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tiamatschild) wrote2011-07-09 05:56 pm
tiamatschild) wrote2011-07-09 05:56 pm
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The first section of my reading list from June 2011.
- The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
Not my favorite novel ever and I probably wouldn't have finished it if I hadn't started it while stuck in a federal jury lobby with no other reading material but some five year old National Geographics and a Wall Street Journal from a month ago, but as it was I got far enough into the book to get truly swept up in the plot. The trouble is, I think Mercedes the grown up is A) rather more admirable than Nantes As The Count and B) is rather more interesting. Also, the slavery side conversation makes no sense to me, although I might just be missing cultural context. Still, lots of the side characters are fascinating!
- Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
How many read throughs does that make it? I... am not sure. Lots. Actually, this was an audio recording, listened to while I did housework and sewing. Darn, itty bitty Nobby is weirdly adorable. Also, I will ship Sandra/Rosie forever. They are too too awesome and cute. (Also love the "Do it or receive an aunt's curse!" moment. It is not often Vetinari winds up stuck in a Bertie Wooster narrative position.)
- The Wine Dark Sea, Patrick O'Brian
Stephen and llamas! Jack and legal dilemmas! SAM PANDA. SAM PANDA omigod he is so awesome! He is he is he is! Father Panda makes me turn into a puddle of goo every time. "Will there ever be tea at all?" Padeen asks. "I was forced to regard him either as a hypocrite or as a begetter of false babies," says Stephen, re Rousseau. Ahahahaha. It's true. Take that, Rousseau, you self absorbed old misogynist. *cough*
- Records of a Floating Life, Shen Fu
Ah, back to first time reads. This was AWESOME. I bought an Oxford World Editions paperback of it while at a thrift shop (which I had come to actually looking for multiple other things entirely, but it called to me) intending to save it for later. But it was too hot to walk back, especially since my promise to my mother not to go walking in the park where a young woman was murdered last fall still holds (no great loss, really, it's out of my way and not exceptionally attractive) so I took the bus. Which proved to be on such a very round about route that I was forced, forced I say, to open it. By the time I got back to the bus stop where I'd parked my bike, it was all I could do to put it back in my pack to bike home. In fact, if the library hadn't been closed, I probably would have just gone there to finish. It's a slim volume, so it didn't keep me up late, but it's a fascinating memoir, about the life of a frequently broke Chinese gentleman living in the 17th century, and his grand, playful love affair with his wife. They're BFFs! She crossdresses and they go to festivals together until she blows her cover by flirting with other women in ways men can't get away with! They garden and devise ways to live on a shoestring and make mistakes that make his parents furious. For those who are not really huge devotees of travel literature, I imagine the last chapter would be the least interesting. I found it a little disappointing myself, because I was hoping more for more narrative, but even so I really want to go to a lot of the places Shen Fu describes! ...Although, since four centuries have passed uh. Doubtless they are now very different.
- The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of "Defective" Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures since 1915, Martin S. Pernick
This is really fascinating stuff, especially on the film history end, but I'm still a little disturbed that Pernick focuses more on connections to the "euthanasia" of adults in his drawing contemporary connections, and seems simply completely unaware of the continuing tendency of caregivers to kill children and babies with disabilities. I am not sure I can fully articulate the reasons, this far out from reading the book (I need to go back so I can do so for my annotated bibliography) but it rang... wrong to me. He emphasizes discontinuity in some very strange ways and I'm not sure I fully comprehend his reasons for doing so or the point he is attempting to make by doing so. (And that sentence got a bit redundant, but I do think they're separate issues, in a way.)
- Silas Marner, George Eliot
YAY I love this book. Silas's bemusement with the high church experience of his Anglican neighbors, which seems to him to have so little connection to his non-conforming youth and childhood made me laaaaaugh and laugh. Oh, Silas. I've been there, honey. Also, Eliot's straight up, "Privilege Puts Blinkers On Your Empathy" wrt the whole adoption bit made me cheer.
- The Politics of Heredity: Essays on Eugenics, Biomedicine, and the Nature-Nuture Debate, Diane B. Paul
Some of this is really interesting, and there is some stuff I did not know in it. ... ... ...On the other hand, Paul feels really condescending at points. Was it really necessary to have an entire essay length section on the ambiguity of the term "eugenics"? And is it just me or is it deeply creepy how many people appear to consider it vital to lecture us on how eugenics wasn't necessarily all that bad? (I am being unfair to Paul here, that isn't precisely her argument, and where she actually deals with actual people with disabilities she demonstrates respect for their agency - the problem is that she is, for some reason, invested in abstractions of control over heavily abstracted disabilities, and this conflicts with what she writes about actual people with actual, instead of abstracted, disabilities. I think. I'd have to do a lot of rereading to get a really powerful handle on what's going on.)
