Books Everyone Should Read

All the Sneaky Ones Part 3

2012-03-02T22:00:00.001-08:00

Time for another female author! Today’s sneaky book review is Bossypants, by Tina Fey.

I have been wanting to read this book for a while, based on Sally’s review of it. When I visited the lovely Erin the other day, she was talking about it and ended up loaning it to me. “I told Caitlin she could borrow it, but you’re a quick reader, so you can have it,” Ez said. Challenge accepted! I thought. I finished it last night, a few days shy of two weeks after she gave it to me. Not too bad, considering it’s pretty long and I started uni this week.

I liked Bossypants. I don’t think everyone should read it, and I didn’t find it as funny as Sally said it was. Maybe it’s because she’s American and the humour is slightly different. It was funny, don’t get me wrong, but it just wasn’t side-splittingly funny.

Ez warned me the writing wasn’t that good, and I found her assessment to be true. It wasn’t up to the literary style I’m used to reading. I think it’s because she’s a script-writer, but it seemed more like a written-down speech rather than a piece of writing that embraced the book-form. I really can’t articulate it any better than that. I think I’m going to go away and think more about what I mean by this, because right now I have no idea.

Tina Fey identifies as a feminist, but I think she has the problem feminists of her class and race have been accused of since they started protesting back at the turn of the 18^th/19^th century: “women’s equality” for her means “women like me who struggle with the same issues as me”. I don’t know if I’m being unfair on Fey, or hypocritical because my feminism probably has the same fault, but it’s just the impression that I get. She is also deeply entrenched in the American capitalist cultural model. And her references to feminism weren’t really supported by any kind of theoretical background.

Let me backtrack a bit. Tina Fey does make reference to some intersectional class and race issues, briefly. And also, Bossypants is not a feminist text; it’s the memoir of a woman, who counts feminism as a part of her identity.

If I met Tina Fey, would I like her (based on her book)? I don’t know. I think I would enjoy talking to her. She’s ambitious and awkward and a feminist, all traits that I share. But there were certain parts of the book that I felt uncomfortable with. Like when she kind of screwed over a co-worker. There are other examples but I can’t remember them.

I’ve just figured out what it is that makes me uncomfortable. Fey just seemed to not want to fight for institutional change. Instead of protesting at sexist attitudes in the entertainment industry, she recommends that women get jobs in the area and hire diverse women. When bemoaning that because she works long hours she can’t see her daughter as much as she wants, she doesn’t suggest a change to workplace structure, but rather says she just has to suck it up because people rely on her for their jobs, and there are positives and negatives to both being a working mother and being a stay-at-home ‘Mom’.

I enjoyed Bossypants. It was light and entertaining reading. But I don’t think everyone should read it.

All the Sneaky Ones Part 2

2012-03-02T21:51:00.003-08:00

I have posted here about my rebellion against the book list and decision to write about the sneaky alternatives I have been reading.

Number two on my haphazard sneaky book list is Holding the Man. I borrowed this book from my Aunt back in September when I was on a queer theory hunt. It misses the mark, but it’s still a story about gay men so it’s close.

Holding the Man is the autobiographical account of Timothy Conigrave. He details the story of his childhood and adolescence as a young gay person in 1970s Melbourne, his great love with first boyfriend John, and the eventual decline of both of them as they struggle with AIDS.

I really enjoyed the first part of this book. In the 1970s homosexuality was not something that was talked about much, and though a lot of the same prejudices are around today, it is more acceptable now for same-sex couples to hold hands in public, for example. I always like reading stories that are set in Melbourne, and to have a perspective from a past era, with a perspective I hadn’t considered, was insightful.

I also learned more than I had ever imagined about gay men sex. There is so much more to it than I had previously thought. I won’t go into details here, but as in my previous post, if you want to know what the homos (men) are doing, check out Holding the Man. As well as the actual sex, I discovered that there is a lot of sexual play between adolescent boys. This I learned from the book and subsequently from discussions with friends.

This probably sounds really callous, but once the AIDS segment of the book started, it got kind of boring and tedious. I hate reading novels where I am literally waiting for characters to die. The medical jargon loses me and there is no plot or character development.

Another problem with Holding the Man was the two main characters, the writer/protagonist and his lover John. There was very little characterisation. The only description he ever gives of John is that he has beautiful brown eyes and luscious eyelashes. We learn nothing about what it is that attracts Tim to John’s personality, apart from the fact that he loves Tim unconditionally. As for Tim, I feel like if I met him (which I can’t now, because he died 6 months after the book was finished) I wouldn’t like him. He was just kind of annoying and whiny. Especially as a grown man, he just seemed like a stereotype of a flamboyant gay man. I liked him better as a teenager.

Should everyone read this book? I think everyone should read the first part.

And one more thing: I’d just like to note that in all 113 books on the book list, not one of them is at all queer (as far as I can tell, I haven’t actually read them all). Only Dorian Gray (see also here) has homo-erotic undertones.

All the Sneaky Ones Part 1

2012-03-02T21:48:00.001-08:00

There must be a word for this: a specific form of procrastination where you do something you’ve been putting off in order not to do something else you’re putting off. For example, a friend of mine went to Centrelink and got a healthcare card, something she had been meaning to do for months, as soon as she had to write a 4000-word essay.

This effect has played out on me in the last few months since we started book challenge. Once I had a whole list of books I had to read, I was suddenly desperate to brush the dust off the stack of books on my bedside table and devour them. So, in the spirit of rebellion against this book list, I am going to pen a few reviews of the books I’ve been reading while studiously ignoring the ‘have to’ books.

