Welcome - Bienvenid@!
This journal, where list what I read and often offer my opinion (I'm picky as hell), is organized by tags. I started seriously documenting what I read in September 200.)Tag use is explained here. If you want to know which way my tastes run, check out my "Recommended" tag. For fanfic check out the general tag page and look by fandoms and their respective recs. Harry Potter slash was my main fandom for years, now I have become panfandomic (SGA, SPN, due South, Star Trek, The Sentinel, Merlin BBC, Smallville, The Dead zone, etc ad infinitum). If you're just browsing you should know I always qualify fanfics, lately with this [N], in Argentina 6 out of 10 is the passing mark so that one is for the ones I don't actively dislike. [N6,5] & [N7] means something about it made me stop, laugh, think, etc. [N8] is a rec, [N9] is excellent and [N10] Perfect/extraordinary. Sometimes I feel I'm not as strict as I should but you will see that all my N8s and up are on my rec tags. Sometimes I use this for books too, but more rarely since I don't have such a good frame of reference in other books.
Este diario, donde anoto qué leo y qué pienso de lo que leo (que conste que soy extremadamente exigente), está organizado por etiquetas. Empece a anotarlo todo en Septiembre de 2007 pero estoy tratando de ir agregando lo de años anteriores (calculando como puedo cuando fue que leí lo que leí). Para ver que tipos de libros me gustan podes usar la etiqueta de "Recomendados" Las [N+nº] en los títulos son calificaciones, 6 de 10 es la nota con la que uno aprueba en Argentina, así que esa es la que uso. Casi nunca uso la [N10], lo que predice lo mucho que me odiarían mis alumnos si se me diera por enseñar profesionalmente..
Este diario, donde anoto qué leo y qué pienso de lo que leo (que conste que soy extremadamente exigente), está organizado por etiquetas. Empece a anotarlo todo en Septiembre de 2007 pero estoy tratando de ir agregando lo de años anteriores (calculando como puedo cuando fue que leí lo que leí). Para ver que tipos de libros me gustan podes usar la etiqueta de "Recomendados" Las [N+nº] en los títulos son calificaciones, 6 de 10 es la nota con la que uno aprueba en Argentina, así que esa es la que uso. Casi nunca uso la [N10], lo que predice lo mucho que me odiarían mis alumnos si se me diera por enseñar profesionalmente..
Although I try to keep track of all the books I read, this is completely impossible to do for fanfics (in fact, I rarely manage to write down all the essays and short-stories), of which I read about three ten times as much, since early September '07 I've been trying to keep track of those as well but mostly... I read way too much and the more I read the less time I have to keep track of them here.
Refer to profile for more info.
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Refer to profile for more info.
Lady Mary Montagu was this 18th British lady who got to travel around thanks to her husband being an ambassador. This is an account of her time in Austria and Turkey. She was freaked by nail polish (not but Turkish), and they were only using pink, on account on it being the 18th century and all.
More interestingly, though, she's like 'they have more liberty than we do, they are all covered up and nobody can touch them so they can do as they please since it's impossible for even their own husbands to recognize them!" Certainly a novel perspective on veiling, what with the current idea of it as a tool of repression.
Here's a quote:
You may guess how effectually this disguises
them, that there is no distinguishing the great lady from her slave,
and ’tis impossible for the most jealous husband to know his wife
when he meets her, and no man dare either touch or follow a woman
in the street.
This perpetual masquerade gives them entire liberty of following
their inclinations without danger of discovery. The most usual
method of intrigue is to send an appointment to the lover to meet the
lady at a Jew’s shop, which are as notoriously convenient as our
Indian Houses,* and yet even those that don’t make that use of ’em do
not scruple to go to buy penn’orths and tumble over rich goods,
which are chiefly to be found amongst that sort of people. The great
ladies seldom let their gallants know who they are, and ’tis so difficult
to find it out that they can very seldom guess at her name they have
corresponded with above half a year together. You may easily
imagine the number of faithful wives very small in a country where
they have nothing to fear from their lovers’ indiscretion, since we see
so many that have the courage to expose themselves to that in this
world and all the threatened punishment of the next, which is never
preached to the Turkish damsels. Neither have they much to apprehend
from the resentment of their husbands, those ladies that are
rich having all their money in their own hands, which they take with
’em upon a divorce with an addition which he is obliged to give ’em.
