Books: more update!
Aug. 13th, 2013 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricShe who travels long-haul reads many books. So does she who travels around the UK on holiday.
Jack Hafferkamp, ed, The Ecstatic Moment: The Best of Libido: This was a very odd anthology! I enjoyed some of the stories and was anthropologically fascinated by others.
For instance, there seemed to be a common thread of fantasies about sex with feminists. But not in the yay, feminists are at home with their sexual selves and are therefore good in bed way. In the 'I, manly man, am sexually attractive to feminists! Even if I am a man! So there!' way (the most interesting of these was a voyeurism story about a chap who was persuaded to appear naked before an invisible of audience of feminists who would insult him for the sins of his gender; and then they also asked to see him masturbate). To add to this, there was one story about a correspondance between a pro-porn feminist and a sex-negative feminist, which ended in the brilliant line "so, dear editors, that is why this piece is late: I have started a mutual masturbation affair with a MacDworkinite female lawyer, straight and married".
All of the men in the section entitled 'men' I hated, most of the stories in 'women in charge' were actually about men; stories about women had a worrying tendency to "goddess-self" imagery, except for the above-mentioned story about the mutual-masturbating porn-debating feminists. 'Women alone' was probably the most sympathetic section, but not necessarily the most interesting. The group sex stories included a sort of memoir by a now-retired chap who'd been in publishing in the 50s: I didn't *like* him, he was self-satisfied, smug about getting so many ladies and about having "the balls" to publish certain racy texts. But it was an interesting read. Especially with a view to how casual sex might be conducted prior to widely-available contraception and prior to AIDS - it made an interesting primary source in that regard.
Most of the poetry was dreadful except for one great poem about tits.
Moyra Caldecott, Etheldreda: Hah! This was pretty bad, but surprisingly good for a terrible historical novella. I had some historical issues, as expected - the one which comes to mind is the fact that all the depicted royals have church weddings. NOT ACTUALLY A THING AT THIS STAGE.
As a story... I'm actually surprised with how well-paced the narrative was. It felt stilted at first and in a few other places, but for something patched together from Bede, hagiography and the Chronicle, it wasn't bad!
What I liked best about it is that I could tell that Caldecott was fascinated with some of the same features of Anglo-Saxon history at this period as I: the complex back-and-forth of conversion; the incredibly interlinked royal politics and family trees producing a cast of interesting characters who crop up everywhere; and the scheming machinations of Archbiship Wilfrid. I don't grok her characterisation of him - my head!canon Wilfrid is older, pricklier, and less soppy about Etheldreda - but hers does fit. I'd have made more of the hilarious back-and-forth Aelfric depicts between Etheldreda, Wilfrid, and Ecgfrid, with the two royals each bribing him to be on their side: but hers does fit.
Having said that, the weird not-specifically-christian spiritualist bent was, well, weird. And lead to historically inaccurate theology in places.
Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit: Well, this was... this was a thing! I really enjoyed this, but didn't find it all-absorbing or angst-inducing, which is a surprise, given my well-documented Issues around fundamentalism and apostacy (not to mention teh queer). What I liked best was the narrator's wry, off-beat observations on human nature, and sometimes on the nature of history.
Where I was disappointed is that we didn't really get a wedge in to her mother's disappointments. Her mother's story is presented as parental fact, unchangeable - to be lived with, not questioned. And yet one could see from the other secondary female characters that their strictly religious life had disappointed them at times; that they had had to make compromises and been betrayed. I felt like the first-person narration and the narrowing of the story down to the question of sexuality left out other stories worth telling. Had the narrator not been queer, but had been, say, heterosexual and just plain into sex, she would have been betrayed by her context. I would like to have seen more poking at her decision not to become a missionary 'in the field', too: what if she'd wanted to abandon missionary work alltogether?
I don't know, these aren't FLAWS in the book. But as always when it comes to narratives of women and religion, I chafe against one-sided depictions. More than one kind of woman is let down by any given religious context.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet: Prince of Denmark, ed. by Phillip Edwards: Well, it's Hamlet. This edition is particularly interesting, with a host of critical apparatus relating to the manuscript and revision history.
I was fascinated by the early part, and the complex themes set up, and felt let down by the abrupt down-spiral. EVERYONE DIES IN A PILE OH NOES. I'm not convinced this is Shakespeare at his best - in fact, the swathes of text which had been deleted by the time we reach the final MS suggests someone (either Shakespeare or a patron?) else agreed with me, and thought the darn thing had too much waffle and repetition.
