I instigated a policy a while ago, that I should not read exposés. This was after I read Bushwhacked and The Amercian Way of Death in close succession and found myself questioning the worth of humanity and whether it might be better to just go live in a yurt somewhere in Mongolia (shout out to E Ben, here, who just test-drove that life plan). Anyway, since I also have some strict policies on toilet facilities in my life, a yurt is not a good option, so no more exposés, unless I'm fully braced, and only if consumed in small amounts.
I did not, however, expect For Her Own Good: 150 Years of Advice to Women to be quite so exposé-like. The first chapter explains the patriarchy, not as just any male-dominated society, but the pre-industrial Western world in which the family unit is the basic unit of a person's destiny, and the father/male head of the family is the authority. It was quite interesting, particularly in how women were more valuable then for their unique skills, which capitalism as an economic and social system rendered alien and somewhat irrlevant. (The book was written in the mid-70s, so it's a very different "modern" situation being compared to history.)
Anyway, as soon as you start talking about the social structure of capitalism, and how the personal and the buisness are separate spheres but people are raised to function in the public or "business" world, making the personal sphere secondary and perhaps irrelevant...well, I can't read anymore.
And that's that.
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Friday, July 29, 2005
A Wash
Last night was, on average, a neutral night for literature in my little world. On the one hand, the library was just pathetic. Few or none of the books I wanted were there, even when a) the online catalog said they would be there when I checked earlier in the day, or b) there is no EARTHLY reason they shouldn't be there. I mean, don't you think there should be at least one copy of Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana just SITTING on the SHELF???
And Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third Narnia book. Let me complain briefly: the library system owns about sixty copies of this book. But because some are different editions or even different printings of the same edition or even, I suspect, the same exact copy of the book entered into the database by two different people, I have to sort through twenty five listings for this title before I prove that yes, the main branch carries it, and yes, they're all checked out.
Ah, but on the other hand, you now have to climb over a bookshelf to get into our bathroom. Luckily, that's not the literal truth, but the little corridor does feel rather like a submarine made of books. Yes, we have added a shelf to the pantheon. It has a WHOLE shelf for books that are borrowed from other people, plus three full shelves that we haven't filled up yet. This is all the expanding I'm allowed to do before we buy a house fifteen years from now, when we've saved up the $8,000,000 down payment you need to buy around here.
I'd like to put in a plug for my fiance here, too--Mike was a rock, when this somewhat cheapo bookshelf was letting me down (unhelpful directions, an Allen wrench that didn't match any of the sizes in our tool kit). He was very patient with my snippy impatience, and has once again made me a very happy lady.
Wish me luck making it through the last three hours of the work week.
And Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third Narnia book. Let me complain briefly: the library system owns about sixty copies of this book. But because some are different editions or even different printings of the same edition or even, I suspect, the same exact copy of the book entered into the database by two different people, I have to sort through twenty five listings for this title before I prove that yes, the main branch carries it, and yes, they're all checked out.
Ah, but on the other hand, you now have to climb over a bookshelf to get into our bathroom. Luckily, that's not the literal truth, but the little corridor does feel rather like a submarine made of books. Yes, we have added a shelf to the pantheon. It has a WHOLE shelf for books that are borrowed from other people, plus three full shelves that we haven't filled up yet. This is all the expanding I'm allowed to do before we buy a house fifteen years from now, when we've saved up the $8,000,000 down payment you need to buy around here.
I'd like to put in a plug for my fiance here, too--Mike was a rock, when this somewhat cheapo bookshelf was letting me down (unhelpful directions, an Allen wrench that didn't match any of the sizes in our tool kit). He was very patient with my snippy impatience, and has once again made me a very happy lady.
Wish me luck making it through the last three hours of the work week.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Brief Whine
I won't be long because I should be working, but I'm returning a library book half-read (well, more like 20% read), and I wanted to mention it before it was out of sight and, therefore, mind.
Stick Figure, by Lori Gottlieb, which we plugged on This American Life at one point. I have faith in those people, though they like Dan Savage a lot more than I do. But I couldn't like this book. It's written as a diary of an 11-year-old girl, but it's spotty in its realism as a diary. Of course, no diary-style novel ever reads like a real diary, with the holes, assumptions, whims, ramblings, etc. But these entries all give the very strong impression of an adult interpreting how things must have looked to her precocious young self, with a layer of "confusion" over it. An example is the author's clear awareness of her mother's gender-specific hypocrisies regarding food; another is the line where she says "I look at the women in the magazines; maybe that's what I'm supposed to look like." Well, yes, people feeling that way is a huge problem. But there's this too-precious "confusion" that the girl expresses, which is positively drowned in the adult author's neon signs pointing at the bad messages she was sent as a child.
It's about her eating disorder. I couldn't finish it. So sorry.
Stick Figure, by Lori Gottlieb, which we plugged on This American Life at one point. I have faith in those people, though they like Dan Savage a lot more than I do. But I couldn't like this book. It's written as a diary of an 11-year-old girl, but it's spotty in its realism as a diary. Of course, no diary-style novel ever reads like a real diary, with the holes, assumptions, whims, ramblings, etc. But these entries all give the very strong impression of an adult interpreting how things must have looked to her precocious young self, with a layer of "confusion" over it. An example is the author's clear awareness of her mother's gender-specific hypocrisies regarding food; another is the line where she says "I look at the women in the magazines; maybe that's what I'm supposed to look like." Well, yes, people feeling that way is a huge problem. But there's this too-precious "confusion" that the girl expresses, which is positively drowned in the adult author's neon signs pointing at the bad messages she was sent as a child.