- Minds Made Feeble: The Myth and Legacy of the Kallikak Family, David Smith
Interesting stuff about publication histories and Smith's reconstruction of how the "Kallikaks" were constructed in the first place, but full of unexamined ablism, and some basic misunderstanding of historical categories of ability.
- Making Marriage Modern: Women's Sexuality from the Progressive Era to World War II, Christina Simmons
An interesting overview in a lot of ways, although not really anything I didn't know, and curiously shy of even mentioning eugenics. I also, I must confess, came fairly close to throwing the book across the room when Simmons attributes "anarchist wives" criticism of Goldman entirely to fears that she might seduce their husbands. Uh. No. Also, no. Also, I thought this was supposed to be a feminist text? Doesn't that kind of imply taking women seriously? (There were multiple directions of critique of Goldman from an anarchist feminist perspective at the time - one of them being Parson's observations on how very unthinkingly privileged and consequently impracticable Goldman's vision actually was.)
- The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies, Martin Norden
Really interesting and insightful, but in places it suffers from Norden's decision to disregard mental illness as disability. I understand why he made that decision - the book is long enough already - but it's still bizarre to read a summation and anlysis of The Deer Hunter's treatment of disability that doesn't even touch on its use of PTSD. I also found the treatment of gender rather frustrating, because Norden never directly addresses the fact that the patterns he identifies as ablist (which are ablist, definitely) revolve around the camera treating men like women. (He also seems to think that depicting internalized ablism is automatically unrealistic, which I... ... ...don't think it is, even though that internalized ablism is often handled by film makers in really exasperating ways that either reinforce it or involve helpful ablebodied people educating people with disabilities out of their ablism gag.)
- Charity Girl, Georgette Heyer
The reviewer quoted on the cover claiming that how the romances shook out would surprise me was wrong - I identified the primary couple within fifteen pages. Still, they were god friends and that was nice.
- Desolation Island, Patrick O'Brian
The image of the whale surfacing alongside the Leopard is still incredibly gorgeous and evocative for me, no matter how many times I read it or hear it read aloud. Guuuuuh. And the bit with the poem! And the typhus epidemic is terrifying. And this remains, for me, a major touchstone novel for who Jack Aubrey is. That chase with the Dutch seventy four - !
- False Colors, Georgette Heyer
... .... ....I don't think I like this novel much. Waaaaaay too much early/mid 20th century style defense of the sexual double standard and while I enjoy disguise plots, the twins thing is over an ethical line for me, although at least it's also over an ethical line for the hero. ...Which. Actually. May make it worse. Uh.
- Sherlock Holmes: Three Tales of Intrigue, Arthur Conan Doyle
Audiobook again. A very nice recording, although I could wish one of the three tales had been almost anything but "The Crooked Man". Talk about internalized ablism and racist colonial tropes!
- Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Also audiobook. It's fascinating to me how tied this novel is to the early nineties, when it was written. It's not just a matter of the technology, the political and religious allegory and entwining really really really depend on that political moment.
- Needlemade Laces: Materials, Designs, Techniques, and Patterns, Pat Earnshaw
This is fun! I'm looking forward to working on some of these. The patterns are well drafted look simple enough to work with.
- H.M.S. Surprise, Patrick O'Brian
Diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil! Also, Sophie's quest to ruin her reputation is hilarious. And aaaagh the aftermath of Stephen's interrogation!
- The Children, Edith Wharton
No one does creepy idyllic domestic like Wharton. No one.
- Myths and Legends of Our Own Land, Charles M. Skinner
This is horrible. Don't try to read it. Really, it's horrible. In addition to being just plain BORING it gets misogyny, racism, and classisim all over the place.
- Friday's Child, Georgette Heyer
I really quite liked this one. The circle of friends aspect was really nice.
- Marriage Law and Practice in the Long Eighteenth Century: A Reassessment, Rebecca Probert
OMIGOSH. I enjoyed this enormously. It was completely awesome, and kind of like sitting in a friendly, roundtable style lecture with a really good teacher. I learned a lot from this text, not just about marriage law in the long Eighteenth century, or the historiography of same, but about the practice of history, and the uses and limitations of fragmentary documentary evidence. Totally and completely worth it. So glad it was recommended to me.
- The Commodore, Patrick O'Brian
I love Brigid SO MUCH. Also, Clarissa continues to kick ass. The yellow fever section is fascinating and disturbing, and eeeeeeeeeeeeee! Di's final lines! When she tells Stephen she's never letting him out of her bed again! Ha! Oh dear, those two.
