory with Raffles getting on the bad side of an foreign crime syndicate with a fondness for elaborate death traps (the Neapolitans rather than the Chinese), with a side dose of fridging. This syndicate defeated, Raffles returns to his addictive schemes for self-destruction like nothing happened. The whole thing reads more like a deconstruction of this debonair genre than a pioneer of the same. However, the elegant Victorian prose enlivened proceedings, and I zipped through it greatly entertained.
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I really do enjoy finding out of print oddities to read. They are little time capsules, and while some are filled with cliches, sometimes they can be quite charming and unexpected. Or both at once! And you generally can't go very far wrong for under five dollars.
Glad you enjoyed these silly write ups!
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Older children's books can be great fun, as long as one avoids the landmines of Lesson Books, wherein the child's pet/sibling/bestie/parent/magic/houseplant must be rubbed out for the common good to prevail. And Victorian pulp is fun for how many tropes were popularized in that era.
I do read more recent publications, but it's much harder to know what I'm getting. Sometimes it feels like every protagonist needs a backstory of abuse or trauma (often with flashbacks) and I'm not in the mood for that. So I'm on retro holiday and so far it seems to be working out.