[quotes], [quotes] books/non-fiction, #non-fiction, #essay, 2012: essay in english, 2012, book-2012 [essay], book-2012, @read in english, *author: female, +academic, *read for university, +feminism, +gender issues
So boring it's criminal.
I feel like I have been reading this for years, I actually started it around last October so it’s been a good 8 months. The saddest thing is that I’m pretty sure is the genre and not the author, ‘Treasure Island’ was equally as bad (although it had the advantage of having more than one character and not being a religious pamphlet). With any luck nobody will put another piece of it in my hands, ever.
I don’t know if I actually read this once before or it’s so terribly repetitive that earlier parts are giving me flashbacks. Stopped reading the book and started reading the Sparknotes just before Friday shows up because I was going from murderous to suicidal and while Defoe is already dead, I’m still at risk.
+social issues, *read for university, english literature, @read in english, *author: male, #novel, 2012, 2012: novel, book-2012, x: hated
Read: 26.04.2012
Joyce was as disappointing as I expected. Or Maybe extra, since I don’t think you can be disappointed unless you expected better somehow. It’s just that people keep going on about him. I can’t understand why, Woolf was writing back then, D.H. Lawrence has paragraphs I want to marry! What do they see in this guy?
I had to write some notes since it was the only way I was going to retain enough to use in the exam...
THE SISTERS: Strange story about a boy who is friends with an old priest, who dies.
AN ENCOUNTER: Two boys meet a pervert in an escapade from school.
EVELINE: A young girl debates where to immigrate to Buenos Ayres with her lover or stay with her abusive father.
THE BOARDING HOUSE: A determined woman gets rid of her drunkard of a husband and sets up a boarding house to keep herself and her two children fed. Once her daughter is born she watches with perfect equanimity as she falls into a relationship with one of her tenants. Then calls said tenant to "fix" things by marrying her.
A MOTHER: A mother gets her daughter a gig at a concert, then has to complain for her to get paid.
TWO GALLANTS: Two friends desperate to get laid.
A LITTLE CLOUD: An old acquaintance shows up Dublin all successful from London and Paris and the local man feels shown up and starts rethinking his ordinary existence.
COUNTERPARTS: Guy is humiliated by his boss, gives him cheek, then goes out to get drunk with his friends by pawning his watch. We then discover he’s married, his wife humiliates him when he’s sober and he humiliates her when he’s drunk. Guy gives little son a beating for letting the fire go out. WTF. So all that was to say that bullies are bullied, I guess.
THE DEAD: I know this one is the famous one, it’s certainly the longest but I still don’t see the point except to portray how very pathetic men can be.
A PAINFUL CASE: This one I kinda liked. Like the others, it didn’t go anywhere but it had a je-ne-se-quoi, a potentiality.
CLAY: Kinda nice in that at least the main character is an older single lady.
GRACE: Drunkard falls down stairs, his friends take him to a Catholic reform group. His wife’s like: whatever, thanks, dudes.
