I skipped last week because I hadn't read much, and then I read a lot!
Goodbye, Eastern Europe, Jakob Mikanowski. This was good, I'm glad I read it. But while the first half of this book is divided into thematic chapters, the second half is about "The Twentieth Century" in chronological order, a lot of which is understandably depressing and made for a bit of a slog.
Lady Eve's Last Con, Rebecca Fraimow. Yay con artist romance IN SPACE! Yay sibling relationships! This was a breezy read, but with heart to it.
The life of Jenny Lind : briefly told to her daughter, Mrs. Raymond Maude, O. B. E., Jenny Maude. So I recently listened to "Patience for the Harvest", a "theatrical portrait" done as a monologue interrupted by musical performances based on the premise that if Jenny Lind and Emily Dickinson had ever met, they would be BFF pen pals. Which is a great premise, and the author (Harry Clark) had definitely done his research, but the whole thing just doesn't work on an emotional level.
Anyway, that got me interested in reading some biographical stuff on Jenny Lind. Sadly, there still doesn't seem to be a book-length modern critical biography of Lind in English (and the only recently published books that come close aren't easily available), so I figured that if I was going to get hagiography I might at least get it from people who knew Lind. This one, by Lind's daughter, is a pretty breezy read, but compared to the next item on the list it's mainly interesting for the final couple chapters about Lind's later life (when she had married and settled down).
Memoir of Madame Jenny Lind-Goldschmidt 1820-1851, Henry Scott Holland and William Rockstro. This is the "official biography", published four years after Lind's death, with help from Otto Goldschmidt, Jenny Lind's husband, who was very invested in maintaining the impression that the relationship between Jenny Lind and Felix Mendelssohn was all very pure and spiritual and about Art and not anything that could in the slightest way be considered scandalous.
So yes, going in I knew that I was getting Victorian hagiography that was going to ignore anything that didn't fit the portrait of Lind as a virginal "perfect woman" lacking in any artifice. On the other hand, it turns out that I actually like Victorian biographies! Well, up to a point, but I enjoy the combination of storytelling and in-depth primary source detail. Opera is not my fandom -- the Mendelssohn family and 19th century classical music are -- but this (and a bit of help from Wikipedia) gave me a useful sense of Lind's signature roles.
The most interesting of the supporting characters I met was definitely Harriet Grote, an unconventional society hostess and Lind's patron in Englad, a radical who hung out with the Utilitarians, and was a major political player during her husband's decade in Parliament. (Most of this I didn't get from my reading -- the book just mentioned that the Grotes were friendly with the Utilitarians, but that was enough to get me Googling.)
Unfinished Adventure, Evelyn Sharp.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mrissa recently reviewed one of Sharp's school stories, and this reminded me that I was interested in reading Sharp's memoirs. I know Sharp as Hertha Ayrton's biographer, but she was also an author, journalist, suffragist, pacifist, and has plenty to write on here, always very wittily. About halfway through and having much fun.
Goodbye, Eastern Europe, Jakob Mikanowski. This was good, I'm glad I read it. But while the first half of this book is divided into thematic chapters, the second half is about "The Twentieth Century" in chronological order, a lot of which is understandably depressing and made for a bit of a slog.
Lady Eve's Last Con, Rebecca Fraimow. Yay con artist romance IN SPACE! Yay sibling relationships! This was a breezy read, but with heart to it.
The life of Jenny Lind : briefly told to her daughter, Mrs. Raymond Maude, O. B. E., Jenny Maude. So I recently listened to "Patience for the Harvest", a "theatrical portrait" done as a monologue interrupted by musical performances based on the premise that if Jenny Lind and Emily Dickinson had ever met, they would be BFF pen pals. Which is a great premise, and the author (Harry Clark) had definitely done his research, but the whole thing just doesn't work on an emotional level.
Anyway, that got me interested in reading some biographical stuff on Jenny Lind. Sadly, there still doesn't seem to be a book-length modern critical biography of Lind in English (and the only recently published books that come close aren't easily available), so I figured that if I was going to get hagiography I might at least get it from people who knew Lind. This one, by Lind's daughter, is a pretty breezy read, but compared to the next item on the list it's mainly interesting for the final couple chapters about Lind's later life (when she had married and settled down).
Memoir of Madame Jenny Lind-Goldschmidt 1820-1851, Henry Scott Holland and William Rockstro. This is the "official biography", published four years after Lind's death, with help from Otto Goldschmidt, Jenny Lind's husband, who was very invested in maintaining the impression that the relationship between Jenny Lind and Felix Mendelssohn was all very pure and spiritual and about Art and not anything that could in the slightest way be considered scandalous.
So yes, going in I knew that I was getting Victorian hagiography that was going to ignore anything that didn't fit the portrait of Lind as a virginal "perfect woman" lacking in any artifice. On the other hand, it turns out that I actually like Victorian biographies! Well, up to a point, but I enjoy the combination of storytelling and in-depth primary source detail. Opera is not my fandom -- the Mendelssohn family and 19th century classical music are -- but this (and a bit of help from Wikipedia) gave me a useful sense of Lind's signature roles.
The most interesting of the supporting characters I met was definitely Harriet Grote, an unconventional society hostess and Lind's patron in Englad, a radical who hung out with the Utilitarians, and was a major political player during her husband's decade in Parliament. (Most of this I didn't get from my reading -- the book just mentioned that the Grotes were friendly with the Utilitarians, but that was enough to get me Googling.)
Unfinished Adventure, Evelyn Sharp.
mrissa recently reviewed one of Sharp's school stories, and this reminded me that I was interested in reading Sharp's memoirs. I know Sharp as Hertha Ayrton's biographer, but she was also an author, journalist, suffragist, pacifist, and has plenty to write on here, always very wittily. About halfway through and having much fun.
