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What Are You Reading Wednesday
Oct. 16th, 2018 09:38 pmIt's Wednesday in Australia.
Currently Reading:
Poetry: Nancy Boutillier, 'On the Eighth Day Adam Slept Alone'
Fiction: At Swim Two Boys, but it's on a bit of a hiatus because of wanting to push through review copies of other things. G. Willow Wilson, The Bird King, which is starting to gain momentum.
Academic: Tyler Bradway, 'Queer Experimental Literature', a review copy. I'm really liking the theory/methods while being bored by his choice of primary texts.
Other: technically, The Lifted Brow latest issue, but I haven't opened it for a while.
Recently Finished:
River Cottage Gluten Free by Naomi Devlin
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I'm not sure that I have much luck with gluten-free cookbooks overall - I may need to stick to modifying regular recipes, although I did note down a few possibilities from this one. The information that gf pastry, unlike regular pastry, needs to NOT be kneaded was fascinating - given I suck very very badly at kneading pastry.
My biggest annoyance with this book is that the author is a /homeopath/ and they (she and the River Cottage guy) try to sell this as a reason you should trust her on nutrition. If she's also acting as a nutritionist, that's not the same thing as homeopathy, and frankly I do not trust a practising homeopath to have the faintest idea about sensible nutrition.
Le Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I started this over the summer (er. Again. I have started this multiple times in the past five years) and got most of the way through it while driving in England. I credit it with having rapidly improved my French - and the difference between this and my previous attempts is that I wasn't sitting still focusing on nothing but the story and getting frustrated with my poor comprehension. I finished it the other weekend while walking the return leg of a long ramble through the forest of Bowland, and it made A++ walking company.
The French translation is, as far as I can determine, excellent, and unlike the HP translations I didn't find myself weirdly jarred by names and wordings that sounded working-class or rustic suddenly sounding poncy in French (Oliver Wood to Olivier duBois really CHANGES certain implications), and I loved whatever they did with Sackville-Baggins (having only heard it, I can't recall it the way I would if I read it written down). The audio recording is excellent, and the voice actor does a great job particularly with the elven songs. It's hard to not make those sound ridiculous, and could have been worse in French, where the translation left in 'trol-la-lally', a series of ridiculous phonemes which are EXTRA ridiculous removed from English context.
I made a gesture toward this when I posted about re-reading LOTR, and I still can't fully articulate it, but it is so good to reconnect with Middle Earth again. Not so much because I missed it (first fandom, one fandom to rule them all, etc - but I haven't been pining for it in the past decade), but because it feels grounding. I first read LOTR at twelve, and the hobbit shortly before that. Over half my life. The first fictional world I shared with others, the first media I saw on opening day. A shit ton of other stuff made me who I am, sure, but i /grew up/ in LOTR and it's incredibly reassuring, especially right now, to lean back into it.
Carol Emke, 'How We Desire', trans. Imogen Taylor: this was a Text Publishing ARC; the book is due out early next year. Full review to come later; short version is I have mixed feelings about the text but appreciate that the work exists (I mean that in the Barthes sense - the specific translation and edition put out by Text Publishing Australia).
Friendship, Love, and Letters: Ideals and Practices of Seraphic Friendship in Seventeenth-Century England by Cornelia Wilde
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was... this should have been more interesting to me than it was. A bunch of 18th century dudes writing long philosophical letters to particular but non-romantic lady friends? FASCINATING. But. It's not that the problem is this was a PhD first - it's that it was /german/. So german. There's long sections of very good close reading, but the overarching process is systematic rather than theorising. And the grammar of the sentences gets very... german.
So, academically a useful reference and also a useful case study in some things to avoid for me, personally.
I also just finished The Widows of Malabar Hill, and ploughed through Band Sinister. Reviews to come later.
Recently DNF'd: Nadiya Hussain, 'The Fall and Rise of the Amir Sisters'. I have weird feelings about DNF'ing a review copy, but it was a right choice for my mental elfs right now. The book was pretty good pulp chicklit, notable for being about a family of british muslim sisters, all now adults. I had to crash out because I eventually realised the depiction of one MC's spiralling despair at facing infertility was fucking me up in the head, for... not obvious reasons, given I don't really want kids, but here we are. If that's something you have a better tolerance for, or might find validating, I think it was a really interesting depiction of the situation and her choices, and all the characters are pretty engaging, so don't write the book off on my account!
Up Next: I've been approved for some more ARCs on Netgalley (more than I expected tbh!), so I think my next up will be Ann Aptaker's 'Flesh and Gold'. I also have two library books on loan, Autumn and Elmet, that I really need to start on!
Music notes: none of note. I've not bought anything new; I think the next habit rewards purchase will be the new Christine and the Queens album, but I've been saying that for a while.
