Yet another book post.
Jun. 4th, 2006 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedStill trying to write something for every book I read this year. On the plus side it's really helping me to remember them, on the minus side it takes SO LONG. *shakes out fingers*
...and I still have two essays to write this weekend, weeeeeep.
Vamped, David Sonowski
Set in a future society composed almost entirely of vampires. Sonowski has a lot of fun working out exactly how that would work – vampire economics, vampire pop culture, vampire corporate politics, etc. One fairly dorky vampire, who remembers the days before vampires took over the planet (and actually, who helped the process along) finds a young human girl and, almost in spite of himself, adopts her. Of course he has to keep his “daughter” a secret from his neighbors so that they won’t eat her.
The amazing thing about this book is that it has about a million chances to be sexually charged, dangerous-yet-compelling, animalistic – all the things normally associated with vampires -- and yet it NEVER GOES THERE. The main character is a loser, vampire society is just like regular society except that it’s if anything more predictable and mundane, and...and it's fluffy and silly and cute. For the premise alone, I’d count this book a win.
Although…there are cases where Sonowski is almost too eager to avoid any and all accusations of deviance. For instance, Father Jack, one of those kinds of Catholic priests, eventually gets into a mutually consensual relationship with a “Screamer” (a vampire who looks like a child, but isn’t one). She’s older than he is – but that prude, Sonowski, is careful to say that he is very uncomfortable with the implications of this relationship, no matter how compelling the extenuating circumstances.
Dude. On the scale of 1 to Very Problematic I think this one falls around a 2 or a 3, “would normally cause alarm but is in this case completely harmless and actually, sort of sweet.”
The Hungry Tide, Amitav Ghosh
A Calcutta businessman goes to see an aunt in “Tide Country,” a very poor chain of islands near Bengal, whose inhabitants are subjected to bad storms, periodic flooding, and gruesome death by man-eating tiger. Along the way, he meets an American marine biologist headed to the same place looking for river dolphins. I bought this for my mother. I’m not sure who started it – maybe me? -- but we’ve been buying each other India-themed books for a while now. It was one of those weird situations: I assumed that because she bought an India book for me, she probably liked that sort of thing, so I bought one for her, so then she bought one for me, and this escalated until it finally came out that neither one of us is particularly interested in India. XD
Mom says she skipped the political sections of this one. I did the same thing with A Suitable Boy and parts of The God of Small Things (is there some genre convention in Indian historical fiction that says the narrative must be interrupted by politics?) so I can’t exactly blame her, but they weren’t anywhere near as disconnected to the rest of the story in this book – and they were short! – so really, no reason to skip them. Ah, well. This book is, first and foremost, about a place, and secondly about a time, and only after that is it about any particular set of characters. But that's okay, because the Tide Country is a really, really fascinating place, and it has a really fascinating history. Well worth reading a book for.
I liked the characters too, though. The businessman is instantly likeable, but ultimately not as inspiring as the American -- he's interesting because he's flawed. I didn't think I'd like the American, but I did. She has an unusual mental constitution. At a certain point in the book, she realizes that she will most likely be spending the rest of her life on small boats in the channels between islands, looking for dolphins through her binoculars. She feels a deep sense of satisfaction. She thinks: maybe to almost everyone my work is meaningless, but I will be able to die feeling as if I have accomplished something with my life. That's cool. That's the feeling I wanted when I decided to become a scientist.
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
Beautiful but heartbreaking! I have since lost the book, but I can quote this part from memory because it is so traumatizing: Rahel, sensing that something is off with her twin brother Estha, says something a little disobedient to her mother, but it’s not a big deal, it’s something any normal six-year-old would say. Her mother gets a stony expression and Rahel realizes with horror what she’s done, but she can’t take it back, it’s too late for that. “Do you realize what you’ve done?” her mother says. “You made me love you a little less. That’s what we do when we say hurtful things to the people we care about: we make them love us a little less.”
AHHHHHH! It doesn’t have exactly the same impact when I write it because I’m not a genius poet like Arundhati Roy, but this section was totally chilling. In her own way, their mother is a strong person, but she doesn’t love her children unconditionally, they have to earn her love. The psychology of the characters in this book is frightening, because they are all that close to being normal, that close to being completely screwed up. As much as anything else, this is a commentary on the mental instability/history of inbreeding/moral bankruptcy of India’s hereditary landowning class, which Rahel's mother's family are all members of although they are currently impoverished. The characters are twisty and ugly and *shivers*.
Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain
I spent a while looking down on Brittain, because she does not really understand what Roland, on the front lines of WWI, is going through -- but it’s not as if she didn’t realize this at the time, and it's not as if Roland didn’t believe the pro-war hype more than she did when he signed up, and it's not like all civilian endeavors becomes worthless just because there’s a war on, and anyway it is COMPLETELY ridiculous for me to feel superior to someone with so much sensitivity in her memoirs, merely because I have experienced the trenches through lectures and written accounts.
The best part about Brittain's memoirs are that she can humorously, but also respectfully, look back on her own youthful ideals and poke fun at them for the benefit of her readers. Half of this book is old diary entries and letters and Brittain does an excellent job of presenting them, because she is very self-aware. Sometime when I'm reading historical accounts I forget that those people were just as capable of analyzing themselves as I am of analyzing them today.
The odd thing about her memoirs is the extent to which they straddle the line between fiction and non-fiction -- not because they aren't true, but because they seem too novelistic to be true. For example: I did not think Roland would die on Christmas Eve, the day before his leave, after an entire chapter of preparation for his arrival, because that would be too novelistic -- but this is exactly what happens. Sometimes reality is more like fiction than fiction.
The sad thing about Roland's death -- other than the fact that he died, which was plenty sad as he'd had such a vivid personality -- was that Vera's brother Edward assumed the role of comforter without showing how much Roland's death hurt him too, when he also loved Roland (yes, like that). Then again, Edward dies too. The sad thing about this book is that all of the major male characters die. Again, in a fictional book this would be improbable, but in real life things like this really do happen.
The Classic Slum, Robert Roberts
Half anthropology, half memoir. I liked this book a lot. The level of statistical detail is amazing (this is the "what much does a family of six circa 1900 eat in a Manchester clum versus a London slum" book). And Roberts' commentary is great, he's SUCH a socialist. Anyway the best part about this book is that I finally have a sense of the value of money for all of those Regency romance/Victorian fantasy books I've been reading. This was so useful that I typed up the information to share with you.
Quick monetary guide:
12 pennies (pence) in a shilling (bob)
5 shillings in a crown
20 shillings or 4 crowns in a pound (quid)
80% of the population was working-class poor, weekly average wages:
male, unskilled: 1 pound
female, unskilled: 7 s
male, skilled: 2 pounds
In an average working class family, both the husband and wife worked, and 65% of the total family income was spent on food. A very basic diet of meat, bacon, butter, eggs, and bread -- no fruit, vegetables, sugar, beer, tea, etc -- for 6 cost 15 s per week. Depending on the neighborhood, rent was between 4 and 7 s a week. There were of course additional expenses like clothing and fuel. Money was very, very tight, especially with children at school thanks to the compulsory education acts. The main difference between unskilled and skilled (carpentry, etc) work was that the wives, children and grandparents of skilled workers didn't have to work. Also, skilled work tended to be much less irregual. About half of all work in London was part-time; when money ran low, people pawned their possessions, and when it ran high, they bought them back.
So a family of five with an income of 100 pounds a year, a third of which is spent on books, is living in poverty, but is still slightly better off than the family of the worst-off factory worker in London.
18-20% of the population was middle class, yearly average wages:
male factory worker: 75 pounds (thanks to seasonal bonuses)
middle class male: 340 pounds
Middle class men spent about 20% of their income on food, however the food in their diets was more varied, and there was more of it. Reardon calls London "the cheapest city in the world" -- for someone with a middle-class income, not obliged to entertain, it was cheap.
Between middle class and working-class children, there was a height difference of about five inches.
The incomes of the hereditary aristocracy (less than 2% of the population) varied widely -- some were only very rich, while others were obscenely rich. On the higher end of the merely very rich (the "very, very, very" rich), a family might draw 20,000 pounds a year.
New Grub Street, George Gissing.
About the Victorian publishing industry. Believe it or not, I didn't read this one for class (I say "or not" because it perfectly ties into several lectures.) There's an amazon reviewer who says:
George Gissing's 1891 novel, "New Grub Street," is likely one of the most depressing books I've ever read.
Although it's true that certain characters suffer for their art, yea even unto death, it's not as depressing as all that. I recommend this book to: everyone who has ever been a writer, dabbled in writing, or even thought about dabbling in writing. It's about writing for a living vs. writing for the sake of writing (Gissing uses two characters who are like...opposing facets of his own personality to comment on this). And his commentary is still relevant, it's amazing. I earmarked favorite passages and ended up with half the book. If you like reading about writing, you'll like it (no really).
To-read:
- Black Powder War, Naomi Naovik (halfway through, actually I like it better than Throne of Jade (which I liked better than HMD))
- Dreamfall, Joan Vinge (although I cringe just reading the first paragraph)
- Around the Bloc, Stephanie Elizondo Greist
- Maps for Lost Lovers, Nadeem Aslan
- The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russel
- Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
...and I still have two essays to write this weekend, weeeeeep.