It's about her eating disorder. I couldn't finish it. So sorry.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Trouble in Paradise
I keep getting distracted by work. Not the good kind of distracted, either, where things get done. The cruddy kind where I'm worried about things that are my fault but mostly out of my control. I am a worrier, and mostly not in a constructive way.
But the topic of the day is Literary Fiction: Why? Why? Why? And the answer, I often find, is simply, "For no reason but that the world is a bleak and uncaring void."
First, let's look at what set me off. Alice Munro's Runaway, which is the one I made Brenda lend me, when she would have started me off with a different Alice Munro book. I will first off say that it is extremely well-executed, only rarely falling into what I consider to be the pitfall of literary fiction, which is not being about anything particular. By this I suppose I mean bad LF, although it's also possible that I'm not perceptive enough to get it (this is ENTIRELY possible). But often, I find that these tiny slices of average life in which nothing particular happens are supposed to lead me to a deep understanding of something that I'm not sure even the author knows what. It's like abstract art; Jackson Pollack clearly knew what he was doing, but there are a lot of people out there who took that to mean they could make squiggles and people would buy it.
But Alice Munro is clearly getting at something, and although the actual events in her stories are often very small (even when they could have been made large, like the story of a woman who spent most of her life committed to an institution she should not have been in, she tells them as small and personal), they are interesting and clearly important. There is definitely a density to her stories, and a sense that the entire story is a heavy velvet curtain--there is probably something behind it, but even if there wasn't, the curtain is thick and rich and has a gravity of its own.
She wrote lovely, rich stories with characters who make you feel like you're learning about humanity as you read about them. So why is everything we learn so tragic? Why is it about betrayal, failure, pain, and fate kicking people when they're down? I really can't understand why nothing good ever happens to any of these people. A woman gets married--that's happy, right? But there's no sense of joy in it; it's 1927 and someone has finally asked her. She has a friend with a special gift, but she likes showing it off, and are they really friends?
Every story in this anthology, and, I often feel, most literary fiction, is an exploration of unhappiness, disappointment, and the ways in which unease can creep in where you're expecting small joys. I don't find this useful. Though I know I tend to be a cheerful sort of person, I'm not even asking for all cheer (I've read that book, it was called Three Wishes by Barbara Delinksy, and it was HORRIBLE), but life is a balance of tragedy and joy, of disappointment and pleasure. The pleasure is not made less real or sweet by the joy, anymore than pain is alleviated by the fact that you were once happy.
Katie's observation is that writers fear sentiment, and the positive often smacks of sentiment, so they shy away. This is why I have a philosopy called the New Sincerity, in which irony and cynicism are banished as old-fashioned, and it's once again "cool" to care about things, to love in a sensible and reasonable way (not just passionately and destructively), and to be interested in and pleased by the world around you. I don't always live it, but I'm fond of this philosophy.
In conclusion, I will reluctantly mention Mike's point that A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers is literary fiction with a downer of a topic, but an upbeat tone--striking the balance I'm looking for. I begrudge him this point, true or not, because 1) I don't like that book, and 2) I found it sad, in the manner of something cheerful that has become grimy--a child's favorite toy trampled on in a muddy front yard.
That is all.
But the topic of the day is Literary Fiction: Why? Why? Why? And the answer, I often find, is simply, "For no reason but that the world is a bleak and uncaring void."
First, let's look at what set me off. Alice Munro's Runaway, which is the one I made Brenda lend me, when she would have started me off with a different Alice Munro book. I will first off say that it is extremely well-executed, only rarely falling into what I consider to be the pitfall of literary fiction, which is not being about anything particular. By this I suppose I mean bad LF, although it's also possible that I'm not perceptive enough to get it (this is ENTIRELY possible). But often, I find that these tiny slices of average life in which nothing particular happens are supposed to lead me to a deep understanding of something that I'm not sure even the author knows what. It's like abstract art; Jackson Pollack clearly knew what he was doing, but there are a lot of people out there who took that to mean they could make squiggles and people would buy it.
But Alice Munro is clearly getting at something, and although the actual events in her stories are often very small (even when they could have been made large, like the story of a woman who spent most of her life committed to an institution she should not have been in, she tells them as small and personal), they are interesting and clearly important. There is definitely a density to her stories, and a sense that the entire story is a heavy velvet curtain--there is probably something behind it, but even if there wasn't, the curtain is thick and rich and has a gravity of its own.
She wrote lovely, rich stories with characters who make you feel like you're learning about humanity as you read about them. So why is everything we learn so tragic? Why is it about betrayal, failure, pain, and fate kicking people when they're down? I really can't understand why nothing good ever happens to any of these people. A woman gets married--that's happy, right? But there's no sense of joy in it; it's 1927 and someone has finally asked her. She has a friend with a special gift, but she likes showing it off, and are they really friends?
Every story in this anthology, and, I often feel, most literary fiction, is an exploration of unhappiness, disappointment, and the ways in which unease can creep in where you're expecting small joys. I don't find this useful. Though I know I tend to be a cheerful sort of person, I'm not even asking for all cheer (I've read that book, it was called Three Wishes by Barbara Delinksy, and it was HORRIBLE), but life is a balance of tragedy and joy, of disappointment and pleasure. The pleasure is not made less real or sweet by the joy, anymore than pain is alleviated by the fact that you were once happy.
