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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?
This list is a bit shorter, finally. Still going on Sunny Chernobyl; have listened to a few more audio recordings from Charles Perrault's fairy tales - did I mention that Litteratureaudio.com is my new friend? Sadly there's very little on there that I've already read in English, and I'm not quite up to unseen novel-length French texts. But the Perrault tales are short and easily digestible.
I just started The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which is not an autobiography, since it happily proclaims to have been written by Gertrude Stein. It's enjoyable reading, but I'm not sure how to feel about the false-autobiography setup. If this was a man writing the "autobiography" of his wife we would all agree that was creepy and silencing of women, no?
What did you recently finish reading?
I Don't: A Christmas Wish by Kari Gregg
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Well, this was *fun*, but... eh. I found the premise quite weird - a family who'd been OK with their gay son's partner before suddenly go marriage-rabid? Weird. I think that was supposed to be part of the fantasy, that the gay couple now warrant the social inclusion of being bullied about their marriage or lack thereof.
Obviously I had fundamentally differing ideas to the protagonist on the idea of marriage; I don't think the text did enough justice to his partner's POV, which felt like a fabricated caricature. For that matter, I wasn't happy with the lack of depth given to the suddenly!bisexual cousin (and why was no one freaking out about his older boyfriend?).
But then, it remains a mystery to me why I *really wanted* to read this book. I knew it'd infuriate me and yet I could not convince myself to take it off the to-read list.
Muriel at Metropolitan by Miriam Tlali
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was an odd book - it dealt almost exclusively with the protagonist's work life, and was more episodic than plot-driven. Her husband never even got a name. Muriel herself only started to pick up character development about halfway through: for the most part she is an observer and commentator on the world around her.
I did really like this book, though. Muriel's internal POV is a nice place to be: wry, insightful, starkly aware of the race politics around her, but generous to everyone. The prose is clear and elegant, and the political neatly woven together with the practical.
I bought this book to wash my brain of the obnoxious white apologist readings of post-apartheid lit that I'd encountered marking the Matu here. I can safely say that if I wished to set South African novels for 18 year old ESL speakers, I would definitely choose this over Coetzee's Disgrace
The Vicar Of Bullhampton by Anthony Trollope
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Now, this was an interesting read. I found it dense / heavy going for quite some of the way, but the wide cast and very different entertwined plots were all treated with equal care and respect. It's hard to say what the unifying theme of the book is - perhaps something about living with consequences of one's actions.
I was pleased to see that Trollope didn't cut Gilmore too much slack for being a pestering, whiny git, even though the narrative is very sympathetic to him as a person. The Vicar and his wife also have to eat humble pie for pressuring Mary into entertaining unwelcome advances, and so they ought. But I just didn't LIKE her alternative suitor or really find their relationship convincing. Sigh.
The miller was perhaps the most interesting character, and the Vicar's relationship with him also fascinating. The Vicar's sense of helplessness when faced with the miller's pain and the inaptitude of the Vicar's pastoral skills for dealing with an avowed athiest were very well drawn.
One thing I do wish was that we had got some sense from Carry Brattle herself of what had lead her to be 'very bad'. Her boredom with her halfway houses was clear and sympathetically drawn, and it seemed like everyone else had an opinion on the propensity of women 'like that' to be drawn back to more interesting if dissolute ways, but what had prompted it in the first place? It seemed like Trollope was really trying to make Carry a sympathetic character, but he missed that.
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories by Alice Munro
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I really liked Munro's style here. As the title indicates, all the stories turned in some way on human relationships, and Munro tells them with a deft touch and a sense of... hmm. The significance of small things, I suppose. She's never didactic, and many of the stories are quite loose, leaving ends untied and even the progression of time uncertain. I liked that. Most but not all of the settings are lower-middle or working class: in the last story, where the POV protagonist was a university professor, it struck me how very different his perspective on the working-class housewife was to the perspectives of the other narratives.
For all that he was classist, and over-supplied with male entitlement, he was perhaps my favourite character, for his late-life selflessness. In that story, his wife has lost all memory of him as her husband, due to Alzheimers or similar, and recognises him only as a regular visitor and possible friend. He is heartbroken but his concern for her happiness and desire to remain part of her life means he never pushes in, and ends up working to reunite her with the man she's formed a passionate (apparently chaste, but devoted) partnership with in the nursing home.
