What 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?
Oooh, hmm. According too goodreads, for fun I am reading:
- Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess. I'm actually listening to it as a free french language audiobook via litteratureaudio.com, who are my new best buddies.
- Perrault's Contes, also french audiobook.
- Orbach, Fat is a Feminist Issue. Neither French nor audiobook. It is *very* interesting, although not what I expected. I had seen it cited as a foundation text for 'health at every size/ fat positivity'. Imagine my surprise to find it's a self-help manual for compulsive eaters, which would likley get anyone laughed out of the fatosphere now.
For work:
- Lisa Gee, Friends: Why Men and Women are from the Same Planet. This is pop sociology: well informed but not excellently analysed. Not well historicised and occasionally prone to evo-psych. BUT. It's nevertheless fascinating at pointing up intersections between approaches to friendship and to family. I suspect![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
liv might find it interesting - or find the distinction made between 'instrumental' and 'affective' familial cultures useful, if only Gee had cited where she'd *got* that from.
- Yasmina Foehr-Janssens, La jeune fille et l'amour. Peer review took me to task for lack of francophone scholarship, and this is one of the few pieces that have come out since I did the basic research that might remedy that. Also Yasmina is likely to be on my final diss. panel, so it MIGHT help to read her stuff. Delighted to report that her prose is clear & lucid and not like wading through French scholarship often is.
What did you recently finish reading?
A lot of things, apparently.
Anne of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Summary: "Anne befriends abusive elders, and various minor plots reinforce that women suffer if not married".
And yet. And yet. I really *liked* this book on re-read. I think because it's nice to see Anne as an adult, away from the romantic sub-plots of Anne of the Island. Anne's House of Dreams, where she's safely married, also has that upside. I find it odd how her professional life is treated - no apparent regret about giving up work? And for that matter her engagement - she doesn't even seem to THINK about saving up money for her house, trousseau, etc. Isn't even sewing for her trousseau? That's odd, especially given that money, savings, and household econcomics feature clearly in all the preceding books.
Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was good fun, as always. I enjoy seeing Anne as a professional/working adult, even though the book treats her as a girl still in most ways. I had somehow forgotten, or not linked up in my mind, how much this book influences my ideas about teaching.
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
As a teen I used to skip re-reading this book, because there was too much childish playing in it. On re-read, that only takes up half the book! It is weird how twelve-year-olds are 'little girls', and then very rapidly fifteen-year-old Anne is off to train as a teacher. I did a lot of checking and wiki-searching bits and pieces of the PEI education system and references that have always gone over my head, this time. The references to Home Children, for instance, I had never connected up with the matching Australian child migrant scheme.
( Also, woah, casual racism! )
Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World's Most Polluted Places by Andrew Blackwell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Each individual chapter in this was fairly interesting - I particularly enjoyed the ones on Canadian & US oil towns. However, all together, one after the other: it gets boring. The latter half is also pulled down by the author's attempt to integrate his personal romantic woes into the narrative of his travels - it would be better if he had not bothered, as they don't constitute a narrative so much as a repeated whine.
I also finished 'Best Australian Poems 2013', 'Closer to Home: Bisexuality and Feminisms', Susan Cooper's 'The Grey King' and Tracey Warr's 'Almodis the Peaceweaver'. Running out of time this week - I'll review them properly in a later post.
What Will You Read Next?
I have a book of queer girl writings ('Baby Remember My Name'), and a Keiran Desai novel, and a rapid reading list for article revising purposes. Remains to be seen what takes precedence...
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?
What Are You Currently Reading?
Oooh, hmm. According too goodreads, for fun I am reading:
- Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess. I'm actually listening to it as a free french language audiobook via litteratureaudio.com, who are my new best buddies.
- Perrault's Contes, also french audiobook.
- Orbach, Fat is a Feminist Issue. Neither French nor audiobook. It is *very* interesting, although not what I expected. I had seen it cited as a foundation text for 'health at every size/ fat positivity'. Imagine my surprise to find it's a self-help manual for compulsive eaters, which would likley get anyone laughed out of the fatosphere now.
For work:
- Lisa Gee, Friends: Why Men and Women are from the Same Planet. This is pop sociology: well informed but not excellently analysed. Not well historicised and occasionally prone to evo-psych. BUT. It's nevertheless fascinating at pointing up intersections between approaches to friendship and to family. I suspect
liv might find it interesting - or find the distinction made between 'instrumental' and 'affective' familial cultures useful, if only Gee had cited where she'd *got* that from.- Yasmina Foehr-Janssens, La jeune fille et l'amour. Peer review took me to task for lack of francophone scholarship, and this is one of the few pieces that have come out since I did the basic research that might remedy that. Also Yasmina is likely to be on my final diss. panel, so it MIGHT help to read her stuff. Delighted to report that her prose is clear & lucid and not like wading through French scholarship often is.
What did you recently finish reading?
A lot of things, apparently.
Anne of Windy Poplars by L.M. MontgomeryMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Summary: "Anne befriends abusive elders, and various minor plots reinforce that women suffer if not married".
And yet. And yet. I really *liked* this book on re-read. I think because it's nice to see Anne as an adult, away from the romantic sub-plots of Anne of the Island. Anne's House of Dreams, where she's safely married, also has that upside. I find it odd how her professional life is treated - no apparent regret about giving up work? And for that matter her engagement - she doesn't even seem to THINK about saving up money for her house, trousseau, etc. Isn't even sewing for her trousseau? That's odd, especially given that money, savings, and household econcomics feature clearly in all the preceding books.
Anne of Avonlea by L.M. MontgomeryMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was good fun, as always. I enjoy seeing Anne as a professional/working adult, even though the book treats her as a girl still in most ways. I had somehow forgotten, or not linked up in my mind, how much this book influences my ideas about teaching.
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. MontgomeryMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
As a teen I used to skip re-reading this book, because there was too much childish playing in it. On re-read, that only takes up half the book! It is weird how twelve-year-olds are 'little girls', and then very rapidly fifteen-year-old Anne is off to train as a teacher. I did a lot of checking and wiki-searching bits and pieces of the PEI education system and references that have always gone over my head, this time. The references to Home Children, for instance, I had never connected up with the matching Australian child migrant scheme.
( Also, woah, casual racism! )
Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World's Most Polluted Places by Andrew BlackwellMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Each individual chapter in this was fairly interesting - I particularly enjoyed the ones on Canadian & US oil towns. However, all together, one after the other: it gets boring. The latter half is also pulled down by the author's attempt to integrate his personal romantic woes into the narrative of his travels - it would be better if he had not bothered, as they don't constitute a narrative so much as a repeated whine.
I also finished 'Best Australian Poems 2013', 'Closer to Home: Bisexuality and Feminisms', Susan Cooper's 'The Grey King' and Tracey Warr's 'Almodis the Peaceweaver'. Running out of time this week - I'll review them properly in a later post.
What Will You Read Next?
I have a book of queer girl writings ('Baby Remember My Name'), and a Keiran Desai novel, and a rapid reading list for article revising purposes. Remains to be seen what takes precedence...