Katie's observation is that writers fear sentiment, and the positive often smacks of sentiment, so they shy away. This is why I have a philosopy called the New Sincerity, in which irony and cynicism are banished as old-fashioned, and it's once again "cool" to care about things, to love in a sensible and reasonable way (not just passionately and destructively), and to be interested in and pleased by the world around you. I don't always live it, but I'm fond of this philosophy.
In conclusion, I will reluctantly mention Mike's point that A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers is literary fiction with a downer of a topic, but an upbeat tone--striking the balance I'm looking for. I begrudge him this point, true or not, because 1) I don't like that book, and 2) I found it sad, in the manner of something cheerful that has become grimy--a child's favorite toy trampled on in a muddy front yard.
That is all.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Think of the Children!
Okay, Anna pointed out (via her mother--I understand she won't start typing classes till she's at least 6 months old) that there are certain disturbing elements in the story of Babar the Little Elephant. And surely, the fact that he marries Celeste, who is not only his cousin, but still in short dresses, is somewhat troubling.
But I'm more concerned about his callous and selfish relationship with The Old Lady, who takes him in when he's alone and naked (literally!), clothes him, and supplies him, sugar-momma-style, with all his material needs and wants. Then she also supplies cash for gifts for the relatives who start showing up on his doorstep. And what does he do? He takes off with barely a backward glance, in HER car, and doesn't even invite her to the wedding! "Hey baby, it's been great, but you're tying me down, and I gotta be free!"
WHAT???
So in short, this book is full of loose morals and is not appopriate for small children.
There will be another entry later about literary fiction and The New Sincerity, but I need to settle my nerves after that brush with loose French morals.
But I'm more concerned about his callous and selfish relationship with The Old Lady, who takes him in when he's alone and naked (literally!), clothes him, and supplies him, sugar-momma-style, with all his material needs and wants. Then she also supplies cash for gifts for the relatives who start showing up on his doorstep. And what does he do? He takes off with barely a backward glance, in HER car, and doesn't even invite her to the wedding! "Hey baby, it's been great, but you're tying me down, and I gotta be free!"
WHAT???
So in short, this book is full of loose morals and is not appopriate for small children.
There will be another entry later about literary fiction and The New Sincerity, but I need to settle my nerves after that brush with loose French morals.
Monday, July 18, 2005
Feeding the Monster
It looks like the consensus is that I should be a librarian. Thank you everyone who voted--it sounds like a pretty obvious fit, to be honest. I think it's the schooling that scares me more than anything--while I think I could be a librarian, I don't feel confident that I could qualify as one. And I've always resisted the idea of grad school in general. But to be a children's librarian or to work in YA, I think, would be pretty cool. Before I did anything, though, I'd have to find a part time or volunteer position, to figure out if I'd really want to do this every day. I think this is a thing I would plan for after Mike and I get married and get a house.
Besides that research (I really only looked at Simmons, which has a very good program, just to get an idea), this weekend has been full of feeding the addiction. We ordered a new bookshelf (!), which will be a pretty tight fit, but much-needed. Mike seems to think that buying books isn't a big deal, but buying a bookshelf is feeding my addiction. As though I were addicted to furniture. No, needing a new shelf (which we definitely do need) is a sign of the addiction, and what I should probably NOT have done was buy some used books at the Harvard Book Store. But I'd thought long and hard, and really wanted to reread both of them (The Poisonwood Bible and The Midwives). So that's done, and with that and the Amazon package arriving today, I have all the books I'm getting for a while. But oh, what a great ride it was this weekend.
I think today's a library day, too, though I'm not singing the song yet, so it could still go either way. I'm going for returns, but I really want to reread Jon Stewart's Naked Pictures of Famous People, which is light and dumb and funny, so I've started a list, and that's growing. Prince Caspian, Anna Karenina (I have my doubts, but I will try), and The Girls at the Back of the Class, a short, fast book by the author of Dangerous Minds.
Librarianism. I have to get used to it. It's kind of exciting to think about the things my life might hold for me in a few years that are so different from anything I'm doing now. I'm not usually excited about change, but getting married seems to be bringing on all kinds of good things.
Besides that research (I really only looked at Simmons, which has a very good program, just to get an idea), this weekend has been full of feeding the addiction. We ordered a new bookshelf (!), which will be a pretty tight fit, but much-needed. Mike seems to think that buying books isn't a big deal, but buying a bookshelf is feeding my addiction. As though I were addicted to furniture. No, needing a new shelf (which we definitely do need) is a sign of the addiction, and what I should probably NOT have done was buy some used books at the Harvard Book Store. But I'd thought long and hard, and really wanted to reread both of them (The Poisonwood Bible and The Midwives). So that's done, and with that and the Amazon package arriving today, I have all the books I'm getting for a while. But oh, what a great ride it was this weekend.
I think today's a library day, too, though I'm not singing the song yet, so it could still go either way. I'm going for returns, but I really want to reread Jon Stewart's Naked Pictures of Famous People, which is light and dumb and funny, so I've started a list, and that's growing. Prince Caspian, Anna Karenina (I have my doubts, but I will try), and The Girls at the Back of the Class, a short, fast book by the author of Dangerous Minds.
Librarianism. I have to get used to it. It's kind of exciting to think about the things my life might hold for me in a few years that are so different from anything I'm doing now. I'm not usually excited about change, but getting married seems to be bringing on all kinds of good things.
Friday, July 15, 2005
Do You Speak for the Trees?
I have to say, Dr. Seuss's The Lorax is a little, well, preachy. It gets kind of didactic toward the end. Like about how people cut down trees and it destroys the world, but only YOU can prevent forest fires...no, wait, I mean REGROW THE FOREST. It leaned a little hard on its message, is all I'm saying.
