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highlyeccentricIt's Wednesday in Australia already, does that count?
Currently Reading: Kingsolver, 'Flight Behaviour'
Recently finished: Where recently means 'since 9 Aug 2015'...
Looking for Alibrandi: Australian Children's Classics by Melina Marchetta
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I bought this in e-book form and I am really regretting it. Usually I only buy e-books of... light reading? Phryne Fisher mysteries, or most YA. And this is YA, so that's the format I bought it in. Up side is, I won't now be tempted to cast off the hard copy when I move house or countries, because damn, how have I not owned this book and not read it since high school?
This is a really, really good novel, and I can't put my finger quite on why but it has much more meat to it than, say the Ann Brashares novels I read on my last YA binge. The language isn't dense, it's natural vernacular for a well-educated Sydney teen: I think one of the strengths is in not shying away from complex ideas just because the language is simple. I don't just mean plot points, although yes, the plotting is artful, but Josie's thoughts, her intellectual resources, are broad and deep and encompass everything from a sharp awareness of class and race as they impact directly on her to broader political ideas, but she doesn't always link the two up well. I particularly liked the discussion between Josie and Michael about the student who called her a wog: Josie's fraught need for validation, Michael's tight "as long as you're not ashamed to be a wog" contrast beautifully.
The plotting, as I said, is artful: only as complex as it needs to be, with none of the ponderousness you sometimes find in intergenerational novels. Pieces of Christina and Nonna's stories unfold not only as Josie finds out about them but as Josie's attitude to them changes. I hadn't remembered much of either of their narratives: the story, the sequence of events you'd describe if summarising the novel, all hinges on Josie, but so much of the plot relies on these episodes of the past recounted to her. I now understand why this book is such a popular high school text choice: *not* just because it's 'relatable' or topical, it's a really, really well executed novel. Not that most tenth-grade English classes are equipped to appreciate the narratological skill here. We *did* talk a bit about the women-family-lineage thing, which is one of the book's greatest strengths.
I now realise how much I learned from this book, starting with "why we don't call people ethnic". I remembered there was some kind of plot point about whether or not Josie would have sex with her boyfriend, and if I'm strictly honest I probably could have conjured up a reasonable recollection of the making-out portions (the school library copies were well-thumbed in certain places), but I had completely forgotten about the speech she gives him in declining. I think, now, I can remember being distressed by the post-makeout argument, by the prospect of having to have that fight (surprisingly, I have never had that fight!). Now, though, I am really bloody impressed with the speech, and wonder how much of that went into the way I thought about virginity/autonomy in my late teens. Not "I need to save this for someone in particular" but "it's mine and I get to do what I want with it". I never had to have that fight with partners, but I did have to give an account of myself to over-curious collegemates often enough.
Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet: New Essays by Karen Hellekson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was a quick re-read of about half of the articles - I revisited ones I'd liked before and ignored the rest. The essay on 'archontic literature' remains brilliant, and I'm astounded I've survived this far without citing it.
Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World by Robyn Ochs
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
as a book overall, I don't think the tiny-quotes-and-contributions format worked well; it read like a bizarrely large pamphlet. However, it was pretty nifty reading up on 2000s bi... everything; slightly disappointing to think how little has changed; and the last few sections, on politics, were very interesting, especially when some of the authors had fine-tuned their ideas since 'Closer to home: Bisexuality and feminism'.
Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Well, I binge-read this in the space of a few days, that's how much I liked this. It's very, very good.
Some thoughts:
- it's *good* that it's essays: Gay is really good at short essays, and I'm not sure how her style, or any one of her several topics, would stand up to a longer book. I would read a longer book, though, to find out. (I found myself wondering if I'd have liked The Wife Drought better if it were a series of essays like this - something in Gay's style reminded me of Crabb's.)
- speaking of essays, Roxanne Gay has a *fantastic* style for mixing lit-crit (of the artistic commentary type: she's a creative writing prof, not an english lit prof) with personal memoir-type writing. An essay on The Hunger Games, for instance, is also an essay on personal experience of sexual assault. I was a bit less convinced about a similarly-structured essay on fat camp (personal experience of, and a book about): the social criticism seemed under-developed, but I couldn't decide how it ought to be read. I suspect the fatosphere would be disappointed in it, anyway.
- Gay's talent is not, I think, in thinking up startling new ideas but in bringing them together with personal commentary and with other ideas you might not have thought to link together. I didn't find I was hitting information or types of opinion I hadn't seen before until I got to the section on black (US) cinema - and in the case of the essay on The Help, I think I actually had read Roxanne Gay's writing on that film before, if not that exact essay. So I learned new and interesting things from the essays on the likes of Tyler Perry, but the fact of not learning new information didn't impede my appreciation of Gay's writing on academia, dating, or friendship: either she made me look at something in a new way, or put into words something I had never had cause to write down clearly.
Would recommend!
Also finished: Land of the Seal People, which I'll write up when I've had time to think it over a bit more.
Up next: IDEK, are we pretending I ever have any clue what I'm reading next?