First off: Girl Walking Backwards, a YA novel I read in December when Dracula got too scary/monotonous. I wouldn’t say this is a book everyone should read. I’m not even sure I should have read it. It’s the story of a fairly disturbed 16- or 17-year-old girl living in Southern California, who is coming to terms with her sexuality, her history, and her place in the world. As the title suggests, the book meanders along, not going anywhere in particular. It had the classic first-novel fault of not knowing where/how to finish, the result being that the last quarter of the novel resembled that sandwich you left in your bag for a week which, though once delicious, is now just mush.

But what this book lacks in plot it makes up for in scandalous and daring content. I kind of wish I had read this book when I was in high school. It certainly would have opened up my mind more than the hundreds of samey YA books I tore through. One of these aspects is sexuality. The protagonist, Skye, is bisexual-identified but to my mind she seemed much more like a lesbian. I feel really embarrassed about this, but I think I’ve only read one or two other novels that are from a first-person lesbian perspective. I thought it was interesting, and radical, the way she looked at and talked about, other women, kind of objectifying but in less of an aggressive male-gaze manner. It opened my mind to new modes and concepts of lesbianism.

This book was also radical about sex. There was a lot of sex in Girl Walking Backwards; none of it, not even the heterosexual sex, is “penis in vagina” (PIV) sex. At the start of the book Skye has a boyfriend, Riley, with whom she has what she terms “our version of sex”. This includes masturbating together and cunnilingus. Later in the book, [SPOILER] Riley cheats on Skye with a girl she has a crush on by giving the girl cunnilingus in a bathroom. [END SPOILER]. There is also some detailed lesbian sex, so if you’re still wondering at this stage in life (whatever that stage is, I don’t know you so I’m not judging) how people have sex when there’s no penis, then maybe you should read this book and find out. Or just google it, I don’t know.

Girl Walking Backwards also had some intense themes: drugs, abuse, abandonment, witchcraft, new age cults. It was written in the 90s, so I don’t know, maybe YA books were a bit edgier than they were ten years later when I was a teen. It was good to see some of this content, but I didn’t like how it was dealt with. It was pretty dark and just made me feel down. I like it when books can go to the dark places but not leave you there.

Finally, it is worth noting that Girl Walking Backwards, unlike 75%+ of the consensus cloud book list, is written by a woman. Grrrrl power, yeah!

A Room of One's Own

2012-03-02T19:25:00.001-08:00

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

I really enjoyed this book as the writing style made me think of Sally, whom I love. There were so many fabulous feminist sentiments held within. The main idea that Woolf explores deeply is that for men to feel comfortable within themselves they need to feel superior, and what better way than to believe that half the population is innately inferior to them?

I would really like to buy my own copy of this book to highlight her wonderful arguments and turn of phrase. She deftly lays out the issue of women and men’s equality and how many men see women being brought up to their level as taking away their rights as a man. I’m not going to try to recreate the argument here, I have never been able to articulate it well and she is a master at it.

Woolf is not above admitting that she has biases and they will affect her writing. “Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them; it is for you to seek out this truth and to decide whether any part of it is worth keeping.” She does not purport to be an oracle speaking on women and fiction. I found her style of writing comfortable and enjoyable. Very stream-of-consciousness, but a consciousness that has been thinking deeply about these issues.

One of the things Woolf pontificates on is how much men have written about women. And how little women have written about everything. I read about a challenge where one would write their assignments at University referring only to books written by women. As much as I would have liked to achieve that for some assignments in my undergrad, I was mostly studying theology and I had to settle for one book written or edited by a woman – even that was often a struggle. I also recently read about Jack Heath who read only women authors for a year.

I was phenommed* to find that this book, which is clearly a seminal feminist work, was not on The List. In fact nothing by Virginia Woolf was on the list. The list has obviously succumbed to the patriarchy and I see it as my solemn duty to recover it. Thus, this review will be posted on the consensus cloud blog, because I will not have dictated to me that this year >75% of the books I read must be by men.

Everyone should read this book.

*it was phenomenal to me

Persuasion- written a little while ago

2012-02-10T03:15:00.000-08:00

Well, I can tick another book off my list, I just finished persuasion. If that's not on the book list then I will just give up completely. There are spoilers , obviously.

I liked persuasion but far less than I liked pride and prejudice and northanger abbey. Its strange that northanger abbey is often left out or not read when i think its far more interesting than persuasion. Do you know what happens in persuasion? People get persuaded. Although I don't think any more persuaded than all the other books, its just, this time it happens to the main character so it gets the name. The main characters name is Anne. Plain old Anne. She is nice, reasonably attractive, able to get along with everybody and has a good set of principals. But I would never go for here. She is the kind of girl that is your best friend but in terms of love you always saw her as a bit asexual. I just want to shake her and say "get excited!! Fight for the attention of the one you love and have a bitch with your girlfriends about men." But noo, she is all about concealing her emotions with strategic head dips and walks to the piano on the other side of the room. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh, I certainly wouldn't want to hang ut with her though, I'd probably knock her over and she would never get a word in edgeways, which I would feel guilty about. So that's Anne. She has a sister called Mary. I'm going to hazard a guess and say that there was someone in Jane austins acquaintance that she didn't like very much named Mary. Mary in pride and prejudice is an antisocial bore and Mary in persuasion is a pain in the arse. She is really jealous and precious and woe is me-ish. And she thinks she is so fricken entitled! And a hypocrite! My goodness she pissed me off, and her husband was such a great guy, I felt pretty bad for him. See, he actually proposed to Anne but she refused him I'll explain why in a sec, and so then he married Mary much to the chagrin of his sisters and mother who all like Anne much more than Mary.

