soph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophia_sol) wrote2014-05-23 09:30 am
sophia_sol) wrote2014-05-23 09:30 am
Entry tags:
- anent: book thoughts 1,
- author: aj jacobs,
- author: anne bronte,
- author: donna jo napoli,
- author: el konigsburg,
- author: eva ibbotson,
- author: seanan mcguire,
- book theme: fantasy,
- book theme: folk/fairy tales & mythology,
- book theme: history,
- book theme: history (modernish when writ,
- book theme: kidlit,
- book theme: modern earth,
- book theme: nonfiction,
- book theme: romance,
- book theme: ya,
- fandom: fairy tales,
- pub date: 1847,
- pub date: 1967,
- pub date: 1982,
- pub date: 2008,
- pub date: 2009,
- pub date: 2010,
- pub date: 2013,
- rating: ***,
- rating: ****
Book thoughts again, finally
Hhhhhahahaha I've been terrible of late at actually posting my book thoughts after reading the books and writing up the thoughts. I already did the hard work of writing the thoughts out! Why do I not post them? MY BRAIN IS A MYSTERY TO ME.
Anyways here have a bunch of books:
Agnes Grey, by Anne Bronte
I really wanted to like this book, because of various things I've heard about the three Bronte sisters as compared to each other (eg that one Hark! A Vagrant comic about dude-watching with the Brontes). I'd never read any Anne Bronte before and decided to start with this one because it's way shorter than her other one. But I found this book really rather boring. And the main character came across as so self-righteous in her morals and behaviour that I just couldn't like her.
Indexing, by Seanan McGuire
TOO MANY FAIRY TALE FEELS, CANNOT BE COHERENT. Short answer: I really wanted to like this book, and there was a lot to like about it, but I ultimately felt kind of betrayed by what it did with fairy tales because apparently I am TOO MUCH of a fairy tale nerd? Oh self.
My two biggest problems:
1) FAIRY TALES AS THE NEMESIS NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO fairy tales are wonderful glorious things, why would you write a book that is all about keeping them from having any power, isn't the fact that stories are powerful a GOOD thing? Isn't that why we tell stories?
2) Character-wise this book is great at diverse representation. But fairy-tale-wise? NOPE. It's the same-old same-old western fairy tales all up in this joint. And it seems like she is trying to have her cake and eat it too wrt what fairy tale types are manifesting. There are strong hints that the more popular and widely told a fairy tale is, the more commonly it manifests. Which would TO A CERTAIN EXTENT explain why the fairy tales that manifest in the context of this book (set in the USA) are all the popular western ones (although there is enough of an immigrant population in the USA that there should still be plenty of others!!!!). But if popularity explains manifestations, why are the more violent variants the ones that seem to show up more often? The versions of fairy tales that are most commonly told these days are the extremely-sanitized versions! Like, the version of sleeping beauty where she is raped and gives birth to twins? I'm pretty sure is a lot more niche than stories like Aladdin. And yet the former appears in this book and the latter does not. And then as you get towards the end of the book, there's stuff about the power of far earlier versions of the main character's tale type, versions that don't even exist anymore - and so the whole argument about popularity just goes up in smoke. SO WHY AREN'T THERE MULTICULTURAL FOLK TALES BEING REPRESENTED THEN?????
(okay so this started turning into the long version anyways, SO SUE ME, I have a lot of feels.)
Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and me, Elizabeth, by E. L. Konigsburg
Mostly this is just a really lovely book about friendship between two young girls who are both outsiders of different sorts. It feels very true to the realities of being that age and being low on the social scale at school (...from what I can remember, from my advanced age of being mid-20s!)
I like that it's an interracial friendship and that that is not made a big deal, and for the most part the race thing is well handled.
On the other hand, the bit with the watermelon is unfortunate given the history of racism in the US and the association of watermelons with negative stereotypes of black people.
I haven't yet decided how I feel about it being the character of colour (Jennifer) who is the original witch, because there are associations there as well. However, it's possible that Jennifer herself was picking up on those associations and defiantly connecting herself with them. I don't know which the author intended, but I think it's quite plausible that Jennifer was intentional (consciously or otherwise) about how she chose to behave, given how widely read she is - canonically including interest in the Salem witch trials!
At any rate, between this and Mixed-Up Files, I think I can say that E L Konigsburg is definitely a great writer of books about and for children.
And I am disappointed to see that as of yet AO3 has no fic for this book!
The Smile, by Donna Jo Napoli
This is a younger-end-of-YA historical fiction book about the woman who da Vinci painted in the Mona Lisa. And it's one of those books that tries to make the complicated politics of its setting more accessible by having the main character be someone who is super oblivious to politics. Which is PRETTY ANNOYING. Also even the politics it did include were vastly oversimplified.
Also the main character falls in love with the youngest Medici boy and he with her. And she's all "I love him let me be with him!" And the adults in her life are all "wow no that's a terrible idea" and I am one million percent on the side of the adults here because MEDICIS. And also because she's all of fifteen years old and pretty sheltered and she does not have the maturity or life experiences to be making those kinds of decisions!