Currently Reading:
Poetry: Nancy Boutillier, 'On the Eighth Day Adam Slept Alone'
Fiction: At Swim Two Boys, but it's on a bit of a hiatus because of wanting to push through review copies of other things. G. Willow Wilson, The Bird King, which is starting to gain momentum.
Academic: Tyler Bradway, 'Queer Experimental Literature', a review copy. I'm really liking the theory/methods while being bored by his choice of primary texts.
Other: technically, The Lifted Brow latest issue, but I haven't opened it for a while.
Recently Finished:
River Cottage Gluten Free by Naomi DevlinMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
I'm not sure that I have much luck with gluten-free cookbooks overall - I may need to stick to modifying regular recipes, although I did note down a few possibilities from this one. The information that gf pastry, unlike regular pastry, needs to NOT be kneaded was fascinating - given I suck very very badly at kneading pastry.
My biggest annoyance with this book is that the author is a /homeopath/ and they (she and the River Cottage guy) try to sell this as a reason you should trust her on nutrition. If she's also acting as a nutritionist, that's not the same thing as homeopathy, and frankly I do not trust a practising homeopath to have the faintest idea about sensible nutrition.
Le Hobbit by J.R.R. TolkienMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I started this over the summer (er. Again. I have started this multiple times in the past five years) and got most of the way through it while driving in England. I credit it with having rapidly improved my French - and the difference between this and my previous attempts is that I wasn't sitting still focusing on nothing but the story and getting frustrated with my poor comprehension. I finished it the other weekend while walking the return leg of a long ramble through the forest of Bowland, and it made A++ walking company.
The French translation is, as far as I can determine, excellent, and unlike the HP translations I didn't find myself weirdly jarred by names and wordings that sounded working-class or rustic suddenly sounding poncy in French (Oliver Wood to Olivier duBois really CHANGES certain implications), and I loved whatever they did with Sackville-Baggins (having only heard it, I can't recall it the way I would if I read it written down). The audio recording is excellent, and the voice actor does a great job particularly with the elven songs. It's hard to not make those sound ridiculous, and could have been worse in French, where the translation left in 'trol-la-lally', a series of ridiculous phonemes which are EXTRA ridiculous removed from English context.
I made a gesture toward this when I posted about re-reading LOTR, and I still can't fully articulate it, but it is so good to reconnect with Middle Earth again. Not so much because I missed it (first fandom, one fandom to rule them all, etc - but I haven't been pining for it in the past decade), but because it feels grounding. I first read LOTR at twelve, and the hobbit shortly before that. Over half my life. The first fictional world I shared with others, the first media I saw on opening day. A shit ton of other stuff made me who I am, sure, but i /grew up/ in LOTR and it's incredibly reassuring, especially right now, to lean back into it.
Carol Emke, 'How We Desire', trans. Imogen Taylor: this was a Text Publishing ARC; the book is due out early next year. Full review to come later; short version is I have mixed feelings about the text but appreciate that the work exists (I mean that in the Barthes sense - the specific translation and edition put out by Text Publishing Australia).
Friendship, Love, and Letters: Ideals and Practices of Seraphic Friendship in Seventeenth-Century England by Cornelia WildeMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was... this should have been more interesting to me than it was. A bunch of 18th century dudes writing long philosophical letters to particular but non-romantic lady friends? FASCINATING. But. It's not that the problem is this was a PhD first - it's that it was /german/. So german. There's long sections of very good close reading, but the overarching process is systematic rather than theorising. And the grammar of the sentences gets very... german.
So, academically a useful reference and also a useful case study in some things to avoid for me, personally.
I also just finished The Widows of Malabar Hill, and ploughed through Band Sinister. Reviews to come later.
Recently DNF'd: Nadiya Hussain, 'The Fall and Rise of the Amir Sisters'. I have weird feelings about DNF'ing a review copy, but it was a right choice for my mental elfs right now. The book was pretty good pulp chicklit, notable for being about a family of british muslim sisters, all now adults. I had to crash out because I eventually realised the depiction of one MC's spiralling despair at facing infertility was fucking me up in the head, for... not obvious reasons, given I don't really want kids, but here we are. If that's something you have a better tolerance for, or might find validating, I think it was a really interesting depiction of the situation and her choices, and all the characters are pretty engaging, so don't write the book off on my account!
Up Next: I've been approved for some more ARCs on Netgalley (more than I expected tbh!), so I think my next up will be Ann Aptaker's 'Flesh and Gold'. I also have two library books on loan, Autumn and Elmet, that I really need to start on!
Music notes: none of note. I've not bought anything new; I think the next habit rewards purchase will be the new Christine and the Queens album, but I've been saying that for a while.