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Weekly-ish Reading
I reread two of my old-favorite, middle-grade/young adult historical fiction novels, The Beaded Moccasins: The Story of Mary Campbell and The Ransom of Mercy Carter. Both are about real-life colonial girls who were kidnapped and eventually assimilated into Native American tribes in the 1700s, and I was both glad and, to be honest, a little relieved that they both held up. The Ransom of Mercy Carter especially is just as good as I remembered.
I also read two other middle-grade historical fiction books that are slightly in the same vein. Blue Birds is about Roanoke Colony and split between the POVs of a colonist, Alis, and a Native American girl, Kimi. I picked up When Daylight Comes on a whim; it's set during the 1773 slave insurrection on St. John Island in the Danish West Indies. The book itself was written in 1985. Given that, it's definitely not perfect--the main character, Helena, is white and a magistrate's daughter captured by the rebels, so there's plenty that's intentionally problematic and then a couple of elements that are most likely unintentionally problematic, but its good points outweighed its flaws, at least for me.
Rapture of the Deep took me a good couple months to finish, just because I got sidetracked in the middle. It's Book 7, which puts me a little more than halfway through the Bloody Jack series. I sped through My Bonny Light Horseman, Book 6, which was surprisingly short--Rapture of the Deep is much longer, but it's also full of pirates and undersea deep diving and sunken Spanish wrecks, so I couldn't help but love it.
My biggest in-progress read is still Anna Karenina. I'm about 300 pages into my copy--up to Book III--and trying to read at least a chapter a day, usually in the mornings before I start on schoolwork. Making the reading a part of my morning routine has really helped me get back into the flow of it, which is great because I really do love this book. On the other hand, it leaves me craving shorter, snappier books because it...is very much neither of those things. But I've been enjoying leaving myself a pocket of time every day to sink into it for a bit.
I also read two other middle-grade historical fiction books that are slightly in the same vein. Blue Birds is about Roanoke Colony and split between the POVs of a colonist, Alis, and a Native American girl, Kimi. I picked up When Daylight Comes on a whim; it's set during the 1773 slave insurrection on St. John Island in the Danish West Indies. The book itself was written in 1985. Given that, it's definitely not perfect--the main character, Helena, is white and a magistrate's daughter captured by the rebels, so there's plenty that's intentionally problematic and then a couple of elements that are most likely unintentionally problematic, but its good points outweighed its flaws, at least for me.
Rapture of the Deep took me a good couple months to finish, just because I got sidetracked in the middle. It's Book 7, which puts me a little more than halfway through the Bloody Jack series. I sped through My Bonny Light Horseman, Book 6, which was surprisingly short--Rapture of the Deep is much longer, but it's also full of pirates and undersea deep diving and sunken Spanish wrecks, so I couldn't help but love it.
My biggest in-progress read is still Anna Karenina. I'm about 300 pages into my copy--up to Book III--and trying to read at least a chapter a day, usually in the mornings before I start on schoolwork. Making the reading a part of my morning routine has really helped me get back into the flow of it, which is great because I really do love this book. On the other hand, it leaves me craving shorter, snappier books because it...is very much neither of those things. But I've been enjoying leaving myself a pocket of time every day to sink into it for a bit.
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If (for whatever reason) you're ever looking for a rec list of the best Dear America books, hit me up because a bunch of them still hold up pretty dang well! Also, you might have already heard of this one, but a really good middle-grade book about the Revolutionary War is Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson (I was going to say it was published recently-ish until I went to double-check and saw it came out in 2010...)
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I somehow had no idea this existed?? Although, having read the wikipedia summary of the series - and WOW, those books got quite dark - the one set in Ireland in the 1930s is giving me a sense of deja vu; I must have found it at the library as a kid and just never connected it with the rest of the series/being an American Girl publication?
Did you ever read the Little House spin-off books about Laura Ingalls Wilder’s mother/grandmother/great-grandmother/etc.?
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Yep, I read a couple of those! The ones that stuck in my head the most were the spin-offs about her daughter, Rose.