Books: another update
Jun. 6th, 2013 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricFor all that I feel like I've been steam-rollered in April-May, apparently I had time to read a lot of books!
Ben Aaronovitch, Rivers of London: I 'read' this by audiobook while marking first-year essays. For every two essays I'd have a knitting-and-book break. This was a really fun story! I loved the sense of place (as I do), and the characterisation of the rivers. My two gripes with the book are thus: one, that Peter's POV narration of his perving habits drove me up the wall and I want to SLAP him; two, that the final denoument ran too smoothly - no red herrings from the point where Peter realises who's been possessed. That disappointed me. Note: do not read this book if you don't like gross magic. On a scale of Disney Princess to China Mieville, this magic is somewhere between Neil Gaiman and China Mieville in terms of violence and screwed-uppedness.
Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited: I really enjoyed reading this - I rolled around laughing at the characterisations and characatures of Oxford and of Catholicism the whole way through.
What surprised me, though, is that prior to reading this, I thought of this as "the book about repressed homosexuality in post-war England", and it's not, that's so far from an accurate description of the book or even of Sebastian's character. I mean, yes, he's evidently a friend of dorothy, and the protagonist's feelings for him are interesting to say the least. But I am surprised that I'd never heard it discussed as a book about mental illness, before - especially given that Sebastian's "problems" are clearly inherited from his father (in terms of alcoholism, if nothing else).
Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games: Extremely compelling - I binge-read this in an evening. But I was disappointed - I didn't feel like it had much substance, as a dystopia. I've read more compelling and more thought-provoking YA dystopias, even (Victor Kelleher's Parkland springs to mind, and The Makers; or Gillian Rubenstine's Galax Arena).
Fun, but I've no interest in reading the sequels. As with The Handmaids Tale, I think I'd have liked this better if it were a different story - if it were the story of someone who was actually pretty comfortable and pretty happy with their society, and their growing sense of betrayal. Perhaps Peeta?
Drusilla Modjeska, The Orchard: I definitely didn't have the emotional maturity for this book when it was assigned to me. I found it interesting in places, but I remember being bored by 'The Adultery Factor' (part one). Now that part makes sense to me, but also the artifice of the whole book is clearer. I don't think I realised, when I read it, that it was fiction. That 'I' was not necessarily Modjeska. That her praise of Stella Bowen over Jean Rys wasn't the True Feminist Way To View That Particular Affair but simply a way. That her criticism of the 'mistress' in that narrative conflicted with her sympathetic portrait of the mistress in the running fiction of the adulterous friends-of-friends. That the reason Alec's commentary on men and aging falls funny and yet confirms the worldview of the essays is that Alec is just as fictional as the rest of them.
One thing I do remember is feeling drawn to the ideas presented in 'Sight and Solitude'. For one thing, that was my first meeting with the idea of the (male) gaze, of social performance and many other things besides. I remember being alarmed by the idea, not of blindness but of aloneness (which did not come with blindness; the narrator's account of her life near-blind is full of other people, and a private isolation I now recognise as depression). And yet attracted to it, to the idea that solitude leads to self-knowledge, to strength and renewal for sustained relationships. That in solitude a woman might know herself as 'neither wife nor mistress'.
I was very lonely when I first read this book. I was surrounded by other people. Neither time away nor a sense of strong, authentic relationships was readily available to me. I had, at that time, three good and true friendships and one dying one. Of the good friendships, two were in their infancy and one was fraught with teenaged romantic angst.
It's not surprising that Modjeska's praise of solitude drew me so strongly. Here, I think, is the root of my belief that what I need - although not necessarily what I will enjoy - is to learn to live alone.
When I first read this book I was afraid that I had found my one true soulmate, my other half. (I hadn't, of course, but I had found the first of the truly kindred spirits I've met since leaving school.) Modjeska promised something else, an alternative to the terrifying sense of belonging which threatened to bind me to someone too early. It was everything I thought I wanted, that other-half-ness (of course; we had more than half imagined it together), but it terrified me, and Modjeska... Modjeska's praise of solitude offered an alternative.
It still draws me, but now I can see the fabrication of it; how the narrator's solitude is filled with people.
This time, I empathise with the men she describes, the men who look around themselves and find women demanding something, something the men never meant to give. That's more or less my experience of relationships - not of not getting what I needed, but of (mostly) men who need things and for some reason think I can give said things to them.
Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair: I re-read this prior to giving my copy away. Such fun! So many quirky world-building details!
Ben Aaronovitch, Rivers of London: I 'read' this by audiobook while marking first-year essays. For every two essays I'd have a knitting-and-book break. This was a really fun story! I loved the sense of place (as I do), and the characterisation of the rivers. My two gripes with the book are thus: one, that Peter's POV narration of his perving habits drove me up the wall and I want to SLAP him; two, that the final denoument ran too smoothly - no red herrings from the point where Peter realises who's been possessed. That disappointed me. Note: do not read this book if you don't like gross magic. On a scale of Disney Princess to China Mieville, this magic is somewhere between Neil Gaiman and China Mieville in terms of violence and screwed-uppedness.
Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited: I really enjoyed reading this - I rolled around laughing at the characterisations and characatures of Oxford and of Catholicism the whole way through.
What surprised me, though, is that prior to reading this, I thought of this as "the book about repressed homosexuality in post-war England", and it's not, that's so far from an accurate description of the book or even of Sebastian's character. I mean, yes, he's evidently a friend of dorothy, and the protagonist's feelings for him are interesting to say the least. But I am surprised that I'd never heard it discussed as a book about mental illness, before - especially given that Sebastian's "problems" are clearly inherited from his father (in terms of alcoholism, if nothing else).
Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games: Extremely compelling - I binge-read this in an evening. But I was disappointed - I didn't feel like it had much substance, as a dystopia. I've read more compelling and more thought-provoking YA dystopias, even (Victor Kelleher's Parkland springs to mind, and The Makers; or Gillian Rubenstine's Galax Arena).
Fun, but I've no interest in reading the sequels. As with The Handmaids Tale, I think I'd have liked this better if it were a different story - if it were the story of someone who was actually pretty comfortable and pretty happy with their society, and their growing sense of betrayal. Perhaps Peeta?
Drusilla Modjeska, The Orchard: I definitely didn't have the emotional maturity for this book when it was assigned to me. I found it interesting in places, but I remember being bored by 'The Adultery Factor' (part one). Now that part makes sense to me, but also the artifice of the whole book is clearer. I don't think I realised, when I read it, that it was fiction. That 'I' was not necessarily Modjeska. That her praise of Stella Bowen over Jean Rys wasn't the True Feminist Way To View That Particular Affair but simply a way. That her criticism of the 'mistress' in that narrative conflicted with her sympathetic portrait of the mistress in the running fiction of the adulterous friends-of-friends. That the reason Alec's commentary on men and aging falls funny and yet confirms the worldview of the essays is that Alec is just as fictional as the rest of them.
One thing I do remember is feeling drawn to the ideas presented in 'Sight and Solitude'. For one thing, that was my first meeting with the idea of the (male) gaze, of social performance and many other things besides. I remember being alarmed by the idea, not of blindness but of aloneness (which did not come with blindness; the narrator's account of her life near-blind is full of other people, and a private isolation I now recognise as depression). And yet attracted to it, to the idea that solitude leads to self-knowledge, to strength and renewal for sustained relationships. That in solitude a woman might know herself as 'neither wife nor mistress'.
I was very lonely when I first read this book. I was surrounded by other people. Neither time away nor a sense of strong, authentic relationships was readily available to me. I had, at that time, three good and true friendships and one dying one. Of the good friendships, two were in their infancy and one was fraught with teenaged romantic angst.
It's not surprising that Modjeska's praise of solitude drew me so strongly. Here, I think, is the root of my belief that what I need - although not necessarily what I will enjoy - is to learn to live alone.
When I first read this book I was afraid that I had found my one true soulmate, my other half. (I hadn't, of course, but I had found the first of the truly kindred spirits I've met since leaving school.) Modjeska promised something else, an alternative to the terrifying sense of belonging which threatened to bind me to someone too early. It was everything I thought I wanted, that other-half-ness (of course; we had more than half imagined it together), but it terrified me, and Modjeska... Modjeska's praise of solitude offered an alternative.
It still draws me, but now I can see the fabrication of it; how the narrator's solitude is filled with people.
This time, I empathise with the men she describes, the men who look around themselves and find women demanding something, something the men never meant to give. That's more or less my experience of relationships - not of not getting what I needed, but of (mostly) men who need things and for some reason think I can give said things to them.
Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair: I re-read this prior to giving my copy away. Such fun! So many quirky world-building details!
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Date: 2013-06-06 10:05 am (UTC)