Suddenly reading progress!
Mar. 12th, 2014 11:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricWhat Are You Reading Wednesday:
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?
What are you currently reading?
Most excitingly, 'Slow Train to Switzerland' by Diccon Bewes, a British expat living in Bern. He got hold of an old printed copy of an 1863 journal by 'Miss Jemima', a member of Thomas Cook's first guided expedition to Switzerland. Bewes and his mother set off to replicate the route using modern rail transport, and at each stop he tells you random tidbits about rail history, the history of tourism, and about 19th century Europe. It's GREAT. I'm suffering a bit from living somewhere where I don't know the recent or distant past (aside from 'Hey Calvinism!' I know little about medieval or early modern Geneva).
I've started Phyllis Ann Kerr's 'The Idylls of the Queen' and it's boring me. Academically, I'm ploughing through out-of-order selections from Schulenberg's 'Forgetful of Their Sex'. So many more things about prohibitions to prevent monastic lesbianism than I knew about!
What did you recently finish reading?
I finished with Millet & Wogan-Brown, 'Middle English Prose for Women', and am mostly irritated that it had so few texts in it, so now I have to go back to the Worst Edition Ever for the rest of the Katherine Group. I also trundled through Cicero's 'On Friendship' (conculsion: Laelius is a pompous ass and I wouldn't be friends with him if Cicero paid me).
Cookery: I've pored over 'A Girl Called Jack', not just because Jack Monroe is really cute, but I haven't made anything from it yet.
Now, proper reviews:
Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand Stories ed. Vincent O'Sullivan -
New Zealand Stories by Katherine Mansfield
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I really enjoyed this collection. It gave me a queer sort of sideways homesickness - there's much that Australia and New Zealand have in common, both culturally and landscapewise, but there's also much that is *different*. Sometimes those differences startled me - I had trouble, for instance, in 'The Woman at the Store', not picturing a dusty brown Australian environment instead of a green New Zealand bushland. At others, the sense of place, the sharp accuracy of *Wellington* in some of the stories... well. Can you be homesick for a place you've never lived but might have done? Somewhere there's an alternate universe where I packed up and moved to NZ, and in that universe, the peculiar smell I associate with New Zealand and no other place is not in fact an olfactory phantom.
Ahem. On to literary commentary. I really, really loved 'The Woman at the Store', which was also creepy as all get-out. It reminded me of Henry Lawson, a bit, although the editor notes that they do not think Mansfield was familiar with his work. I wonder if she knew of Barbara Baynton, though? Hrrm. Anyway. I could see that her writing got more sophisticated over time, but I think I liked the earlier works best - and the unfinished later ones. The editor complained that Mansfield is taught in schools as too much 'national identity' and not enough social critique, but I thought the social critique in 'A Garden Party' was too heavy-handed, or... somehow unfinished. Of the Burnell family stories, I liked the most childish ones best, but remained fascinated by Beryl. I felt something ought to be in store for her, but what? Again, as the social criticism got more obvious (The Doll's House) I thought it could have been... better developed somehow.
'A Married Man's Story', which is unfinished, drove me craaazy. I went so far as to put keywords into googlebooks to find out what the hell people think was up with that story. No satisfactory answers were there. People seem to take the accusation of poisoning at face value, too - odd. I think his mother committed suicide and blamed his father.
I found the short story about the child 'kidnapped' by Maori very unsettling, especially since the editor, and the most-easily-accessible scholarship online seem to think Mansfield had a very positive attitude to the Maori. She was in a relationship with a wealthy young Maori lady in London, at some point. And I saw that in the earliest of the Burnell stories, where Kezia spends time with her Maori friend. But I didn't see it in this story - I saw benevolent-racist ideas about simplicity, connection to nature, abundant affection, sure. But I can't believe that New Zealand was utterly removed from the 'white savage' mythos and the fantasy of white children/women kidnapped by 'savages'? Erk.