So, when Anne was 19 she fell in love and got engaged to this spunk called frederick who was by all definitions a top bloke trying to make his way in the world of sailing. Her mother like figure (a robyn, if you will,) strongly advised her against the marriage because she would be marrying lower and there was no gaurantee of his becoming rich. Did I mention that her whole family, spare her, were proud, haughty and had a strong sense of self importance? So she was 19 and persuaded out of this marriage. He went away to mend his broken heart and get rich at sea while she 'got over' him, but mysteriously refused other marriage proposals for no good reason. Fast forward eight years- Anne is well and truly over the hill when captain Wentworth (spunky Fred) returns to town with all his spunkiness in search of a wife. I know what your thinking, they fall in love again. WRONG! He really doesn't seem that interested in her anymore and shows no signs of angsty silence that so afflicted Mr darcy ( and Edward Cullen) when in love. Him and Louise, one of Anne's mates and her sisters sister in law, hit it off and it seems on the brink of engagement when a bit of larrikining goes too far and Louise gives herself a brain injury. Don't worry, she recovers. Anyway, I'm getting too bogged down in story telling. So Wentworth realises he loves Anne when Louise falls in love with someone else and he doesn't care (its more complex but I'll spare you) and then he goes to bath, where all the action happens, and has to vy with Mr Elliot, who has Anne's family's approval, for her love. Wentworth wins and they live happily ever after. So they did end up together After all.

I don't know, it was a tad boring for my liking and i thought a lot of really important aspects were brushed over while other stuff was over talked about. I tell you what though, I did not see Louise's fall coming at all. One minute everyone is having fun and the next minute Louise is lifeless on the concrete. For a good half a page I kept expecting her to open her eyes with wicked michief and say 'lol jks, you though I was dead.' She is the type to do it. So bravo Jane, a well thrown curve all. You should bowl for india, then Clarke might have actually gone out.

OK I've started talking about cricket- a sure sign that this book review ought to end now.

The Wind in the Willows

2012-02-02T16:52:00.000-08:00

The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

This book was ridiculously tedious, uninteresting and incredibly difficult to wade through!
Had it been any longer I would probably have given up! However I became determined not to be beaten by a children's book*!
The character of Toad is horribly unsympathetic. The 'hijinks', such as they are, are unrealistic** and not overly engaging. Perhaps Toad was meant to be written as a duffer and a slimy character; but Rat is also condescending to Mole, not listening to him and presuming he knows more - much in the vein of Toad's behaviour. Even Badger is quite harsh to Toad. Perhaps that is what they believe Toad needs but being mean, lecturing and eventually imprisoning someone is hardly good manners.
In the case of Toad it is clear that he is not interested in changing his ways, so the others are really wasting time and energy.

Until half-way through, the book doesn't even suffer from the smurfette trope because there are no women at all. When we finally meet some, they are unfavourable caricatures of the worst traits of women (as perceived by men). The gaoler's daughter is stereotypical mother figure; caring for Toad's every need.

Her aunt is money-hungry and unrealistically willing risk her job to help a prisoner escape.
The barge washer-woman entraps Toad into looking like a fool (how dare she!).
Notice that none of these women have names? Now, to be fair, none of the human characters have names and the animals are all named by their species. But seriously? No women animals? Otter, who has children, is not even mentioned to have a wife; let alone her having a part in the story.

Lastly, the animals eat chicken, ham, bacon and tongue. How is this okay? The first horse is mentioned to have a personality, despite being a beast of burden, but later Toad steals and sells a horse, a process throughout which the horse never offers an opinion - even when a price for him*** is being negotiated.

My recommendation is that no one ever read this book again. It isn't worth it.

Jocelyn.

*This may have been karma, on account of I was (am) trying to cheat by reading all the easy books, so that I will have read more than Emmeline, it would have taken less time to read a 'hard' book I'm sure!
** For example Toad receives a sentence of one year for stealing a car, three for 'furious driving' and 15 years for giving cheek to the police. All of which gets rounded up to 20 years. What? In what universe is 'giving cheek' 5x worse than reckless driving and 15x worse than stealing a car?? Also would Toad really be allowed to return to his house after escaping from a 20 year sentence - did the police not think to check there for the escaped prisoner?
*** I'm going to assume the horse was male - everyone else was

Emmeline: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

2012-01-16T22:39:00.000-08:00

Do you know what an ipad is?

Douglas Adams didn't, but he wrote about one, 31 years before they were released on the market. Except he didn't call it an ipad, he called it the hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy, a book with thousands of pages that could be accessed by pressing buttons. If in the form of an actual book, it would be far to heavy to carry around.

Most futuristic books appear hopelessly anachronistic once the actual future arrives. Mary Shelley's The Last Man, for example, was published in 1826, set around 2030, and the characters all run around in horse and carriage and sending letters by messenger.

Adams' book (and the whole series) is amazing because in it he writes about technology that the inventors hadn't even started imagining.