The final Travelling Pants installment was delightful.
And now I'm drifting between the very, very literary Alice Munro (stories, Runaway), The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, which is good but not really holding my attention, and The Law of Similars, which I want to read, have been carrying around with me, but have not yet begun. I really loved The Midwives, which was Chris Bohjalian's story about the family of a midwife who has been accused, in effect, of malpractice. And I want to read Trans-Sister Radio, a book which, despite its too-precious title, I'm hoping will be an intelligent and sensitive take on transsexualism.
Lynne is reading Anna Karenina, and I'm tempted to try it with her. I'm tempted, in fact, to see if Renegade Book Club would like to read it in stages--maybe read a few chapters and then meet. Or not--whatever. Still, they had a whole winter study course on it at Williams, and it's one of those books that one ought to read. Plus, I can get it half price from the publisher I work for. What's not to love?
The final Travelling Pants installment was delightful.
And now I'm drifting between the very, very literary Alice Munro (stories, Runaway), The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, which is good but not really holding my attention, and The Law of Similars, which I want to read, have been carrying around with me, but have not yet begun. I really loved The Midwives, which was Chris Bohjalian's story about the family of a midwife who has been accused, in effect, of malpractice. And I want to read Trans-Sister Radio, a book which, despite its too-precious title, I'm hoping will be an intelligent and sensitive take on transsexualism.
Lynne is reading Anna Karenina, and I'm tempted to try it with her. I'm tempted, in fact, to see if Renegade Book Club would like to read it in stages--maybe read a few chapters and then meet. Or not--whatever. Still, they had a whole winter study course on it at Williams, and it's one of those books that one ought to read. Plus, I can get it half price from the publisher I work for. What's not to love?
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
These Days
My aunt (well, second cousin, technically) said this weekend that I should go back to school and get my masters as a librarian. The truth is I've thought of that, and I think I'd love to be a children's librarian, or to build a collection. But something I've learned about myself in the working world is that, in spite of the many skills I have, I'm really quite incapable of being organized. I'm not a systematic person. I'm a stack-it-all-in-the-corner-and-let-god-sort-it-out kind of person. And I think that's pretty sad, because working in a library would, I think, make me very happy.
I also mentioned to my aunt that I'm about to take a bit of a dive into nonfiction. Not that I don't read plenty of it (though I've got a new policy against exposés), but I've got some good stuff on my list. Like The Scientist in the Crib, about how young children try to figure out the world and use logic to come up with all sorts of random conclusions about reality. And Cures, which is the memoir of a gay man who spent a lot of years with therapists who were trying to cure him of being gay. Finding Your North Star (that might not be exactly the title) is a little self-helpy for me, but it's by Martha Beck, whose other books, both memoirs, I really love.
And maybe her career counselling advice will send me back to grad school to become a librarian.
I also mentioned to my aunt that I'm about to take a bit of a dive into nonfiction. Not that I don't read plenty of it (though I've got a new policy against exposés), but I've got some good stuff on my list. Like The Scientist in the Crib, about how young children try to figure out the world and use logic to come up with all sorts of random conclusions about reality. And Cures, which is the memoir of a gay man who spent a lot of years with therapists who were trying to cure him of being gay. Finding Your North Star (that might not be exactly the title) is a little self-helpy for me, but it's by Martha Beck, whose other books, both memoirs, I really love.
And maybe her career counselling advice will send me back to grad school to become a librarian.
Friday, July 08, 2005
Sad Times
It's been a pretty emotional week--the excitement and party at July 4th, and the death of a fellow I knew that happened this week. It's hard to think about other things, but it's hard not to, as well. Right now, I'm mostly reminded to value the people I care about, and to tell them so. I hope everyone takes that advice.
Yesterday we had the first Renegade Book Club meeting, after much diddling around on my part. I have a hard time talking about a book so long after I've read it, especially since I didn't take good notes. It was an excellent book, though I don't know if I'd call it an excellent novel. Gilead was much more of a meditation than a novel. Lynne speaks of dipping into it rather than sitting down to read it, and I must say I agree. The narrator is elderly, and it is often like talking to someone old--somewhat drifty, stream-of-consciousness, moving back and forth between the past, the present and the abstract. But it is also poetry, because it's the story of a man who loved life, and the world, and people, full of flaws--everything. It's warming to meet a very good man in fiction, and to observe him trying to be a good man, when he is truly, of course, just a man.
I hope we keep Renegade Book Club running, and maybe get it a little tighter. I'm not really happy with Old Book Club at this point, so I consider it valuable. But it's hard to keep up with everything. Right now I'm reading a number of things that aren't even on my list. I'm slipping behind. I could use another long weekend, just sitting at home and reading. Sadly, it'll never happen.
Yesterday we had the first Renegade Book Club meeting, after much diddling around on my part. I have a hard time talking about a book so long after I've read it, especially since I didn't take good notes. It was an excellent book, though I don't know if I'd call it an excellent novel. Gilead was much more of a meditation than a novel. Lynne speaks of dipping into it rather than sitting down to read it, and I must say I agree. The narrator is elderly, and it is often like talking to someone old--somewhat drifty, stream-of-consciousness, moving back and forth between the past, the present and the abstract. But it is also poetry, because it's the story of a man who loved life, and the world, and people, full of flaws--everything. It's warming to meet a very good man in fiction, and to observe him trying to be a good man, when he is truly, of course, just a man.
