sophia_sol | last post of books read in 2013

Safe Harbor, by Anita Diamant

Oh look I'm reading literary fiction aimed at women in midlife crisis. NOT MY USUAL FARE. It was actually mostly pretty good? My biggest issue was that the two main characters (two female friends) didn't have distinct enough personalities from each other, so at the end of the book I was still getting them mixed up with each other. And also the author cheats a bit with POV -- you know the thing, where someone's writing in limited third but still puts in things like describing the POV character's eyes as "striking grey eyes". NO THAT'S NOT HOW LIMITED THIRD WORKS.

But anyways it's a story about two women being quietly miserable but supporting each other through their friendship and that aspect is relatively good. (ALSO I SHIP THEM NGL. WHICH I WAS NOT EXPECTING.)

IDK, I was just kind of disappointed because I'd read another book by this author before (The Red Tent) and really enjoyed it a lot! But otoh I'd read that book back when I was in high school and I wasn't a very discerning reader at the time. I wonder what I'd think if I read The Red Tent now? On the other other hand The Red Tent is feminist historical fiction about biblical characters whereas Safe Harbor is modern literary fiction and it could just be that I really don't click well with the literary genre. Because I don't!

It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health, by Robie Harris, illustrated by Michael Emberley

This is the book my parents used for giving me the birds-and-bees talk as a kid. And after they'd read it through with me, they left it prominently visible on one of the bookshelves for easy access, and I reread the hell out of it, because it was just so fascinating.

It's nice to come back to it as an adult and be impressed with the quality of it. I mean, it's not perfect, but - especially for the era - it's doing really well. It acknowledges (and does not condemn!) the existence of both homosexuality and bisexuality! Its illustrations include people of different races and body types, including people with disabilities! It talks honestly and rationally about both perspectives on the abortion issue! It includes good information on safer sex and on the importance of consent! It does a good job of explaining bodies and reproduction!

The only place where it really falls down is its extremely binary approach to sex/gender.

Digger, by Ursula Vernon

THIS BOOK IS SO GREAT. SO GREAT. I was thrilled when my kickstarter omnibus edition of the entirety of Digger arrived at my home the other day, and I promptly sat down and read through the whole thing again!

Digger is a Hugo-award-winning graphic novel, and is the strangely lovely story of a wombat who finds herself stranded far from home and finds that there are things that need doing. It has a good story with both humour and feeling, fantastic characters, fascinating worldbuilding and interesting cultures, and absolutely gorgeous art.

It was a webcomic, once upon a time, which updated two times a week every week for years. I followed it back in the day! Well, sort of. At the time I first discovered it, the first couple hundred or so pages were free to read, and also whatever page was most recent - but to have access to the entirety of the archives you had to pay. I was a high-school student at the time, with no credit card and not much in the way of spending money, so I couldn't access the archives. I did my best to follow along anyways but it didn't work very well because there were vast swathes of the story I'd missed.

And then the archive opened up and IT WAS FREE and I devoured it gladly, and then kept up with it in earnest as it headed towards the end. AND IT WAS SO GOOD.

I've reread it online a couple times since then, and it's so nice to have a print copy of it, now!

I have so much love for everything about Digger and HIGHLY recommend it. You can read it online yourself for free!

The Kalevala, by Elias Lönnrot, translated by Keith Bosley

This is the Finnish national epic. They celebrate Kalevala Day every year and everything. It was clearly important in the shaping of the Finnish national identity! But it's also interesting in that although its roots are in the folk traditions of the area, it was profoundly shaped by just one 19th century dude. Elias Lönnrot took it upon himself to create an epic for Finland, which he did by spending a very long time traveling around collecting a whole bunch of different poetry/stories/songs from the oral tradition and then shoving them together and altering them and shaping them so that they would form one cohesive story.

So, you know, I'm kind of conflicted, conceptually. Because here's this well-educated, well-off dude going off and taking things from the folk tradition and repurposing them for his own desires, which… I'm not sure what word I'm looking for here? Probably "privilege". I mean, the dude didn't always even deem it necessary to record the names of the people who he collected from, and from what I can tell he also didn't always bother to keep record of the original forms of what he collected. He, the high-class dude with a vision, is the one whose name and art is remembered, not the people without whom he never could have done what he did, not the people who the tradition actually belonged to.

But on the other hand, I'm not actually sure how far distant from the folk tradition he actually was. How much of an outsider was he? How much of a right did he have to the traditions he was using? And also, whether he had a right or not, what he did was clearly extremely important for the vast majority of Finnish people anyways, so does that make it okay anyway? I don't know!

Everything in my sometimes-I-really-wish-I'd-become-a-folklorist heart cries out against Lönnrot's extremely 19th century perspective on how to approach folklore, but as someone who really knows very little about Finland except what I know from wiki and the intro to my copy of the Kalevala, who am I to criticize the dude? I don't know enough about the cultural context!

SO WITH ALL THAT IN MIND, ON TO THE ACTUAL TEXT. Which is super great! And the translation I have is also super great! (my aunt, who loaned the book to me, assures me that it's the only English translation worth reading.)

I love the sound and feel and shape of the poetry. It's different from any I've been introduced to before, but still holds some similarities to some. The line parallelism, for example, reminds me in part of the poetry of the Hebrew Bible. And the repetitiveness of certain sections, or broader parallel constructions, reminds me of other folk traditions I'm familiar with. But it still has its own distinctiveness.

It takes a different kind of focus to read than, say, a novel - since there's a lot more focus on imagery, and also a certain amount of repetitiveness, and so you're not reading for the plot and characters and stuff, you're reading for the...well, the poeticness of it (along with a bit of plot/character). Which I don't actually do very often! So instead of just galloping through pages during lunchtime, I keep on having to stop and pause and regroup, or let things settle in my head, or something. So it takes longer to read than you would expect given the relatively small number of words per page.

But it's interesting and compelling and I'm very glad to have read it.

(warning though for people being awful to each other in a lot of ways: murder, rape, incest, violence, and so forth. As one kiiiind of expects from folk traditions :P)