The last four weeks in books
Dec. 11th, 2016 09:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizbeeBut first: I've been lurking around DW and LJ less than usual, because my trusty early-2011 MacBook Pro died, and doing anything on an iPad is a pain, even with a Bluetooth keyboard.
(I was casting about re how to replace it -- buy a cheap Windows laptop to tide me over while I save for a new MacBook? That was the plan, but then I actually looked at cheap Windows laptops. Yikes.
So, no, I'm just going to (a) pay off my vacuum cleaner faster than planned -- said vacuum having been purchased on an interest-free card, because it was a VACUUM EMERGENCY -- and save enough of a lump sum that I can pay off the future MacBook within its interest-free period. I've saved $100 so far! AND I have a jar that's full of coins, there might be another $20 in there.
But rest assured that I'll be whinging about my iPad in the meantime, especially because it's unreasonably hard to borrow and read ebooks from the library via the app, and my TV and movie watching is limited to Australian streaming services and the DVDs I already own.)
Now, I actually haven't been reading a whole lot lately, because ... I dunno, I start things and have trouble getting into them, maybe I'm in a slump.
Books I Have Wholeheartedly Enjoyed
Mistletoe and Murder by Robin Stevens
The latest in Stevens' Wells & Wong Mysteries, a five-book (so far) middle-grade/early YA series set in the 1930s. It's not quite fair to say that each book is a pastiche of a different classic interwar genre, but, for example, one of the earlier books literally featured a murder on the Orient Express.
The premise is this: Hazel Wong has been sent from her home in Hong Kong to a posh English boarding school, where the hockey sticks are jolly and the classmates are racist. There, she meets and befriends the Honourable Daisy Wells, a girl genius who conceals her intellect beneath an obfuscating layer of wide-eyed aristocratic uselessness. (If that sounds like Lord Peter Wimsey, well, wait until you meet her uncle.) Daisy and Hazel Fight Crime!
I particularly loved this Christmas book, because it has a wonderful bit where Hazel meets other non-white people of her class, and there's a charge of mutual recognition that felt really well-observed. And Daisy, who started out the series as essentially "what if you took the more sociopathic interpretations of Sherlock Holmes and bundled them all into the body of a pretty teenage girl", is slowly developing empathy, and even more slowly realising that she is asexual, aromantic and desperately in love with Hazel.
Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil by Melina Marchetta
I reviewed this over at No Award, but weeks after I read it, I'm still thinking about it, and also fancasting a big-budget BBC adaptation and compiling a soundtrack. It's probably the best crime novel I've read all year.
Books I Moderately Enjoyed
Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World by Richard Rhodes
I've been listening to the podcast You Must Remember This, "the podcast dedicated to the forgotten and/or secret histories of Hollywood's first century". It's extremely good, but it also inspires me to read more Hollywood histories, and seek out more classic movies. (That last is a particular problem, see above re: being limited to streaming services that work in Australia.)
This was just about the only Hollywood history at my main e-library, so I pounced. It was ... fine. It went into too much detail about technology and engineering for me, so large chunks went straight over my head, and it hardly dealt with Lamarr's acting career at all. (It does go a long way to correcting the perception I occasionally see on Tumblr, that Lamarr didn't really want to act, but to be a full-time engineer. No, she was extremely dedicated to her acting career, which she worked hard to achieve, and inventing was a hobby she took very seriously.)
The book mentions, but doesn't really explore, the sexist perceptions of Lamarr's work. When her invention was rejected by the US Navy, it was dismissed as entirely her own, and the silly whim of an airhead actress. When, thirty years later, it turned out to be valuable, it was assumed that the real work had been done by her male collaborator. And now that collaborator, a musician who also persued invention as a hobby, is being erased again. As demonstrated by the fact that I can't even remember his name.
Books I Found Interesting But Wouldn't Inflict On Anyone Else
adelheid and I had this idea of doing a podcast about boarding school fiction in the new year. That's on hold while I'm technologically impaired, but I've been reading a lot of Angela Brazil novels.
Brazil essentially invented the twentieth century girls boarding school genre. There was fiction set in girls schools before her, of course, but she came of age at a time when formal education of girls became mainstream, and a lot of the tropes of the genre date back to Brazil's work.
I read a bunch of her novels from the first decade of the twentieth century, and found them mildly interesting, but sort of ... formless. All of her books were standalones, so there's no opportunity to really explore the school or to grow up with the characters.
I've just skipped to the 1910s, and now -- the most recent I've read is The New Girl at St Chad's -- the school environment is becoming more familiar. Now we have four girls to a dorm, instead of two sharing a bedroom, and rivalries between school houses. From the 1900s boarding school, essentially thirty girls overseen by a handful of teachers and a principal, we now have 200 girls, plus teachers, prefects ("monitresses") and an Oxford-educated lady as principal.
