Conspicuous consumption

[altariel]

Big pictures under most of the cuts.

(Some of) what I read over the summer



Wrote about reading Ulysses here. I did finish it, by gum. As you can see, I had a feminist SF-a-thon over the summer. Joanna Russ' The Two of Them and We Who Are About To... were probably the most awesome. Monique Wittig's Les Guérillères inspired some experimentation. The Book of the Night by Rhoda Lerman should be better known. I still have a pile of these to get through, hurray. Loved the Tiptree winner, Baba Yaga Laid an Egg by Dubravka Ugrešić (not shown on the pile because I read it at the start of the year, and that pile was started in June). Got to the end of the first half of my Virginia Woolf project in March when I finished Between the Acts, but haven't progressed very far with the essays or short fiction since then.

What I read for last term



Mary Olivier: A Life is probably my pick of the year and certainly the find of the year. I read The Life and Death of Harriet Frean by the same author too, but that was on my Kindle and so difficult to represent pictorially. Beloved was amazing too.

The assignments arising from this course will add up to the equivalent of having read Great Expectations this holiday. I know this because of this. Send help. (No, I didn't see the recent adaptation. Because I was reading all the things. Worth a look?)

Some K1ndle reads

• The Marq'ssan Cycle, L. Timmel Duchamp


• Drown, Junot Diaz


• The Kings of Eternity, Eric Brown (lovely!)


• Little Face, Sophie Hannah


• True Grit, Charles Portis (fab-u-lous, as Craig Revell Horwood might say)


• The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes (yawn)


• Unless, Carol Shields


• The True History, Lucian of Samosata


• How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe, Charles Yu


• The Country of the Pointed Firs, Sarah Orne Jewett


• The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver


• Assorted Michael Dibdins


• Self-Liberation: A Guide to Strategic Planning for Action to End a Dictatorship or Other Oppression, Gene Sharp


• From Dictatorship to Democracy, Gene Sharp


• 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, Ha-Joon Chang

What else I read over the holiday



The third one down is Sally Hayward's Spring Term, based on Antonia Forest's characters. Thought it was great. The bottom three are still in progress. Thank you to the_wild_iris for the Catherine Fishers! Will take the opportunity to highly recommend Evelyn Finds Herself by Josephine Elder, which I read back in March: ostensibly a girls' school story, actually a superb account of adolescence. You can stick your Catchers in the Rye.

The fun stuff



I also tried to be a good citizen at the Middle-earth Fanfiction Awards, and not only did I hit my (conservative) target of 25 reviews, I managed to get to 52 - including two novel-length works! They are both highly recommended: Amid the Powers and Chances of the World by Azalais and Lie Down in the Darkness, Rise Up From the Ash by Dwimordene. I also read The Last Ring-Bearer by Kyrill Yeskov, a retelling of LotR from Mordor's perspective: nowhere near as good as either of those stories (and a lot of Tolkien fanfic that I read), but of course a Man Wrote It and that means it got covered in Salon (my thorts here).

I think I also reread The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but that could have been last year or, indeed, any year of my life since I was ten. (Checks LibraryThing...) Yes, that was this year.

Summary: I didn't do much this year except read. Seriously. I didn't budge from this chair much except to go somewhere else in order to be able to read other things.
Bonus prize for ploughing through this post: I'll give a three-word review of any book on my lists if you ask.

Comments

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

The Naomi Mitchison, perhaps. Met her once at a wedding...

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Met her once at a wedding...

Wow!

Anyway: witty, aristocratic, exploratory.

[julesjones]

And one I must re-read soon. :-)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Yes!

[happytune.livejournal.com]

I'm in awe!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I'm more in awe of your achievement in 2011 xx

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Sense of an Ending. Just read it. Didn't like protagonist, didn't like female protagonist, and the Lost Boy Genius I didn't buy at all, and found the endless tell-not-show unconvincing - but otherwise all right :/

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Contrived, skilful, same-old-same-old.

ETA: Actually, I didn't have a clue what had happened by the end. What was your interpretation of events?

Spoiler warning

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Lost boy genius Adrian got Veronica's mother up the duff, baby was born mentally disabled (older mother trope, NATCH) and Adrian offed himself. Tony didn't realise it was the mother he'd gotten up the duff until the careworker told him.

Re: Spoiler warning

[altariel.livejournal.com]

So Adrian was the father? I couldn't tell whether we were meant to think that Tony had slept with the mother on that weekend visit, and had suppressed the memory entirely.

Re: Spoiler warning

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

God, that one went over my head. Hmmm, no I don't think so. He was painfully exhaustive in every other flipping detail so he doesn't really cut his Unreliable Narrator chops.

