Protector of the Small, Jane of Lantern Hill, and Banished

[sophia_sol]

Writing up extensive thoughts about every book I read was much easier when I read fewer books. Around the beginning of May I switched to reading published books during my lunch hour at work instead of spending it on the computer and all of a sudden my rate of bookreading has SKYROCKETED -- and not just because of the extra hour of reading a day, but because the reading-every-day puts my brain in the mindset of reading profic and so I read more of it at home as well. In the month of May I completed 14 books, which is just shy of a book every other day. Like hell I had enough time/energy to write lengthy reactions to each of those books! Especially since usually these books are completed at lunch (when I'm not at a computer to write my thoughts down immediately) or at bedtime (when my computer has been turned off for the evening already).

But I MISS it, I really do. So I am going to keep trying my best. HERE:

Squire, and Lady Knight, by Tamora Pierce

I realized while reading these that there are two different modes of rereading I do. One is rereading a book that I've read infrequently enough or long enough ago that I don't remember everything that happens, so I am experiencing some or most (or all) of the contents anew. And one is rereading a book that I have already read a million times.

The latter makes a reread really fast! Because I don't need any time to digest or comprehend what I am reading -- I just motor on forward at breakneck pace. It's a way of reminding myself in order of everything I like about the book. There's nothing new or surprising, I'm not about to have any sudden insights about the content, I know exactly what is going to happen next and often the words in which it's going to happen. But it's a wonderful experience anyways because it's so comforting and enjoyable to just wallow in something I love and know so well.

I'm quite sure that there are people out there who would find this way of rereading books unfamiliar and/or uninteresting. But WOWWWW NO I LOVE IT.

This is all a very roundabout way to say, I have nothing much to say about these books. I LOVE THEM THE END?

Actually no there is something to say, and that something is this: I like these two books rather less than the first two in this particular quartet. And I think the reason for that is because in the first two books Kel is an everyperson. She is explicitly ordinary, or at least as ordinary as her upbringing could leave her. But in Squire and Lady Knight that is subverted into her being once again the chosen of the gods. And wow I am so bored of that! Having the main character be the SPECIAL CHOSEN ONE, the ONLY ONE WHO CAN ACCOMPLISH XYZ IMPORTANT THING, sighhhh no thank you. I love Kel because she is so driven by her own history and personality and situation in life. She does stuff because it's important to her, and she works hard and makes things happen in spite of circumstances. (KELLLLLL ILU) And to make her supernaturally Special undermines that. And it makes me sad.


Jane of Lantern Hill, by LM Montgomery

A comforting reread! I was having a bad evening and this book is a delicious warm hug telling me that everything is okay.

It is a book about NATURE PORN and COMPETENCE PORN and FAMILIAL LOVE.

Basically I love Jane to bits: she is unapologetically domestic and LOVES it and is AWESOME at it. But this doesn't stop her from also doing things like casually rescuing an escaped circus lion!

And oh my god the middle bits of the book where Jane and her dad are busy being blissfully happy together, I was actually tearing up with feels.

My biggest frustration with the book is that Irene's sway over Jane's dad is never resolved. Jane and her mother break free of Jane's grandmother, and Jane's parents are successfully reconciled. But Irene was one of the biggest factors in driving Jane's parents apart in the first place, and that part of the situation is never resolved. I am assuming that having Jane around to speak sense will help matters, but STILL. Ughhhh. I really really really dislike Irene. Of the two main antagonists, I actually have a lot more sympathy for Jane's grandmother. She has feels towards her daughter and granddaughter but is so emotionally unhealthy herself she doesn't know how to express these in any sort of helpful way and just ends up ruining things. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think she's pretty awful! But I understand where she's coming from. Whereas Irene calls you "lovey" and assumes you are incompetent at everything, but in such a "nice" way there is no way to call her out on it without feeling like the bad guy in any given interaction. WOW NO THANK YOU. Ugh, she just frustrates me so much.

The other thing that frustrates me about this book is an extremely minor nitpicky thing. Jane can't get her donuts to work right whenever she tries making them. And the narrative says that the problem with her donuts is that they soak up fat. THE ANSWER TO THAT IS STRAIGHTFORWARD THOUGH. When you are deep-frying things, if there's too much fat being soaked up that means your temperature is too low! You want the temperature high enough that the food item cooks all the way through relatively quickly, so that there is not enough time for it to become soggy with grease! Of course, you also don't want the temperature so high that the outside burns before the inside is cooked through, and finding the balance is tricky if one doesn't have a thermometer, as Jane wouldn't, but THE ANSWER IS AT LEAST OBVIOUS, even if it is not necessarily easy to achieve!


Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church, by Lauren Drain

You can tell pretty easily from this book what it is about. Lauren Drain was part of the Westboro Baptist Church for seven years, starting when she was a young teen, and this book chronicles her time among them.

And wow this book was powerful. I have read more skilfully-written books in my time, but the contents....! It was really fascinating to get a look at the thoughts of the WBC instead of just reading their hateful protest signs. I understand them, in a way I didn't before, and understand why someone would want to be part of it, would want to stay part of it. It made me realize that it has a lot of the signs of being a cult (I use the term according to its vernacular meaning, not its academic definition), and it's attractive for the same kinds of reasons any cult is attractive to a certain sort of person.

And it reminded me that the members of the WBC are human, not just a frightening "other". Ah, the dangers of othering. YOU WOULD THINK I WOULD KNOW BETTER. Just goes to show how easy it is to fall into that mindset, even when you have experienced it yourself, are educated on the topic, and are on the lookout for it.

But it sounds like a lot of the members of the WBC are genuinely trying to be good people, and just have a radically different idea of what that entails than I do. (take a look, for example, at this short statement by two other young women who left the WBC very recently.) I firmly believe that the WBC's idea of behaving rightly is extremely harmful and absolutely terrible, but they don't think so. They aren't one-dimensional villains cackling to themselves over how well their evil plans are going. They're imperfect human beings like everyone else.

Comments

[toft]

Yeah, I didn't enjoy Lady Knight as much for the same reason, but I still kind of love Squire, because the special Chosen One stuff doesn't start until quite late in the day, and I really love the jousting sequences and her first command stuff when she's out in the field with the King's Own.

[holyschist]

Huh, I don't love the special Chosen One stuff, but Squire and Lady Knight are still my favorites of that quartet because they hit me right in my Career-Driven Women kink that rarely gets hit (and Kel has no endgame romance yes god thank you as much as Pierce's romances usually make me eyeroll, she got away with NOT PAIRING OFF THE HEROINE at the end of a YA novel, and no one else seems to be allowed, so bless her). I mean, there are things I would have done differently--particularly having her fuck up more obviously in Lady Knight (and I actually think Merric is 100% right that she shouldn't micromanage--it's not a sign of his terrible prejudice against the lower classes to suggest that, and I don't think the maternalistic micromanagement Kel does is all that respectful), but there's still so much crunchy finding-her-career goodness. And Raoul, I love Raoul.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I agree about Protector of the Small! Both about the awesomeness of Kel, and about the fact that the first two books before she becomes yet another chosen one are better and more interesting. And I feel like she would have chased her refugees into Scanra and defeated the big bad just as well without having a Destiny, so it didn't even add anything to the story.

And somehow I still have not read Jane of Lantern Hill. Clearly I am falling down on my duties as a Montgomery fan...