Reading this book was weird because I couldn't remember whether I'd read it before. The whole time I kept second-guessing myself. It was familiar but new all at the same time. Maybe I read it when I was a kid, or when I was drunk (less likely), or maybe it was just familiar from the movie (the Zooey Deshanel version).

So, should everyone read this book? I say probably, it's worth it, but it wouldn't be the end of the world if you didn't.

Retrospective Read: Jane Eyre

2012-01-04T22:52:00.000-08:00

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

[Spoilers start at the end of the second sentence]

I read Jane Eyre many years ago and it didn’t really capture me. I struggled to get into the story and later only had a vague idea of how the story went. When we lived in the US Emmeline was studying it and the college was to put on a play of Jane Eyre. There was some discussion around the book before the play, but not much as she had not finished and no one wants to be the person who accidentally spoils something (“Are you up to the bit where it is the wife in the attic?...no? oh, nevermind”). Poor Emmeline and her strict policy of reading books before seeing them performed was reading Jane Eyre right up until the lights were dimmed in the theatre.

As a theatrical device in said play, the red room and the attic were the same place. It made the story a little difficult to follow, but drew a comparison between crazy young Jane and the crazy wife. The idea of the crazy wife that has to be locked away concerns me as to Mr Rochester’s character as there was a time when it was du rigour to have your wife declared crazy and committed so that she was no longer a bother. If she wasn’t crazy before he locked her away I’m pretty sure being locked away would have been enough to make her pretty mad.

I reckon that the way in which he escapes being pigeonholed as such a man is the fact that he never actually had her committed because he didn’t want to not care for her and didn’t want her not living in an asylum. Given what we know about asylums, that was a good call if he did indeed wish to care for her.

Mr Rochester is a more interesting love interest than Austin’s Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy. He seems to have more depth and not just be a pretty face. The relationship has its basis in communication and mutuality not longing glances, frission and high tempers. He is also much more worthy of love than the men in Wuthering Heights

Jane herself inspired me as a teenager reading the book because she was confident and a survivalist, but not at the expense of her own happiness. She took risks and they paid off. Lizzy Bennett (to continue the Pride and Prejudice comparisons) is confident in her own way, but she does not experience any threats to her comfortable way of life* and does not need to survive in the way that Jane does.

This is probably a book that I should reread at some stage, but realistically I probably won’t unless one day I’m lying around bored and it is the most appealing option. There are just so many books I want to read for the first time!!

I would recommend not reading Jane Eyre too young.

Jocelyn

*I will note that if Lizzy and/or her sisters do not marry reasonably well they will in fact be homeless and reliant on the kindness of others once their father dies, this is not an imminent threat but I imagine it would stress one somewhat (especially with Mrs Bennett harping on).

The Picture of Dorian Gray

2012-01-04T00:30:00.000-08:00

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

[Spoiler Alert]

Overall review:

Emmeline warned me that The Picture of Dorian Gray was depressing* so I was expecting something more along the lines of The Bell Jar. Unfortunately I knew the basic storyline of The Picture of Dorian Gray because on the tvshow ‘Freaky Stories’ I seem to recall one where a young man stabs his painting at the end. Emmeline was disappointed when I told her that because it robbed me of the ending, or at least of being able to guess the ending!

Throughout the book I felt a little as though it was an opportunity for Wilde to show off a large amount of knowledge he had amassed on a variety of subjects, rather than him just writing a book. The descriptions of Dorian’s obsessions went on too long and there was a tendency to skim after a while. Jeffrey Eugenides** writing the introduction claims that Wilde writes witty dialogue but struggles in other areas and needs actors to bring his work to life. What dialogue there is to be had is mainly found in the first third and last quarter and, especially when it involves Dorian or Harry flirting (including with each other) is indeed snappy and one can imagine it being performed on the stage with much chemistry between the characters.

The Picture of Dorian Gray leaves me hanging out to know what it is that Dorian does to lead others astray***. It is clear that he creates ‘fallen women’ and that is not too hard to understand, but I wonder how he ruins the lives of the young men whilst escaping unscathed himself. That being said, I also love that it is left to the imagination.

[I]n his search for sensations that would be at once new and delightful, and possess that element of strangeness that is so essential to romance, he would often adopt certain modes of thought that he knew to be really alien to his nature, abandon himself to their subtle influences, and then, having , as it were, caught their colour and satisfied his intellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious indifference that is not incompatible with a real ardour of temperament.

In the light of the previous sentence (and given Wilde’s own sexual proclivities) I like to imagine that not a few of the young men ruined were taken as lovers also. Dorian has the sort of sex appeal that does not discriminate. Beautiful and self destructive people are drawn to Dorian and he obliges them by flattering their beauty then destroying them.

A few notes I made as I read the book:

Lady Henry scores the best introduction in the whole book “She was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest.” How does every woman not want to look like that?

As a language-nerd I was super-excited to see that the French that was in the book was not translated into English immediately afterward, however the conversation French phrases made it clear what was being said. When Dorian reads three particular stanzas of a French poem on Venice, they are relayed to us in their original form and the meaning is made clear in the reveal that follows. This is not always well done, in Anna Karenina**** Tolstoy throws French around like it’s Christmas and mostly I found it annoying and pretentious.

Harry to Dorian: “You will soon be going about like the converted, the revivalist, warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired.” There is indeed no one so passionate about the evilness of x than the one who has turned from x themselves!

Is this a book everyone should read? I can’t decide. I think it has some interesting ideas but the package does not call for universal recommendation.

