Books books books!

[sophia_sol]

The African Queen, by CS Forester

Oh dude, I wasn't expecting much of this book, but I actually love it a lot?????

First of all: it somehow manages to combine being REALLY EXCITING with NOT AT ALL STRESSFUL FOR ME, which is quite frankly magic and I don't know how CS Forester does it but I wish more writers knew this magic!

Second of all, a book written in the '30s by a dude writer with an awesome female protagonist? GOSH. It's not perfect in that respect, but it successfully made her a believable specimen of the human species as influenced by her time and place and culture but still very individual. And also it made me super love her. So. GO BOOK.

(there is also of course bits of the racism one would expect of the period, but thankfully not much as the vast majority of the book takes place in the middle of the wilderness with no other humans around, so for me that aspect was manageable)

Also idek but I kind of love the ending! I wouldn't have loved it if I weren't prepared for it, but one of the first things I did after beginning to read was go to Wikipedia and spoil myself entirely for the plot. So I knew not to expect them to succeed. But I love the detail that only a few days after their failure the Konigin Luise is destroyed ANYWAYS by a British mission sent expressly for that purpose! It adds this dimension of extra tragedy to Rose's story because she was gonna Do The Thing and then failed and then...it was never even needed for her to do it anyways. And nobody understands or appreciates or even cares about the unbelievable dangers they went through on their voyage down the Ulanga! This period of time is the only time in Rose's life that she's ever felt happy or fulfilled and then it is just over, kaput, it doesn't matter at all, it's like it never even really happened. AWWW ROSE BB I'M SORRY.

(now I want the fanfic where Rose, instead of drearily accepting her fate as laid out by her expectations of being a Good British Woman, instead runs off and becomes an explorer.)

(but ao3 has zero fics for the book and only one for the movie! WOE! And the movie's ending is Very Different than the book's, and I suspect the movie characterizes the Rose/Allnutt relationship as an unambiguously positive one, so I can't even properly appreciate the one fic that exists…)

(HANG ON HANG ON HANG ON WIKI SAYS THE AUTHOR OF THE AFRICAN QUEEN IS THE SAME DUDE WHO WROTE THE HORATIO HORNBLOWER BOOKS, STOP THE PRESSES, I NEED TO READ THOSE BOOKS NOW) (Note to self: possibly I should consider finishing the Aubrey-Maturin series first?)


Just So Stories, by Rudyard Kipling

Kipling has an absolutely wonderful way with words, but I was a lot less into the contents of these stories than I was when I was a kid. My favourite part of the book, though, is something that wasn't even in the edition I had as a kid....! Which is Kipling's original illustrations, with the most delightful captions/explanations.

But I don't like how the story of the Elephant's Child (which my sister and I quote from all the time - "the great grey-green greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees") is a story with a lot of corporal punishment. Or how pretty much any of the stories with female characters involve traditional gender roles. Or how race is dealt with when it appears.

But Kipling has such a wonderful way with words.

(except for the poems at the end of each story, which I always skipped as a kid, and tried reading this time, and was like, "...nope, still uninterested in them.")


Hawkeye: My Life As A Weapon, by by Matt Fraction, art by David Aja and Javier Pulido

Picked it up because Tumblr loves it. I mostly enjoyed it, though I don't feel like I was always successful at following the story. It's possible I'm not very good at picking up visual cues. (Very possible.) Also the artist changed partway through and although the second artist was trying to keep to the same style it didn't look quite the same and I didn't like it as well. I loved David Aja's art for the first half.

Also also there was an "extra' at the back of the book, with the Hawkeye-Hawkeye first meeting from Young Avengers, and that one…. I liked the stuff with Hawkeye and Hawkeye, but the romance subplot? SUPER not into how that was done. Plus the art for this one was much more standard-comic-book style, particularly in the Kate-Bishop-is-female-thus-must-be-drawn-sexily thing. Sigh.


Heidi, by Johanna Spyri

Heidi starts out so promisingly - I absolutely love the opening parts with Heidi blossoming in her new life and drawing her grandfather out and the deep affection and bond between the two of them. Her time in Frankfurt is meh. And then it all becomes very overtly christian-proselytizing, what with the grandfather being transformed overnight into a new person after Heidi explains christianity to him, and everything becomes all about God. Also I don't like how Peter is characterized, and with Clara it's one of those disability narratives that ends in the person being completely cured, and basically I spent much of the latter part of the book cringing in comparison with how I spent much of the first bit grinning soppy-eyed at the book. SIGH.


White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf, by Aaron Bobrow-Strain

I have a happy squish on the fact that the author is basically using this as a way to talk about the relationship between food and race/class/gender. On the other hand, I found the structure of the book somewhat confusing and I think it would have read better if the author'd gone with a straightforward chronological structure. Anyways, overall recommended!

(however: I went to wikipedia to figure out a bit more of the timeline of when Ward's became Wonder bread, as discussed in this book, aaaaand there is no wiki article on Ward's, and the very long and detailed Wonder bread article doesn't mention Ward's, and none of the wiki pages for the three companies that sell Wonder bread in North America mention Ward's, and basically I AM SO CONFUUUUUSED. Probably this is just a symptom of You Can't Trust Wikipedia? There is an unofficial Ward Baking Company website that seems to back up what the book says. A little more googling around also seems to confirm more or less the same, but mostly my conclusion is that COMPANY MERGERS AND PURCHASES AND NAMES AND RENAMINGS ARE CONFUSING IN GENERAL. (I already knew this.))