- One Piece Vol. 2: Buggy the Clown, Oda Eiichiro
Nami is so hilariously awesome and I love the running theme through these early volumes with her of being completely taken aback by Luffy and Zoro and the weird simpatico thing they have going. It is a deeply weird simpatico thing. Also, Luffy deciding to take responsibility for the dog's honor. Oh, Luffy, you dork.
- Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature, Rosemarie Garland Thomson
Really useful, really fascinating stuff. I think I'm less sanguine about the extraordinary body as, well, powerful because extraordinary than Thomson is, but her reading in that direction is still really interesting. (I suspect this is partly a different directions thing. I've read so much SFF that I'm used to that trope, and really, I think it's intensely problematic and more closely allied to old tropes of the gothic than Thomson sees it as being. Morrison's work, it seems to me, is different not because of the extraordinariness of her people with disabilities, their status as metaphor, but because of their status as character - Morrison's showcasing of their agency and action.)
- Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
Pratchett's shifting conceptions of the Discworld fascinate. Guards! Guards! is old enough that he hasn't decided to allow his characters crossbows yet. The Night Watch are still carrying pikes in play off of other fantasy series. This is the only novel with the Watch where they do that - Pratchett's ditched the pikes as narratively impractical by Men at Arms. (Dang, I wish there was as much Sybil in subsequent watch books as there is here. She is so incredibly awesome.)
- One Piece Vol. 1: Romance Dawn, Oda Eiichiro
Oh, Luffy. Oh, Zoro. Goodness, Zoro really is a TOTAL marshmellow. And there's something about his close narrative association with women that intrigues me. But I haven't entirely figured it out yet. It's just. Interesting. (As is his instant, if slightly cranky, simpatico with Luffy. Heeeee.)
One Piece Vol. 3: Don't Get Fooled Again, One Piece Vol. 4: The Black Cat Pirates, One Piece Vol. 5: For Whom the Bell Tolls, One Piece Vol. 6: The Oath, Oda Eiichiro
Heck with it, I'm collapsing these into approximations of arcs or chunks I read in, even though that's not always going to be practical. Ahem. Oh, Usopp. Oh, Nami. I admit to loving Zoro being a troll here - his grin as he tells the kids that they ate Usopp is just - Oh dear. Zoro. And Kaya, oh, Kaya. I love her final decision of what to do with her life, and the remarkable degree to which she retains her self possession. I love that the primary issue with Usopp's slightly panicked relation re pirates is, for everyone who knows him, not his honesty, but the possibility that he meant to hurt people with his gift for storytelling. It's refreshing! (Also: Yay! Hello, Going Merry! Welcome to the crew!)
One Piece Vol. 7: The Crap-Geezer, Oda Eiichiro
Ah, official translations picked up from the library and their deeply weird bowdlerization tendencies.
Hellboy: The Crooked Man and Others, Mike Mignola
I made the mistake of reading this after dark. Didn't get to sleep until after midnight. AAAAGH. The title story is supremely disturbing.
The Golden Ocean, Patrick O'Brian
Okay, really? This is not all that good. But it has its amusing bits, and aw, ridiculous teenage boys are always adorable even if you do frequently want to punch them in the nose. Vile nuisances that they so often are. <3 (God, I'm glad I'll never be a teenager again. Once is more than enough.)
Medieval Domesticity, Ed. Maryanne Kowalelski & P.J.P. Goldberg
All the essays in here are great, but AHHHHH OMIGOSH. Everyone NEEDS to read the one on Patient Griselda and burgess laymen's emotional attraction to, and involvement with, the story. It is SO BRILLIANT and it makes SO MUCH SENSE and then it's TOTALLY OBVIOUS omigosh omigosh.
One Piece Vol. 10: OK, Let's Stand Up!, One Piece Vol. 11: The Meanest Man in the East, Oda Eiichiro
Library didn't have the bulk of this arc, alas, so I'll have to go back and read everything again. Eeeeeee! I still love Luffy seemingly ignoring Arlong until he looks up and says, "Use? What do you think Nami is?"
One Piece Vol. 12: The Legend Begins, One Piece Vol. 13: It's all right!, One Piece Vol. 14: Instinct, One Piece Vol. 15: Straight Ahead!, Oda Eiichiro
Vivi! Tashigi! EEEEE. I love them BOTH. And I love Usopp's gooiness over the giants, and Zoro's proposal that he cut off his feet (and then his choice to die in a "cool pose" and Nami and Vivi's reaction when he tells them they should have picked something noble too, oh kids) and Luffy and Zoro's stupid fight and that both Nami and Zoro pretended to get drunk, and EEEEEEEEEE. I love Zoro and Tashigi's dynamic of hilarious over idealistic shouty weird kind of sort of rivalry. And Viiiiiiiviiiiiiii. And Laboon! And oh, I love Nami and Vivi together, I do, I do, I do.