The reason I wouldn't really inflict them on anyone else -- unless you're ALSO really into boarding school fiction -- is that they haven't aged well. There are inordinate amounts of moralising (which is funny, since Brazil, like all writers of works aimed at girls, was held up as an example of Bad Fiction That Will Lead Young Women Astray), and some really shocking racism. And I don't just mean "unfortunate old-fashioned subtext", I mean "the heroine's sister composes minstrel songs", or "let's have a long digression about the inhumanity of the heathen Chinese".
Even St Chad's, which is otherwise delightful, has a character throwing around the N-word, which, to the modern reader (me) is as shocking as if she'd turned around and called her classmate a cunt, and a lot less hilarious.
So as historical artefacts, these are interesting and valuable, but as books I would recommend for entertainment and enjoyment, they're ... not great. Not great at all.
What I'm Reading Next
The Whites by Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt -- an American detective novel that looks Extremely Masculine And Manly. Not my usual sort of thing, but my boss was reading it, and it looked interesting. And, well, the e-library had it.
(I really must pay off my fines at the other library I belong to, their e-collection fills a lot of the gaps in my current library.)
Green River, Running Read by Ann Rule -- so the OTHER podcast I've been listening to is My Favorite Murder, an extremely dark true crime comedy podcast. I didn't like it much at first -- in fact, it's so slapdash that it was what made me go, "You know, even I could make a podcast better than this!" -- and yet somehow I've now listened to all the episodes, joined the Facebook Group, joined the Australian Facebook group, and then joined the Australian Facebook group's book club.
(I was also going to go to a Melburne Murderino meet-up on Thursday, but I was so exhausted that I piked out. And since I was asleep by 7:45, according to my sleep app, that was clearly the right choice.)
Anyway, they talk a lot about Ann Rule's The Stranger Beside Me, her debut, in which she discusses finding out that the nice man who worked with her at a crisis counselling centre was ... Ted Bundy. The library didn't have that, but they did have this, and since Bundy assisted, Hannibal Lecter style, with the hunt for the Green Bay Killer, I thought it might be interesting.
(When I say "Hannibal Lecter style", I mean Thomas Harris literally read about that and wrote Silence of the Lambs.)
Blacklands by Belinda Bauer -- a UK crime novel, chosen by the My Favorite Murder AU book club because one of the MFM hosts discussed it in the latest episode. And I was like, well, I'll give it a go, the library has it right there and I might like it.
(I was casting about re how to replace it -- buy a cheap Windows laptop to tide me over while I save for a new MacBook? That was the plan, but then I actually looked at cheap Windows laptops. Yikes.
So, no, I'm just going to (a) pay off my vacuum cleaner faster than planned -- said vacuum having been purchased on an interest-free card, because it was a VACUUM EMERGENCY -- and save enough of a lump sum that I can pay off the future MacBook within its interest-free period. I've saved $100 so far! AND I have a jar that's full of coins, there might be another $20 in there.
But rest assured that I'll be whinging about my iPad in the meantime, especially because it's unreasonably hard to borrow and read ebooks from the library via the app, and my TV and movie watching is limited to Australian streaming services and the DVDs I already own.)
Now, I actually haven't been reading a whole lot lately, because ... I dunno, I start things and have trouble getting into them, maybe I'm in a slump.
Books I Have Wholeheartedly Enjoyed
Mistletoe and Murder by Robin Stevens
The latest in Stevens' Wells & Wong Mysteries, a five-book (so far) middle-grade/early YA series set in the 1930s. It's not quite fair to say that each book is a pastiche of a different classic interwar genre, but, for example, one of the earlier books literally featured a murder on the Orient Express.
The premise is this: Hazel Wong has been sent from her home in Hong Kong to a posh English boarding school, where the hockey sticks are jolly and the classmates are racist. There, she meets and befriends the Honourable Daisy Wells, a girl genius who conceals her intellect beneath an obfuscating layer of wide-eyed aristocratic uselessness. (If that sounds like Lord Peter Wimsey, well, wait until you meet her uncle.) Daisy and Hazel Fight Crime!
I particularly loved this Christmas book, because it has a wonderful bit where Hazel meets other non-white people of her class, and there's a charge of mutual recognition that felt really well-observed. And Daisy, who started out the series as essentially "what if you took the more sociopathic interpretations of Sherlock Holmes and bundled them all into the body of a pretty teenage girl", is slowly developing empathy, and even more slowly realising that she is asexual, aromantic and desperately in love with Hazel.
Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil by Melina Marchetta
I reviewed this over at No Award, but weeks after I read it, I'm still thinking about it, and also fancasting a big-budget BBC adaptation and compiling a soundtrack. It's probably the best crime novel I've read all year.
Books I Moderately Enjoyed
Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World by Richard Rhodes
I've been listening to the podcast You Must Remember This, "the podcast dedicated to the forgotten and/or secret histories of Hollywood's first century". It's extremely good, but it also inspires me to read more Hollywood histories, and seek out more classic movies. (That last is a particular problem, see above re: being limited to streaming services that work in Australia.)