ARABY: Super duper crush. Nothing happens, again.
non-read or half read or fell asleep:
IVY DAY IN THE COMMITTEE ROOM & AFTER THE RACE
+modernist, +social issues, *read for university, @_ireland, english literature, @read in english, *author: male, #novel, 2012, 2012: novel, book-2012
Quotes:
From The Rise of English (chapter 1)
Literature was in several ways a suitable candidate for this ideological
enterprise. As a liberal, 'humanizing' pursuit, it could provide a potent
antidote to political bigotry and ideological extremism. Since literature, as
we know, deals in universal human values rather than in such historical
trivia as civil wars, the oppression of women or the dispossession of the
English peasantry, it could serve to place in cosmic perspective the petty
demands of working people for decent living conditions or greater control
over their own lives, and might even with luck come to render them oblivious
of such issues in their high-minded contemplation of eternal truths and
beauties. English, as a Victorian handbook for English teachers put it, helps
to 'promote sympathy and fellow feeling among all classes'; another Victorian
writer speaks of literature as opening a 'serene and luminous region of
truth where all may meet and expatiate in common', above 'the smoke and
stir, the din and turmoil of man's lower life of care and business and debate'."
Literature would rehearse the masses in the habits of pluralistic thought and
feeling, persuading them to acknowledge that more than one viewpoint than
theirs existed namely, that of their masters. It would communicate to them
the moral riches of bourgeois civilization, impress upon them a reverence for
middle-class achievements, and, since reading is an essentially solitary, contemplative
activity, curb in them any disruptive tendency to collective political
action. It would give them a pride in their national language and
literature: if scanty education and extensive hours of labour prevented them
personally from producing a literary masterpiece, they could take pleasure in
the thought that others of their own kind - English people had done so.
The people, according to a study of English literature written in 1891, 'need
political culture, instruction, that is to say, in what pertains to their relation
to the State, to their duties as citizens; and they need also to be impressed
sentimentally by having the presentation in legend and history of heroic and
patriotic examples brought vividly and attractively before them'." All of
this, moreover, could be achieved without the cost and labour of teaching
them the Classics: English literature was written in their own language, and
so was conveniently available to them.
Like religion, literature works primarily by emotion and experience, and
so was admirably well-fitted to carry through the ideological task which
religion left off. Indeed by our own time literature has become effectively
identical with the opposite of analytical thought and conceptual enquiry:
whereas scientists, philosophers and political theorists are saddled with
these drably discursive pursuits, students of literature occupy the more
prized territory of feeling and experience. Whose experience, and what
kinds of feeling, is a different question. Literature from Arnold onwards is
the enemy of 'ideological dogma', an attitude which might have come as a
surprise to Dante, Milton and Pope; the truth or falsity of beliefs such as that
blacks are inferior to whites is less important than what it feels like to
experience them. Arnold himself had beliefs, of course, though like everybody
else he regarded his own beliefs as reasoned positions rather than
ideological dogmas. Even so, it was not the business ofliterature to communicate
such beliefs directly - to argue openly, for example, that private
property is the bulwark of liberty. Instead, literature should convey timeless
truths, thus distracting the masses from their immediate commitments,
nurturing in them a spirit of tolerance and generosity, and so ensuring the
survival of private property. Just as Arnold attempted in Literature and
Dogma and God and the Bible to dissolve away the embarrassingly doctrinal
bits of Christianity into poetically suggestive sonorities, so the pill of
middle-class ideology was to be sweetened by the sugar of literature.
There was another sense in which the 'experiential' nature of literature
was ideologically convenient. For 'experience' is not only the homeland of
ideology, the place where it takes root most effectively; it is also in its literary
form a kind of vicarious self-fulfilment. If you do not have the money and
leisure to visit the Far East, except perhaps as a soldier in the pay of British
imperialism, then you can always 'experience' it at second hand by reading
Conrad or Kipling. Indeed according to some literary theories this is even
more real than strolling round Bangkok. The actually impoverished experience
of the mass of people, an impoverishment bred by their social conditions,
can be supplemented by literature: instead of working to change such
conditions (which Arnold, to his credit, did more thoroughly than almost
any of those who sought to inherit his mantle), you can vicariously fulfil
someone's desire for a fuller life by handing them Pride and Prejudice.
[quotes], [quotes] books/non-fiction, #non-fiction, #essay, 2012: essay in english, 2012, book-2012 [essay], book-2012, @read in english, *author: male +academic, author: terry eagleton, +bookish
23.04.2012
Probably the kind of book one needs to read a couple times, especially if listening, when bits and pieces are lost by zooming out.
