Not Wednesday Reading Meme
May. 18th, 2015 04:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricRecently Finished:
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I finally finished this! It was amusing; I can see why it appealed to my father. It was witty and artful, but I found it annoying after a while - too self-concious of itself in the historical parts, and the modern sections were less interesting than the historical ones.
Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Reread. YES GOOD.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Bought the whole set in e-book format in order to binge-read them as I used to do (not sure where my hard copies are; either dispersed to undergrads or with my little sister). The binge-reading experience on this book was excellent, exactly as engrossing and poignant as it used to be.
I'm trying to think of books *other* than fantasy/sci-fi that I read as a teenager where young women had sex and did not have meltdowns. I can't think of any. Even Bridget Jones doesn't count, her life is one non-stop meltdown with occasional sex in it. Oh, wait, John Marsden! Bless his cotton socks, what would Australian teenagers do without John Marsden.
On the one hand, I really appreciate the way Bee's virginity loss is told here. Same with Feeling Sorry for Celia (I cannot forget the line 'it's difficult to do somethingorother when all you want to do is think about the second time you and your now-ex had sex'. Or. That's not verbatim, but the gist stuck). As a teenager I didn't *understand* Bee at all but Brashares wrote it such that I empathise with her. (As a young adult, Lena in book three hit too close to home for the same effect.) But. I just. I wonder how much these good, poignant books normalised for me the idea that sex, especially early sex, is just naturally going to fuck you up in the head and scrape you raw.
On re-reading now... ouch. Now I understand Bee as I did not when I was her age or for many years after. But I also wonder what on *earth* was up with Eric? Aside from the obvious ethical misstep vis-a-vis his role as coach... the scene is described as a seamless transition from 'they meet' to 'bee's concious self abandons her body' to 'bee is alone'. This isn't just her mistake in taking on too much, and nor is the only problem here his ethics in sleeping with her at all. What was going on in that sex scene? How did he not notice she'd checked out?
The book wants to present him as well-meaning and essentially a decent guy (cf his later re-appearance in the series). But older and more jaded as I am now I read that scene, and Bee's subsequent meltdown, and I see *what happens when there hasn't been good consent* (consent, yes, but somewhere it went sour). And I am not sure the book itself knows that. And I'm certainly not convinced it's a case of Bee being "too young for what she did with him". At the very least there's a whole bunch of shit here about virginity loss as an identity-transforming threshold being a damaging construct, especially for those with fragile identities to begin with.
Currently Reading: Rosenwein's Emotional Communities. Student essays. Stuff.
Up Next: MOAR travelling pants. Also I'm expecting Hawkeye 1-5 'My Life as a Weapon' in the mail.
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas JonassonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I finally finished this! It was amusing; I can see why it appealed to my father. It was witty and artful, but I found it annoying after a while - too self-concious of itself in the historical parts, and the modern sections were less interesting than the historical ones.
Monstrous Regiment by Terry PratchettMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Reread. YES GOOD.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann BrasharesMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Bought the whole set in e-book format in order to binge-read them as I used to do (not sure where my hard copies are; either dispersed to undergrads or with my little sister). The binge-reading experience on this book was excellent, exactly as engrossing and poignant as it used to be.
I'm trying to think of books *other* than fantasy/sci-fi that I read as a teenager where young women had sex and did not have meltdowns. I can't think of any. Even Bridget Jones doesn't count, her life is one non-stop meltdown with occasional sex in it. Oh, wait, John Marsden! Bless his cotton socks, what would Australian teenagers do without John Marsden.
On the one hand, I really appreciate the way Bee's virginity loss is told here. Same with Feeling Sorry for Celia (I cannot forget the line 'it's difficult to do somethingorother when all you want to do is think about the second time you and your now-ex had sex'. Or. That's not verbatim, but the gist stuck). As a teenager I didn't *understand* Bee at all but Brashares wrote it such that I empathise with her. (As a young adult, Lena in book three hit too close to home for the same effect.) But. I just. I wonder how much these good, poignant books normalised for me the idea that sex, especially early sex, is just naturally going to fuck you up in the head and scrape you raw.
On re-reading now... ouch. Now I understand Bee as I did not when I was her age or for many years after. But I also wonder what on *earth* was up with Eric? Aside from the obvious ethical misstep vis-a-vis his role as coach... the scene is described as a seamless transition from 'they meet' to 'bee's concious self abandons her body' to 'bee is alone'. This isn't just her mistake in taking on too much, and nor is the only problem here his ethics in sleeping with her at all. What was going on in that sex scene? How did he not notice she'd checked out?
The book wants to present him as well-meaning and essentially a decent guy (cf his later re-appearance in the series). But older and more jaded as I am now I read that scene, and Bee's subsequent meltdown, and I see *what happens when there hasn't been good consent* (consent, yes, but somewhere it went sour). And I am not sure the book itself knows that. And I'm certainly not convinced it's a case of Bee being "too young for what she did with him". At the very least there's a whole bunch of shit here about virginity loss as an identity-transforming threshold being a damaging construct, especially for those with fragile identities to begin with.
Currently Reading: Rosenwein's Emotional Communities. Student essays. Stuff.
Up Next: MOAR travelling pants. Also I'm expecting Hawkeye 1-5 'My Life as a Weapon' in the mail.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-18 10:37 pm (UTC)Also, Rosenwein's Emotional Communities needs to go on my to-reread list pronto. (Notes to self)
no subject
Date: 2015-05-19 09:27 am (UTC)On scouring my brain though I think Ellie and Lee broke up after having sex because... he told someone? And then the appeal fizzed out for her and she had an Emotional Slump. So maybe he's in keeping with teenage fiction norms after all. I'm beginning to see why Judy Blume's Forever is such a thing. (Haven't read it. Couldn't stand Are You There God?, never picked up any more Blume.)