The book was trying to make her thwarted love story into a meditation on the circumscribed nature of women's choices and usually I am all over that but in the context of this book I was just not there. With the way various things had been handled I didn't feel like the book had earned that conclusion.
The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life As An Experiment, by A. J. Jacobs
This is a collection of articles by the guy who spent a year living according to all the biblical rules and a year reading the Encyclopedia Britannica. These articles are more life experiments in the same vein, but shorter in length. He's a deeply amusing writer - I giggled my way through this book - but I find some things about him very frustrating. He's just very middle class white hetero dude sometimes. I found that the first two articles in the book (internet dating on behalf of his nanny, and outsourcing his life to assistants overseas) were the worst for this. Also I skipped the article where he impersonated a celebrity because that just seemed rife for embarrassment squick.
The Ogre of Oglefort, by Eva Ibbotson
A short, quick kid's book. Very Ibbotson: aristocracy, animals/nature, and childhood friendship. Mostly nice and insubstantial. I wasn't a huge fan of this one, except writing this down a few days after reading I can't even remember anymore what the various things were that specifically frustrated me. Oh well.
Magic Flutes, by Eva Ibbotson
Oh look, again I prove that although I find Ibbotson a good writer I JUST CAN'T HANDLE HER ROMANCES. This one was better than the last romance of hers I read (The Secret Countess). But we still had to do the thing with a fiancee who proves herself inferior and unworthy of the male main character's love? At least this one was merely shallow and vain and unintellectual and unmusical as opposed to actively terrible like the unworthy fiancee in The Secret Countess. Also of course this book is all "aristocracy is awesome."
But I think the part that disappointed me the most was that Jacob (the awesome dude in charge of the opera company Tessa, the female protagonist, worked at) wasn't allowed to remain admirable but was a Bad Person for allowing Tessa to waste all her money as a patron for the new opera the company was putting on. As if Tessa isn't a capable adult who can make her own decisions. PLUS the new opera, which is the masterpiece the opera company's conductor had been working on for seven years, is strongly implied to actually be terrible, which, WHY?
The plot would have still worked out just fine if the new opera was actually good and Tessa was allowed her agency in being its patron but she still ran out of money early and so it still couldn't be put on and the company is still in major financial trouble. And then we wouldn't end up with the unfortunate implication in the last bit of the book that this opera company (which has been Tessa's LIFE AND JOY and basically her found-family) is somehow the villain because of their behaviour to Tessa. Urghhhh.
The romance itself between Tessa and Guy is pretty unexceptionable though, so that's good. And I very much like Guy's foster-mother Martha and Guy's relationship with her. (and I am FRANKLY ASTONISHED that the book didn't end with the characters somehow finding out that Guy is in fact from some sort of aristocratic background originally!)
But the romance I'm actually rather more into? MAXI/HEIDI awww they're so adorable together with their mutual exuberant delight in cinema, and the way they're both really very straightforward and nice people!
And I really do enjoy how earnestly Ibbotson loves a) Vienna, and b) music.
Anyways here have a bunch of books:
Agnes Grey, by Anne Bronte
I really wanted to like this book, because of various things I've heard about the three Bronte sisters as compared to each other (eg that one Hark! A Vagrant comic about dude-watching with the Brontes). I'd never read any Anne Bronte before and decided to start with this one because it's way shorter than her other one. But I found this book really rather boring. And the main character came across as so self-righteous in her morals and behaviour that I just couldn't like her.
Indexing, by Seanan McGuire
TOO MANY FAIRY TALE FEELS, CANNOT BE COHERENT. Short answer: I really wanted to like this book, and there was a lot to like about it, but I ultimately felt kind of betrayed by what it did with fairy tales because apparently I am TOO MUCH of a fairy tale nerd? Oh self.
My two biggest problems:
1) FAIRY TALES AS THE NEMESIS NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO fairy tales are wonderful glorious things, why would you write a book that is all about keeping them from having any power, isn't the fact that stories are powerful a GOOD thing? Isn't that why we tell stories?
2) Character-wise this book is great at diverse representation. But fairy-tale-wise? NOPE. It's the same-old same-old western fairy tales all up in this joint. And it seems like she is trying to have her cake and eat it too wrt what fairy tale types are manifesting. There are strong hints that the more popular and widely told a fairy tale is, the more commonly it manifests. Which would TO A CERTAIN EXTENT explain why the fairy tales that manifest in the context of this book (set in the USA) are all the popular western ones (although there is enough of an immigrant population in the USA that there should still be plenty of others!!!!). But if popularity explains manifestations, why are the more violent variants the ones that seem to show up more often? The versions of fairy tales that are most commonly told these days are the extremely-sanitized versions! Like, the version of sleeping beauty where she is raped and gives birth to twins? I'm pretty sure is a lot more niche than stories like Aladdin. And yet the former appears in this book and the latter does not. And then as you get towards the end of the book, there's stuff about the power of far earlier versions of the main character's tale type, versions that don't even exist anymore - and so the whole argument about popularity just goes up in smoke. SO WHY AREN'T THERE MULTICULTURAL FOLK TALES BEING REPRESENTED THEN?????
