Books: an update
Dec. 1st, 2012 01:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricUnder the influence of Goodreads and procrastination, I have read books.
Sarah Rees Brennan & Justine Larbalestier, Team Human What can I say? I rolled around laughing. The world-building was perfect (Why are there vampires in the US? Well, they fled persecution in England, of course!). I love how the early chapters felt like a beautiful mock-up of Twilight from a third POV, as Mel watches Cathy and Francis become appalling cliches together - and that turns into an unexpectedly serious plot about autonomy, choice and what happens when you disagree with your friend's life choices. The double romance plot was charmingly constructed and the detective plot a brilliant counterpoint to the two of them.
Jane Austen, Persuasion I found Anne a likeable heroine, but AAAARGH I FIND JANE AUSTEN SO INFURIATING. Case A: Classism. We can sneer at the class-consciousness of Mr Elliot, but do we need to give a reason to despise Mrs Clay? Oooh, no, it suffices to say that she's low-born and ill-bred! Therefore she has ill-intentions! No one could possibly see any holes in this logic.
Cough. Let's say she gets a free pass on classism because of the period, doncha know. In that case I proffer the following objections:
* NOTHING HAPPENS TO ANNE. Nothing whatsoever. Things happen around her, but Jane has specifically set up the story so that Anne never has to engage with distasteful subjects, like, oh, I don't know, the financial ruin of her family! That can all be dealt with by other people while Our Heroine quietly goes about her business elsewhere in the country. That way our genteel readers need never think about matters financial. Likewise, all the actual problems (illness, bereavement, mostly) happen to other people. Nothing external acts on Anne and Anne does nothing either, save (shock, horror) for looking at Captain Wentworth occasionally.
* Moreover, Anne's character doesn't grow or change at all. She starts the novel quiet, firm of principle, and in love, and that's how she ends it. She does not take any risks for love (LOOKING is not a risk - even in this novel, other women feel perfectly comfortable going up to Captain Wentworth or asking him to join them). She does not have any of her principles challenged. And she does not stand up to her family. Her circumstances change, but entirely by good luck. Captain Wentworth's financial position is now enviable, and it's merely a matter of a few fortunate LOOKS and lo, romantic plot solved!
But oh, you say, it's the ~period~. Women of that class didn't do anything! Bollocks, I say unto you. I am not terribly well-informed on Regency history, but I'm historian enough to know that women have *always* done things, and many of them are interesting enough to build a plot around. Anne's sister Elizabeth, for instance, manages the household finances and oversees, despite her investment in appearing rich, their down-scaling to a townhouse in Bath! A far better writer than Jane might have been able to make Elizabeth Elliot an engaging character and told a nice moral story about her maturing through having to take responsibility.
That sort of unsympathetic heroine isn't Jane's style. But let's see. What about a story wherein Elizabeth married at the opening of the novel, and Anne inherited the management of the financially-disastrous family affairs? Despised by her father but supported by Lady Russell, she must convince Sir Walter to downsize. Shennanigans occur, Captain Wentworth comes back into orbit, and finds much to admire in this capable mistress of her household blah blah blah.
Insofar as it's a product of the ~period~, it seems to me that it's the period which dicates that genteel ladies (who actually do any number of sensible and practical things in their households and families) shouldn't want to *read* about difficult things, like finances and character development. UGH.
TL;DR, still can't stand Jane Austen.
Suzy Baldwin, Best of Friends Perhaps the best of the slew of books on 'friendship: how to do eet' that I collected in the last few years.
Bonus points:
- interviews a mix of heterosexual women, lesbians, single women and coupled women
- interviewees' primary friendships are not all homosocial. One woman's best friend is her husband; another's is her gay male life-partner-housemate-type person; another's is her girlfriend; another's is a woman-friend; another's is a gay man and erstwhile lover
- interviewees include both public figures and less-high profile persons
- a general trend toward artistic, intellectual or feminist people means insightful and incisive commentary
Down sides:
- Bettina Arnt is an interviewee
- Can't be sure without googling every single interviewee, but there doesn't seem to be much of a racial mix. I may yet be proven wrong, but I don't recognise the names of any Indigenous Australian women - and it's not like we're lacking in notable indigenous women, this book was released the same year the documentary Black Chicks Talking came out
- Hand-in-hand with the focus on the artistic, intellectual type community comes a certain class selectivity.
Interesting points:
- I identified/sympathised most strongly with the group of 70s feminists in the middle of the book: Dale and Lynne Spender, Anne Summers. Why that is I'm not quite sure, but there was a sharp drop on my interest when the book moved from the Spenders to Quentin Bryce, who is certainly one of the set of what Baldwin calls the 'particularly australian breed of feminist beaurocrats'.