B.P.R.D.: Hollow Earth and Other Stories, Created Mike Mignola, Ed. Scott Allie
Being field commander is NOT KATE CORRIGAN'S DREAM JOB. Heeeeee oh dear. I love Kate. I love Liz. I love Liz and it is a crying shame there is not more of her conscious in the title story. Although "I pretty much have to. I don't have any pants," is a great line.
B.P.R.D.: The Soul of Venice and Other Stories Created Mike Mignola, Ed. Scott Allie
Roger dating an Estrucan goddess is the best. thing. ever.
The Professor's Daughter, Joann Sfar and Emmanuel Guibert
I... ... ...don't know what I think about this. The art is incredibly beautiful and evocative, and it was a fun read starting out and curiosity carried me through, but it's really kind of... incoherent in places. It swings rapidly from looking like it's going to confront colonialist tropes and misogyny to... ... ...I don't even know, wandering off into something that bears a strong resemblance to standard horror movie fare. Revelations and explanations don't fit with prior presentations of character, and the end... is emotionally unconvincing to me. It's gorgeous though!
B.P.R.D. Plague of Frogs, Mike Mignola
Oh, Kate. Oh, Liz. Kate shooting up the graveyard of zombies is awesome, and Liz's comfort and ease with her powers is fantastic to see. Also, Roger's dream is terrifying, and his encounter with the little girl always makes me gasp and tear up. And Abe - Oh, Abe, you get mixed up in the most horrible things, don't you?
One Piece Vol. 32: Love Song, One Piece Vol. 33:, One Piece Vol. 34: The City of Water, Water Seven, One Piece Vol 35: Captain, One Piece Vol. 36: The Ninth Justice, One Piece Vol. 37: Tom, One Piece Vol. 38: Rocketman!, One Piece Vol. 39: Scramble, Oda Eiichiro
...There is really an incredible amount that happens in this seven volumes. Goodness gracious. Water Seven is a ridiculously dense arc - there's the introductions and engagement with Galley La, CP9, Franky and Co, Kokoro and Chimney (I FREAKING LOVE CHIMNEY. I want to see her again eventually, hilarious and awesome - I want to write all the gen about her growing up and keeping a lighthouse and having her own kinds of carefree, cheerily fearless adventures) , and Yokozuna. There's the worldbuilding - Good lord, how many locations are in just these volumes, let me think... there's Water Seven itself, which is a complex city with all kinds of social tensions and socially and economically marked places, there's Enies Lobby, although that really only starts to be explored at the end of this particular chunk, and there's the sea trains, which I think definitely count as locations. There's the history! Personal history, civic history, personal history which is civic history, all the things which seem more and more intriguing the further I read - Koroko is a mermaid who married a human, either before or after she moved to a human city, raised her own half human half sea people children and is now raising her grandaughter (and a cat - I respect the cat's species ID and so do Koroko and Chimmey), while Tom is a fishman who moved to a human city, adopted it so completely as his own that he gave the last years of his life entirely to it, and raised two difficult human boys to be absolutely wonderful men (really WEIRD men, granted, but still). (Unrelatedly, the official translation renders his catchphrase as "Do it with a boom!" which... I do understand why, since it's one of the common otomotopeia in English, but it feels wrong to me. "boom" is too round and long for the sentence. "Bang" would be better, if sticking with the English.) SO MUCH going on here. ...And also the Davy Back Fight. Ah, yes, the Davy Back Fight. I really hate that arc. CRYING waste of an awesome location - although the old man on the stilts and Akinau BICYCLING ON THE OCEAN and then the whole entire encounter with him and his subsequent bemusement are awesome.
Outer Banks Mysteries and Seaside Stories, Charles Harry Whedbee
Hmmmm. I. Don't like the style adopted here, and some of the stories have creepy - I almost wish Orientalist weren't a word usually applied solely to this sort of this sort of thing being done with cultures from the Eurasian land mass, because that is what Whedbee seems to be doing with his Native American stories and I can't think of a good word. I mean, it's cultural appropriation, kind of, but that's not the only thing going on. Some of the other stories are really interesting, but again, I don't like the coy, insinuating style that seems to be par for the course in this particular genre. It ruins all the fun of the ghosts. They're not even scary anymore, and I'm so suggestible that the time I was babysitting and wound up watching Jackie Chan Adventures after dark I had to retreat to the kitchen and turn all the lights on. It takes a lot of mishandling to relate something that should be scary or creepy and have me going "eh" is my point here.
