Recent (-ish) reading
May. 22nd, 2023 06:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeRight then, catching up on those reading posts... :)
Re-read Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson in preparation for seeing the play! Of course it was also useful to refresh the canon details in my mind for writing my longfic. And all in all I love it better than ever. It's funny how these fannish obsessions go; my initial review from two years ago is really rather lukewarm, but subsequent re-reading (along with fic-reading, discussion, etc.) increased my appreciation for it—in stark contrast to Flight of the Heron, with which I fell head over heels in love at first read and which I instantly knew would be an all-time fave. So it goes!
After that, tired by travelling, I wanted some good familiar comfort reading, so I re-read Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett. Aww, Discworld. :) I can't really ever read these books with my present-day adult reading brain; it's too much bound up in the perceptions and feelings of the first wondrous discovery of these books, aged about twelve, with only a little genre or cultural context and definitely not getting many of the jokes and references. But I love Granny Weatherwax as much as ever, Granny Weatherwax&Nanny Ogg is my all-time platonic OTP, and the subverted-fairytales plot and setting of this book are very enjoyable.
The Lairds of Dun by Violet Jacob (1931). Violet Jacob (née Kennedy-Erskine) was a member of the family of Erskine of Dun, who had occupied their Angus estate since the fourteenth century (her brother was the nineteenth laird); as well as being an author of poetry and prose fiction she was an amateur historian, and this book is the result of her researches into the history of her family. There's a lot of really fascinating stuff in there! We learn about the Erskine ancestor who was a major figure in the Scottish Reformation, negotiating between Mary, Queen of Scots and more radical reformers like John Knox, his close friend; the laird who tried to poison the young heirs who were his nephews, Princes in the Tower style, and who along with his sisters was found guilty of murder (happily, one of the boys survived and later inherited); the 'masterful spinster' who inherited the estate upon the failure of the male Erskine line in the nineteenth century and who was extremely socially proud and a fanatical hunter. But most interesting of all, at least to Flemington fans, is chapter XII, on the eighteenth century and the Jacobite risings. Read this if you want to know exactly where David Balnillo and James Logie come from!
New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson (1882). A collection of stories which I picked up in a very nice edition in a second-hand bookshop in Edinburgh. It's a bit of a various collection! There are a couple of sets of linked short stories set in contemporary London, which are both adventure-mystery stories having to do with crime and immoral dealings, and which really reminded me of the sort of thing E. W. Hornung writes. (They were contemporaries, just about; I would guess that Hornung read Stevenson's books). There's a novella set by the Firth of Forth, which is another exciting adventure story and also rather Hornungish; it features a romance which was in theory pretty interesting but in practice very dull and underdeveloped, and which—in comparison to the central not-textually-a-romance in Kidnapped—I think serves to illustrate how convention and assumed expectations can hamper real feeling and relationship development in writing. And there are some stories, two historical and one contemporary, set in France, which explore various interesting ideas of history, morality and art. The title is odd—in the first set of stories there are 'author's notes' referring to an apparent framing device of these being translations of old Arabian tales, similar to the original Thousand and One Nights, but it's never really explained fully and is dropped for the later stories. Altogether they made for a good read—the ideas are frequently intriguing, the adventure stories are good fun and the prose, if it isn't Hornung's, has a very nice late-Victorian construction—but the charm and warmth of Kidnapped are not here, and so far I've failed to find them in any of Stevenson's other books. At some point I will read the sequel to this one, The Dynamiter, which Louis co-wrote with Fanny—I look forward to that.
Re-read Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson in preparation for seeing the play! Of course it was also useful to refresh the canon details in my mind for writing my longfic. And all in all I love it better than ever. It's funny how these fannish obsessions go; my initial review from two years ago is really rather lukewarm, but subsequent re-reading (along with fic-reading, discussion, etc.) increased my appreciation for it—in stark contrast to Flight of the Heron, with which I fell head over heels in love at first read and which I instantly knew would be an all-time fave. So it goes!
After that, tired by travelling, I wanted some good familiar comfort reading, so I re-read Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett. Aww, Discworld. :) I can't really ever read these books with my present-day adult reading brain; it's too much bound up in the perceptions and feelings of the first wondrous discovery of these books, aged about twelve, with only a little genre or cultural context and definitely not getting many of the jokes and references. But I love Granny Weatherwax as much as ever, Granny Weatherwax&Nanny Ogg is my all-time platonic OTP, and the subverted-fairytales plot and setting of this book are very enjoyable.