I hope we keep Renegade Book Club running, and maybe get it a little tighter. I'm not really happy with Old Book Club at this point, so I consider it valuable. But it's hard to keep up with everything. Right now I'm reading a number of things that aren't even on my list. I'm slipping behind. I could use another long weekend, just sitting at home and reading. Sadly, it'll never happen.
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Pants Pants Pants
Okay, clearly this book is a winner. Although, for the record, I think the names are going downhill. I mean, Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants is a good name for a book. The Second Summer of the Sisterhood is kind of weak, but at least it has alliteration on its side. But Girls in Pants is just shorthand for Another One of those Books about Those Girls You Like to Read About. I'm sure it'll be a wonderful book, but still.
I don't think I've met anyone who hasn't liked that book--a random girl in the elevator at work spent a long ride and a walk to the sidewalk gushing (with hand gestures). E Ben, who is a MAN, liked it. Mike liked the parts he read over my shoulder. Sensational!
I think, in the first book, I liked Bridget best. I liked that she was such a together, confident person, but that she didn't fully grasp what was going on inside herself. I thought it was a very complete depiction of someone who's skimming along successfully on the surface of life, but who doesn't even know what to do with the depths. Carmen was most like me, though. All temper and no self-control. There were so many moments, in all the stories, that just hit you with their perfect description of exactly what you've felt at one time or another.
Thanks so much for writing, Rachel! Becky's told me that I should talk about books with you, since it's 90% of what I want to talk about. It's nice to find someone who's interested in this Quest to Read Everything.
I don't think I've met anyone who hasn't liked that book--a random girl in the elevator at work spent a long ride and a walk to the sidewalk gushing (with hand gestures). E Ben, who is a MAN, liked it. Mike liked the parts he read over my shoulder. Sensational!
I think, in the first book, I liked Bridget best. I liked that she was such a together, confident person, but that she didn't fully grasp what was going on inside herself. I thought it was a very complete depiction of someone who's skimming along successfully on the surface of life, but who doesn't even know what to do with the depths. Carmen was most like me, though. All temper and no self-control. There were so many moments, in all the stories, that just hit you with their perfect description of exactly what you've felt at one time or another.
Thanks so much for writing, Rachel! Becky's told me that I should talk about books with you, since it's 90% of what I want to talk about. It's nice to find someone who's interested in this Quest to Read Everything.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Ah-HAH!
After many laborious weeks, I have finished reading Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. It was a long book. There was a lot of information in it. He assimilates it very thoroughly--despite its scholarly air, he simplifies his means of arguing by repeating connections he's made over and over again. This gets a little repetitious (yes, Mr. Diamond, I understand that the east-west axis of Eurasia made it easier to spread agricultural advancements quickly across the continent), but on the other hand, I would never have been able to read it if he'd gone with underkill instead of over.
I'm now full of cocktail party tidbits that I suspect I'm going to be boring people about for months to come. Almost all crops native to the Americas are actually native to South America. One of the reasons Europe and Asia developed so quickly compared to other continents was simply that they had a lot of good crops and animals to start with, when it came to farming. If you can't farm, you can't increase your population as fast, and you can't feed yourselves fast enough to have leisure times to develop things like microchips. For example, one factoid I liked was this: a nomadic hunter-gatherer can only have one baby ever 4 years--basically, you can't have a new baby till the old one can walk, otherwise you're not mobile enough. So even if you have enough food for everyone, you still can't increase your population as fast.
Anyway, it was a really interesting book. Well designed, too--because of the repetition I mentioned before, even if you put it down for a while, you can come back to it later and details or conclusions that slipped your mind will be reiterated. This is why I was able to take over a month to read it and yet still retain a lot.
Besides this, I've been reading a LOT of young adult material. I'm running low on steam for it, actually. Now that I've finished The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in time for the movie that will be out in about six months, I can get back to other things. Oh, except that my turn with Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood just came up at the library. I swear that's it, though--after that, I'm reading only serious adult tomes for at least a month.
Well, maybe not serious. I'm eyeing Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency.
I'm now full of cocktail party tidbits that I suspect I'm going to be boring people about for months to come. Almost all crops native to the Americas are actually native to South America. One of the reasons Europe and Asia developed so quickly compared to other continents was simply that they had a lot of good crops and animals to start with, when it came to farming. If you can't farm, you can't increase your population as fast, and you can't feed yourselves fast enough to have leisure times to develop things like microchips. For example, one factoid I liked was this: a nomadic hunter-gatherer can only have one baby ever 4 years--basically, you can't have a new baby till the old one can walk, otherwise you're not mobile enough. So even if you have enough food for everyone, you still can't increase your population as fast.
Anyway, it was a really interesting book. Well designed, too--because of the repetition I mentioned before, even if you put it down for a while, you can come back to it later and details or conclusions that slipped your mind will be reiterated. This is why I was able to take over a month to read it and yet still retain a lot.
Besides this, I've been reading a LOT of young adult material. I'm running low on steam for it, actually. Now that I've finished The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in time for the movie that will be out in about six months, I can get back to other things. Oh, except that my turn with Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood just came up at the library. I swear that's it, though--after that, I'm reading only serious adult tomes for at least a month.
Well, maybe not serious. I'm eyeing Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
A Little Embarassing
I really feel like, between the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants and rereading all my Susan Isaacs once a year, I've missed out on a lot of important things. See the following, for example.
And in case you don't scroll all the way down, commentary first.
1) I suspect that One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch was banned in communist Russia. A very different standard.
2) Speaking of standards, whatever nutjob banned Little House on the Prairie probably has hypersensitivity problems. How do you walk down the street if you're that easily offended?
3) I have already added a few of these to my list, and I'm proud to say that some were already on it.