SPEAKING OF LADIES. Surprise lesbian short story, 'Leves Amores'. I didn't actually find it all that interesting, as a story, except for the fact that sufficient details were planted in it that the first-person protagonist was unlikely to be a man. (I assume even tarty single women in the city in 1907 don't allow their male dates to come in to their room and watch them don stockings, and help them fasten clothes, etc.)
Dear John, I love Jane: Women Write About Leaving Men for Women ed. Candace Walsh and Laura André -
Dear John, I Love Jane: Women Write About Leaving Men for Women by Candace Walsh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was a really fascinating collection! One or two of the essays annoyed me in their style - too far into 'experimental short story' mode, IMHO. Some hit home very close for me, especially those concerning out-of-the-blue revelations ('I didn't come out as a lesbian until... I had no idea I was!'). A few were in part set in Australia, and that also felt true and real - the description of gendered expections in an outback mining town, for instance. Others were utterly foreign to me but completely adorable - the older woman who, despite having realised her preference for women after her first marriage, did not begin socialising with lesbians until her sixties, and didn't find the right woman for her until sixty-nine.
One thing which made me sad was that no one, not one woman in this book, even those who acknowledged continuing interest in men after their great lady-revelation, identified as bisexual. I understand many reasons why those women preferred 'lesbian' or no label at all, but it made me sad. Some of those reasons aren't great reasons, after all. I was touched by one essayist, who claims her straight past very strongly: I was straight, now I am gay, arguing that it would be disrespectful to her past self to do away with that. I like that. But I wonder why it is that no bisexual women are here - surely many of us do in fact leave (particular) men for (particular) women? Did none submit? Are they all worse writers than the collection warranted? Did the call for submissions somehow exclude bi(pan/etc) women?
What do you think you'll read next? For funsies, I have laid hands on 'The queer art of failure', but what I'm really hankering for is Eisner's 'Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution'. I can't get hold of it here, so have ordered a copy online. For work... Anselm or Augustine or, um, the other A-name chappy.
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?
What are you currently reading?
Most excitingly, 'Slow Train to Switzerland' by Diccon Bewes, a British expat living in Bern. He got hold of an old printed copy of an 1863 journal by 'Miss Jemima', a member of Thomas Cook's first guided expedition to Switzerland. Bewes and his mother set off to replicate the route using modern rail transport, and at each stop he tells you random tidbits about rail history, the history of tourism, and about 19th century Europe. It's GREAT. I'm suffering a bit from living somewhere where I don't know the recent or distant past (aside from 'Hey Calvinism!' I know little about medieval or early modern Geneva).
I've started Phyllis Ann Kerr's 'The Idylls of the Queen' and it's boring me. Academically, I'm ploughing through out-of-order selections from Schulenberg's 'Forgetful of Their Sex'. So many more things about prohibitions to prevent monastic lesbianism than I knew about!
What did you recently finish reading?
I finished with Millet & Wogan-Brown, 'Middle English Prose for Women', and am mostly irritated that it had so few texts in it, so now I have to go back to the Worst Edition Ever for the rest of the Katherine Group. I also trundled through Cicero's 'On Friendship' (conculsion: Laelius is a pompous ass and I wouldn't be friends with him if Cicero paid me).
Cookery: I've pored over 'A Girl Called Jack', not just because Jack Monroe is really cute, but I haven't made anything from it yet.
Now, proper reviews:
Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand Stories ed. Vincent O'Sullivan -
New Zealand Stories by Katherine MansfieldMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I really enjoyed this collection. It gave me a queer sort of sideways homesickness - there's much that Australia and New Zealand have in common, both culturally and landscapewise, but there's also much that is *different*. Sometimes those differences startled me - I had trouble, for instance, in 'The Woman at the Store', not picturing a dusty brown Australian environment instead of a green New Zealand bushland. At others, the sense of place, the sharp accuracy of *Wellington* in some of the stories... well. Can you be homesick for a place you've never lived but might have done? Somewhere there's an alternate universe where I packed up and moved to NZ, and in that universe, the peculiar smell I associate with New Zealand and no other place is not in fact an olfactory phantom.
