April book log
Apr. 30th, 2021 08:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troisoiseauxRead Spinsters in Jeopardy by Ngaio Marsh— I jumped several books and more than a decade ahead in the series with this one, landing at a point in the timeline where Alleyn and Agatha Troy are married with a precocious 6-year-old. Wild plot - cults! kidnapping! drug trafficking! undercover sting operations! - verging on the downright goofy, but a fun read.
I was rather amused that, besides the pseudo-Egyptian pseudo-satanism (??), the really scandalous bits* of the cult ritual involved - gasp! - weed and dicks (or, as Marsh put it, "unbridled phallicism"). While I'm not personally inclined towards partaking in either, I definitely know people for whom that's just a normal Friday night.
* ...besides the really awful bit which Alleyn and co. managed to stop the proceedings before it got to, which was implied to involve ritual sex with the cult leader, whether the chosen young woman wanted to or no. That's, you know, less fun.
Read Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, which is... hm. Not my favorite of her novels. I tried to read this for the first time when I was on an Austen kick a few years ago, but I didn't get very far - I think I made it to the introduction to the Crawfords? - because everyone was just so mean to poor Fanny Price. This time I made it far enough before questioning my life choices (...not to mention the characters') that it seemed worth powering through rather than giving up again.
I think part of my issue is that there's more in it that hasn't aged well than in, say, Pride & Prejudice— the whole "cousin marriage" thing feels squicky, especially since they grew up together (the line about Sir Thomas having raised the ideal wife for his son?? big yikes!), and most of the "amateur theater is a disreputable pastime" subplot gets lost in translation— like, okay, yes, in context it's definitely a vehicle for inappropriate flirting, but the overall disapproval (Fanny's, Sir Thomas') just doesn't track as a modern reader. More than that, though, it's that there's so much cruelty - both intentional and unintentional - and unhappiness, and Fanny is so bland and yet such a stressful POV character, because so much of the book is just a parade of people making her life miserable and she just sits there and takes it!! Give me Jane "I will never call you aunt again as long as I live" Eyre any day.
Having now officially read all of Austen's (finished, "real") novels at least once, I read Helena Kelly's Jane Austen, the Secret Radical, which I once had my hands on in a bookstore back when it was possible to go places and touch things, and which in retrospect I'm relieved I didn't buy. It provided some interesting context about the social, political, and literary landscape in which Austen was writing her novels and the lens through which her contemporary audience would understand them, but some of Kelly's textual interpretations and conclusions about Austen's intent seemed like a stretch, and her first two chapters, on Northanger Abbey and Sense & Sensibility, left me feeling so ??? that I found myself approaching the rest of the book with more caution than enthusiasm.
I get the impression that Kelly was the kid on the playground who always brought up that Ring Around The Rosie is about the Black Plague, or was like "you know in the real story she dies at the end!" about The Little Mermaid. Which, yeah! That's true! Bad things happen (or very nearly happen) in Austen novels, and the popular perception of them as fluffy rom-coms does miss some of the sociopolitical nuance! But, like, chill. For one thing, she seems determined to argue that characters' relationships will end unhappily— Henry Tilney is a mansplainer and will smother Catherine's opportunities for self-growth! Elinor and Edward will struggle financially and their personalities aren't suited for long-term happiness! In marrying Edmund, Fanny ends up "with a man who doesn't love her, who is a fool and a hypocrite" (...okay, that one's fair, actually). The only pairings she appears optimistic about are Elizabeth and Darcy, and Anne and Wentworth— and even then, she points out the unique challenges of being a naval wife.
I also found her insistence that a given line/scene was cLeArLy a Sex Thing - this description of Catherine opening a drawer is a metaphor for masturbation! Edward Ferrars absentmindedly "cutting the [scissor] sheath to pieces" is a metaphor for sexual violence! - unpersuasive at best and extremely uncomfortable at worst. She carries the latter example on to the absolutely jaw-dropping implication that "perhaps we don't need to look any further for the reason why Edward was educated by a private tutor, away from his younger siblings" (UM????) at which point I very nearly bailed on the rest of the book.
To give credit where it's due, though, the chapter on class depiction in Pride & Prejudice was really interesting - if I'd stumbled across it as an article online I would have sent it to multiple friends - and the one on Mansfield Park as a criticism of the slave trade and the Church of England's ties to it was a close second.