This was just about the only Hollywood history at my main e-library, so I pounced. It was ... fine. It went into too much detail about technology and engineering for me, so large chunks went straight over my head, and it hardly dealt with Lamarr's acting career at all. (It does go a long way to correcting the perception I occasionally see on Tumblr, that Lamarr didn't really want to act, but to be a full-time engineer. No, she was extremely dedicated to her acting career, which she worked hard to achieve, and inventing was a hobby she took very seriously.)
The book mentions, but doesn't really explore, the sexist perceptions of Lamarr's work. When her invention was rejected by the US Navy, it was dismissed as entirely her own, and the silly whim of an airhead actress. When, thirty years later, it turned out to be valuable, it was assumed that the real work had been done by her male collaborator. And now that collaborator, a musician who also persued invention as a hobby, is being erased again. As demonstrated by the fact that I can't even remember his name.
Books I Found Interesting But Wouldn't Inflict On Anyone Else
adelheid and I had this idea of doing a podcast about boarding school fiction in the new year. That's on hold while I'm technologically impaired, but I've been reading a lot of Angela Brazil novels. Brazil essentially invented the twentieth century girls boarding school genre. There was fiction set in girls schools before her, of course, but she came of age at a time when formal education of girls became mainstream, and a lot of the tropes of the genre date back to Brazil's work.
I read a bunch of her novels from the first decade of the twentieth century, and found them mildly interesting, but sort of ... formless. All of her books were standalones, so there's no opportunity to really explore the school or to grow up with the characters.
I've just skipped to the 1910s, and now -- the most recent I've read is The New Girl at St Chad's -- the school environment is becoming more familiar. Now we have four girls to a dorm, instead of two sharing a bedroom, and rivalries between school houses. From the 1900s boarding school, essentially thirty girls overseen by a handful of teachers and a principal, we now have 200 girls, plus teachers, prefects ("monitresses") and an Oxford-educated lady as principal.
The reason I wouldn't really inflict them on anyone else -- unless you're ALSO really into boarding school fiction -- is that they haven't aged well. There are inordinate amounts of moralising (which is funny, since Brazil, like all writers of works aimed at girls, was held up as an example of Bad Fiction That Will Lead Young Women Astray), and some really shocking racism. And I don't just mean "unfortunate old-fashioned subtext", I mean "the heroine's sister composes minstrel songs", or "let's have a long digression about the inhumanity of the heathen Chinese".
Even St Chad's, which is otherwise delightful, has a character throwing around the N-word, which, to the modern reader (me) is as shocking as if she'd turned around and called her classmate a cunt, and a lot less hilarious.
So as historical artefacts, these are interesting and valuable, but as books I would recommend for entertainment and enjoyment, they're ... not great. Not great at all.
What I'm Reading Next
The Whites by Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt -- an American detective novel that looks Extremely Masculine And Manly. Not my usual sort of thing, but my boss was reading it, and it looked interesting. And, well, the e-library had it.
(I really must pay off my fines at the other library I belong to, their e-collection fills a lot of the gaps in my current library.)
Green River, Running Read by Ann Rule -- so the OTHER podcast I've been listening to is My Favorite Murder, an extremely dark true crime comedy podcast. I didn't like it much at first -- in fact, it's so slapdash that it was what made me go, "You know, even I could make a podcast better than this!" -- and yet somehow I've now listened to all the episodes, joined the Facebook Group, joined the Australian Facebook group, and then joined the Australian Facebook group's book club.
(I was also going to go to a Melburne Murderino meet-up on Thursday, but I was so exhausted that I piked out. And since I was asleep by 7:45, according to my sleep app, that was clearly the right choice.)
Anyway, they talk a lot about Ann Rule's The Stranger Beside Me, her debut, in which she discusses finding out that the nice man who worked with her at a crisis counselling centre was ... Ted Bundy. The library didn't have that, but they did have this, and since Bundy assisted, Hannibal Lecter style, with the hunt for the Green Bay Killer, I thought it might be interesting.
(When I say "Hannibal Lecter style", I mean Thomas Harris literally read about that and wrote Silence of the Lambs.)
Blacklands by Belinda Bauer -- a UK crime novel, chosen by the My Favorite Murder AU book club because one of the MFM hosts discussed it in the latest episode. And I was like, well, I'll give it a go, the library has it right there and I might like it.
no subject
Date: 2016-12-11 03:49 am (UTC)Oh, now that sounds promising.
In your mentions of your working and non-working technology, you don't mention your Kobo. Do you still have/use that? Or did you find that your iPad was more convenient?
Me, I haven't even attempted to borrow e-books from the library because I assumed that as a Linux user, I was not going to be able to.
no subject
Date: 2016-12-11 08:14 pm (UTC)And, yeah, library DRM doesn't work with Linux. It's via Adobe, so it barely works with Apple products.
no subject
Date: 2016-12-11 09:25 pm (UTC)