What Are You Reading (Not On A) Wednesday
Aug. 17th, 2019 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricStrangely, I did not read much in my ten day's tourism? Or I did, but Outlander is a Long Book.
Currently Reading:
Fiction: Roxanne Gay's 'Difficult Women', and Robin Hobb's 'Royal Assassin'. Technically also The Three Musketeers, but I admit i haven't picked it up recently.
Non-Fiction: I picked up Gluten-Free Girl Everyday from the library and am pottering through that.
Poetry: Slowly through Paradise Lost in Anthony Oliviera's recording
Lit Mag: stalled on TLB 41.
Recently Finished
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Okay. This is a very difficult book to review. It is, above all, engaging. It's prose style is good, its historical research is pretty decent (it took me until about a week after finishing it to catch the biggest historical flaw, which is the use of 'clan-specific tartan' prior to the 19th century). Gabaldon does an amazing job of making the original husband Infuriating without being actually a *bad person*, so by the time Claire gets separated from him I'm like 'AND GOOD RIDDANCE'. Pretty much every character *except* him is very well-drawn, complex, and difficult to utterly loathe or unquestionably like (yes, even the villain Black Jack Randall - he's easy to loathe, but by the end you sort of pity him, too).
Thing the second: I didn't read this book in my Yoof, so it's fascinating to read it now and realise just how much of a stamp it left on the Collective Id of fannish women my age and older. It's just... one id-tastic component after the other. Some I do not like! Some I liked in context done well! Some I absolutely love and realised I have very rarely seen *since* 90s 'romance fantasy' genre books.
There is a whole LOT of consent-fuckery here. Including some things that were meant to be that way, and some that I don't think Gabaldon thought were in the slightest bit boundary- pushing. And a really striking use of The Ravishment Trope (where The Lady Are Uncomfortable but sekritly wants it and The Hero Are Forceful) applied to cunnilingus. Unfortunately my ability to appreciate that one was hampered by, oh, basic character continuity. I refuse to believe the innocent man who didn't think blowjobs were real (also, I don't believe THAT for a second, not in crowded quarters. Perhaps he didn't think women performed them?), who was the subject of a delightful 'experienced lady deflowers eager young man' trope only pages before, has the anatomical and other knowledge necessary to carry off a successful Ravishment By Cunnilingus.
And then it got... well. I can't say I *disliked* the more brutal scenes, but I would have liked them better if they were deliberately cast as a narrative exploring the dynamics of a rather fucked-up relationship. Gabaldon is wanting to have her cake and eat it too: both have a Wholistic And Restorative Relationship that offers everything Claire's nice marriage didn't, *and* a brutal, id-tastic encounter with the realities of spousal rape, the right to punish one's wife, etc. I *liked* her attempt to balance it, in the sense that she doesn't run it like a dom/sub script: Claire is at relevant points Overcome by the manly whatever, but more often when pushed she pushes back. To both erotic and relational ends. I liked that. But I'm still more disturbed by it. And even more by the fact that the balancing factor vis a vis Jamie (narratively - it's not explicit, it's just the material we keep being offered) is that he too has been a victim of both physical and sexual violence. The length the narrative dwells on his treatment at the hands of Randall sure is *something*. (But then, right at the end, it seems like his Recovered Masculinity is signified by fathering a child, and personally that is a solution that is unappealing to me.)
In short: a hot mess! But a hot mess that I will probably continue to seek out, because there are more books of this hot mess!
Initial response, preserved for posterity: What. The. Fuck. Did I just read? Spend a week reading? Actual review to come when I peel my brain off the back of my eyeballs, where it has been smeared by the truckload of WTF that is this book. Is it terrible? Is it amazing? I cannot say.
On Friendship by Michel de Montaigne
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I read it, I confirmed my suspicion that Montaigne is the source of the pronouncement that women are excluded from friendship by consensus of the Ancients (he might not be wrong, but it's definitely HIM, not The Ancients, that put it explicitly).
Also, Montaigne's kinks are showing.
Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Apparently I've never reviewed this before! It's... As It Always Is. I cannot understand why 15 y old me thought FitzChivalry Farseer was attractive, he's a fuckboy. But unlike the first re-read where I realised that, I now appreciate that that's on purpose. He's *supposed* to be like that. That's the point.
Having said that, this time around the descriptions of the Forged - community members 'taken away' and made 'soulless', who display no empathy, grab things, and lash out at their family... Um. It's not a straight up changeling child story, there is a clear in-story explanation, and the majority of examples are grown adults. And yet. I've just read too many horrible descriptions of autistic children and adults to not get my hackles up when we've got pages describing the horrors of unempathetic adults who wreak havoc on the community. It's not an ANALOGY but it is drawing on the same kinds of fears that people use to construct dehumanising narratives about autistic people. So. That's a thing.
Up Next:
I have the next Ali Smith from the library, RF Kuang's The Poppy War, and a bunch of books I posted ahead of me to Aus.