I have yet to read the full introduction in this one.
Jack Hafferkamp, ed, The Ecstatic Moment: The Best of Libido: This was a very odd anthology! I enjoyed some of the stories and was anthropologically fascinated by others.
For instance, there seemed to be a common thread of fantasies about sex with feminists. But not in the yay, feminists are at home with their sexual selves and are therefore good in bed way. In the 'I, manly man, am sexually attractive to feminists! Even if I am a man! So there!' way (the most interesting of these was a voyeurism story about a chap who was persuaded to appear naked before an invisible of audience of feminists who would insult him for the sins of his gender; and then they also asked to see him masturbate). To add to this, there was one story about a correspondance between a pro-porn feminist and a sex-negative feminist, which ended in the brilliant line "so, dear editors, that is why this piece is late: I have started a mutual masturbation affair with a MacDworkinite female lawyer, straight and married".
All of the men in the section entitled 'men' I hated, most of the stories in 'women in charge' were actually about men; stories about women had a worrying tendency to "goddess-self" imagery, except for the above-mentioned story about the mutual-masturbating porn-debating feminists. 'Women alone' was probably the most sympathetic section, but not necessarily the most interesting. The group sex stories included a sort of memoir by a now-retired chap who'd been in publishing in the 50s: I didn't *like* him, he was self-satisfied, smug about getting so many ladies and about having "the balls" to publish certain racy texts. But it was an interesting read. Especially with a view to how casual sex might be conducted prior to widely-available contraception and prior to AIDS - it made an interesting primary source in that regard.
Most of the poetry was dreadful except for one great poem about tits.
Moyra Caldecott, Etheldreda: Hah! This was pretty bad, but surprisingly good for a terrible historical novella. I had some historical issues, as expected - the one which comes to mind is the fact that all the depicted royals have church weddings. NOT ACTUALLY A THING AT THIS STAGE.
As a story... I'm actually surprised with how well-paced the narrative was. It felt stilted at first and in a few other places, but for something patched together from Bede, hagiography and the Chronicle, it wasn't bad!
What I liked best about it is that I could tell that Caldecott was fascinated with some of the same features of Anglo-Saxon history at this period as I: the complex back-and-forth of conversion; the incredibly interlinked royal politics and family trees producing a cast of interesting characters who crop up everywhere; and the scheming machinations of Archbiship Wilfrid. I don't grok her characterisation of him - my head!canon Wilfrid is older, pricklier, and less soppy about Etheldreda - but hers does fit. I'd have made more of the hilarious back-and-forth Aelfric depicts between Etheldreda, Wilfrid, and Ecgfrid, with the two royals each bribing him to be on their side: but hers does fit.
Having said that, the weird not-specifically-christian spiritualist bent was, well, weird. And lead to historically inaccurate theology in places.
Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit: Well, this was... this was a thing! I really enjoyed this, but didn't find it all-absorbing or angst-inducing, which is a surprise, given my well-documented Issues around fundamentalism and apostacy (not to mention teh queer). What I liked best was the narrator's wry, off-beat observations on human nature, and sometimes on the nature of history.
Where I was disappointed is that we didn't really get a wedge in to her mother's disappointments. Her mother's story is presented as parental fact, unchangeable - to be lived with, not questioned. And yet one could see from the other secondary female characters that their strictly religious life had disappointed them at times; that they had had to make compromises and been betrayed. I felt like the first-person narration and the narrowing of the story down to the question of sexuality left out other stories worth telling. Had the narrator not been queer, but had been, say, heterosexual and just plain into sex, she would have been betrayed by her context. I would like to have seen more poking at her decision not to become a missionary 'in the field', too: what if she'd wanted to abandon missionary work alltogether?
I don't know, these aren't FLAWS in the book. But as always when it comes to narratives of women and religion, I chafe against one-sided depictions. More than one kind of woman is let down by any given religious context.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet: Prince of Denmark, ed. by Phillip Edwards: Well, it's Hamlet. This edition is particularly interesting, with a host of critical apparatus relating to the manuscript and revision history.
I was fascinated by the early part, and the complex themes set up, and felt let down by the abrupt down-spiral. EVERYONE DIES IN A PILE OH NOES. I'm not convinced this is Shakespeare at his best - in fact, the swathes of text which had been deleted by the time we reach the final MS suggests someone (either Shakespeare or a patron?) else agreed with me, and thought the darn thing had too much waffle and repetition.
I have yet to read the full introduction in this one.