Wednesday Reading Meme on Tuesday
Jul. 1st, 2025 07:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Books I Quit Reading
Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, which I’ve meant to read for ages because it’s been recced to hell and back. It’s an excellent example of literary fiction, which unfortunately means it’s reminding me why I don’t read much modern literary fiction, which is that I find it depressing. Olive is just so mean?? She’s so contemptuous to her husband in chapter one that I was actually rooting for him to ditch her and run away with his pharmacy clerk, and I never root for male characters to leave their wives.
I read a few more chapters, but then I realized I was actively dreading picking it up again, and life is simply too short.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Nothing this week! The birthday festivities have already begun, and I spent the weekend in Bloomington, meeting a friend’s new baby and having cocktails at a speakeasy, where we had the best seats in the house watching the bartender make the drinks. He had a wonderful contraption for blowing a giant smoke-filled bubble over a drink, which clung to the rim of the glass until you popped it, and then the smoke wisped away in the dimness of the bar.
What I’m Reading Now
Hilary McKay’s The Time of Green Magic, which is a magical house children’s fantasy, and I LOVE a magical house children’s fantasy. Gorgeous. The heroine is already slipping into the books she reads, tasting the sea salt on her lips. Excited to report back.
What I Plan to Read Next
Blue Balliett’s Out of the Wild Night.