4) At first I was embarassed by the number of titles that I not only haven't read, but haven't heard of. But now I'm a little skeptical about this list. I mean, I would expect that The Happy Hooker has been banned lots of times--possibly more often than James and the Giant Peach, because, while more libraries are trying to include the latter, astronomically more people would have complaints about the former.
And I think the advice to read more is not necessarily solid. Some of these are wonderful books, but there are plenty of good non-banned books out there.
So that's my two cents. I have to mark up the list, which may take a while.
Here's a list of the top 110 banned books. Bold the ones you've read. Italicize the ones you've read part of. Read more. Convince others to read some.
#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Das Kapital by Karl Marx
#37 Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Emile Jean by Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Emile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
And in case you don't scroll all the way down, commentary first.
1) I suspect that One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch was banned in communist Russia. A very different standard.
2) Speaking of standards, whatever nutjob banned Little House on the Prairie probably has hypersensitivity problems. How do you walk down the street if you're that easily offended?
3) I have already added a few of these to my list, and I'm proud to say that some were already on it.
4) At first I was embarassed by the number of titles that I not only haven't read, but haven't heard of. But now I'm a little skeptical about this list. I mean, I would expect that The Happy Hooker has been banned lots of times--possibly more often than James and the Giant Peach, because, while more libraries are trying to include the latter, astronomically more people would have complaints about the former.
And I think the advice to read more is not necessarily solid. Some of these are wonderful books, but there are plenty of good non-banned books out there.
So that's my two cents. I have to mark up the list, which may take a while.
Here's a list of the top 110 banned books. Bold the ones you've read. Italicize the ones you've read part of. Read more. Convince others to read some.
#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Das Kapital by Karl Marx
#37 Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Emile Jean by Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Emile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Trade Off
So Melissa showers me with new things to read (The Innkeeper's Song, by Peter Beagle, which I was too young to appreciate last time). I need to move faster through what I'm reading now, though, to get to it.
I'll DEFINITELY need to undergo a Personal Library Renaissance this time. No more BPL books (except book club books and reserves that I've been waiting for, assuming they ever come in) until I've read a certain percentage of the books I own and have borrowed from others. Right now all my reading is borrowed--GG&S is from Elizabeth (because she beat me to it at the book fair), Alias Grace from Lynne (who hopefully is reading The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants and enjoying it) and The Ruby in the Smoke from Katie, who will have to read Philip Pullman's Golden Compass series soon.
I also need to read the Chronicles of Narnia. I've only ever read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but I've become fond of C.S. Lewis in my dotage, and the movie's coming out. Once again, my reading comes in waves--before it was books about finding God and parenting, and now it's YA fiction (mostly fantasy). I also really want to read When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro, which Becky was kind enough to say I could keep if I wanted. I'm too greedy, because I really really do want.
I'm looking forward to finishing GG&S and Alias Grace, because I'd like to be able to look at both of those rather vast books more objectively, and maybe write about them here. Instead of about trips to the library and, basically, biblioporn.
I'll DEFINITELY need to undergo a Personal Library Renaissance this time. No more BPL books (except book club books and reserves that I've been waiting for, assuming they ever come in) until I've read a certain percentage of the books I own and have borrowed from others. Right now all my reading is borrowed--GG&S is from Elizabeth (because she beat me to it at the book fair), Alias Grace from Lynne (who hopefully is reading The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants and enjoying it) and The Ruby in the Smoke from Katie, who will have to read Philip Pullman's Golden Compass series soon.
I also need to read the Chronicles of Narnia. I've only ever read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but I've become fond of C.S. Lewis in my dotage, and the movie's coming out. Once again, my reading comes in waves--before it was books about finding God and parenting, and now it's YA fiction (mostly fantasy). I also really want to read When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro, which Becky was kind enough to say I could keep if I wanted. I'm too greedy, because I really really do want.
I'm looking forward to finishing GG&S and Alias Grace, because I'd like to be able to look at both of those rather vast books more objectively, and maybe write about them here. Instead of about trips to the library and, basically, biblioporn.
Friday, June 10, 2005
Impressed with Myself
Wow, so I'm almost out of library books. I had seven items out so assumed I had a lot, but I'm returning three of them, one's an audiobook that I'm going to rip to MP3 and listen to at my leisure, and the other three are either minor or done. So I'm...purged. Clean. I can go where I want, do...whatever I want. Horrible, horrible freedom.
Well, Guns, Germs and Steel is going to take a while. Sara, Sara's father and I all seem to have the problem that that book takes forever to read. I'm on page 255 (which I remember because I creep along page by page), and I'm so proud! It's enjoyable, though. Then there are the Alice Munro books I borrowed from Brenda, and the one last book Melissa lent me. Yeah, and Katie just let me have the Philip Pullman--okay, it's a lot. A lot of it is Young Adult, though, so I suspect I'll breeze through some of it.
And then I'll come back and read a bunch of adolescent girl nonfiction, which seems to be my current thing (Stick Figure, Queen Bees and Wannabes, maybe reread Reviving Ophelia). I'll tell you, I'm going to be woefully underprepared for parenting a boy.
Well, Guns, Germs and Steel is going to take a while. Sara, Sara's father and I all seem to have the problem that that book takes forever to read. I'm on page 255 (which I remember because I creep along page by page), and I'm so proud! It's enjoyable, though. Then there are the Alice Munro books I borrowed from Brenda, and the one last book Melissa lent me. Yeah, and Katie just let me have the Philip Pullman--okay, it's a lot. A lot of it is Young Adult, though, so I suspect I'll breeze through some of it.