Not my favorite novel ever and I probably wouldn't have finished it if I hadn't started it while stuck in a federal jury lobby with no other reading material but some five year old National Geographics and a Wall Street Journal from a month ago, but as it was I got far enough into the book to get truly swept up in the plot. The trouble is, I think Mercedes the grown up is A) rather more admirable than Nantes As The Count and B) is rather more interesting. Also, the slavery side conversation makes no sense to me, although I might just be missing cultural context. Still, lots of the side characters are fascinating!
- Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
How many read throughs does that make it? I... am not sure. Lots. Actually, this was an audio recording, listened to while I did housework and sewing. Darn, itty bitty Nobby is weirdly adorable. Also, I will ship Sandra/Rosie forever. They are too too awesome and cute. (Also love the "Do it or receive an aunt's curse!" moment. It is not often Vetinari winds up stuck in a Bertie Wooster narrative position.)
- The Wine Dark Sea, Patrick O'Brian
Stephen and llamas! Jack and legal dilemmas! SAM PANDA. SAM PANDA omigod he is so awesome! He is he is he is! Father Panda makes me turn into a puddle of goo every time. "Will there ever be tea at all?" Padeen asks. "I was forced to regard him either as a hypocrite or as a begetter of false babies," says Stephen, re Rousseau. Ahahahaha. It's true. Take that, Rousseau, you self absorbed old misogynist. *cough*
- Records of a Floating Life, Shen Fu
Ah, back to first time reads. This was AWESOME. I bought an Oxford World Editions paperback of it while at a thrift shop (which I had come to actually looking for multiple other things entirely, but it called to me) intending to save it for later. But it was too hot to walk back, especially since my promise to my mother not to go walking in the park where a young woman was murdered last fall still holds (no great loss, really, it's out of my way and not exceptionally attractive) so I took the bus. Which proved to be on such a very round about route that I was forced, forced I say, to open it. By the time I got back to the bus stop where I'd parked my bike, it was all I could do to put it back in my pack to bike home. In fact, if the library hadn't been closed, I probably would have just gone there to finish. It's a slim volume, so it didn't keep me up late, but it's a fascinating memoir, about the life of a frequently broke Chinese gentleman living in the 17th century, and his grand, playful love affair with his wife. They're BFFs! She crossdresses and they go to festivals together until she blows her cover by flirting with other women in ways men can't get away with! They garden and devise ways to live on a shoestring and make mistakes that make his parents furious. For those who are not really huge devotees of travel literature, I imagine the last chapter would be the least interesting. I found it a little disappointing myself, because I was hoping more for more narrative, but even so I really want to go to a lot of the places Shen Fu describes! ...Although, since four centuries have passed uh. Doubtless they are now very different.
- The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of "Defective" Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures since 1915, Martin S. Pernick
This is really fascinating stuff, especially on the film history end, but I'm still a little disturbed that Pernick focuses more on connections to the "euthanasia" of adults in his drawing contemporary connections, and seems simply completely unaware of the continuing tendency of caregivers to kill children and babies with disabilities. I am not sure I can fully articulate the reasons, this far out from reading the book (I need to go back so I can do so for my annotated bibliography) but it rang... wrong to me. He emphasizes discontinuity in some very strange ways and I'm not sure I fully comprehend his reasons for doing so or the point he is attempting to make by doing so. (And that sentence got a bit redundant, but I do think they're separate issues, in a way.)
- Silas Marner, George Eliot
YAY I love this book. Silas's bemusement with the high church experience of his Anglican neighbors, which seems to him to have so little connection to his non-conforming youth and childhood made me laaaaaugh and laugh. Oh, Silas. I've been there, honey. Also, Eliot's straight up, "Privilege Puts Blinkers On Your Empathy" wrt the whole adoption bit made me cheer.
- The Politics of Heredity: Essays on Eugenics, Biomedicine, and the Nature-Nuture Debate, Diane B. Paul
Some of this is really interesting, and there is some stuff I did not know in it. ... ... ...On the other hand, Paul feels really condescending at points. Was it really necessary to have an entire essay length section on the ambiguity of the term "eugenics"? And is it just me or is it deeply creepy how many people appear to consider it vital to lecture us on how eugenics wasn't necessarily all that bad? (I am being unfair to Paul here, that isn't precisely her argument, and where she actually deals with actual people with disabilities she demonstrates respect for their agency - the problem is that she is, for some reason, invested in abstractions of control over heavily abstracted disabilities, and this conflicts with what she writes about actual people with actual, instead of abstracted, disabilities. I think. I'd have to do a lot of rereading to get a really powerful handle on what's going on.)
