Almost a year ago to the day, I had just finished up the 2019 Uncensored banned books scavenger hunt. Obviously, that is not happening this year and I miss it more than many other Covid-cancelled leisure activities.
What I Just Finished Reading
The Silver Bough vol. 1 – F. Marian McNeill
The first book in McNeill’s seminal four volume study of Scottish folklore is bracketed by off-putting content: Part V extols a particularly chauvinistic breed of Christianity, and in Part VIII—fully a third of the book—McNeill treats confessions from the Scottish witch trials as unembellished fact. (The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft provides an excellent corrective to these chapters.)
But readers able to grit their teeth and persevere through these sections will find a lot of fascinating content covering everything from what the historic and archeological record can tell us about druids, the Celtic pantheon, and conceptions of magic and the otherworld, to all the ways elements of these belief systems were reskinned and incorporated into Scotland’s religious and cultural daily life through the 1960s.
N.B. I would encourage anyone interested in reading The Silver Bough NOT to acquire the ebook version available on amazon; the OCR’ed text is riddled with errors that make 30 percent of the book almost unreadable. The publisher does not deserve to receive anyone’s money for this hot mess.
Ghost Wall – Sarah Moss
I cannot sing Ghost Wall’s praises enough. Holy shit, you guys, this book. It rocketed to the top my list of favorites. It is easily the best thing I’ve read this year.
Its set up is extremely Relevant To My Interests—working class teenager and her parents join a group of privileged students on a university field trip to recreate everyday life during pre-Roman Britain—and could easily have fallen flat for precisely that reason.
It does not fall flat.
Moss’s prose is luminous: Within a few days, our feet would wear a path through the trees to the stream, but that first night there was moss underfoot, squashy in the dim light, and patches of wild strawberries so ripe and red they were still visible in the dusk, as if glowing. ... It was not that I didn’t understand why my father loved these places, this outdoor life. It was not that I thought houses were better.
( Cut, if not for spoilers, for spoilerish themes. )
Read. This. Book.
What I Am Currently Reading
Silver On The Tree – Susan Cooper
Another seasonal reread, for the first days with true autumn sunlight and morning chilliness.
Marked – Sarah Fine
As of this week, I’m over halfway through. So there's that.
The Graces – Laure Eve
This book really took off for me at the 10 percent mark, and I’ve been speeding through since.
Insight Meditation – Joseph Goldstein
Goldstein was one of the best writers on Buddhist practice, hands down.
The Patron Saint of Pregnant Girls – Ursala Hegi
Featuring many of the same motifs as The Night Circus, but I'm enjoying this presentation much more.
A Handbook of the Cornish Language – Henry Jenner
This week I read the section on pronouns and half of the chapter on verb conjugations.
What I'm Reading Next
This week, I picked up a copy of Rosalind Miles’s Isolde.
これで以上です。
What I Just Finished Reading
The Silver Bough vol. 1 – F. Marian McNeill
The first book in McNeill’s seminal four volume study of Scottish folklore is bracketed by off-putting content: Part V extols a particularly chauvinistic breed of Christianity, and in Part VIII—fully a third of the book—McNeill treats confessions from the Scottish witch trials as unembellished fact. (The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft provides an excellent corrective to these chapters.)
But readers able to grit their teeth and persevere through these sections will find a lot of fascinating content covering everything from what the historic and archeological record can tell us about druids, the Celtic pantheon, and conceptions of magic and the otherworld, to all the ways elements of these belief systems were reskinned and incorporated into Scotland’s religious and cultural daily life through the 1960s.
N.B. I would encourage anyone interested in reading The Silver Bough NOT to acquire the ebook version available on amazon; the OCR’ed text is riddled with errors that make 30 percent of the book almost unreadable. The publisher does not deserve to receive anyone’s money for this hot mess.
Ghost Wall – Sarah Moss
I cannot sing Ghost Wall’s praises enough. Holy shit, you guys, this book. It rocketed to the top my list of favorites. It is easily the best thing I’ve read this year.
Its set up is extremely Relevant To My Interests—working class teenager and her parents join a group of privileged students on a university field trip to recreate everyday life during pre-Roman Britain—and could easily have fallen flat for precisely that reason.
It does not fall flat.
Moss’s prose is luminous: Within a few days, our feet would wear a path through the trees to the stream, but that first night there was moss underfoot, squashy in the dim light, and patches of wild strawberries so ripe and red they were still visible in the dusk, as if glowing. ... It was not that I didn’t understand why my father loved these places, this outdoor life. It was not that I thought houses were better.
( Cut, if not for spoilers, for spoilerish themes. )
Read. This. Book.
What I Am Currently Reading
Silver On The Tree – Susan Cooper
Another seasonal reread, for the first days with true autumn sunlight and morning chilliness.
Marked – Sarah Fine
As of this week, I’m over halfway through. So there's that.
The Graces – Laure Eve
This book really took off for me at the 10 percent mark, and I’ve been speeding through since.
Insight Meditation – Joseph Goldstein
Goldstein was one of the best writers on Buddhist practice, hands down.
The Patron Saint of Pregnant Girls – Ursala Hegi
Featuring many of the same motifs as The Night Circus, but I'm enjoying this presentation much more.
A Handbook of the Cornish Language – Henry Jenner
This week I read the section on pronouns and half of the chapter on verb conjugations.
What I'm Reading Next
This week, I picked up a copy of Rosalind Miles’s Isolde.
これで以上です。