Bisexuality: A Critical Reader by Merl Storr
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I liked that this collection gave a wider variety of perspectives than Eisner's 'Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution', even though in many ways the Critical Reader is far outdated and could be replaced by Eisner. I found the entrenched binarism of the discourse, even the 90s articles, quite tough going - perhaps my favourite article was an exerpt from a sociological study on exactly that, binary discourse in bisexual women's communication about sexuality. That article noted that even where the women decided to reject models of sexuality based on having a 'heterosexual' and 'homosexual' side, they did so by investing in other binaries: queer versus straight being a particularly popular one. While reading this, I was finding the easy 'nono, bisexual doesn't mean binary!' rebuttal more and more difficult to swallow. I realise there's more to the term than etymology, but the concept of 'bisexual' is exactly as caught up in the man/woman gay/straight binary as the terms 'homosexual' and 'heterosexual' (f'rinstance, as pointed out this morning, wouldn't it make more sense to talk about gynosexual and androsexual orientations?) I found the entrenched gender binarism and relatively... uh... *straight* positioning of opposite-sex relationships involving bisexuals throught the reader quite alienating.
I also found that men's writing about bisexuality annoyed me more than women's. Perhaps it was selection bias of this collection, but it was mostly men who wrote about embracing "all people" and being "liberated" and "truly ourselves" with both sexes. There were a few articles which dealt with the difficulty of being bisexual in lesbian communities, but surprisingly little dealing with the politics of being queer while dating a heterosexual. I enjoyed the exerpt from Jan Clausen's My Interesting Condition and hunted down the full article. I don't identify with her on many counts but it was a very interesting read and I plan to read 'Apples and Oranges' further down the track.
What Will You Read Next?
Oh gosh, I don't know at this point. I have some more queer books on order, including a book on bisexual feminism, so it might be those. Or it might be something totally else.
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?
What are you currently reading?
This list is a bit shorter, finally. Still going on Sunny Chernobyl; have listened to a few more audio recordings from Charles Perrault's fairy tales - did I mention that Litteratureaudio.com is my new friend? Sadly there's very little on there that I've already read in English, and I'm not quite up to unseen novel-length French texts. But the Perrault tales are short and easily digestible.
I just started The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which is not an autobiography, since it happily proclaims to have been written by Gertrude Stein. It's enjoyable reading, but I'm not sure how to feel about the false-autobiography setup. If this was a man writing the "autobiography" of his wife we would all agree that was creepy and silencing of women, no?
What did you recently finish reading?
I Don't: A Christmas Wish by Kari GreggMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
Well, this was *fun*, but... eh. I found the premise quite weird - a family who'd been OK with their gay son's partner before suddenly go marriage-rabid? Weird. I think that was supposed to be part of the fantasy, that the gay couple now warrant the social inclusion of being bullied about their marriage or lack thereof.
Obviously I had fundamentally differing ideas to the protagonist on the idea of marriage; I don't think the text did enough justice to his partner's POV, which felt like a fabricated caricature. For that matter, I wasn't happy with the lack of depth given to the suddenly!bisexual cousin (and why was no one freaking out about his older boyfriend?).
But then, it remains a mystery to me why I *really wanted* to read this book. I knew it'd infuriate me and yet I could not convince myself to take it off the to-read list.
Muriel at Metropolitan by Miriam TlaliMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was an odd book - it dealt almost exclusively with the protagonist's work life, and was more episodic than plot-driven. Her husband never even got a name. Muriel herself only started to pick up character development about halfway through: for the most part she is an observer and commentator on the world around her.
I did really like this book, though. Muriel's internal POV is a nice place to be: wry, insightful, starkly aware of the race politics around her, but generous to everyone. The prose is clear and elegant, and the political neatly woven together with the practical.