#non-fiction, #essay, 2012: essay in english, 2012, book-2012 [essay], book-2012, @read in english, *author: male +academic, author: terry eagleton, +bookish
22.04
This one is really good. Quotes following.
As I lived among folk for whom language was an absolutely necessary way of validating our existence, I was told that the minds of the world lived only in the small continent of Europe. The metaphysical language of the New Philosophy, then, I must admit, is repulsive to me and is one reason why I raced from philosphy to literature, since the latter seemed to me to have the possibilities of rendering the world as large and as complicated as I ex-perienced it, as sensual as I knew it was. In literature I sensed the possi-bility of the integration of feeling/knowledge, rather than the split be-tween the abstract and the emotional in which Western philosophy inevitably indulged.
Because I am a curious person, however, I postponed readings of black women writers I was working on and read some of the prophets of this new literary orientation. These writers did announce their dis-satisfaction with some of the cornerstone ideas of their own tradition, a dissatisfaction with which I was born. But in their attempt to change the orientation of Western scholarship, they, as usual, concentrated on themselves and were not in the slightest interested in the worlds they had ignored or controlled. Again I was supposed to know them, while they were not at all interested in knowing me. Instead they sought to "deconstruct" the tradition to which they belonged even as they used the same forms, style, language of that tradition, forms which necessarily embody its values.
There is at least one other lesson I learned from the Black Arts Movement. One reason for its monolithic approach had to do with its desire to destroy the power which controlled black people, but it was a power which many of its ideologues wished to achieve. The nature of our context today is such that an approach which desires power sin-glemindedly must of necessity become like that which it wishes to de-
The Race for Theory 61 stroy. Rather than wanting to change the whole model, many of us want to be at the center. It is this point of view that writers like June Jordan and Audre Lorde continually critique even as they call for empowerment, as they emphasize the fear of difference among us and our need for leaders rather than a reliance on ourselves.
I can only speak for myself. But what I write and how I write is done in order to save my own life. And I mean that literally. For me litera-ture is a way of knowing that I am not hallucinating, that whatever I feel/know is. It is an affirmation that sensuality is intelligence, that sen-sual language is language that makes sense.
For my language is very much based on what I read and how it affects me, that is, on the surprise that comes from reading something that compels you to read differently, as I believe literature does. I, therefore, have no set method, another prerequisite of the new theory, since for me every work suggests a new approach. As risky as that might seem, it is, I believe, what intelligence means - a tuned sensitivity to that which is alive and therefore cannot be known until it is known. Audre Lorde puts it in a far more succinct and sensual way in her essay "Poetry is not a Luxury": As they become known to and accepted by us, our feelings and the honeste xplorationo f them become sanctuaries and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas. They become a safe-housef or that differences o necessaryt o changea nd the con-ceptualizationo f any meaningfula ction.R ightn ow, I could name at leastt en ideasI wouldh avef ound intolerableo r incomprehensi-ble and frightening, excepta s they came afterd reamsa nd poems. This is not idle fantasy, but a disciplined attention to the true meaning of "it feels right to me." We can train ourselves to respect our feelings and to transpose them into a language so they can be shared. And where that language does not yet exist, it is our poetry which helps to fashion it. Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for afu-ture of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been be-fore. 1 1. Audre Lord, SisterO utsider(T rumansburg, N.Y.: The Crossing Press, 1984), 37. Lloyd
[quotes], [quotes] books/non-fiction, #non-fiction, #essay, 2012: essay in english, 2012, book-2012 [essay], book-2012, @read in english, *author: female +academic, +bookish
20.04.2012
Comments:
Need to read the whole thing ASAP.
