Currently Reading #15

[littlerdog.livejournal.com]

The Windup Girl will go to the local supermarket's charity table as soon as anyone's going that way. After all, it's only bad, not evil. It deserves a chance at a loving home.

Meanwhile, I've started reading To the Pole by Caroline Hamilton. This book is full of the sort of people I'd usually run to one Pole or the other to avoid. Certainly I wouldn't normally invite them into my head for any length of time. The sort of people who sail through life on a flying carpet of privilege, and actually seem to believe that everything that's been handed to them on a plate is something they've earned. Jolly hockey sticks!

It's striking however that Hamilton seems to need a man to tell her she can do things, even from her position of privilege. Daddy tells her to go to Cambridge (jolly hockey sticks!) and a man, a Real Polar Explorer Man, tells her, yes, Cinders, you can go to the ball. So she goes. What would have happened if RPEM had said, no, the Pole's not for you girl, so back to the hockey field with you? The mind boggles.

There are however touching and funny moments in this book. It's not nearly as annoying as it could have been. When the explorers are searching around with their GPS's trying to find the elusive North Geographic Pole, their combined excitement and frustration are catching. When they start singing our crap National Anthem, however, it's back to the hockey sticks.

I'd back this lot to get up Everest and down again, though.