Currently Reading:
Fiction: Roxanne Gay's 'Difficult Women', and Robin Hobb's 'Royal Assassin'. Technically also The Three Musketeers, but I admit i haven't picked it up recently.
Non-Fiction: I picked up Gluten-Free Girl Everyday from the library and am pottering through that.
Poetry: Slowly through Paradise Lost in Anthony Oliviera's recording
Lit Mag: stalled on TLB 41.
Recently Finished
Outlander by Diana GabaldonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Okay. This is a very difficult book to review. It is, above all, engaging. It's prose style is good, its historical research is pretty decent (it took me until about a week after finishing it to catch the biggest historical flaw, which is the use of 'clan-specific tartan' prior to the 19th century). Gabaldon does an amazing job of making the original husband Infuriating without being actually a *bad person*, so by the time Claire gets separated from him I'm like 'AND GOOD RIDDANCE'. Pretty much every character *except* him is very well-drawn, complex, and difficult to utterly loathe or unquestionably like (yes, even the villain Black Jack Randall - he's easy to loathe, but by the end you sort of pity him, too).
Thing the second: I didn't read this book in my Yoof, so it's fascinating to read it now and realise just how much of a stamp it left on the Collective Id of fannish women my age and older. It's just... one id-tastic component after the other. Some I do not like! Some I liked in context done well! Some I absolutely love and realised I have very rarely seen *since* 90s 'romance fantasy' genre books.
There is a whole LOT of consent-fuckery here. Including some things that were meant to be that way, and some that I don't think Gabaldon thought were in the slightest bit boundary- pushing. And a really striking use of The Ravishment Trope (where The Lady Are Uncomfortable but sekritly wants it and The Hero Are Forceful) applied to cunnilingus. Unfortunately my ability to appreciate that one was hampered by, oh, basic character continuity. I refuse to believe the innocent man who didn't think blowjobs were real (also, I don't believe THAT for a second, not in crowded quarters. Perhaps he didn't think women performed them?), who was the subject of a delightful 'experienced lady deflowers eager young man' trope only pages before, has the anatomical and other knowledge necessary to carry off a successful Ravishment By Cunnilingus.
And then it got... well. I can't say I *disliked* the more brutal scenes, but I would have liked them better if they were deliberately cast as a narrative exploring the dynamics of a rather fucked-up relationship. Gabaldon is wanting to have her cake and eat it too: both have a Wholistic And Restorative Relationship that offers everything Claire's nice marriage didn't, *and* a brutal, id-tastic encounter with the realities of spousal rape, the right to punish one's wife, etc. I *liked* her attempt to balance it, in the sense that she doesn't run it like a dom/sub script: Claire is at relevant points Overcome by the manly whatever, but more often when pushed she pushes back. To both erotic and relational ends. I liked that. But I'm still more disturbed by it. And even more by the fact that the balancing factor vis a vis Jamie (narratively - it's not explicit, it's just the material we keep being offered) is that he too has been a victim of both physical and sexual violence. The length the narrative dwells on his treatment at the hands of Randall sure is *something*. (But then, right at the end, it seems like his Recovered Masculinity is signified by fathering a child, and personally that is a solution that is unappealing to me.)
In short: a hot mess! But a hot mess that I will probably continue to seek out, because there are more books of this hot mess!
Initial response, preserved for posterity: What. The. Fuck. Did I just read? Spend a week reading? Actual review to come when I peel my brain off the back of my eyeballs, where it has been smeared by the truckload of WTF that is this book. Is it terrible? Is it amazing? I cannot say.
On Friendship by Michel de MontaigneMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I read it, I confirmed my suspicion that Montaigne is the source of the pronouncement that women are excluded from friendship by consensus of the Ancients (he might not be wrong, but it's definitely HIM, not The Ancients, that put it explicitly).
Also, Montaigne's kinks are showing.
Assassin's Apprentice by Robin HobbMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Apparently I've never reviewed this before! It's... As It Always Is. I cannot understand why 15 y old me thought FitzChivalry Farseer was attractive, he's a fuckboy. But unlike the first re-read where I realised that, I now appreciate that that's on purpose. He's *supposed* to be like that. That's the point.
Having said that, this time around the descriptions of the Forged - community members 'taken away' and made 'soulless', who display no empathy, grab things, and lash out at their family... Um. It's not a straight up changeling child story, there is a clear in-story explanation, and the majority of examples are grown adults. And yet. I've just read too many horrible descriptions of autistic children and adults to not get my hackles up when we've got pages describing the horrors of unempathetic adults who wreak havoc on the community. It's not an ANALOGY but it is drawing on the same kinds of fears that people use to construct dehumanising narratives about autistic people. So. That's a thing.
Up Next:
I have the next Ali Smith from the library, RF Kuang's The Poppy War, and a bunch of books I posted ahead of me to Aus.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-18 12:34 am (UTC)That said, I love the series. Hope you enjoy the other volumes!