The thing with real genius is that often you forget is there, it seems effortless… I found The Picture of Dorian Gray a total bore, while I love The Importance of Being Ernest to bits. I had never read any non-fiction by Wilde but you get a lot of it in the dialogues his fictional characters have. Here it's undiluted though, and it's a real treat. Wilde suggests that criticism is a form of creativity in itself, the same interpretation and remix are. So the actor and the singer are critics but the art critic goes further still because with language both sound and image might be transmitted (I bet he'd have loved that witticism 'they say an image says more than a thousand words. Ok, now say that with an image). For him, to understand the other, one must first understand oneself. In the same way the critic must put their individualism into the work they critic so as to understand it better and make it better understood to others. Art, because it's incomplete (and must be so) might only be appreciated through interpretation. * fangirls *
But in this we are merely lending to other ages what we desire, or think we desire, for our own. Our historical sense is at fault. Every century that produces poetry is, so far, an artificial century, and the work that seems to us to be the most natural and simple product of its time is always the result of the most self-conscious effort. Believe me, Ernest, there is no fine art without self-consciousness, and self- consciousness and the critical spirit are one.
Each new school, as it appears, cries out against criticism, but it is to the critical faculty in man that it owes its origin. The mere creative instinct does not innovate, but reproduces.
This is, indeed, only what one would expect, for criticism demands infinitely more cultivation than creation does.
ERNEST. Really?
GILBERT. Certainly. Anybody can write a three-volumed novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature. The difficulty that I should fancy the reviewer feels is the difficulty of sustaining any standard. Where there is no style a standard must be impossible. The poor reviewers are apparently reduced to be the reporters of the police-court of literature, the chroniclers of the doings of the habitual criminals of art. It is sometimes said of them that they do not read all through the works they are called upon to criticise. They do not. Or at least they should not. If they did so, they would become confirmed misanthropes, or if I may borrow a phrase from one of the pretty Newnham graduates, confirmed womanthropes for the rest of their lives. Nor is it necessary. To know the vintage and quality of a wine one need not drink the whole cask. It must be perfectly easy in half an hour to say whether a book is worth anything or worth nothing. Ten minutes are really sufficient, if one has the instinct for form. Who wants to wade through a dull volume? One tastes it, and that is quite enough--more than enough, I should imagine. I am aware that there are many honest workers in painting as well as in literature who object to criticism entirely. They are quite right. Their work stands in no intellectual relation to their age. It brings us no new element of pleasure. It suggests no fresh departure of thought, or passion, or beauty. It should not be spoken of. It should be left to the oblivion that it deserves.
ERNEST. But, my dear fellow--excuse me for interrupting you--you seem to me to be allowing your passion for criticism to lead you a great deal too far. For, after all, even you must admit that it is much more difficult to do a thing than to talk about it.
GILBERT. More difficult to do a thing than to talk about it? Not at all. That is a gross popular error. It is very much more difficult to talk about a thing than to do it. In the sphere of actual life that is of course obvious. Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it. There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other--by language, which is the parent, and not the child, of thought. Action, indeed, is always easy, and when presented to us in its most aggravated, because most continuous form, which I take to be that of real industry, becomes simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatsoever to do. No, Ernest, don't talk about action. It is a blind thing dependent on external influences, and moved by an impulse of whose nature it is unconscious. It is a thing incomplete in its essence, because limited by accident, and ignorant of its direction, being always at variance with its aim. Its basis is the lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
GILBERT. Yes, from the soul. That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilised form of autobiography, as it deals not with the events, but with the thoughts of one's life; not with life's physical accidents of deed or circumstance, but with the spiritual moods and imaginative passions of the mind. I am always amused by the silly vanity of those writers and artists of our day who seem to imagine that the primary function of the critic is to chatter about their second- rate work. The best that one can say of most modern creative art is that it is just a little less vulgar
than reality, and so the critic, with his fine sense of distinction and sure instinct of delicate refinement, will prefer to look into the silver mirror or through the woven veil, and will turn his eyes away from the chaos and clamour of actual existence, though the mirror be tarnished and the veil be torn. His sole aim is to chronicle his own impressions. It is for him that pictures are painted, books written, and marble hewn into form.