- Minds Made Feeble: The Myth and Legacy of the Kallikak Family, David Smith
Interesting stuff about publication histories and Smith's reconstruction of how the "Kallikaks" were constructed in the first place, but full of unexamined ablism, and some basic misunderstanding of historical categories of ability.
- Making Marriage Modern: Women's Sexuality from the Progressive Era to World War II, Christina Simmons
An interesting overview in a lot of ways, although not really anything I didn't know, and curiously shy of even mentioning eugenics. I also, I must confess, came fairly close to throwing the book across the room when Simmons attributes "anarchist wives" criticism of Goldman entirely to fears that she might seduce their husbands. Uh. No. Also, no. Also, I thought this was supposed to be a feminist text? Doesn't that kind of imply taking women seriously? (There were multiple directions of critique of Goldman from an anarchist feminist perspective at the time - one of them being Parson's observations on how very unthinkingly privileged and consequently impracticable Goldman's vision actually was.)
- The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies, Martin Norden
Really interesting and insightful, but in places it suffers from Norden's decision to disregard mental illness as disability. I understand why he made that decision - the book is long enough already - but it's still bizarre to read a summation and anlysis of The Deer Hunter's treatment of disability that doesn't even touch on its use of PTSD. I also found the treatment of gender rather frustrating, because Norden never directly addresses the fact that the patterns he identifies as ablist (which are ablist, definitely) revolve around the camera treating men like women. (He also seems to think that depicting internalized ablism is automatically unrealistic, which I... ... ...don't think it is, even though that internalized ablism is often handled by film makers in really exasperating ways that either reinforce it or involve helpful ablebodied people educating people with disabilities out of their ablism gag.)
- Charity Girl, Georgette Heyer
The reviewer quoted on the cover claiming that how the romances shook out would surprise me was wrong - I identified the primary couple within fifteen pages. Still, they were god friends and that was nice.
- Desolation Island, Patrick O'Brian
The image of the whale surfacing alongside the Leopard is still incredibly gorgeous and evocative for me, no matter how many times I read it or hear it read aloud. Guuuuuh. And the bit with the poem! And the typhus epidemic is terrifying. And this remains, for me, a major touchstone novel for who Jack Aubrey is. That chase with the Dutch seventy four - !
- False Colors, Georgette Heyer
... .... ....I don't think I like this novel much. Waaaaaay too much early/mid 20th century style defense of the sexual double standard and while I enjoy disguise plots, the twins thing is over an ethical line for me, although at least it's also over an ethical line for the hero. ...Which. Actually. May make it worse. Uh.
- Sherlock Holmes: Three Tales of Intrigue, Arthur Conan Doyle
Audiobook again. A very nice recording, although I could wish one of the three tales had been almost anything but "The Crooked Man". Talk about internalized ablism and racist colonial tropes!
- Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Also audiobook. It's fascinating to me how tied this novel is to the early nineties, when it was written. It's not just a matter of the technology, the political and religious allegory and entwining really really really depend on that political moment.
- Needlemade Laces: Materials, Designs, Techniques, and Patterns, Pat Earnshaw
This is fun! I'm looking forward to working on some of these. The patterns are well drafted look simple enough to work with.
- H.M.S. Surprise, Patrick O'Brian
Diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil! Also, Sophie's quest to ruin her reputation is hilarious. And aaaagh the aftermath of Stephen's interrogation!
- The Children, Edith Wharton
No one does creepy idyllic domestic like Wharton. No one.
- Myths and Legends of Our Own Land, Charles M. Skinner
This is horrible. Don't try to read it. Really, it's horrible. In addition to being just plain BORING it gets misogyny, racism, and classisim all over the place.
- Friday's Child, Georgette Heyer
I really quite liked this one. The circle of friends aspect was really nice.
- Marriage Law and Practice in the Long Eighteenth Century: A Reassessment, Rebecca Probert
OMIGOSH. I enjoyed this enormously. It was completely awesome, and kind of like sitting in a friendly, roundtable style lecture with a really good teacher. I learned a lot from this text, not just about marriage law in the long Eighteenth century, or the historiography of same, but about the practice of history, and the uses and limitations of fragmentary documentary evidence. Totally and completely worth it. So glad it was recommended to me.
- The Commodore, Patrick O'Brian
I love Brigid SO MUCH. Also, Clarissa continues to kick ass. The yellow fever section is fascinating and disturbing, and eeeeeeeeeeeeee! Di's final lines! When she tells Stephen she's never letting him out of her bed again! Ha! Oh dear, those two.