Currently Reading: Kingsolver, 'Flight Behaviour'
Recently finished: Where recently means 'since 9 Aug 2015'...
Looking for Alibrandi: Australian Children's Classics by Melina MarchettaMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I bought this in e-book form and I am really regretting it. Usually I only buy e-books of... light reading? Phryne Fisher mysteries, or most YA. And this is YA, so that's the format I bought it in. Up side is, I won't now be tempted to cast off the hard copy when I move house or countries, because damn, how have I not owned this book and not read it since high school?
This is a really, really good novel, and I can't put my finger quite on why but it has much more meat to it than, say the Ann Brashares novels I read on my last YA binge. The language isn't dense, it's natural vernacular for a well-educated Sydney teen: I think one of the strengths is in not shying away from complex ideas just because the language is simple. I don't just mean plot points, although yes, the plotting is artful, but Josie's thoughts, her intellectual resources, are broad and deep and encompass everything from a sharp awareness of class and race as they impact directly on her to broader political ideas, but she doesn't always link the two up well. I particularly liked the discussion between Josie and Michael about the student who called her a wog: Josie's fraught need for validation, Michael's tight "as long as you're not ashamed to be a wog" contrast beautifully.
The plotting, as I said, is artful: only as complex as it needs to be, with none of the ponderousness you sometimes find in intergenerational novels. Pieces of Christina and Nonna's stories unfold not only as Josie finds out about them but as Josie's attitude to them changes. I hadn't remembered much of either of their narratives: the story, the sequence of events you'd describe if summarising the novel, all hinges on Josie, but so much of the plot relies on these episodes of the past recounted to her. I now understand why this book is such a popular high school text choice: *not* just because it's 'relatable' or topical, it's a really, really well executed novel. Not that most tenth-grade English classes are equipped to appreciate the narratological skill here. We *did* talk a bit about the women-family-lineage thing, which is one of the book's greatest strengths.
I now realise how much I learned from this book, starting with "why we don't call people ethnic". I remembered there was some kind of plot point about whether or not Josie would have sex with her boyfriend, and if I'm strictly honest I probably could have conjured up a reasonable recollection of the making-out portions (the school library copies were well-thumbed in certain places), but I had completely forgotten about the speech she gives him in declining. I think, now, I can remember being distressed by the post-makeout argument, by the prospect of having to have that fight (surprisingly, I have never had that fight!). Now, though, I am really bloody impressed with the speech, and wonder how much of that went into the way I thought about virginity/autonomy in my late teens. Not "I need to save this for someone in particular" but "it's mine and I get to do what I want with it". I never had to have that fight with partners, but I did have to give an account of myself to over-curious collegemates often enough.
Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet: New Essays by Karen HelleksonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was a quick re-read of about half of the articles - I revisited ones I'd liked before and ignored the rest. The essay on 'archontic literature' remains brilliant, and I'm astounded I've survived this far without citing it.
Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World by Robyn OchsMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
as a book overall, I don't think the tiny-quotes-and-contributions format worked well; it read like a bizarrely large pamphlet. However, it was pretty nifty reading up on 2000s bi... everything; slightly disappointing to think how little has changed; and the last few sections, on politics, were very interesting, especially when some of the authors had fine-tuned their ideas since 'Closer to home: Bisexuality and feminism'.
Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane GayMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Well, I binge-read this in the space of a few days, that's how much I liked this. It's very, very good.
Some thoughts:
- it's *good* that it's essays: Gay is really good at short essays, and I'm not sure how her style, or any one of her several topics, would stand up to a longer book. I would read a longer book, though, to find out. (I found myself wondering if I'd have liked The Wife Drought better if it were a series of essays like this - something in Gay's style reminded me of Crabb's.)
- speaking of essays, Roxanne Gay has a *fantastic* style for mixing lit-crit (of the artistic commentary type: she's a creative writing prof, not an english lit prof) with personal memoir-type writing. An essay on The Hunger Games, for instance, is also an essay on personal experience of sexual assault. I was a bit less convinced about a similarly-structured essay on fat camp (personal experience of, and a book about): the social criticism seemed under-developed, but I couldn't decide how it ought to be read. I suspect the fatosphere would be disappointed in it, anyway.
- Gay's talent is not, I think, in thinking up startling new ideas but in bringing them together with personal commentary and with other ideas you might not have thought to link together. I didn't find I was hitting information or types of opinion I hadn't seen before until I got to the section on black (US) cinema - and in the case of the essay on The Help, I think I actually had read Roxanne Gay's writing on that film before, if not that exact essay. So I learned new and interesting things from the essays on the likes of Tyler Perry, but the fact of not learning new information didn't impede my appreciation of Gay's writing on academia, dating, or friendship: either she made me look at something in a new way, or put into words something I had never had cause to write down clearly.
Would recommend!
Also finished: Land of the Seal People, which I'll write up when I've had time to think it over a bit more.
Up next: IDEK, are we pretending I ever have any clue what I'm reading next?
no subject
Date: 2015-09-08 04:41 am (UTC)