and I know life is getting shorter, I can't bring myself to set the scene

I’m posting Wednesday Reading Meme a day early this week, as tomorrow I am heading out on my Massachusetts trip! Not planning to take my computer with me so probably will not post until I return, bearing news of a Katherine Hepburn film festival, fancy tea at the Boston Public Library, and (if all goes well) a visit to a maple sugaring operation.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Eliza Orne White’s I, the Autobiography of a Cat, a charming book from 1941, with adorable illustrations by Clarke Hutton (one features a cat batting at an ink pen; cats never change). A cat tells us about his life with a lovely old lady in her beautiful home, where our cat accompanies her on her daily walks around the veranda. (She is blind so uses the veranda rail as a guide, and he walks ahead so she can stroke him from time to time.) Delightful. Always happy to read another book in cat POV. My main contemporary source is Japanese works in translation, but there was clearly a boom in this sort of thing in mid-century American children’s publishing.

I also finished E. Nesbit’s The Wouldbegoods, which perhaps suffered very slightly because I didn’t read The Treasure Seekers first (mostly because I spent the entire book wondering “Who is Albert and why are the Bastables staying with his uncle?”) but overall a pleasant read about children getting up to shenanigans in Edwardian England. Loved the bit where the children decide to walk to Canterbury like the pilgrims of old.

What I’m Reading Now

Zipping through Sarah Tolmie’s The Fourth Island, which is a delight! There is a fourth (magical) island of Aran, where lost people wash up from time to time, and the locals help them build houses and fit into the local community. A little bit Dinotopia although without the dinosaurs.

What I Plan to Read Next

Plotting my trip reading! I have four books on my Kindle: Patricia C. Wrede’s Caught in Crystal, Andrea K. Host’s Stray, George Gissing’s New Grub Street, and Kaje Harper’s Nor Iron Bars a Cage.