Jocelyn
(read Emmeline's review here)

*she later retracted that statement saying that she meant something else

**Author of Middlesex which I have read and have yet to review, Emm’s review is here

***Apparently the first version which he was commissioned to write was ‘mawkish and nauseous’, ‘unclean’, ‘effeminate’ and ‘contaminating’ . I wonder if it details some of Dorian’s dalliances and if so are there still copies around?

****A book I read before we started the challenge and have not as yet retrospectively reviewed

Winne-the-Pooh

2012-01-03T23:55:00.000-08:00

Winne-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne

I may get accused of cheating, because I believe I am now in front of Emmeline book-wise, but that is only because today I read Winne-the-Pooh!

This is a really sweet book, I love Milne's style of writing, you can really imagine that it is his son's toys and he is telling the stories about them. When the real Christopher Robin is asking the narrator questions the answers are very much an adult storyteller's indulgent answers.

The whole thing is very sweet.

When Winne-the-Pooh was on tv the character I disliked most was Gopher, who I believe was introduced by Disney and was not an original Milne character. I also didn't like when the storylines were over the top. Those aspects that most reflect the nature of the book are what makes the show a classic and well-loved.

There is a tradition in my family of giving 'Now we are six' to children on their 6th birthdays and having read Winne-the-Pooh I may start bequeathing it and other Milne books on non-six birthdays!

I believe this is a book that everyone should read - it only took me 2 hours tops!

Northanger Abbey

2011-12-28T20:09:00.000-08:00

[Edited by Jocelyn to add: This book isn't actually on the list but we'll give it to her because she's only read a 3rd of what Emm and I have (and it's a great review)!!]

Lets see if I can review this one a bit better.
I LOVED this book. Catherine is a great protagonist because she is that weird girl who hangs out in the library reading gothic novels. She isnt bad looking, but she's weird enough that no-one notices that she is cute. I loved her overactive imagination because her thought processes were exactly the same as mine would have been in the same situation. she was vague enough to miss every implicit cue, which meant that she led Captain horrid-man into thinking that she was keen on him, when in reality, she was just nice. Upon reflection this girl is just a emalgamation (sp?) of the three authors of this blog. cute, gothic, oblivious, loyal with a killer imagination.
It isnt much focused on except a bit at the beginning, but the guy she falls for is also not entirely normal. its great to see the weird ones get together and the beautiful ones fail spectacularly.
I like the way austin covers so many different situations. What do you do if your friend is flirting with someone else when she has a boyfriend? what does it mean when a guy askes you to dance and then gets distracted? is that guy keen or just nice? did my best friends dad kill her mum? how do you cope when someone is spreading rumours about you? Is it appropriate to punch Mr Thorpe in the face becasue he is an insecure Douche?

Most of these questions get answered, sadly, not all the way I would like them to. Mr Thorpe's nose remains ugly and undamaged.

thats all I cant think Right now, I am so incredibly tired and have typed up about 4 pages in the last hour.
Goodnight Im off to read Persuasion.

Pride and prejudice.

2011-12-28T19:55:00.000-08:00

There is very little I can say in terms of reviewing Pride and prejudice because everyone already knows it all. So I think that I am a cross between Jane and Lydia. Is that possible? I think it is. Im also In love with Mr Bingley. I had bookmarked a bunch of quotes I liked but I seem to have lost them :(
Ok, so for the shortest, possibly worst, review ever I am going to finish by saying that I think im hooked on Austin.

Alice in Wonderland

2011-12-02T18:06:00.000-08:00

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

This review should be a nice change from my regular rambles.
I've never liked movie/tv versions of Alice in Wonderland, the people weren't nice and it was weird and hard to follow. So I didn't go into the book with high expectations. The book made more sense to me than visual reproductions. I suspect some of the movies have also used material out of 'Through the looking glass' which I have not read, as there were things I recalled that were not in the book.
Alice seemed much more in control in the book, and less phased by what was going on around her. She comments that she isn't used to being bossed around so much, but you don't get the sense that she is having a bad time. I also felt she had more agency in the book than movies.
I was disappointed (and surprised) that some of the lines I remembered from movies were changed just slightly, like 'dooo you PLAY croQUET?' from the 1999 tv movie is actually 'can you play croquet?' in the book!
Overall I prefer the book to the movies and whipped right through it in less than a day.

The Last Battle

2011-11-28T16:21:00.000-08:00

The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis

[Disclaimer: I will be discussing theology and Christian beliefs in this review, I can’t not given the content of the book and my background in studying theology.]

Despite the listing being for The Chronicles of Narnia I am only going to review The Last Battle (TLB) as I read the previous six Narnia books in 2007. Therefore for the purposes of crossing items off my list I only had to read TLB. The others are not as fresh in my mind and one Narnia book is worth a review all on its own!

I was particularly appalled at the blatant racism right from the beginning. Actually, upon looking for the first instance of racism I realise the first thing I hated about this book was the Ape, Shift, but I had done a good job of forgetting him (I read the book a couple of weeks ago)!

The first three instances of Calormenes are basically as such:

Then came that dark Man with the beard, the merchant from Calormen. The Calormenes care nothing for Aslan as we do.

Two Calormenes were driving a horse which was harnessed to a log. Just as the King reached them the log had got stuck in a bad muddy place.

‘Get on, son of sloth! Pull, you lazy pig!’ cried the Calormenes, cracking their whips. The horse was already straining himself as hard as he could; his eyes were red and he was covered with foam.