(okay so this started turning into the long version anyways, SO SUE ME, I have a lot of feels.)
Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and me, Elizabeth, by E. L. Konigsburg
Mostly this is just a really lovely book about friendship between two young girls who are both outsiders of different sorts. It feels very true to the realities of being that age and being low on the social scale at school (...from what I can remember, from my advanced age of being mid-20s!)
I like that it's an interracial friendship and that that is not made a big deal, and for the most part the race thing is well handled.
On the other hand, the bit with the watermelon is unfortunate given the history of racism in the US and the association of watermelons with negative stereotypes of black people.
I haven't yet decided how I feel about it being the character of colour (Jennifer) who is the original witch, because there are associations there as well. However, it's possible that Jennifer herself was picking up on those associations and defiantly connecting herself with them. I don't know which the author intended, but I think it's quite plausible that Jennifer was intentional (consciously or otherwise) about how she chose to behave, given how widely read she is - canonically including interest in the Salem witch trials!
At any rate, between this and Mixed-Up Files, I think I can say that E L Konigsburg is definitely a great writer of books about and for children.
And I am disappointed to see that as of yet AO3 has no fic for this book!
The Smile, by Donna Jo Napoli
This is a younger-end-of-YA historical fiction book about the woman who da Vinci painted in the Mona Lisa. And it's one of those books that tries to make the complicated politics of its setting more accessible by having the main character be someone who is super oblivious to politics. Which is PRETTY ANNOYING. Also even the politics it did include were vastly oversimplified.
Also the main character falls in love with the youngest Medici boy and he with her. And she's all "I love him let me be with him!" And the adults in her life are all "wow no that's a terrible idea" and I am one million percent on the side of the adults here because MEDICIS. And also because she's all of fifteen years old and pretty sheltered and she does not have the maturity or life experiences to be making those kinds of decisions!
The book was trying to make her thwarted love story into a meditation on the circumscribed nature of women's choices and usually I am all over that but in the context of this book I was just not there. With the way various things had been handled I didn't feel like the book had earned that conclusion.
The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life As An Experiment, by A. J. Jacobs
This is a collection of articles by the guy who spent a year living according to all the biblical rules and a year reading the Encyclopedia Britannica. These articles are more life experiments in the same vein, but shorter in length. He's a deeply amusing writer - I giggled my way through this book - but I find some things about him very frustrating. He's just very middle class white hetero dude sometimes. I found that the first two articles in the book (internet dating on behalf of his nanny, and outsourcing his life to assistants overseas) were the worst for this. Also I skipped the article where he impersonated a celebrity because that just seemed rife for embarrassment squick.
The Ogre of Oglefort, by Eva Ibbotson
A short, quick kid's book. Very Ibbotson: aristocracy, animals/nature, and childhood friendship. Mostly nice and insubstantial. I wasn't a huge fan of this one, except writing this down a few days after reading I can't even remember anymore what the various things were that specifically frustrated me. Oh well.
Magic Flutes, by Eva Ibbotson
Oh look, again I prove that although I find Ibbotson a good writer I JUST CAN'T HANDLE HER ROMANCES. This one was better than the last romance of hers I read (The Secret Countess). But we still had to do the thing with a fiancee who proves herself inferior and unworthy of the male main character's love? At least this one was merely shallow and vain and unintellectual and unmusical as opposed to actively terrible like the unworthy fiancee in The Secret Countess. Also of course this book is all "aristocracy is awesome."
But I think the part that disappointed me the most was that Jacob (the awesome dude in charge of the opera company Tessa, the female protagonist, worked at) wasn't allowed to remain admirable but was a Bad Person for allowing Tessa to waste all her money as a patron for the new opera the company was putting on. As if Tessa isn't a capable adult who can make her own decisions. PLUS the new opera, which is the masterpiece the opera company's conductor had been working on for seven years, is strongly implied to actually be terrible, which, WHY?
The plot would have still worked out just fine if the new opera was actually good and Tessa was allowed her agency in being its patron but she still ran out of money early and so it still couldn't be put on and the company is still in major financial trouble. And then we wouldn't end up with the unfortunate implication in the last bit of the book that this opera company (which has been Tessa's LIFE AND JOY and basically her found-family) is somehow the villain because of their behaviour to Tessa. Urghhhh.
The romance itself between Tessa and Guy is pretty unexceptionable though, so that's good. And I very much like Guy's foster-mother Martha and Guy's relationship with her. (and I am FRANKLY ASTONISHED that the book didn't end with the characters somehow finding out that Guy is in fact from some sort of aristocratic background originally!)
But the romance I'm actually rather more into? MAXI/HEIDI awww they're so adorable together with their mutual exuberant delight in cinema, and the way they're both really very straightforward and nice people!
And I really do enjoy how earnestly Ibbotson loves a) Vienna, and b) music.