- One Piece Vol. 2: Buggy the Clown, Oda Eiichiro
Nami is so hilariously awesome and I love the running theme through these early volumes with her of being completely taken aback by Luffy and Zoro and the weird simpatico thing they have going. It is a deeply weird simpatico thing. Also, Luffy deciding to take responsibility for the dog's honor. Oh, Luffy, you dork.
- Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature, Rosemarie Garland Thomson
Really useful, really fascinating stuff. I think I'm less sanguine about the extraordinary body as, well, powerful because extraordinary than Thomson is, but her reading in that direction is still really interesting. (I suspect this is partly a different directions thing. I've read so much SFF that I'm used to that trope, and really, I think it's intensely problematic and more closely allied to old tropes of the gothic than Thomson sees it as being. Morrison's work, it seems to me, is different not because of the extraordinariness of her people with disabilities, their status as metaphor, but because of their status as character - Morrison's showcasing of their agency and action.)
- Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
Pratchett's shifting conceptions of the Discworld fascinate. Guards! Guards! is old enough that he hasn't decided to allow his characters crossbows yet. The Night Watch are still carrying pikes in play off of other fantasy series. This is the only novel with the Watch where they do that - Pratchett's ditched the pikes as narratively impractical by Men at Arms. (Dang, I wish there was as much Sybil in subsequent watch books as there is here. She is so incredibly awesome.)
- One Piece Vol. 1: Romance Dawn, Oda Eiichiro
Oh, Luffy. Oh, Zoro. Goodness, Zoro really is a TOTAL marshmellow. And there's something about his close narrative association with women that intrigues me. But I haven't entirely figured it out yet. It's just. Interesting. (As is his instant, if slightly cranky, simpatico with Luffy. Heeeee.)
One Piece Vol. 3: Don't Get Fooled Again, One Piece Vol. 4: The Black Cat Pirates, One Piece Vol. 5: For Whom the Bell Tolls, One Piece Vol. 6: The Oath, Oda Eiichiro
Heck with it, I'm collapsing these into approximations of arcs or chunks I read in, even though that's not always going to be practical. Ahem. Oh, Usopp. Oh, Nami. I admit to loving Zoro being a troll here - his grin as he tells the kids that they ate Usopp is just - Oh dear. Zoro. And Kaya, oh, Kaya. I love her final decision of what to do with her life, and the remarkable degree to which she retains her self possession. I love that the primary issue with Usopp's slightly panicked relation re pirates is, for everyone who knows him, not his honesty, but the possibility that he meant to hurt people with his gift for storytelling. It's refreshing! (Also: Yay! Hello, Going Merry! Welcome to the crew!)
One Piece Vol. 7: The Crap-Geezer, Oda Eiichiro
Ah, official translations picked up from the library and their deeply weird bowdlerization tendencies.
Hellboy: The Crooked Man and Others, Mike Mignola
I made the mistake of reading this after dark. Didn't get to sleep until after midnight. AAAAGH. The title story is supremely disturbing.
The Golden Ocean, Patrick O'Brian
Okay, really? This is not all that good. But it has its amusing bits, and aw, ridiculous teenage boys are always adorable even if you do frequently want to punch them in the nose. Vile nuisances that they so often are. <3 (God, I'm glad I'll never be a teenager again. Once is more than enough.)
Medieval Domesticity, Ed. Maryanne Kowalelski & P.J.P. Goldberg
All the essays in here are great, but AHHHHH OMIGOSH. Everyone NEEDS to read the one on Patient Griselda and burgess laymen's emotional attraction to, and involvement with, the story. It is SO BRILLIANT and it makes SO MUCH SENSE and then it's TOTALLY OBVIOUS omigosh omigosh.
One Piece Vol. 10: OK, Let's Stand Up!, One Piece Vol. 11: The Meanest Man in the East, Oda Eiichiro
Library didn't have the bulk of this arc, alas, so I'll have to go back and read everything again. Eeeeeee! I still love Luffy seemingly ignoring Arlong until he looks up and says, "Use? What do you think Nami is?"
One Piece Vol. 12: The Legend Begins, One Piece Vol. 13: It's all right!, One Piece Vol. 14: Instinct, One Piece Vol. 15: Straight Ahead!, Oda Eiichiro
Vivi! Tashigi! EEEEE. I love them BOTH. And I love Usopp's gooiness over the giants, and Zoro's proposal that he cut off his feet (and then his choice to die in a "cool pose" and Nami and Vivi's reaction when he tells them they should have picked something noble too, oh kids) and Luffy and Zoro's stupid fight and that both Nami and Zoro pretended to get drunk, and EEEEEEEEEE. I love Zoro and Tashigi's dynamic of hilarious over idealistic shouty weird kind of sort of rivalry. And Viiiiiiiviiiiiiii. And Laboon! And oh, I love Nami and Vivi together, I do, I do, I do.
