Scandalously Written

I picked up Elizabeth Kerri Mahon’s Scandalous Women: The Loves and Loves of History’s Most Notorious Women a couple of weeks ago. I was browsing the shelves of the bookstore, in the history section, which is my go to section when I’m not really looking for anything specific. I thought it would be an interesting read – I’m interested in women in history and especially mistresses. (I don’t really know why, I just find it all fascinating!)

Well, I was sort of right. It was interesting to learn about some women I had never heard of before, like Grace O’Malley, a 16th century Irish pirate, or Sarah Winnemucca, a Native American activist in the 19th century. But I was distracted and disappointed by the writing style. There weren’t any glaring grammar or spelling errors, which are, sadly, all too common these days. No, it was the style. When reading about Zelda Fitzgerald, Mahon described the Fitzgerald’s as “…the Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag of the Jazz Age but with charisma and talent.” (p.72) This just totally threw me and instantly set me against the book. Not only was I annoyed at the mention of stupid reality TV non-entities, I was surprised by the conversational tone of the book. When I get a book from the history section, I have certain expectations for that book. I expect it to be a factual account, given to me in a direct way. I don’t mind an author making the material accessible, but I was startled by the turn this book had taken.

When discussing Molly Brown, she concludes with “[f]lamboyant and theatrical, Margaret Tobin Brown was the closest thing to royalty Denver had ever seen. Heck, she even hobnobbed with real royalty…” Was the “heck” necessary? Maybe Mahon was trying to help bring the reader in line with Molly Brown herself, a plain spoken woman. I just felt it to be inappropriate.

One more example – “Ouch, that’s harsh.” It might have been harsh, but you don’t need to say it.

Overall, the book was interesting but I didn’t like the tone and style with which it was written. I would suggest you read it if you like a colloquial tone, or find history books to be too dry or stiffly written. It did give me some suggestions for other books to look for. Each lady is given a few pages, just enough to tantalize. I suppose it’s a good introductory book. It starts with Cleopatra and ends with Amelia Earhart. I give it a 4 out of 10.

A

Madame Bovary

Well, finally it’s happened. I’m able to read substantial books again without wanting to run screaming from the room. I found a list online, compiled by I don’t really know who, that has the top 20 greatest books or something like that and I decided to work my way through it. The only good thing that came out of my degree, in my opinion, is that I’ve already read the number one book – Ulysses. I highly doubt that left to my own devices, I would read that book. It was a struggle to read it for my degree, and I only got through it when my father bought me a book explaining it! It was all going way over my head until I was made aware of the parallels between Ulysses and The Odyssey. (We had to have it read before we studied it in class, so it was basically a blind reading, and a lot of people, I know, didn’t finish it, since we didn’t have to write about it in our exam.)

So I ordered Lolita and Madame Bovary. I started Lolita, but I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind for that one at the moment. I was really wanting to read a period piece, so Madame Bovary it was. I haven’t actually finished it yet, but so far I think I’m enjoying it. It wasn’t until about half way through that it felt like anything happened really, not until she starts her affair. I’m trying to discover what made this book so shocking in the 19th century and I guess it was that she had an affair? And that she was middle class? I don’t know. When you have studied 18th century literature, and have read books like Moll Flanders and Fanny Hill, Madame Bovary is a pleasant walk down a country lane. I had the same reaction with Lady Chatterley’s Lover, although that did have a few explicit sex scenes. I guess people are just shocked by books about affairs, which seems rather silly to me, considering that aristocrats were well known for their dalliances. Middle class people weren’t supposed to act that way I suppose.

Emma Bovary is both a character I can relate to and one that I sort of despise. I can relate to her especially now that I am living out on a farm, her feeling trapped (I don’t have a driver’s license), the monotony of life, of going nowhere and seeing no one. She left her education at the convent (as I left mine at university) and went back to the place of her childhood. She wants romance and to feel all the excitement of life and who can blame her? Everyone wants that, or anyone with imagination, anyone who has seen anything of the world and then is forced to stay in one place, with people whose thoughts and desires seem so limited. So I sympathize with her. At the same time, however, she is spoiled and capricious and terrible. Her poor husband, who loves her dearly and does everything he can for her, is cuckolded and hated by his wife. She forces him to uproot their lives and move to another town, even though he is building a successful practice, but he does it because he loves her and wants her to be well. The gives in to her every whim and is indulged by her husband. She’s driven him into debt, just as she was on the verge of leaving him for another man. She refuses to accept the realities of life, always demanding and yearning for some great romance, some other feeling. She is not content, though she is lucky to be married to a man that loves her and one who could have been a moderately successful country doctor if not for her.

I have no sympathy for people who refuse to accept reality, not even fictional characters.

