soph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophia_sol) wrote2014-08-21 09:50 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2014-08-21 09:50 pm
Entry tags:
- anent: book thoughts 1,
- author: emily carr,
- author: eva ibbotson,
- author: merrie haskell,
- author: tom reiss,
- book theme: canada,
- book theme: fantasy,
- book theme: historical nonfiction,
- book theme: history,
- book theme: kidlit,
- book theme: memoir,
- book theme: nonfiction,
- book theme: reread,
- book theme: short stories,
- pub date: 1946,
- pub date: 2001,
- pub date: 2012,
- pub date: 2013,
- rating: ***,
- rating: ****,
- rating: *****
books!
For a while there I was doing pretty well at giving each book thought its own post, buuuut I have a backlog again so here have a bunch.
Journey to the River Sea, by Eva Ibbotson
There is a lot that's delightful about Eva Ibbotson, but I feel like the more I read of her the more I can see the unfortunate patterns throughout her books, and I just...am not as capable of enjoying them as I once was. And a lot of it isn't even stuff I can articulate very clearly, which makes it hard to write book reviews!
This used to be one of my favourite Ibbotsons, and although I still do like a great deal about it, I just can't be as fond. Sigh.
Also I didn't notice last time I read it just how romanticized the native population of Brazil is in this book. It's all very noble savages.
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, by Tom Reiss
Thank you to skygiants' amazing review of this book for making me want to read it!
This is a nonfiction book about Alexandre Dumas père's father. Also named Alexandre Dumas, just to make things even more confusing. Three Alexandre Dumases in a row and it is the MIDDLE one that is called père? UH HUH.
Anyways the Alexandre Dumas who this book is about (who I'll call Alex Dumas as that's how he usually signed his letters) was born in Haiti (then Saint-Domingue) to a white aristocrat father and a black slave mother.
So a lot of this book turns out to be about the importance of the sugar colonies to the French economy, and about race relations and slavery during the French revolutionary period! WHICH IS FASCINATING and I am so glad to know more about this.
Somehow I'd never actually known before that the French Revolution did not hold back in its egalite but extended it to people of colour as well - within a few years of the French Republic, slavery had been abolished throughout the French empire (....not that all the sugar colonies LISTENED) and people of colour were afforded the same rights and privileges as white people. I'm quite positive that there was still racism happening at the time but THE LAWS MADE WHITE AND BLACK PEOPLE EQUAL.
...And then Napoleon happened and whoops all of that progress got erased almost immediately. THANKS, Napoleon.
Because it's all extremely relevant context for Alex Dumas' life, I also learned rather more about the French Revolution than I knew before - I mean, les mis fandom on tumblr taught me some but in a far more haphazard way. (for example: I was previously under the impression that it was forbidden to talk about Saint-Just without mentioning that he was The Hot One, and I am including Saint-Just's contemporaries in this. And yet Tom Reiss managed!) Obviously the book didn't get into all the nitty gritty details of the revolutionary period, because it was focusing for the most part on the bits that were directly relevant to Alex Dumas' life, but it's still a lot more than I knew before.
I also need to talk about Alex Dumas himself though! He just seems like a really stand-up guy and I really like him. He GENUINELY believes in the equality of all and is forever making sure that nobody is being mistreated! He is kind of incapable of not saying what he thinks about things! He's a really competent leader! And he and his wife are SO ADORABLY AND COMPLETELY IN LOVE WITH EACH OTHER. Also he seems to be a very caring father - he always passes on love to his children in the letters he sends to his wife, and (get this) he manages to bring back his daughter souvenirs from Egypt despite spending an intervening two years imprisoned in Italy in really terrible circumstances.
In conclusion WHY CAN'T REAL LIFE HAVE HAPPY ENDINGS.
Handbook for Dragon Slayers, by Merrie Haskell
Awww, very charming. It's a younger-than-YA book about a princess in a semi-medieval Germany. Its themes are: people are generally more nuanced than you think (Horrible Hermannus has his good points! Dragons aren't evil!); friendship is good; being a good leader means doing what's best for your people, not what you want; and self-care is important (both physical - the MC has a club foot that causes her issues; and mental - making space in your day to do things that are important to you is valuable). All themes I can definitely get behind!