‘Work, lazy brute,’ shouted one of the Calormenes: and as he spoke he struck the horse savagely with his whip*.

One of the Calormenes, who had a helmet instead of a turban and seemed to be in command, snatched the gold circlet off Tirian’s head and hastily put it away somewhere among his clothes.

So what we know about Calormenes is they are dark bearded people with turbans (everyone think of a people group that fits that description), they are cruel, and they are greedy. This blatant racism continues throughout the book and I really struggled with it. I don’t recall being as shocked with the racism in the previous six books and I suspect that may be because I was living in the USA and was daily experiencing culture shock so a little bit of time-travel shock didn’t seem as bad!

I think the thing that I found most confronting was that this was written by an adult intellectual and it basically came down to ‘dark = bad’ and was very simplistic. I remember having a hard time with how simplified the series is the first time I read it, especially as I read it as an adult and had heard the books talked up my whole life!

Which brings me to my next point: given all I have heard about the Chronicles of Narnia, I would have expected to have heard an intelligent discourse on the racism within the books and I really don’t think I have. There is lots of praise about the allegory and Christian messages, I’ve also read a bit of criticism of the blatant evangelical nature of the series, but I’ve never heard a Christian criticise the flaws in a way that doesn’t dismiss the whole series or create an ‘us’ vs ‘them’ scenario where one side argues that C.S. Lewis can do no wrong and everything he writes is fantasmagorical and the other side dismisses him as a racist sexist privileged man who should be discarded. Surely the truth lies somewhere inbetween?

And now, to show that I do not belong in camp #2, I will praise Lewis’ theology and how he makes it accessible to children (and theological students – me).

[There are spoilers ahead that give away how the whole series ends, but seriously, who hasn’t read the whole series by now?]

I have had many discussions with people about God and Allah. There is an idea that Allah and God are one and the same, but Muslims have just misunderstood the nature of Allah, so their religion does things wrongly. This is not a universal Christian belief, and I find it ridiculously offensive. When a Muslim tells me that I really worship Allah, but am doing it wrong, it jars against my very being. Why would as Muslim feel any different if I told them the same thing?

Which is my preamble to the following section of the book…

Emeth is a Calormene who has gone through the door and found himself face to face with Aslan, who welcomes him:

But I said, ‘Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash.’ [Aslan] answered, ‘Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me… Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites – I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him.’

I have had discussions with Christians and Muslims alike about whether God and Allah are the same god or are different gods entirely (one true and one false, depending on who you ask). I don’t like to link Allah to Tash, but I don’t imagine Lewis would have had any trouble doing so. In which case there is some interesting theology going on here. Given orthodox Christian belief is that Jesus is the only way to God, but that is not really what Lewis is saying here.

There is also an interesting twist, if we move away from ‘Tash as Allah’ to ‘Tash as satan’ then I think of the surprise that a whole bunch of Christians will get when they ‘arrive at the pearly gates’ and discover that a whole lot of bad stuff they did in ‘God’s’ name was actually done in satan’s name and see what that does to their chances of getting in!**

Talking about heaven, “Farther in and farther up!” is the cry that is given as the Narnians stream through the door into heaven. I am so glad I read this book to the end as I found Lewis’ description of Aslan’s Land (which is obviously heaven) to be immensely helpful in my own understanding of heaven.

Recently someone asked me what I thought heaven is. I struggled in my response as my answer was ‘eternal closeness with God – nothing to separate us’ but as an atheist that didn’t really resonate with her, and for me I didn’t think it really covered it as I am not Gnostic and believe that God redeems our whole selves, not just our minds. ‘Eternal closeness’ seems too Gnostic for me.

This is where Lewis comes in. Because after a while the characters work out that Aslan’s land is Narnia, but better, and England, but better. As they go ‘farther in and farther up’ they find an even better version and so on.

But that was not the real Narnia. That has a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been here and always will be here: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan’s real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that matter, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream.

Coupled with eternal closeness with God, that sounds like as good a description of heaven as we can achieve on earth.

Jocelyn

*The horses being whipped are Talking Horses, making this behaviour equivalent to whipping a human in our world.

**This is not a particularly theologically sound image; it is just the one that came into my head after reading this section of TLB.

My First Book: The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

2011-11-21T02:14:00.000-08:00

This book was an obvious choice to begin active participation in 2012 Sister Book Challenge. It's been sitting on my shelf for years now, as I bought it bound together with The Importance of Being Earnest. I studied the latter in year 11, but never got around to reading its neighbour.

I'm glad I didn't, because I think at 17 it would have messed with my head. At 23 I still struggled with its dark themes.

I'm going to stop teasing you now and practice my good reviewer skills. The Picture of Dorian Gray is the story of a young aristocrat who gives the book its name. Soon after meeting Dorian Gray, Lord Henry points out to him that his wondrous will fade and with it his charms, while his portrait will always bear the bloom of youth. Upon hearing his, Dorian wishes the reverse were true: that he could go on looking young and unblemished, while the picture grew old. You can probably see where this is going, although I didn't: Dorian's wish is granted.

This book explores themes of morality without being preachy, instead employing a standoffish, interested manner. It looks at what "sin" does to a man. The book considers why men (sic) do wrong -- or rather, why they don't not do wrong. Dorian Gray's wealth and social standing protect him a great deal from punishment for the amoral life he leads, and his face does not bear the mark of his iniquity. It is only his soul that suffers.