And then I'll come back and read a bunch of adolescent girl nonfiction, which seems to be my current thing (Stick Figure, Queen Bees and Wannabes, maybe reread Reviving Ophelia). I'll tell you, I'm going to be woefully underprepared for parenting a boy.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Book House
http://www.liviodemarchi.com/casauk.htm
A crazy person after my own somewhat obsessed heart.
No...no, I have to admit--he's nuttier than I am.
A crazy person after my own somewhat obsessed heart.
No...no, I have to admit--he's nuttier than I am.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Countdown
If I keep my wits about me and my eyes shut in the bookstore, I'm going to have the list back down in the 30s. When it's there, I feel less like I'm trying to beat it back and get somewhere, and more like I have a menu to choose from when it's time to make a book selection. Of course, this depends on the fact that about eight of the 46 books on my list are currently either actively being read or on deck.
The Name on the White House Floor and Other Anxieties of Our Times. Judith Martin before Miss Manners. Collected essays--"our times" being the early 70s. This was a lot of fun--I recommend it.
Which, by the way--add to my top ten list: Miss Manners Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior. I'm not kidding anyone--I'm going to get a copy of the new updated version very very soon.
The Name on the White House Floor and Other Anxieties of Our Times. Judith Martin before Miss Manners. Collected essays--"our times" being the early 70s. This was a lot of fun--I recommend it.
Which, by the way--add to my top ten list: Miss Manners Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior. I'm not kidding anyone--I'm going to get a copy of the new updated version very very soon.
Friday, May 27, 2005
Top Ten?
A top ten list? I don't know if I can do that. I can only think of two books that I would come back to in the category of "favorite book," and even beyond that, these opinions change? Best book I read this year, even, would be hard.
We'd have to start with The Nun's Story by Kathryn Hulme. I've been squawked at, "It's not a true story, you know!!!" (By a librarian, no less--the one in Hudson who used to comment on all your books as you were checking them out.) Yeah, and I only read true stories. That's what all the dragons, spaceships, and true unending romance are about.
Then there's Shining Through, by Susan Isaacs. I don't think I could understand someone who didn't like that book, or at least find it funny. If Bridget Jones were smart and together and funnier, you'd come close to this book.
Um...I'll have to think about the rest of the top ten list. But I can tell you about the next ten.
I'm reading Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, and How to Be Lost by Amanda Eyre Ward, both very enjoyable books. I'm listening to Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell on my MP3 player. And I've got George Takei (you know, Sulu)'s autobiography and an old and obscure book of Judith Martin essays from the library. Plus The Law of Similars (Chris Bohjalian), The Final Solution (Michael Chabon), The Thief Lord, two books of Alice Munro stories, the collected short works of Dorothy Parker, not to mention the MAMMOTH Autobiography of Henry VIII: A Novel. And that's just the borrowed stuff.
We'd have to start with The Nun's Story by Kathryn Hulme. I've been squawked at, "It's not a true story, you know!!!" (By a librarian, no less--the one in Hudson who used to comment on all your books as you were checking them out.) Yeah, and I only read true stories. That's what all the dragons, spaceships, and true unending romance are about.
Then there's Shining Through, by Susan Isaacs. I don't think I could understand someone who didn't like that book, or at least find it funny. If Bridget Jones were smart and together and funnier, you'd come close to this book.
Um...I'll have to think about the rest of the top ten list. But I can tell you about the next ten.
I'm reading Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, and How to Be Lost by Amanda Eyre Ward, both very enjoyable books. I'm listening to Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell on my MP3 player. And I've got George Takei (you know, Sulu)'s autobiography and an old and obscure book of Judith Martin essays from the library. Plus The Law of Similars (Chris Bohjalian), The Final Solution (Michael Chabon), The Thief Lord, two books of Alice Munro stories, the collected short works of Dorothy Parker, not to mention the MAMMOTH Autobiography of Henry VIII: A Novel. And that's just the borrowed stuff.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Too...Many...Books....
Joy, rapture, the autobiography of George Takei has made it to the library in time for me to pick it up with an obscure and probably boring essay by Judith Martin that I've reserved. And the author of the book I just started, Amanda Eyre Ward (How to Be Lost is the book, and so far so good. She went to Williams, I'll point out for the tenth time) wrote a review a long time ago of a book I had changed my mind about wanting to read; the review changed it back. The book is Strip City, and it's a non-fiction account of a road trip that an ex-stripper took just before settling down to marry a fairly straight-laced military man. Basically, she strips her way across the country. I wasn't sure at first that I'd want to read about someone who thinks that flesh trade is a positive life experience, but it sounds from this review like there's a little more to it than that. (The review is here, by the way)
So my list is back up to 48, though I'm working my way through two of them, and my two library books are going to be another two. Then I really need to get to some books on my shelf, mostly borrowed, that are not on the list, though.
I'm so excited! So very!
So my list is back up to 48, though I'm working my way through two of them, and my two library books are going to be another two. Then I really need to get to some books on my shelf, mostly borrowed, that are not on the list, though.
I'm so excited! So very!
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Misogynist or Misanthropist?
My newfound comprehension of Mormons makes me see pretty clearly how Orson Scott Card feels about women--or anyway, how he addresses them in his books. That is, they can be good people (chiefly by being good wives and mothers), but they are weak and ignorant, and need protecting. That's overstating the case, but if he wasn't understated, it wouldn't have taken me this long to figure it out. Rachel & Leah of his Women of Genesis series brought this one home.