Vamped, David Sonowski
Set in a future society composed almost entirely of vampires. Sonowski has a lot of fun working out exactly how that would work – vampire economics, vampire pop culture, vampire corporate politics, etc. One fairly dorky vampire, who remembers the days before vampires took over the planet (and actually, who helped the process along) finds a young human girl and, almost in spite of himself, adopts her. Of course he has to keep his “daughter” a secret from his neighbors so that they won’t eat her.
The amazing thing about this book is that it has about a million chances to be sexually charged, dangerous-yet-compelling, animalistic – all the things normally associated with vampires -- and yet it NEVER GOES THERE. The main character is a loser, vampire society is just like regular society except that it’s if anything more predictable and mundane, and...and it's fluffy and silly and cute. For the premise alone, I’d count this book a win.
Although…there are cases where Sonowski is almost too eager to avoid any and all accusations of deviance. For instance, Father Jack, one of those kinds of Catholic priests, eventually gets into a mutually consensual relationship with a “Screamer” (a vampire who looks like a child, but isn’t one). She’s older than he is – but that prude, Sonowski, is careful to say that he is very uncomfortable with the implications of this relationship, no matter how compelling the extenuating circumstances.
Dude. On the scale of 1 to Very Problematic I think this one falls around a 2 or a 3, “would normally cause alarm but is in this case completely harmless and actually, sort of sweet.”
The Hungry Tide, Amitav Ghosh
A Calcutta businessman goes to see an aunt in “Tide Country,” a very poor chain of islands near Bengal, whose inhabitants are subjected to bad storms, periodic flooding, and gruesome death by man-eating tiger. Along the way, he meets an American marine biologist headed to the same place looking for river dolphins. I bought this for my mother. I’m not sure who started it – maybe me? -- but we’ve been buying each other India-themed books for a while now. It was one of those weird situations: I assumed that because she bought an India book for me, she probably liked that sort of thing, so I bought one for her, so then she bought one for me, and this escalated until it finally came out that neither one of us is particularly interested in India. XD
Mom says she skipped the political sections of this one. I did the same thing with A Suitable Boy and parts of The God of Small Things (is there some genre convention in Indian historical fiction that says the narrative must be interrupted by politics?) so I can’t exactly blame her, but they weren’t anywhere near as disconnected to the rest of the story in this book – and they were short! – so really, no reason to skip them. Ah, well. This book is, first and foremost, about a place, and secondly about a time, and only after that is it about any particular set of characters. But that's okay, because the Tide Country is a really, really fascinating place, and it has a really fascinating history. Well worth reading a book for.
I liked the characters too, though. The businessman is instantly likeable, but ultimately not as inspiring as the American -- he's interesting because he's flawed. I didn't think I'd like the American, but I did. She has an unusual mental constitution. At a certain point in the book, she realizes that she will most likely be spending the rest of her life on small boats in the channels between islands, looking for dolphins through her binoculars. She feels a deep sense of satisfaction. She thinks: maybe to almost everyone my work is meaningless, but I will be able to die feeling as if I have accomplished something with my life. That's cool. That's the feeling I wanted when I decided to become a scientist.
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
Beautiful but heartbreaking! I have since lost the book, but I can quote this part from memory because it is so traumatizing: Rahel, sensing that something is off with her twin brother Estha, says something a little disobedient to her mother, but it’s not a big deal, it’s something any normal six-year-old would say. Her mother gets a stony expression and Rahel realizes with horror what she’s done, but she can’t take it back, it’s too late for that. “Do you realize what you’ve done?” her mother says. “You made me love you a little less. That’s what we do when we say hurtful things to the people we care about: we make them love us a little less.”
AHHHHHH! It doesn’t have exactly the same impact when I write it because I’m not a genius poet like Arundhati Roy, but this section was totally chilling. In her own way, their mother is a strong person, but she doesn’t love her children unconditionally, they have to earn her love. The psychology of the characters in this book is frightening, because they are all that close to being normal, that close to being completely screwed up. As much as anything else, this is a commentary on the mental instability/history of inbreeding/moral bankruptcy of India’s hereditary landowning class, which Rahel's mother's family are all members of although they are currently impoverished. The characters are twisty and ugly and *shivers*.
Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain
I spent a while looking down on Brittain, because she does not really understand what Roland, on the front lines of WWI, is going through -- but it’s not as if she didn’t realize this at the time, and it's not as if Roland didn’t believe the pro-war hype more than she did when he signed up, and it's not like all civilian endeavors becomes worthless just because there’s a war on, and anyway it is COMPLETELY ridiculous for me to feel superior to someone with so much sensitivity in her memoirs, merely because I have experienced the trenches through lectures and written accounts.