- Dale Spender's interview was particularly... well-expressed, is perhaps the term? I quote:
and a little later,
- I did find interesting how few of these interviewees had a real sense of longditudinal historical change in the way social conventions play out. Baldwin asks many interviewees if they thought women were just 'better' friends than men. Baldwin herself wrangles with this question throughout the book, both aware of the long history of exalted male friendship and particularly interested in women's friendships with gay men - but her interviewees so often resorted to pat answers. Anne Summers sweepingly declared that men don't need friends. Someone else, that if men are to be intimate friends it is always with women. And so on. There was a lot of 'women's friendships have always-' sweeping judgements, which I'm used to. More unusually, Anne Summers pronounced that the women's movement taught women to be friends - to enjoy each other's company and not feel like there ought to be men there. Oh, honey, you did not invent female homosociality. *facepalms*
- I really loved that this was not just a book about female homosociality. It talks about women's friendships with men - with their lovers and with other men. That's important, to me. One of my favourite chapters was an interview with Elizabeth Elliot, a visual arts teacher who was married in the early eighties (I guess that makes her my mother's generation?). She and her husband lived for a while in a house with her friend John - a house John and Elizabeth chose together. Her husband moved on, and Elizabeth and John stayed together, raising Elizabeth's daughter Alexandra. At the time of writing, Alexandra was in her late teens, and the household had been augmented by John's partner Will. Elizabeth says, of family:
Sarah Rees Brennan & Justine Larbalestier, Team Human What can I say? I rolled around laughing. The world-building was perfect (Why are there vampires in the US? Well, they fled persecution in England, of course!). I love how the early chapters felt like a beautiful mock-up of Twilight from a third POV, as Mel watches Cathy and Francis become appalling cliches together - and that turns into an unexpectedly serious plot about autonomy, choice and what happens when you disagree with your friend's life choices. The double romance plot was charmingly constructed and the detective plot a brilliant counterpoint to the two of them.
Jane Austen, Persuasion I found Anne a likeable heroine, but AAAARGH I FIND JANE AUSTEN SO INFURIATING. Case A: Classism. We can sneer at the class-consciousness of Mr Elliot, but do we need to give a reason to despise Mrs Clay? Oooh, no, it suffices to say that she's low-born and ill-bred! Therefore she has ill-intentions! No one could possibly see any holes in this logic.
Cough. Let's say she gets a free pass on classism because of the period, doncha know. In that case I proffer the following objections:
* NOTHING HAPPENS TO ANNE. Nothing whatsoever. Things happen around her, but Jane has specifically set up the story so that Anne never has to engage with distasteful subjects, like, oh, I don't know, the financial ruin of her family! That can all be dealt with by other people while Our Heroine quietly goes about her business elsewhere in the country. That way our genteel readers need never think about matters financial. Likewise, all the actual problems (illness, bereavement, mostly) happen to other people. Nothing external acts on Anne and Anne does nothing either, save (shock, horror) for looking at Captain Wentworth occasionally.
* Moreover, Anne's character doesn't grow or change at all. She starts the novel quiet, firm of principle, and in love, and that's how she ends it. She does not take any risks for love (LOOKING is not a risk - even in this novel, other women feel perfectly comfortable going up to Captain Wentworth or asking him to join them). She does not have any of her principles challenged. And she does not stand up to her family. Her circumstances change, but entirely by good luck. Captain Wentworth's financial position is now enviable, and it's merely a matter of a few fortunate LOOKS and lo, romantic plot solved!
But oh, you say, it's the ~period~. Women of that class didn't do anything! Bollocks, I say unto you. I am not terribly well-informed on Regency history, but I'm historian enough to know that women have *always* done things, and many of them are interesting enough to build a plot around. Anne's sister Elizabeth, for instance, manages the household finances and oversees, despite her investment in appearing rich, their down-scaling to a townhouse in Bath! A far better writer than Jane might have been able to make Elizabeth Elliot an engaging character and told a nice moral story about her maturing through having to take responsibility.
That sort of unsympathetic heroine isn't Jane's style. But let's see. What about a story wherein Elizabeth married at the opening of the novel, and Anne inherited the management of the financially-disastrous family affairs? Despised by her father but supported by Lady Russell, she must convince Sir Walter to downsize. Shennanigans occur, Captain Wentworth comes back into orbit, and finds much to admire in this capable mistress of her household blah blah blah.
