Monday, March 23, 2009

Reading Roundup - Week 12

It's spring!
Sing with me - Tra - la - la - la - la!
No working outside for me yet, because we still have frost and occasionally snow.
I do want to buy a tiller, but I won't make any garden purchases until next month.
I wish that I could say I had as good a reading week as last time, but this week I came up a bit short.
I only finished one book, Madeleine L'Engle's The Moon by Night (28).
It was actually a very good book, where Vicky Austin travels across the country (and back) with her family. Written and set in the 60's, it reestablishes the Austin family values witnessed in book one, Meet the Austins, of working together, keeping no secrets from one another, and praying before every meal.
In this book, Vicky encounters other boys and families who do not share the same values as the Austin family. They run into a problem with some JD's in Tennessee, and even experience anti-American sentiment in Canada, and it is Vicky's burgeoning awareness of the people and the land outside of her small Connecticut town that make the book especially interesting. Viewing this as a mid-60's travelogue, it is even better if you juxtapose this tale with the direction the nation was taking during the 60's, making one wonder what Vicky Austin would have been like in 1968.
Sorority girl, or hippie chick?
I'd choose Vicky's direction as that of conservative sorority girl going to college for her MRS degree.
Read it, and let me know what you think.
I'm in the middle of two books right now, The Young Unicorns, and Homicide in Hardcover, and I'm again treading water/pages and getting nowhere.
How does this happen?
And on a personal note to Bronx Girl Knits and Karoline Knits:
Have you seen that Barbara Bretton is publishing a sequel to Casting Spells?
It's entitled Laced with Magic, and will be out in August.
Check it out.
Oh - everyone should go check it out!
Read - Read - READ!!!

2 comments:

Caroline said...

Hi Julie, I have a feeling that I'm going to have to check out the sequel of Casting Spells. You haven't steered me wrong with Eggs in Purgatory. I'm loving it already. I started reading it last night, and would have kept on going if I hadn't had to get up at five to run.

Nancy Wetmore-Mathews said...

I am looking forward to Laced with Magic! I just finished Just Desserts and enjoyed it far more than I should have, lol!

I finally found the 2nd knitting mystery so those will be heading your way shortly:D