At the point I’m at, Emma has just had a nervous breakdown after Rudolphe, the man she was going to run away with, called off their affair and elopement on the eve of its happening. She has finally begun recovering and is on a religious bent, though it is just as superficial as any of her other passing fancies. There’s a good third of the book left; they are mired in debt, Bovary has been neglecting his patients for her, so we’ll see where this will lead. Will they be forced to flee the town? Will he find out about her affair? Will she embark on another one? Only time and reading will tell!

Wicked Innocence

So once again I have let an appreciable amount of time go by since posting. I apologise (though no one reads this blog anyway!). I was making the transition from living in the UK to moving back to the US. But I’ve been settled here for 4 months now, and I have read some books.

First up, Wicked by Gregory Maguire. I started reading it last summer and got about half of the way through and lost my motivation. I have heard the Broadway soundtrack and seen parts of the play online, and let me say, the book is a whole other kettle of fish! I haven’t seen the whole play, but from what I’ve heard from someone who has, the book is way more political. I found it confusing and a little difficult to keep up with who everyone was, and what their agenda was. So I stopped reading it.

Then a couple of weeks ago, someone was listening to the soundtrack and kept asking me what happened, so I figured I better finish the book, so I could better answer their questions. I think either it was me, or just that section of the book, which hit a down point, because I was able to finish the last half with no trouble. It was a little like The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, which gives you Pontious Pilate’s POV of Jesus and that time, and you are a lot more sympathetic towards him. In Wicked, you get the “Wicked” Witch of the West’s POV and her whole back story and how she feels about Dorothy coming and landing a house on her sister. From the very beginning you feel sorry for her, she has such a hard life. She does become a little less sympathetic, she’s very hard and hard hearted, but you can understand why, since you have the back story.

So it was a good read. I have the second book, Son of  a Witch, and even the third (I didn’t buy them, someone else already had them all), but I don’t know if I’ll read it. Maybe someday, but for now, I am happy with just having completed Wicked.

The other book I read was Edith Warton’s The Age of Innocence. I happened to catch part of the movie one afternoon when sitting around in my friend’s living room with 4  equally hungover pals. We missed the beginning and it took us a while to figure out what it was, or what was going on, but eventually we did and I was piqued. I didn’t think the movie was that great, too many lingering shots of hands, but that could be blamed on my befuddled state of mind which made everything seem hilarious. Anyway, I thought I remembered seeing the book in our house (another time I’d caught part of the movie on TV and wanted to read it, since I am particularly interested in that time period), and began a 2 day search for it. This was a few days before my move back to the States, and I wanted to find it to read on the plane. Luckily it appeared and I started reading. It begins in the 1870s and spans perhaps a year or 2, before jumping for an epilogue type conclusion. Recently engaged Newland Archer becomes fascinated by his fiancee’s ostracized cousin, Ellen Olenska, and must try to deal with this in the setting of upperclass New York society, with all its restrictions and expectations. It was a good read, I read it pretty much straight through. It’s a study of 19th century manners and conventions, which is what I find so fascinating. I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone, so it’s hard to give an in-depth review. Newland’s fiancee, May, is a product of her upbringing, and as such seems vapid at times, and only interested in keeping up appearance, but this turns out to not be entirely the case. Underneath the veneer of society, actual people dwell, with feeling and longings and desires, that society would not sanction. This is true for all the characters, or almost all of them, and though we’re mostly focused on Newland, you can glean a few hints about the other characters, even though Newland is almost entirely taken up with himself.

Those are the two books I’ve finished reading in the past 4 months. I’ve started quite a few more and have been reading a manga series. I’m in the middle of a book about 18th century women, which I hope to finish soon. I started the Forsythe Saga, but apparently I have 3 books in one or something like that, and I’m in the middle of the second one and flagging a bit. We’ll see how it goes. I started it after finishing The Age of Innocence, them both being set in a similar time. I think I’ve liked Wharton’s book better.

Reading for pleasure can be fun!

So it has been a while since I posted on this blog. Mostly because after I finished all my reading, my essays and my exams, I was well and truly sick of reading. It was a few months before I really picked up a book again, to read for pleasure. Perhaps it was the culmination of 4 years of reading to a deadline that finally got to me. But it’s been 7 months since I graduated (with a 2.1) and I’ve started reading again. I’ve reread a lot of my favorite books, just to go back to something familiar and something I don’t really have to think about while reading. Let’s see what I’ve read recently.

I got Charlie Brooker’s third book, The Hell of it All, for Christmas and finished reading it last week. I really love Brooker’s work, I’ve been reading him for years and own all his books. Maybe it’s because I feel like he has the same approach as I do, being very critical of what I read, only towards TV. His last two books have also included his articles for the G2 portion of The Guardian paper and aren’t strictly about TV, so you get an insight into what he thinks about other things as well – though it was pretty easy to figure it out, based on his opinions of TV shows. I really like his books because they are divided into columns, so it’s an easy book to pick up and put down again. You would be surprised how well they hold up against the test of time as well, despite the first one dealing with shows that aired in 2005. Sometimes you don’t know who the people he’s talking about are, like Big Brother contestants from days past, but because of the amusing way he tells you about them, you don’t really mind. It’s like talking to a friend who lives in another city than you, and has a whole other set of friends, it can still be fun to hear about things these people you’ve never met have done.