B.P.R.D.: Hollow Earth and Other Stories, Created Mike Mignola, Ed. Scott Allie
Being field commander is NOT KATE CORRIGAN'S DREAM JOB. Heeeeee oh dear. I love Kate. I love Liz. I love Liz and it is a crying shame there is not more of her conscious in the title story. Although "I pretty much have to. I don't have any pants," is a great line.
B.P.R.D.: The Soul of Venice and Other Stories Created Mike Mignola, Ed. Scott Allie
Roger dating an Estrucan goddess is the best. thing. ever.
The Professor's Daughter, Joann Sfar and Emmanuel Guibert
I... ... ...don't know what I think about this. The art is incredibly beautiful and evocative, and it was a fun read starting out and curiosity carried me through, but it's really kind of... incoherent in places. It swings rapidly from looking like it's going to confront colonialist tropes and misogyny to... ... ...I don't even know, wandering off into something that bears a strong resemblance to standard horror movie fare. Revelations and explanations don't fit with prior presentations of character, and the end... is emotionally unconvincing to me. It's gorgeous though!
B.P.R.D. Plague of Frogs, Mike Mignola
Oh, Kate. Oh, Liz. Kate shooting up the graveyard of zombies is awesome, and Liz's comfort and ease with her powers is fantastic to see. Also, Roger's dream is terrifying, and his encounter with the little girl always makes me gasp and tear up. And Abe - Oh, Abe, you get mixed up in the most horrible things, don't you?
One Piece Vol. 32: Love Song, One Piece Vol. 33:, One Piece Vol. 34: The City of Water, Water Seven, One Piece Vol 35: Captain, One Piece Vol. 36: The Ninth Justice, One Piece Vol. 37: Tom, One Piece Vol. 38: Rocketman!, One Piece Vol. 39: Scramble, Oda Eiichiro
...There is really an incredible amount that happens in this seven volumes. Goodness gracious. Water Seven is a ridiculously dense arc - there's the introductions and engagement with Galley La, CP9, Franky and Co, Kokoro and Chimney (I FREAKING LOVE CHIMNEY. I want to see her again eventually, hilarious and awesome - I want to write all the gen about her growing up and keeping a lighthouse and having her own kinds of carefree, cheerily fearless adventures) , and Yokozuna. There's the worldbuilding - Good lord, how many locations are in just these volumes, let me think... there's Water Seven itself, which is a complex city with all kinds of social tensions and socially and economically marked places, there's Enies Lobby, although that really only starts to be explored at the end of this particular chunk, and there's the sea trains, which I think definitely count as locations. There's the history! Personal history, civic history, personal history which is civic history, all the things which seem more and more intriguing the further I read - Koroko is a mermaid who married a human, either before or after she moved to a human city, raised her own half human half sea people children and is now raising her grandaughter (and a cat - I respect the cat's species ID and so do Koroko and Chimmey), while Tom is a fishman who moved to a human city, adopted it so completely as his own that he gave the last years of his life entirely to it, and raised two difficult human boys to be absolutely wonderful men (really WEIRD men, granted, but still). (Unrelatedly, the official translation renders his catchphrase as "Do it with a boom!" which... I do understand why, since it's one of the common otomotopeia in English, but it feels wrong to me. "boom" is too round and long for the sentence. "Bang" would be better, if sticking with the English.) SO MUCH going on here. ...And also the Davy Back Fight. Ah, yes, the Davy Back Fight. I really hate that arc. CRYING waste of an awesome location - although the old man on the stilts and Akinau BICYCLING ON THE OCEAN and then the whole entire encounter with him and his subsequent bemusement are awesome.
Outer Banks Mysteries and Seaside Stories, Charles Harry Whedbee
Hmmmm. I. Don't like the style adopted here, and some of the stories have creepy - I almost wish Orientalist weren't a word usually applied solely to this sort of this sort of thing being done with cultures from the Eurasian land mass, because that is what Whedbee seems to be doing with his Native American stories and I can't think of a good word. I mean, it's cultural appropriation, kind of, but that's not the only thing going on. Some of the other stories are really interesting, but again, I don't like the coy, insinuating style that seems to be par for the course in this particular genre. It ruins all the fun of the ghosts. They're not even scary anymore, and I'm so suggestible that the time I was babysitting and wound up watching Jackie Chan Adventures after dark I had to retreat to the kitchen and turn all the lights on. It takes a lot of mishandling to relate something that should be scary or creepy and have me going "eh" is my point here.
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Say, have you read The Voyage of the Narwhal by Andrea Barrett?
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I have not! Should I add it to the list?
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