And it is for this very reason that the criticism which I have quoted is criticism of the highest kind. It treats the work of art simply as a starting-point for a new creation. It does not confine itself--let us at least suppose so for the moment--to discovering the real intention of the artist and accepting that as final.
And in this it is right, for the meaning of any beautiful created thing is, at least, as much in the soul of him who looks at it, as it was in his soul who wrought it. Nay, it is rather the beholder who lends to the beautiful thing its myriad meanings, and makes it marvellous for us, and sets it in some new relation to the age, so that it becomes a vital portion of our lives, and a symbol of what we pray for, or perhaps of what, having prayed for, we fear that we may receive. The longer I study, Ernest, the more clearly I see that the beauty of the visible arts is, as the beauty of music, impressive primarily, and that it may be marred, and indeed often is so, by any excess of intellectual intention on the part of the artist.
Most of our elderly English painters spend their wicked and wasted lives in poaching upon the domain of the poets, marring their motives by clumsy treatment, and striving to render, by visible form or colour, the marvel of what is invisible, the splendour of what is not seen. Their pictures are, as a natural consequence, insufferably tedious. They have degraded the invisible arts into the obvious arts, and the one thing not worth looking at is the obvious. I do not say that poet and painter may not treat of the same subject. They have always done so and will always do so. But while the poet can be pictorial or not, as he chooses, the painter must be pictorial always. For a painter is limited, not to what he sees in nature, but to what upon canvas may be seen.
GILBERT. He will be always showing us the work of art in some new relation to our age. He will always be reminding us that great works of art are living things-- are, in fact, the only things that live. So much, indeed, will he feel this, that I am certain that, as civilisation progresses and we become more highly organised, the elect spirits of each age, the critical and cultured spirits, will grow less and less interested in actual life, and WILL SEEK TO GAIN THEIR IMPRESSIONS ALMOST ENTIRELY FROM WHAT ART HAS TOUCHED. For life is terribly deficient in form. Its catastrophes happen in the wrong way and to the wrong people. There is a grotesque horror about its comedies, and its tragedies seem to culminate in farce. One is always wounded when one approaches it. Things last either too long, or not long enough.
He can't be dead. He is not. I'm marrying him.
Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under- educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid. And, harsh though it may sound, I cannot help saying that such people deserve their doom. The sure way of knowing nothing about life is to try to make oneself useful.
ERNEST. A charming doctrine, Gilbert.
GILBERT. I am not sure about that, but it has at least the minor merit of being true.
[quotes], [quotes] books/non-fiction, #non-fiction, #essay, 2012: essay in english, 2012, book-2012 [essay], book-2012, @read in english, *author: male +academic, author: oscar wilde, +bookish
I expected to be quite bored by this but it turns out, Scott was the most popular author of his age for a reason, even when you are not particularly interested in the topics he’s treating, it’s easy to keep reading his correct and elegant prose. And then, when that’s over and the descriptions of the countryside and the flora and fauna get a bit much there’s is easy to misinterpret homosocial interactions between the main character and his new highlander BFF, who he trusts for not distinctive reason and whose identical sister he lusts after (but whose arms does he throw himself into? Not the girl's, let me tell you).
SO I FINISHED THIS, I rejoice. The fact that i was spoiled in class is possibly the cause I ended up so bored with it, the descriptions do drag some, though. Whatever, after like 6 months I'm metaphorically closing this. Go read the gay quotes.