Ahem. On to literary commentary. I really, really loved 'The Woman at the Store', which was also creepy as all get-out. It reminded me of Henry Lawson, a bit, although the editor notes that they do not think Mansfield was familiar with his work. I wonder if she knew of Barbara Baynton, though? Hrrm. Anyway. I could see that her writing got more sophisticated over time, but I think I liked the earlier works best - and the unfinished later ones. The editor complained that Mansfield is taught in schools as too much 'national identity' and not enough social critique, but I thought the social critique in 'A Garden Party' was too heavy-handed, or... somehow unfinished. Of the Burnell family stories, I liked the most childish ones best, but remained fascinated by Beryl. I felt something ought to be in store for her, but what? Again, as the social criticism got more obvious (The Doll's House) I thought it could have been... better developed somehow.
'A Married Man's Story', which is unfinished, drove me craaazy. I went so far as to put keywords into googlebooks to find out what the hell people think was up with that story. No satisfactory answers were there. People seem to take the accusation of poisoning at face value, too - odd. I think his mother committed suicide and blamed his father.
I found the short story about the child 'kidnapped' by Maori very unsettling, especially since the editor, and the most-easily-accessible scholarship online seem to think Mansfield had a very positive attitude to the Maori. She was in a relationship with a wealthy young Maori lady in London, at some point. And I saw that in the earliest of the Burnell stories, where Kezia spends time with her Maori friend. But I didn't see it in this story - I saw benevolent-racist ideas about simplicity, connection to nature, abundant affection, sure. But I can't believe that New Zealand was utterly removed from the 'white savage' mythos and the fantasy of white children/women kidnapped by 'savages'? Erk.
SPEAKING OF LADIES. Surprise lesbian short story, 'Leves Amores'. I didn't actually find it all that interesting, as a story, except for the fact that sufficient details were planted in it that the first-person protagonist was unlikely to be a man. (I assume even tarty single women in the city in 1907 don't allow their male dates to come in to their room and watch them don stockings, and help them fasten clothes, etc.)
Dear John, I love Jane: Women Write About Leaving Men for Women ed. Candace Walsh and Laura André -
Dear John, I Love Jane: Women Write About Leaving Men for Women by Candace WalshMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was a really fascinating collection! One or two of the essays annoyed me in their style - too far into 'experimental short story' mode, IMHO. Some hit home very close for me, especially those concerning out-of-the-blue revelations ('I didn't come out as a lesbian until... I had no idea I was!'). A few were in part set in Australia, and that also felt true and real - the description of gendered expections in an outback mining town, for instance. Others were utterly foreign to me but completely adorable - the older woman who, despite having realised her preference for women after her first marriage, did not begin socialising with lesbians until her sixties, and didn't find the right woman for her until sixty-nine.
One thing which made me sad was that no one, not one woman in this book, even those who acknowledged continuing interest in men after their great lady-revelation, identified as bisexual. I understand many reasons why those women preferred 'lesbian' or no label at all, but it made me sad. Some of those reasons aren't great reasons, after all. I was touched by one essayist, who claims her straight past very strongly: I was straight, now I am gay, arguing that it would be disrespectful to her past self to do away with that. I like that. But I wonder why it is that no bisexual women are here - surely many of us do in fact leave (particular) men for (particular) women? Did none submit? Are they all worse writers than the collection warranted? Did the call for submissions somehow exclude bi(pan/etc) women?
What do you think you'll read next? For funsies, I have laid hands on 'The queer art of failure', but what I'm really hankering for is Eisner's 'Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution'. I can't get hold of it here, so have ordered a copy online. For work... Anselm or Augustine or, um, the other A-name chappy.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-16 06:20 pm (UTC)There's a short story set in the same 'verse in a collection called "Invitation to Camelot" (edited by Martin Greenberg, if I remember correctly). Nice contrast between Kay's unchivalric honesty and...Lancelot? It's been a while. There's also a short story from Parke Godwin, from the Mordred of "Firelord" in it.