Growing Pains, by Emily Carr
Oh dear I have so many feels for Emily Carr now. Carr continues to be an absolutely amazing writer; I love how she writes. But also this book is a lot more straightforwardly autobiographical than the last two books of hers I've read (Klee Wyck and The Book of Small). And she had something of a hard and frustrating life! None of her family was really supportive of her intense drive towards her art; and she had health struggles; and she had people not taking her style of art (or her gender) seriously; and then there was that fifteen-year period where she did almost no art at all and was a landlady for a boarding house and she hated it. I WAS SO GLAD when eventually Lawren Harris (of the Group of Seven) was so encouraging and supportive of her! And then her seventieth birthday party with so many people saying nice things about her...!
Journey to the River Sea, by Eva Ibbotson
There is a lot that's delightful about Eva Ibbotson, but I feel like the more I read of her the more I can see the unfortunate patterns throughout her books, and I just...am not as capable of enjoying them as I once was. And a lot of it isn't even stuff I can articulate very clearly, which makes it hard to write book reviews!
This used to be one of my favourite Ibbotsons, and although I still do like a great deal about it, I just can't be as fond. Sigh.
Also I didn't notice last time I read it just how romanticized the native population of Brazil is in this book. It's all very noble savages.
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, by Tom Reiss
Thank you to skygiants' amazing review of this book for making me want to read it!
This is a nonfiction book about Alexandre Dumas père's father. Also named Alexandre Dumas, just to make things even more confusing. Three Alexandre Dumases in a row and it is the MIDDLE one that is called père? UH HUH.
Anyways the Alexandre Dumas who this book is about (who I'll call Alex Dumas as that's how he usually signed his letters) was born in Haiti (then Saint-Domingue) to a white aristocrat father and a black slave mother.
So a lot of this book turns out to be about the importance of the sugar colonies to the French economy, and about race relations and slavery during the French revolutionary period! WHICH IS FASCINATING and I am so glad to know more about this.
Somehow I'd never actually known before that the French Revolution did not hold back in its egalite but extended it to people of colour as well - within a few years of the French Republic, slavery had been abolished throughout the French empire (....not that all the sugar colonies LISTENED) and people of colour were afforded the same rights and privileges as white people. I'm quite positive that there was still racism happening at the time but THE LAWS MADE WHITE AND BLACK PEOPLE EQUAL.
...And then Napoleon happened and whoops all of that progress got erased almost immediately. THANKS, Napoleon.
Because it's all extremely relevant context for Alex Dumas' life, I also learned rather more about the French Revolution than I knew before - I mean, les mis fandom on tumblr taught me some but in a far more haphazard way. (for example: I was previously under the impression that it was forbidden to talk about Saint-Just without mentioning that he was The Hot One, and I am including Saint-Just's contemporaries in this. And yet Tom Reiss managed!) Obviously the book didn't get into all the nitty gritty details of the revolutionary period, because it was focusing for the most part on the bits that were directly relevant to Alex Dumas' life, but it's still a lot more than I knew before.
I also need to talk about Alex Dumas himself though! He just seems like a really stand-up guy and I really like him. He GENUINELY believes in the equality of all and is forever making sure that nobody is being mistreated! He is kind of incapable of not saying what he thinks about things! He's a really competent leader! And he and his wife are SO ADORABLY AND COMPLETELY IN LOVE WITH EACH OTHER. Also he seems to be a very caring father - he always passes on love to his children in the letters he sends to his wife, and (get this) he manages to bring back his daughter souvenirs from Egypt despite spending an intervening two years imprisoned in Italy in really terrible circumstances.
In conclusion WHY CAN'T REAL LIFE HAVE HAPPY ENDINGS.
Handbook for Dragon Slayers, by Merrie Haskell
Awww, very charming. It's a younger-than-YA book about a princess in a semi-medieval Germany. Its themes are: people are generally more nuanced than you think (Horrible Hermannus has his good points! Dragons aren't evil!); friendship is good; being a good leader means doing what's best for your people, not what you want; and self-care is important (both physical - the MC has a club foot that causes her issues; and mental - making space in your day to do things that are important to you is valuable). All themes I can definitely get behind!
Growing Pains, by Emily Carr
Oh dear I have so many feels for Emily Carr now. Carr continues to be an absolutely amazing writer; I love how she writes. But also this book is a lot more straightforwardly autobiographical than the last two books of hers I've read (Klee Wyck and The Book of Small). And she had something of a hard and frustrating life! None of her family was really supportive of her intense drive towards her art; and she had health struggles; and she had people not taking her style of art (or her gender) seriously; and then there was that fifteen-year period where she did almost no art at all and was a landlady for a boarding house and she hated it. I WAS SO GLAD when eventually Lawren Harris (of the Group of Seven) was so encouraging and supportive of her! And then her seventieth birthday party with so many people saying nice things about her...!
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