The best part about Brittain's memoirs are that she can humorously, but also respectfully, look back on her own youthful ideals and poke fun at them for the benefit of her readers. Half of this book is old diary entries and letters and Brittain does an excellent job of presenting them, because she is very self-aware. Sometime when I'm reading historical accounts I forget that those people were just as capable of analyzing themselves as I am of analyzing them today.
The odd thing about her memoirs is the extent to which they straddle the line between fiction and non-fiction -- not because they aren't true, but because they seem too novelistic to be true. For example: I did not think Roland would die on Christmas Eve, the day before his leave, after an entire chapter of preparation for his arrival, because that would be too novelistic -- but this is exactly what happens. Sometimes reality is more like fiction than fiction.
The sad thing about Roland's death -- other than the fact that he died, which was plenty sad as he'd had such a vivid personality -- was that Vera's brother Edward assumed the role of comforter without showing how much Roland's death hurt him too, when he also loved Roland (yes, like that). Then again, Edward dies too. The sad thing about this book is that all of the major male characters die. Again, in a fictional book this would be improbable, but in real life things like this really do happen.
The Classic Slum, Robert Roberts
Half anthropology, half memoir. I liked this book a lot. The level of statistical detail is amazing (this is the "what much does a family of six circa 1900 eat in a Manchester clum versus a London slum" book). And Roberts' commentary is great, he's SUCH a socialist. Anyway the best part about this book is that I finally have a sense of the value of money for all of those Regency romance/Victorian fantasy books I've been reading. This was so useful that I typed up the information to share with you.
Quick monetary guide:
12 pennies (pence) in a shilling (bob)
5 shillings in a crown
20 shillings or 4 crowns in a pound (quid)
80% of the population was working-class poor, weekly average wages:
male, unskilled: 1 pound
female, unskilled: 7 s
male, skilled: 2 pounds
In an average working class family, both the husband and wife worked, and 65% of the total family income was spent on food. A very basic diet of meat, bacon, butter, eggs, and bread -- no fruit, vegetables, sugar, beer, tea, etc -- for 6 cost 15 s per week. Depending on the neighborhood, rent was between 4 and 7 s a week. There were of course additional expenses like clothing and fuel. Money was very, very tight, especially with children at school thanks to the compulsory education acts. The main difference between unskilled and skilled (carpentry, etc) work was that the wives, children and grandparents of skilled workers didn't have to work. Also, skilled work tended to be much less irregual. About half of all work in London was part-time; when money ran low, people pawned their possessions, and when it ran high, they bought them back.
So a family of five with an income of 100 pounds a year, a third of which is spent on books, is living in poverty, but is still slightly better off than the family of the worst-off factory worker in London.
18-20% of the population was middle class, yearly average wages:
male factory worker: 75 pounds (thanks to seasonal bonuses)
middle class male: 340 pounds
Middle class men spent about 20% of their income on food, however the food in their diets was more varied, and there was more of it. Reardon calls London "the cheapest city in the world" -- for someone with a middle-class income, not obliged to entertain, it was cheap.
Between middle class and working-class children, there was a height difference of about five inches.
The incomes of the hereditary aristocracy (less than 2% of the population) varied widely -- some were only very rich, while others were obscenely rich. On the higher end of the merely very rich (the "very, very, very" rich), a family might draw 20,000 pounds a year.
New Grub Street, George Gissing.
About the Victorian publishing industry. Believe it or not, I didn't read this one for class (I say "or not" because it perfectly ties into several lectures.) There's an amazon reviewer who says:
George Gissing's 1891 novel, "New Grub Street," is likely one of the most depressing books I've ever read.
Although it's true that certain characters suffer for their art, yea even unto death, it's not as depressing as all that. I recommend this book to: everyone who has ever been a writer, dabbled in writing, or even thought about dabbling in writing. It's about writing for a living vs. writing for the sake of writing (Gissing uses two characters who are like...opposing facets of his own personality to comment on this). And his commentary is still relevant, it's amazing. I earmarked favorite passages and ended up with half the book. If you like reading about writing, you'll like it (no really).
To-read:
- Black Powder War, Naomi Naovik (halfway through, actually I like it better than Throne of Jade (which I liked better than HMD))
- Dreamfall, Joan Vinge (although I cringe just reading the first paragraph)
- Around the Bloc, Stephanie Elizondo Greist
- Maps for Lost Lovers, Nadeem Aslan
- The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russel
- Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami