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Recently Completed #4
Mar. 20th, 2014 03:09 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
littlerdog.livejournal.comHaving made a start on the book I chose purely on the basis of its title--The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica--I'm not overly impressed so far. In fact, I'm bored. I don't care about how ice hockey players feel about US politics in the 1970s. Sorry. Get on with the story! If there is one. So far you've been born. And...?
What have I read lately?
Just finished Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. I read this mostly because of a vague hovering guilt about never having read it. So now it's read, I can feel guilty about something else instead. Diary of Anne Frank, maybe.
For the most part, it wasn't a bad read. Some of the characters were a bit worthy, and Eva the angelic child is frankly unbelievable, but I did like St Clare. A lot. I was sad when he went out of the story. But oh, the religious stuff. Not only did it bore me to tears, I got frustrated by the author's apparent inability to see that it was just another way of keeping the slaves in their place. Don't worry about all the cruelty, cos you'll get pie in the sky when you die. And even in Stowe's benevolence, she's astonishingly racist. Sometimes I almost felt embarrassed to be reading the book.
But despite the insistence that 'intention is not magical', I would like to allow the author some leeway for her good intentions, and for the influence this book had on the issue of abolition of slavery. It was interesting that she had characters foresee an uprising by the slaves, but nobody seemed to have any inkling of what was actually coming for America, ie the horrors of the Civil War, even though it was a mere ten years ahead. It was also interesting to read about northern Americans disapproving of slavery, but finding black people themselves objectionable. Doublethink is always intriguing. Worth a read if you can stomach being preached at for pages. Oh, and the racism.
Before that, I read The Silent Twins by Marjorie Wallace, a study of identical twins June and Jennifer Gibbons and their unusual bond. The twins seemed absorbed in each other, spoke only to each other and their younger sister, yet wrote copiously in diaries, novels, short stories and poems. Variously diagnosed as psychopathic or schizophrenic, the twins spent ten years in Broadmoor Hospital after committing a series of petty crimes. The book is based on the twins' own writings as well as on interviews with family members, professionals and others who had dealings with them.
If I were to diagnose, which I shouldn't, but if I were, I'd say they were schizotypal rather than schizophrenic, but what do I know?
A fascinating and disturbing book. The only major flaw I spotted was some rather wild speculation on the significance of what struck me as simply sleep paralysis.
Going backwards yet again, Print and Prejudice by Sara Goodman Zimet. The chief signifance of this book is I think that the same debates we're having now about boys and reading (boys need special boy books!) were being had back in the 1970s when this book was written. It's an interesting book full of references to studies that would probably be interesting to follow up, although sometimes the conclusions drawn don't immediately seem to be justified by the evidence. If you change more than one thing between the experimental group and the control, how can you really know which change produced the observed effect? You can't.
The book looks at racism, sexism, political bias and the good old sin of omission of people from history. Dated, but possibly a useful starting point, especially when engaging in the 'boys need boy books' debate.
Both concurrent with and prior to Print and Prejudice, I was reading Is Heathcliff a Murderer? in which critic John Sutherland looks at several puzzles in nineteenth-century fiction, and attempts to resolve them or establish that the author in question was using apparent errors for effect. The studies of books I haven't read were almost as interesting as those of ones I have read, even ones I've read but don't remember much about. If you're interested in C19th novels, this book should provide points to ponder.
Pedals and Petticoats by Mary Elsy turned out to be very disappointing. Cycling through Europe in the 1950s with three female friends, Elsy seems to have noticed the men they met and little else. There are some interesting observations, but throughout there seems to be an edge of desperation to make the mundane more exciting.
Before that I was reading Cordelia Fine's The Gender Delusion, a yummy book full of debunks of the innate differences between men and women. Well worth reading even if you don't believe a word of it.
What have I read lately?
Just finished Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. I read this mostly because of a vague hovering guilt about never having read it. So now it's read, I can feel guilty about something else instead. Diary of Anne Frank, maybe.
For the most part, it wasn't a bad read. Some of the characters were a bit worthy, and Eva the angelic child is frankly unbelievable, but I did like St Clare. A lot. I was sad when he went out of the story. But oh, the religious stuff. Not only did it bore me to tears, I got frustrated by the author's apparent inability to see that it was just another way of keeping the slaves in their place. Don't worry about all the cruelty, cos you'll get pie in the sky when you die. And even in Stowe's benevolence, she's astonishingly racist. Sometimes I almost felt embarrassed to be reading the book.
But despite the insistence that 'intention is not magical', I would like to allow the author some leeway for her good intentions, and for the influence this book had on the issue of abolition of slavery. It was interesting that she had characters foresee an uprising by the slaves, but nobody seemed to have any inkling of what was actually coming for America, ie the horrors of the Civil War, even though it was a mere ten years ahead. It was also interesting to read about northern Americans disapproving of slavery, but finding black people themselves objectionable. Doublethink is always intriguing. Worth a read if you can stomach being preached at for pages. Oh, and the racism.
Before that, I read The Silent Twins by Marjorie Wallace, a study of identical twins June and Jennifer Gibbons and their unusual bond. The twins seemed absorbed in each other, spoke only to each other and their younger sister, yet wrote copiously in diaries, novels, short stories and poems. Variously diagnosed as psychopathic or schizophrenic, the twins spent ten years in Broadmoor Hospital after committing a series of petty crimes. The book is based on the twins' own writings as well as on interviews with family members, professionals and others who had dealings with them.
If I were to diagnose, which I shouldn't, but if I were, I'd say they were schizotypal rather than schizophrenic, but what do I know?
A fascinating and disturbing book. The only major flaw I spotted was some rather wild speculation on the significance of what struck me as simply sleep paralysis.
Going backwards yet again, Print and Prejudice by Sara Goodman Zimet. The chief signifance of this book is I think that the same debates we're having now about boys and reading (boys need special boy books!) were being had back in the 1970s when this book was written. It's an interesting book full of references to studies that would probably be interesting to follow up, although sometimes the conclusions drawn don't immediately seem to be justified by the evidence. If you change more than one thing between the experimental group and the control, how can you really know which change produced the observed effect? You can't.
The book looks at racism, sexism, political bias and the good old sin of omission of people from history. Dated, but possibly a useful starting point, especially when engaging in the 'boys need boy books' debate.
Both concurrent with and prior to Print and Prejudice, I was reading Is Heathcliff a Murderer? in which critic John Sutherland looks at several puzzles in nineteenth-century fiction, and attempts to resolve them or establish that the author in question was using apparent errors for effect. The studies of books I haven't read were almost as interesting as those of ones I have read, even ones I've read but don't remember much about. If you're interested in C19th novels, this book should provide points to ponder.
Pedals and Petticoats by Mary Elsy turned out to be very disappointing. Cycling through Europe in the 1950s with three female friends, Elsy seems to have noticed the men they met and little else. There are some interesting observations, but throughout there seems to be an edge of desperation to make the mundane more exciting.
Before that I was reading Cordelia Fine's The Gender Delusion, a yummy book full of debunks of the innate differences between men and women. Well worth reading even if you don't believe a word of it.
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