Insofar as it's a product of the ~period~, it seems to me that it's the period which dicates that genteel ladies (who actually do any number of sensible and practical things in their households and families) shouldn't want to *read* about difficult things, like finances and character development. UGH.
TL;DR, still can't stand Jane Austen.
Suzy Baldwin, Best of Friends Perhaps the best of the slew of books on 'friendship: how to do eet' that I collected in the last few years.
Bonus points:
- interviews a mix of heterosexual women, lesbians, single women and coupled women
- interviewees' primary friendships are not all homosocial. One woman's best friend is her husband; another's is her gay male life-partner-housemate-type person; another's is her girlfriend; another's is a woman-friend; another's is a gay man and erstwhile lover
- interviewees include both public figures and less-high profile persons
- a general trend toward artistic, intellectual or feminist people means insightful and incisive commentary
Down sides:
- Bettina Arnt is an interviewee
- Can't be sure without googling every single interviewee, but there doesn't seem to be much of a racial mix. I may yet be proven wrong, but I don't recognise the names of any Indigenous Australian women - and it's not like we're lacking in notable indigenous women, this book was released the same year the documentary Black Chicks Talking came out
- Hand-in-hand with the focus on the artistic, intellectual type community comes a certain class selectivity.
Interesting points:
- I identified/sympathised most strongly with the group of 70s feminists in the middle of the book: Dale and Lynne Spender, Anne Summers. Why that is I'm not quite sure, but there was a sharp drop on my interest when the book moved from the Spenders to Quentin Bryce, who is certainly one of the set of what Baldwin calls the 'particularly australian breed of feminist beaurocrats'.
- Dale Spender's interview was particularly... well-expressed, is perhaps the term? I quote:
Mum told me all this stuff and I'd say "It doesn't work, I'm not doing it." My mother wonders now how she could ever have given Lynne and me the advice that she did. Most of what she advised us is totally inappropriate for teh lives we lead. She talks about the 'footbinding period', and about how she thought she had to make us into wives and mothers. And she tried really hard to do that: 'You'll never get a boyfriend if you talk to them like that.' That sort of stuff. She says, 'I look at the two of you now and see how ridiculous that was.' She's quite apologetic about some of it, but also able to say that the advice had been handed on for centuries and suddenly, in the space of one lifetime, it doesn't work.
and a little later,
Women build up communities in which they trust each other to talk about what they do and how they do it, and how to renegotiate. All the boys have been able to do in the last twenty years is react. Men as a group haven't held up masculinity and asked which parts are bad, and they haven't got communities in which they're renegotiating the rules and the roles. Whereas women are feeling quite confident because, from our basic six or eight best friends, we know that this is what we're doing and how we're doing it.
- I did find interesting how few of these interviewees had a real sense of longditudinal historical change in the way social conventions play out. Baldwin asks many interviewees if they thought women were just 'better' friends than men. Baldwin herself wrangles with this question throughout the book, both aware of the long history of exalted male friendship and particularly interested in women's friendships with gay men - but her interviewees so often resorted to pat answers. Anne Summers sweepingly declared that men don't need friends. Someone else, that if men are to be intimate friends it is always with women. And so on. There was a lot of 'women's friendships have always-' sweeping judgements, which I'm used to. More unusually, Anne Summers pronounced that the women's movement taught women to be friends - to enjoy each other's company and not feel like there ought to be men there. Oh, honey, you did not invent female homosociality. *facepalms*
- I really loved that this was not just a book about female homosociality. It talks about women's friendships with men - with their lovers and with other men. That's important, to me. One of my favourite chapters was an interview with Elizabeth Elliot, a visual arts teacher who was married in the early eighties (I guess that makes her my mother's generation?). She and her husband lived for a while in a house with her friend John - a house John and Elizabeth chose together. Her husband moved on, and Elizabeth and John stayed together, raising Elizabeth's daughter Alexandra. At the time of writing, Alexandra was in her late teens, and the household had been augmented by John's partner Will. Elizabeth says, of family:
We are John's family absolutely. And so is Will now. To me, Will is family. I've always wanted an extend family and I guess I have it. Because I'm adopted I have this real sense that family is not only blood. It can be blood, but you've also got choices, and I guess that was one of the very positive things about being adopted, that I knew very clearly, early on, that family could be whatever you wanted it to be, although I didn't know how to articulate that for some time. I felt that I was chosen by my parents to make up a family, so I could quite deliberately choose somebody else to become family.
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Date: 2012-12-01 05:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-01 06:07 am (UTC)/random icon appreciation
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Date: 2012-12-01 11:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-01 05:51 pm (UTC)However, I am completely hooked on The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, for some reason.