And this has made me think about male writers who address women. It's not the kind of thing I usually notice; I suspect that's mostly because I'm less aware of the differences between men and women than some people. Everyone is "people," and then whether you're a man or woman will have an effect on what kind of person you are. That sounds kinda sickeningly simplistic, but the personal insights behind it are not the point here.
The point is some books in which I've disagreed with people on how men write women (I can't speak to how accurate women are when they write men). For example, She's Come Undone, by Wally Lamb. I might be the only person I know who thought that was NOT a very good depiction of a women. It was a very well-written person, especially for someone so troubled and messed up, which is hard a hard thing to do appealingly with your narrator and protagonist. I don't think I would have any complaints if everyone hadn't ranted about how well the male author wrote the female character. I don't think she was very specifically female at all--if anything, I felt a disjoint between the fact that her personality was formed by sexual abuse (in her early teen years, not as a young child) and the aggressive, active, self-sabotaging attitude of the character. Not that women aren't that way, sometimes, but for a book lauded as having a feminine sensibility, I wasn't convinced.
Let's see, then there's The Color of Light, by William Goldman. Possibly the only people who have read this book are the ones I've lent it to, but I've loved this for a long time. Mostly this is because William Goldman is a hilarious and brutal writer. When Jo borrowed it, though, her reaction was, "He doesn't really like women, does he?" which was the first time I realized that all the female characters in the book were pretty messed up in one way or another. I brooded on that for a while and then realized that ALL the characters were pretty messed up; the reason the women were notably unredeemed was mostly because Chub was the only redeemed one at all. So that's men 1, women 0--not a great score for either team.
(Two Brew wasn't redeemed--he was just rich and funny)
As a partially relevant side-note, I've always thought Stephen King wrote women in a style that I would call poor but likeable. He thinks women know something he doesn't--have some grasp of Truth or Humanity that any man (or at least King himself) lacks. But I find that kind of appealing, in a flattering way. Heck yeah, I have a deep grasp of the cosmos. I'll take that kind of credit wherever I can get it.
And then there's Orson Scott Card. I retain my fondness for Ender's Game, and I'll say that I enjoyed Enchantment, Homebody, and Speaker for the Dead. But these Women of Genesis books, besides tricking me into thinking I knew Bible stories when I really learned Book of Mormon stories, are full of men who, even when they're CLEARLY WRONG--within the context of the story--are treated as right for being men. And when women are right, they're still just women. It makes for a weird imbalance of character.
I was quite old before I thought of myself as a girl. I mean, I was never a tomboy (though I wanted to be), but I think there are a lot of moments that make people identify with their gender that I'm missing, either because of how I grew up or because I've always been a little dim that way. But I've often felt like I was watching these interactions involving gender with a certain objectivity. I wonder if that's at all valid, or if everyone feels that way.
And this has made me think about male writers who address women. It's not the kind of thing I usually notice; I suspect that's mostly because I'm less aware of the differences between men and women than some people. Everyone is "people," and then whether you're a man or woman will have an effect on what kind of person you are. That sounds kinda sickeningly simplistic, but the personal insights behind it are not the point here.
The point is some books in which I've disagreed with people on how men write women (I can't speak to how accurate women are when they write men). For example, She's Come Undone, by Wally Lamb. I might be the only person I know who thought that was NOT a very good depiction of a women. It was a very well-written person, especially for someone so troubled and messed up, which is hard a hard thing to do appealingly with your narrator and protagonist. I don't think I would have any complaints if everyone hadn't ranted about how well the male author wrote the female character. I don't think she was very specifically female at all--if anything, I felt a disjoint between the fact that her personality was formed by sexual abuse (in her early teen years, not as a young child) and the aggressive, active, self-sabotaging attitude of the character. Not that women aren't that way, sometimes, but for a book lauded as having a feminine sensibility, I wasn't convinced.
Let's see, then there's The Color of Light, by William Goldman. Possibly the only people who have read this book are the ones I've lent it to, but I've loved this for a long time. Mostly this is because William Goldman is a hilarious and brutal writer. When Jo borrowed it, though, her reaction was, "He doesn't really like women, does he?" which was the first time I realized that all the female characters in the book were pretty messed up in one way or another. I brooded on that for a while and then realized that ALL the characters were pretty messed up; the reason the women were notably unredeemed was mostly because Chub was the only redeemed one at all. So that's men 1, women 0--not a great score for either team.
(Two Brew wasn't redeemed--he was just rich and funny)
As a partially relevant side-note, I've always thought Stephen King wrote women in a style that I would call poor but likeable. He thinks women know something he doesn't--have some grasp of Truth or Humanity that any man (or at least King himself) lacks. But I find that kind of appealing, in a flattering way. Heck yeah, I have a deep grasp of the cosmos. I'll take that kind of credit wherever I can get it.
And then there's Orson Scott Card. I retain my fondness for Ender's Game, and I'll say that I enjoyed Enchantment, Homebody, and Speaker for the Dead. But these Women of Genesis books, besides tricking me into thinking I knew Bible stories when I really learned Book of Mormon stories, are full of men who, even when they're CLEARLY WRONG--within the context of the story--are treated as right for being men. And when women are right, they're still just women. It makes for a weird imbalance of character.
I was quite old before I thought of myself as a girl. I mean, I was never a tomboy (though I wanted to be), but I think there are a lot of moments that make people identify with their gender that I'm missing, either because of how I grew up or because I've always been a little dim that way. But I've often felt like I was watching these interactions involving gender with a certain objectivity. I wonder if that's at all valid, or if everyone feels that way.
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