I had never considered the idea of a face bearing one's past and revealing one's soul but I see now that it's a valid point. I enjoying thinking this idea through as I read the book.

Authorship of Dorian Gray is also very important. At times I felt as though Lord Henry was merely a voicepiece for Oscar Wilde's own philosophical ideas. They were interesting, but the dialogue with him became tiresome, as it was comprised almost entirely of aphorisms and epigrams.

Oscar Wilde's own private life is also relevant to the text. Apparently when it was first published in 1890 it was censored and banned in many places and widely condemned as immoral. After the first edition Wilde had to change it to be less homoerotic. The morality of the author was conflated with that of the text. This was bidirectional: Oscar Wilde's own homosexuality was seen to pollute his work, and also the immorality in the text was considered to reflect on the soul that produced it.

When I read The Importance of Being Earnest, I had no idea Oscar Wilde was a raging homo. Reading The Picture of Dorian Gray, however, I bore this fact in mind as I considered the campness of the text. The Importance of Being Earnest is heavily invested in heterosexual notions of marrying and giving in marriage**. In Dorian Gray, marriage is more of a general background to male friendship. The two main characters (both male) apart from Dorian are in love with him, though only one admits to it, and there are hints that Dorian does not exclusively "ruin" young women. I'm not sure if I would have noticed these elements if I was still ignorant of Oscar Wilde's sexuality, and I think it's a fascinating point to consider: how much of the author we put into the text. Death of the author debate, etc, etc, blah blah blah.

One more note before my final evaluation: the novel is quite mysogynistic, anti-semetic, and a little bit racist. It's hard to know how much of this is a product of its time, and how much is Oscar Wilde being an arsehole.

So: should everyone read this novel? Yes, I think so. It's brilliant, with original concepts and ideas, and I think it's the sort of book that can be read over and again. Everyone should read it -- but only once they're in their mid-twenties, maybe, and not if they're too melancholic.

*Pardon the double negative.
**It is important to note, though, that Wilde hardly takes these things seriously.

(Read Jocelyn's review here)

A farewell to arms.

2011-11-10T14:11:00.001-08:00

So this my (Cecelia's) first post. I have read embarrassingly few books in this cloud. My proudest accomplishment thus far is ‘a farewell to arms’ by Ernest Hemingway. It was a book that I was required to study in year 12.

I have a lot of thoughts on a farewell to arms, my number one thought being this: I HATE IT! There are a number of reasons why I feel this way.

Firstly, I had to study it. Usually you end up hating texts/films that you have to study. For example, I love the film ‘look both ways’ because I never had to study it. I hate the book ‘catcher in the rye’ because it is total whiny drivel. And I had to study it.

Secondly, Year 12 sucked. Second worst year ever!* So that means I probably wasn’t in quite the right headspace to be reading this ridiculously depressing book.

But I should get on to talking about the book. (Is this the part where I put a spoiler alert? I don’t know if I’ll spoil anything so I’ll warn you just in case.) The protagonist is an alcoholic and quite slutty and I very much didn’t like him. He fell in love with a girl. Whenever they were together the pages were filled metaphors for lovemaking. Hint: if he is describing her hair, chances are they are doing it. Whenever they were apart, the weather was crappy. If it was raining someone probably just died.

Oh my, thinking about this is giving me English flashbacks.

I don’t like Ernest Hemingway. Kat Stradford of 10 things I hate about you was right when she said “Romantic? Hemingway? He was an abusive, alcoholic misogynist who squandered half of his life hanging around Picasso trying to nail his leftovers.”

Well, right about the abusive alcoholic misogynist bit. The Picasso stuff I am not so sure about.

Lastly, I have a confession to make. I did not read the entire book. HOWEVER, I still count it because I had to endure countless English classes of studying it and I got an A fricken+ on the text response for it so I think I must have soaked enough in to be allowed to count it.

Im sorry, Im not very good at this sort of review-y thing. Perhaps I’ll get better the more I read and review. Also, I’m trying to get my hands on that magical essay that I wrote.**

*2003 takes the cake.

** Its only comparatively magical to the start of year 12. I went from getting a D to an A+ in English in one year.

Retrospective Read: Pride and Prejudice

2011-11-09T22:31:00.000-08:00

I first read this book as part of year 11 literature. My grandmother was very disappointed in me as I hated it. I kept sloping around the house reading it and throwing it on the ground in disgust.

"Why are all these women obsessed with marriage?" I asked. "It's just all about marriage! How boring!"

Later, of course, I became familiar with a little thing called irony, of which Ms. Austen was a massive fan. And, predictably, I became a huge fan of hers. I say predictably because I very much fit the mould of the kind of person that would be a Jane Austen fan: early-twenties, secret romantic, literary woman who aspires to be a "woman writer" and loves the fact that Austen had to write her genius novels in secret.

So, Pride and Prejudice. Lizzy Bennet has charmed readers for dozens of decades. She's probably one of the most loved characters of all time and definitely a woman who was ahead of her time. Her love story with the adominably proud Mr Darcy has been homaged, consciously and unconsciously in hundreds of books and movies that followed*. Mr Darcy is the dark and mysterious man we love to hate, but then grow to love for his quiet strength and unwavering passion for the delectable Lizzy.

I have also read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which is amazing and a great adaptation. The Bennet sisters are even greater when they're Japanese-trained zombies slayers. It's Victorian-era post-feminism!