Re: Spoiler warning

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I was struggling to find an interpretation of events that would mean that the story was dull. But it seems that the story was in fact dull. I think Tony's unreliable in the sense that he "doesn't get things", and so I wondered whether there was something momentous that he still wasn't getting. But eventually decided I didn't much care.

[applegnat.livejournal.com]

Oscar Wao?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I need more than three words to do that properly. I really liked it the first time I read it (a couple of years back), although I didn't much like the handling of the female characters. This turned out not to be as bad as I remembered on second reading, when I was bowled over by the technical virtuosity. Still, I don't think he pulls off the female voices: Lola's voice doesn't ring true to me. And I wish it was her book. I wish I had this book, with all its geekiness and cleverness and geeky cleverness and clever geekiness, but written by a woman, and about becoming a woman.

I also think he showed real guts in taking his time over writing it.

What did you think of it?

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

I didn't do much this year except read.

Sounds like a good year to me. :)

I have fond memories of Edmund Crispin's "Best SF" short story anthologies for Faber & Faber, as the publishers were still called when they first came out. ISTR that there were eventually seven volumes, most of which I read as a teenager in the 1960s, either borrowed from my local library or buying them with my pocket money. I can't tell from the cover of your book if it combines all of the original volumes, in which case it must be a very large book, or if it's just the first one, or whether it's a selection of stories from all of them. A little oddly, I believe that Crispin was a well-known crime writer rather than himself an SF writer, but he made a good choice of stories.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

It's just the first volume: I grabbed it when I saw it because you had spoken so warmly of them in the past. I enjoyed it very much!

If you count up from the bottom of the pile in that picture, and find the slim green paperback that's 6th from the bottom - that's The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin, which is his most well known crime book!

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that you enjoyed it. Your memory of what I said in the past is better than mine is. :) I'm pleased to see on checking the contents of that first volume that it includes three stories by female writers, which for an anthology first published in 1955 is good going. (Though that may have been a fluke, as the remaining volumes only seem to have another two or three in total.) The John Wyndham story has strong feminist (as well as anti-racist) sympathies, as well as a nice line in black humour, and is a particular favourite of mine.

I've never rad any of Crispin's crime fiction.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I was also pleasantly surprised by the number of female writers included.

I can really recommend Crispin. His books are a little like Doctor Who, but without the space-time travel (!). Gervase Fen (professor of English at Oxford) lopes around in a dreadful car being cleverer than everyone else, and having surreal adventures. The Moving Toyshop is a good place to start.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I may give "The Moving Toyshop" a try. I haven't read much crime fiction - just Sherlock Holmes and a little Agatha Christie.

[wormwood-7.livejournal.com]

Hope Mirrlees, Collected Poems?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Brilliant, experimental, obscure.

Did I link to anything about this? You'll be interested, see here.

[wormwood-7.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link :) Very interesting.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed Spring Term too. I hope she writes more; it really felt like an Antonia Forest in writing style as well as characterisation.

I should find some Joanna Russ. I've enjoyed the one or two I've read in the past.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I hope she writes more too, I could happily read a full series of them. I liked the way it combined home and school elements.

Would be very interested to hear what you make of Joanna Russ.

[forodwaith.livejournal.com]

Oooh, Mary Olivier sounds wonderful. I'll have to search that one out.

What did you end up thinking of the Carol Shields?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Mary Olivier is available at Project Gutenberg. I hugely recommend it. May Sinclair wrote 20+ novels, although I doubt many are still in print. Virago also republished The Three Sisters, loosely based on the Brontes.

I liked the Carol Shields very much. It wasn't ambitious, but it was skilfully written and tender. I've picked up Small Ceremonies, which I think you recommended, although I've not had a chance to read it yet.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't have got through it without the audio reading, and even then there were some sticky moments. Also, I had a lot of free time over the summer.

[aliana1.livejournal.com]

Well done, you! Wish I had the tenacity to accomplish so much excellent non-school-related reading.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I wish I had the tenacity to accomplish anything else but reading!

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

Maxine Hong Kingston gets referred to constantly in writing about women's autobiography, along with Lillian Hellman. Three words? (Also, may I borrow it?)

I'm also curious about the books on writing, the Prose, Mullan and Brande, but it's probably greedy to ask for more reviews.

The Hayward was exactly what I needed exactly when I needed something like that, and I like it on top of that, despite some things not quite working for me in it. But it was a thoroughly enjoyable read.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Seconding Katlinel on interest in the books on writing, particularly the Mullan.