The Lairds of Dun by Violet Jacob (1931). Violet Jacob (née Kennedy-Erskine) was a member of the family of Erskine of Dun, who had occupied their Angus estate since the fourteenth century (her brother was the nineteenth laird); as well as being an author of poetry and prose fiction she was an amateur historian, and this book is the result of her researches into the history of her family. There's a lot of really fascinating stuff in there! We learn about the Erskine ancestor who was a major figure in the Scottish Reformation, negotiating between Mary, Queen of Scots and more radical reformers like John Knox, his close friend; the laird who tried to poison the young heirs who were his nephews, Princes in the Tower style, and who along with his sisters was found guilty of murder (happily, one of the boys survived and later inherited); the 'masterful spinster' who inherited the estate upon the failure of the male Erskine line in the nineteenth century and who was extremely socially proud and a fanatical hunter. But most interesting of all, at least to Flemington fans, is chapter XII, on the eighteenth century and the Jacobite risings. Read this if you want to know exactly where David Balnillo and James Logie come from!
New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson (1882). A collection of stories which I picked up in a very nice edition in a second-hand bookshop in Edinburgh. It's a bit of a various collection! There are a couple of sets of linked short stories set in contemporary London, which are both adventure-mystery stories having to do with crime and immoral dealings, and which really reminded me of the sort of thing E. W. Hornung writes. (They were contemporaries, just about; I would guess that Hornung read Stevenson's books). There's a novella set by the Firth of Forth, which is another exciting adventure story and also rather Hornungish; it features a romance which was in theory pretty interesting but in practice very dull and underdeveloped, and which—in comparison to the central not-textually-a-romance in Kidnapped—I think serves to illustrate how convention and assumed expectations can hamper real feeling and relationship development in writing. And there are some stories, two historical and one contemporary, set in France, which explore various interesting ideas of history, morality and art. The title is odd—in the first set of stories there are 'author's notes' referring to an apparent framing device of these being translations of old Arabian tales, similar to the original Thousand and One Nights, but it's never really explained fully and is dropped for the later stories. Altogether they made for a good read—the ideas are frequently intriguing, the adventure stories are good fun and the prose, if it isn't Hornung's, has a very nice late-Victorian construction—but the charm and warmth of Kidnapped are not here, and so far I've failed to find them in any of Stevenson's other books. At some point I will read the sequel to this one, The Dynamiter, which Louis co-wrote with Fanny—I look forward to that.
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Date: May. 23rd, 2023 03:26 am (UTC)Isn’t it something how a story can grow on you? I think about this a lot because it happens to me often with movies, but yes, I very much relate to finishing something with the initial thought that it was fine or had its merits but that I didn’t really like it, and then a year later I’m still thinking about that thing while other stuff I’d thought I liked more has faded. Sounds like it was a good thing that Kidnapped haunted you a little!
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Date: May. 26th, 2023 05:31 pm (UTC)Aww, yes, exactly! I'm working my way through RLS's books anyway, and would have got to this one in ebook form at some point, but now it's especially nice :D
Yes—it took me a while getting to appreciate it properly, but it stuck around in the thoughts like that. Certainly it was a good thing!
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Date: May. 23rd, 2023 11:05 am (UTC)Oooh! I don't think I'll read the whole thing, but this I will definitely read. : D Did you have a physical edition to read, or an electronic one?
Yes, I agree, Kidnapped grew on me as well on the second reading! I still haven't felt moved to write for it, who knows whether that will happen. But I definitely enjoy all the fic. <3
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Date: May. 26th, 2023 05:37 pm (UTC)I still haven't felt moved to write for it, who knows whether that will happen.
If I may say so, I hope it does! :D Aww, but in any case I'm glad the book has grown on you too and that you enjoy the fic.
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Date: May. 24th, 2023 04:15 am (UTC)I haven't read a lot of RLS; I believe exactly none until a year or so again, when I read Treasure Island because I had picked up a YA Kindle book on sale called Clash of Steel that was loosely based on it, and I wanted to read the original/inspiration first. I enjoyed Treasure Island more than I expected to, and Clash of Steel won my heart.
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Date: May. 26th, 2023 05:42 pm (UTC)I read The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde some years ago, liked it but didn't find it anything very special, and never read any other Stevenson until Jacobite fandom brought Kidnapped to my attention. I still haven't read Treasure Island, though it sounds great—I'll get to it at some point...
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Date: May. 26th, 2023 08:20 pm (UTC)And the New Arabian Nights stories are definitely great fun! By the way, it makes perfect sense to think that Hornung would have read and enjoyed them--Doyle definitely did, by the way! :)
Oh, and the ones in The Dynamiter are also very enjoyable, and we meet prince Florizel again, which is a treat! Every time I re-read them now, I think of Broster poking fun at these stories in her Holmes pastiche, and I have a good laugh! XD
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Date: May. 27th, 2023 05:38 pm (UTC)By the way, it makes perfect sense to think that Hornung would have read and enjoyed them--Doyle definitely did, by the way! :)
Oh, that's nice to know :)
Now, I remember finding Broster's Holmes pastiche a bit confusing, and thinking there were probably lots of references in there that I didn't get—this must have been one of them, and I must re-read the story after I've finished both books and see if it makes any more sense :D