So: Everyone should read Pride and Prejudice. Because it's brilliant, a classic.

Note: This is embarrassing. In my last post I wondered why Harry Potter isn't in the cloud and it totally is. I also considered reading 100 Years of Solitude in Spanish, but it isn't in the cloud! Love in the Time of Cholera is.

*Eg. Bridget Jones' Diary. Bridget Jones makes a pathetic substitute for Lizzy.

Retrospective Read: Twilight

2011-11-09T22:08:00.000-08:00

Emmeline here. This is my inaugural post for this blog.

I'm pretty sure we're going to post reviews of books we read prior to the Consensus Cloud Challenge. Well I decided to get Twilight over and done with.

I'd hardly heard anything about this book when I saw the movie at the cinema. Later I devoured all the books, love-hating every minute of it.

I read this book at the start of 2009. I remember sitting on the tram reading it with the covers pressed against my thighs, so no-one could see what I was reading. When I had to close it I did it very quickly and shoved it right in my bag. It was as if I was in constant fear of someone pointing out to me that, as a Serious Arts Student, I shouldn't be reading such drivel.

And it is drivel. Terribly written, unedited, highly problematic. I'm glad I read it, though, because it means I can critique it. Which I have. A lot. I used to be obsessed with how messed up and bad it is.

I think I've moved on, though.

In Winter of 2009 I made it most of the way through Crepusculo, which is Twilight in Spanish. It was a way of turning a guilty pleasure into an intellectual exercise. Interestingly, it was more painful to read Twilight in Spanish than in English, because I had to go over the words more slowly, and it was more obvious just how repetitive and annoying the language is. On the plus side, Meyer's limited vocabulary made it not as difficult to read as it otherwise would have been.

So: Is Twilight a book everybody should read? I think so. It's painful and terrible, but you kind of just need to know what the fuss is about*. Just don't buy the book, because by doing so you are giving money to the Mormon church, which is homophobic.

Question: If I read a book from the consensus cloud in another language, does that count? I could read 100 Years Of Solitude in the original Spanish. I don't think I would, though. Apparently Marquez' writing is highly metaphorical and difficult to read in Spanish.

Question: Why isn't the HP series in the Consensus Cloud??

* Like Harry Potter. Except that Harry Potter is actually good.

The Old Man and the Sea

2011-11-09T21:55:00.000-08:00

When Emmeline and I were crossing off our lists initially we had two highlighters for different categories. One was books that we had started but never finished and the other was books that we owned but hadn't read.

Given that The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway was a bookclub book (from the first week), is very short, and I had already begun it, I thought I would start there. Also we were at Joanne's and she had a copy I could borrow.

It turns out that I had barely read the first page and so didn't have much of a headstart. Also, reading a book after you've already sat through a bookclub on it is bizarre, because you are always straining to remember what was said and if it fits with what you are reading rather than just enjoying the book on its own merit.

[Spoilers beyond this point]

I did not like The Old Man and the Sea. If it wasn't so short and I wasn't reading it as part of this project I believe I wouldn't have finished it*. I knew the fish gets eaten by sharks so I knew all his hard work was for nothing. I also couldn't remember if he died at the end or not, so I thought that might happen as well** and the whole thing would have been a waste of time.

The imagery of the book was good, I could really imagine his hut, his body, his boat and the ocean.

I liked that the skeleton of the fish remained even after the sharks had demolished the flesh and the old man was revered for his skills upon return to the shore, rather than ridiculed for fanciful stories, which I was terrified he would be.

With the return of the young boy to fish by his side forevermore and the vindication of his skills as a fisherman; it was all in all a pleasant ending to a painful journey.

-Jocelyn

*I am not afraid to stop reading a book I don't like or am not currently in the mood for. On my consensus cloud The Scarlet Letter and 1984 are two books I previously have started reading but haven't felt like finishing and have discarded for a later time (which may or may not come).

**I always assume the worst will happen in books and movies. It can take away from their enjoyment and I have begun to seek out spoilers when I feel my enjoyment will increase. Previously I eschewed spoilers like the plague!

In the Beginning.

2011-11-09T21:29:00.000-08:00

Having finished my degree I am left with a gaping hole in my life which I have been asking around for hobbies to fill it with. Emmeline suggested I attempt to read all the books on a book cloud she had had on her wall for a while.
I immediately went online, printed out a copy and crossed off as much as I could.

It looked pretty good because of the few that I have read, many are the large-text (most popular) books. Initially I didn't cross off Hitchhikers or Narnia because I had not finished the series. Emmeline then pointed out to me that The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy only refers to the first book, not the whole series. I promptly crossed out both only to be corrected that that one does refer to the whole series!!

Emmeline and I decided to aim to read as many as possible by the end of 2012. And of course if it isn't on the internet they you didn't really do it. So we are making a blog and posting about the books we read. Reviewing would probably be the wrong term, we shall see what our thoughts look like.

Whilst visiting Cecelia I was creating a Venn Diagram to show what Emmeline and I had read and where our overlaps are. Cecelia wanted to be involved so we brought her into the fold despite her serious handicap (she gets carsick and so did not have the 2 hour bus trip during high school advantage that Emmeline and I did).

I hope you all, nonni, zii and anonymii* enjoy our reading escapades!

-Jocelyn

*I initially had 'grandparents, aunties and anonymii' because the plural of one anonymous person must be anonymii. Then I couldn't go past the alliteration that writing grandparents and aunties&uncles in Italian would create.