I bought this book to wash my brain of the obnoxious white apologist readings of post-apartheid lit that I'd encountered marking the Matu here. I can safely say that if I wished to set South African novels for 18 year old ESL speakers, I would definitely choose this over Coetzee's Disgrace
The Vicar Of Bullhampton by Anthony TrollopeMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Now, this was an interesting read. I found it dense / heavy going for quite some of the way, but the wide cast and very different entertwined plots were all treated with equal care and respect. It's hard to say what the unifying theme of the book is - perhaps something about living with consequences of one's actions.
I was pleased to see that Trollope didn't cut Gilmore too much slack for being a pestering, whiny git, even though the narrative is very sympathetic to him as a person. The Vicar and his wife also have to eat humble pie for pressuring Mary into entertaining unwelcome advances, and so they ought. But I just didn't LIKE her alternative suitor or really find their relationship convincing. Sigh.
The miller was perhaps the most interesting character, and the Vicar's relationship with him also fascinating. The Vicar's sense of helplessness when faced with the miller's pain and the inaptitude of the Vicar's pastoral skills for dealing with an avowed athiest were very well drawn.
One thing I do wish was that we had got some sense from Carry Brattle herself of what had lead her to be 'very bad'. Her boredom with her halfway houses was clear and sympathetically drawn, and it seemed like everyone else had an opinion on the propensity of women 'like that' to be drawn back to more interesting if dissolute ways, but what had prompted it in the first place? It seemed like Trollope was really trying to make Carry a sympathetic character, but he missed that.
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories by Alice MunroMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I really liked Munro's style here. As the title indicates, all the stories turned in some way on human relationships, and Munro tells them with a deft touch and a sense of... hmm. The significance of small things, I suppose. She's never didactic, and many of the stories are quite loose, leaving ends untied and even the progression of time uncertain. I liked that. Most but not all of the settings are lower-middle or working class: in the last story, where the POV protagonist was a university professor, it struck me how very different his perspective on the working-class housewife was to the perspectives of the other narratives.
For all that he was classist, and over-supplied with male entitlement, he was perhaps my favourite character, for his late-life selflessness. In that story, his wife has lost all memory of him as her husband, due to Alzheimers or similar, and recognises him only as a regular visitor and possible friend. He is heartbroken but his concern for her happiness and desire to remain part of her life means he never pushes in, and ends up working to reunite her with the man she's formed a passionate (apparently chaste, but devoted) partnership with in the nursing home.
Bisexuality: A Critical Reader by Merl StorrMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I liked that this collection gave a wider variety of perspectives than Eisner's 'Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution', even though in many ways the Critical Reader is far outdated and could be replaced by Eisner. I found the entrenched binarism of the discourse, even the 90s articles, quite tough going - perhaps my favourite article was an exerpt from a sociological study on exactly that, binary discourse in bisexual women's communication about sexuality. That article noted that even where the women decided to reject models of sexuality based on having a 'heterosexual' and 'homosexual' side, they did so by investing in other binaries: queer versus straight being a particularly popular one. While reading this, I was finding the easy 'nono, bisexual doesn't mean binary!' rebuttal more and more difficult to swallow. I realise there's more to the term than etymology, but the concept of 'bisexual' is exactly as caught up in the man/woman gay/straight binary as the terms 'homosexual' and 'heterosexual' (f'rinstance, as pointed out this morning, wouldn't it make more sense to talk about gynosexual and androsexual orientations?) I found the entrenched gender binarism and relatively... uh... *straight* positioning of opposite-sex relationships involving bisexuals throught the reader quite alienating.
I also found that men's writing about bisexuality annoyed me more than women's. Perhaps it was selection bias of this collection, but it was mostly men who wrote about embracing "all people" and being "liberated" and "truly ourselves" with both sexes. There were a few articles which dealt with the difficulty of being bisexual in lesbian communities, but surprisingly little dealing with the politics of being queer while dating a heterosexual. I enjoyed the exerpt from Jan Clausen's My Interesting Condition and hunted down the full article. I don't identify with her on many counts but it was a very interesting read and I plan to read 'Apples and Oranges' further down the track.
What Will You Read Next?
Oh gosh, I don't know at this point. I have some more queer books on order, including a book on bisexual feminism, so it might be those. Or it might be something totally else.