I also finished The Brothers Karamazov, which I will write up in its own post later because this one has gone on for long enough.
I was rather amused that, besides the pseudo-Egyptian pseudo-satanism (??), the really scandalous bits* of the cult ritual involved - gasp! - weed and dicks (or, as Marsh put it, "unbridled phallicism"). While I'm not personally inclined towards partaking in either, I definitely know people for whom that's just a normal Friday night.
* ...besides the really awful bit which Alleyn and co. managed to stop the proceedings before it got to, which was implied to involve ritual sex with the cult leader, whether the chosen young woman wanted to or no. That's, you know, less fun.
Read Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, which is... hm. Not my favorite of her novels. I tried to read this for the first time when I was on an Austen kick a few years ago, but I didn't get very far - I think I made it to the introduction to the Crawfords? - because everyone was just so mean to poor Fanny Price. This time I made it far enough before questioning my life choices (...not to mention the characters') that it seemed worth powering through rather than giving up again.
I think part of my issue is that there's more in it that hasn't aged well than in, say, Pride & Prejudice— the whole "cousin marriage" thing feels squicky, especially since they grew up together (the line about Sir Thomas having raised the ideal wife for his son?? big yikes!), and most of the "amateur theater is a disreputable pastime" subplot gets lost in translation— like, okay, yes, in context it's definitely a vehicle for inappropriate flirting, but the overall disapproval (Fanny's, Sir Thomas') just doesn't track as a modern reader. More than that, though, it's that there's so much cruelty - both intentional and unintentional - and unhappiness, and Fanny is so bland and yet such a stressful POV character, because so much of the book is just a parade of people making her life miserable and she just sits there and takes it!! Give me Jane "I will never call you aunt again as long as I live" Eyre any day.
Having now officially read all of Austen's (finished, "real") novels at least once, I read Helena Kelly's Jane Austen, the Secret Radical, which I once had my hands on in a bookstore back when it was possible to go places and touch things, and which in retrospect I'm relieved I didn't buy. It provided some interesting context about the social, political, and literary landscape in which Austen was writing her novels and the lens through which her contemporary audience would understand them, but some of Kelly's textual interpretations and conclusions about Austen's intent seemed like a stretch, and her first two chapters, on Northanger Abbey and Sense & Sensibility, left me feeling so ??? that I found myself approaching the rest of the book with more caution than enthusiasm.
I get the impression that Kelly was the kid on the playground who always brought up that Ring Around The Rosie is about the Black Plague, or was like "you know in the real story she dies at the end!" about The Little Mermaid. Which, yeah! That's true! Bad things happen (or very nearly happen) in Austen novels, and the popular perception of them as fluffy rom-coms does miss some of the sociopolitical nuance! But, like, chill. For one thing, she seems determined to argue that characters' relationships will end unhappily— Henry Tilney is a mansplainer and will smother Catherine's opportunities for self-growth! Elinor and Edward will struggle financially and their personalities aren't suited for long-term happiness! In marrying Edmund, Fanny ends up "with a man who doesn't love her, who is a fool and a hypocrite" (...okay, that one's fair, actually). The only pairings she appears optimistic about are Elizabeth and Darcy, and Anne and Wentworth— and even then, she points out the unique challenges of being a naval wife.
I also found her insistence that a given line/scene was cLeArLy a Sex Thing - this description of Catherine opening a drawer is a metaphor for masturbation! Edward Ferrars absentmindedly "cutting the [scissor] sheath to pieces" is a metaphor for sexual violence! - unpersuasive at best and extremely uncomfortable at worst. She carries the latter example on to the absolutely jaw-dropping implication that "perhaps we don't need to look any further for the reason why Edward was educated by a private tutor, away from his younger siblings" (UM????) at which point I very nearly bailed on the rest of the book.
To give credit where it's due, though, the chapter on class depiction in Pride & Prejudice was really interesting - if I'd stumbled across it as an article online I would have sent it to multiple friends - and the one on Mansfield Park as a criticism of the slave trade and the Church of England's ties to it was a close second.
I also finished The Brothers Karamazov, which I will write up in its own post later because this one has gone on for long enough.