I like Brooker’s TV shows as well, especially Newswipe, but I really think his forte is in writing. One added bonus from having seen him on TV is that I now hear the columns in my head as if narrated by Brooker himself! Although that makes me sound a bit insane…

I started reading Gone with the Wind, but gave it up while Scarlett was still in Altanta and the war had just broken out. I may pick it up again, since I feel like I should read such an iconic book and I loved the movie. Maybe it’s because I read so many parred down Modernist books, but I felt that Margaret Mitchell used way too many adjectives! I know she was trying to evoke a certain feel, a time and place that has long since vanished, but really, did she need to many adjectives? It was like wading through a bog, or trying to run while wearing one of Scarlett O’Hara’s huge hoop dresses! Still, being a Southern girl myself, I almost feel obliged to give Scarlett another chance. We’ll see.

The last book I read, which wasn’t a rereading of an old favorite, was Personal Days by Ed Park. I got it while temping as an office slave, so it really appealed to me. It’s about a group of people who work in an office, and you don’t really know what they do, and you get the feeling that they don’t even know what they really do. It really captured the feeling of office work, especially for me, being a temp means that you don’t get paid much attention and can spend a lot of your time observing the people who permanently work there. Personal Days is full of things you notice when you work in an office, thing people say like “let’s touch base,” “keep me in the loop,” etc. Which is actually a pretty scary thought, since it means that essentially all offices are the same, no matter what you are doing. I’ve worked for the county council, an architects firm and a publishing company, among other jobs, and it’s all basically the same speak. Officese, I guess. Office jargon. It’s given me a real distaste for working in offices, though it’s the only real job world I know, so I’ll probably end up in an office telling people to “keep me in the loop.”

But the book is good fun for anyone who has ever worked, or is working in an office at the moment. There’s a bit of murder mystery thrown in there (though no one has been murdered, unless you count being fired as a kind of career murder), just to spice things up.  The first half is more funny, since it’s all about the office, and sets the office scene well and establishes the characters. Oh, and you never know who the narrator is (as far as I can remember. I read it in August, when I was still an office monkey.).

So, good reads all around then!

Let The Right One In – do it!

I finished reading Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist last night. At 3.30am. Perhaps not the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but still. It was a good read. I’ve been reading it off and on for about 2 weeks now. It’s a pretty substantial book, so it’ll keep you going for a while.

I have to admit that I was inspired to read it after watching the movie and, as is the case most of the time, the book is so much more than the movie! (the only time I’ve found the movie better than the book was with Stardust. The movie was so much better than the book!) There is a lot more depth to the book, the characters are expanded and explained. The movie is like a brief introduction to everyone, the book is hanging out with them for a few drunken nights and getting to know everything about them.

Trying not to ruin anything for anyone, but I will say this. The bullies in the book (and you meet them fairly quickly, so you’ll know who they are) are given more of a backstory than in the movie. You get to see what their home lives are like, why they act the way they do. In the movie, they are pretty much left as motiveless bullies, to make it easier to identify who is good and who is bad, I suppose. And to leave out some of the strange feelings you get as you read. You hate the bullies for bullying Oskar, but, like most bullies, they come from broken, violent homes, so you feel a bit sorry for them. I would say that it’s a good book for challenging your preconceptions.

Oh, and it’s also about vampires. I’ve read many vampire stories, from Dracula to Twilight, so I feel like I’m quite well versed in vampire lore. Let The Right One In adds a whole new twist to the tired tale. I read a review of the movie and someone had said they liked the way the movie dealt with the whole vampires-must-be-invited-in thing and the same holds true for the book, it’s just a bit more gruesome! Same goes for Eli’s sleeping arrangement. No coffins in this book. It’s not really your typical vampire story. And how the vampirism actually works is explained and actually makes a lot of sense. For a vampire book, dealing with a mythical creature, I would say Let The Right One In does a pretty darn good job of making it seem realistic!

Recommendation – read this book. Especially if you like vampire stories but are a bit tired of the usual fare. If you enjoyed Twilight but found yourself wishing it was….grittier, more realistic, less sugar-coated and about soulmates, Let The Right One In should help fill that void.

To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse next. I’m in the middle of writing a paper about the treatment of disconnection in this text. I’m not really a fan of Woolf. I had to read Between the Acts last year, which I found a bit pretentious. This one isn’t too pretentious, though still irritating in its own way.

It’s her most autobiographical book and all I can say is “poor thing.” Mr Ramsay, based on her father, is incredibly self-centered and an unlikable character. I found him very tedious and I didn’t really care about his thought processes or his constant need for female sympathy. Women are there for more than giving sympathy! So yes, not a very nice guy.

Various critics pointed out that it’s a book about creation, about writing or painting and we go through this process with Lily Briscoe, the only really likable character. I suppose she’s supposed to be Woolf, in a way, as the artist, told that women can’t write and can’t paint, but determined to prove them wrong. I don’t really understand the creative process though, I suppose, so I can’t really say I understood fully or was very sympathetic to her either.

One critic, Hermione Lee, pointed out that Woolf is distant from her working class characters, and I would have to agree. The working class are relegated to the background, though the main characters discuss the plight of fishermen while having Boeuf en Daube. They are incredibly middle-class pretentious and as such totally alien and unrelatable to me. This is probably my own problem, but as Lee illustrates, I’m not the only one to notice.

As a Modernist text (I’m reading it for my Modernism class), it’s easier to read than some other texts – Gertrude Stein for one! It had a pretty much linear plot, though there is a 10 year gap in the middle, which is also the section where her lack of understanding of the working class is most highlighted.

Luckily, it’s a a short book, only just over 150 pages, and so this is a short review. I know a lot of people like Virginia Woolf, but I am not one of them.

A

‘Still Life’? More like ‘Still Crap’!

“Art is not the recovery of the innocent eye, which is inaccessible. ‘Make it new’ cannot mean, see it free of all learned frames and names, for paradoxically it is only a precise use of learned comparison and the signs we have made to distinguish things seen or recognised that can give the illusion of newness.” —A S Byatt’s Still Life.

I read the above few sentences with a sense of “yes! This is what I was thinking!” This came about because of an essay I wrote a couple of weeks ago about Modernist writers and their attitudes towards tradition. I have a problem with the Futurists, and their call to arms against the past; their desire to burn it all, throw it away, deny it any importance. But without the past, without something to compare the “new” to, how can you be said to be “new” or innovative? So I was very much on board with Byatt’s expression there.

But it was all shattered by the next sentence: “I had the idea that this novel could be written innocently, without recourse to reference to other people’s thoughts, without, as far as possible, recourse to similie or metaphor.”

Why are you telling me what you had planned to do? Why are you pointing out what you are doing? If you are writing a novel, just write the novel! It’s a kind of pre-empting of criticism, of analysing her work as she writes it. Fine, write a review of it, write up notes, detailing what you did and why, but not in the novel itself! It completely threw me. And that’s not the only time it happens, but it was the most jarring one for me, since I was totally on board with the initial thought. I do not like this book. (I am about 100 pages from the end) I have to read it for a Literature and Food class (which is a joke in and of itself!), so I can’t just leave it. I am looking forward to finishing this course so that I can tear each and every page of Still Life into tiny pieces.

I love books, don’t get me wrong. I love reading. Why else would I be studying literature? There are lots of books I studied that I liked. Last year, on an exchange year at the University of South Carolina, I did a course where I loved all the books I read. I read Proust’s Swann’s Way, which was challenging, but enjoyable. I suppose it did a similar thing to Byatt’s work, commenting on itself, but it wasn’t masquerading as a novel. It’s like Byatt is trying to tick as many boxes as possible – novel, critical essay, philosophical study, period piece. All she’s managed to do well is irritate the crap out of me!

I suppose I should state the main aim of this blog. It is to give myself somewhere to rant about my readings, and to give my family and friends a break from hearing about it! I’ve started it a bit late, as I’m in my final term of my final year, but since I do read for pleasure, it’s not like I’m going to stop reading. I might also do some retrospective criticism of some of the other books I read, espeically as I will be revising them for my exams.

Books that I had to read, that will probably come in for some criticism: Fanny Hill, Moll Flanders, Pamela, Villette, To the Lighthouse. These are all books from this year. Books that I started out hating but then came to like: Ulysses and Gulliver’s Travels, both from this year (though I read GT in my first year, but for a differently focused class).

This will do for now, though I might come and update this, once I’ve finished Still Life and have a more complete critique of it. Right now it’s just annoying the bejeezus outta me!

UPDATE

So, I finished reading Still Life yesterday. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who might read it, and those few who can somehow get enjoyment out of it! But I will say this – I hate AS Byatt. I do not like what she did in the end. I only sympathised with two characters (I think you’ll figure out who, if you read it), and I don’t see what the point of that part was. Stupid stupid woman and her stupid book. We’re discussing it next week in class and I’ll be interested to see why the teacher put it on the course.

In conclusion, having completed the book, my opinion has not changed. It is a thoroughly unejoyable book, with unappealing, unsympathetic characters, a rather dull story line and authorial interjections that break up the flow. I don’t know what Byatt was trying to do with this text, but she failed miserably.