Quotes:
ছ When Fergus and Waverley met, the latter was struck with the peculiar grace and dignity of the Chieftain's figure. Above the middle size and finely proportioned, the Highland dress, which he wore in its simplest mode, set off his person to great advantage. He wore the trews, or close trowsers, made of tartan, chequed scarlet and white; in other particulars his dress strictly resembled Evan's, excepting that he had no weapon save a dirk, very richly mounted with silver. His page, as we have said, carried his claymore; and the fowling-piece, which he held in his hand, seemed only designed for sport. He had shot in the course of his walk some young wild-ducks, as, though CLOSE TIME was then unknown, the broods of grouse were yet too young for the sportsman. His countenance was decidedly Scottish, with all the peculiarities of the northern physiognomy, but yet had so little of its harshness and exaggeration that it would have been pronounced in any country extremely handsome. The martial air of the bonnet, with a single eagle's feather as a distinction, added much to the manly appearance of his head, which was besides ornamented with a far more natural and graceful cluster of close black curls than ever were exposed to sale in Bond Street.
ছ An air of openness and affability increased the favorable impression derived from this handsome and dignified exterior. Yet a skilful physiognomist would have been less satisfied with the countenance on the second than on the first view. The eyebrow and upper lip bespoke something of the habit of peremptory command and decisive superiority. Even his courtesy, though open, frank, and unconstrained, seemed to indicate a sense of personal importance; and, upon any check or accidental excitation, a sudden, though transient lour of the eye showed a hasty, haughty, and vindictive temper, not less to be dreaded because it seemed much under its owner's command. In short, the countenance of the Chieftain resembled a smiling summer's day, in which, notwithstanding, we are made sensible by certain, though slight signs that it may thunder and lighten before the close of evening.
PP. 116
So this is talk, dark and handsome. A very pretty man, indeed (the characters refer that way to brave men, for reasons that escape but greatly amuse me) and his introduction is almost verbatim from that of a romance novel hero. The narrative being focalized through Edward Waverly only makes it more gay.
ছ Flora Mac-Ivor bore a most striking resemblance to her brother Fergus; so much so that they might have played Viola and Sebastian with the same exquisite effect produced by the appearance of Mrs. Henry Siddons and her brother, Mr. William Murray, in these characters. They had the same antique and regular correctness of profile; the same dark eyes, eye-lashes, and eye-brows; the same clearness of complexion, excepting that Fergus's was embrowned by exercise and Flora's possessed the utmost feminine delicacy. But the haughty and somewhat stern regularity of Fergus's features was beautifully softened in those of Flora. Their voices were also similar in tone, though differing in the key. That of Fergus, especially while issuing orders to his followers during their military exercise, reminded Edward of a favourite passage in the description of Emetrius:
—whose voice was heard around,
Loud as a trumpet with a silver sound.
That of Flora, on the contrary, was soft and sweet—'an excellent thing in woman'; yet, in urging any favourite topic, which she often pursued with natural eloquence, it possessed as well the tones which impress awe and conviction as those of persuasive insinuation. The eager glance of the keen black eye, which, in the Chieftain, seemed impatient even of the material obstacles it encountered, had in his sister acquired a gentle pensiveness. His looks seemed to seek glory, power, all that could exalt him above others in the race of humanity; while those of his sister, as if she were already conscious of mental superiority, seemed to pity, rather than envy, those who were struggling for any farther distinction. Her sentiments corresponded with the expression of her countenance. Early education had impressed upon her mind, as well as on that of the Chieftain, the most devoted attachment to the exiled family of Stuart. She believed it the duty of her brother, of his clan, of every man in Britain, at whatever personal hazard, to contribute to that restoration which the partisans of the Chevalier St. George had not ceased to hope for. For this she was prepared to do all, to suffer all, to sacrifice all. But her loyalty, as it exceeded her brother's in fanaticism, excelled it also in purity. Accustomed to petty intrigue, and necessarily involved in a thousand paltry and selfish discussions, ambitious also by nature, his political faith was tinctured, at least, if not tainted, by the views of interest and advancement so easily combined with it; and at the moment he should unsheathe his claymore, it might be difficult to say whether it would be most with the view of making James Stuart a king or Fergus Mac-Ivor an earl. This, indeed, was a mixture of feeling which he did not avow even to himself, but it existed, nevertheless, in a powerful degree.
In Flora's bosom, on the contrary, the zeal of loyalty burnt pure and unmixed with any selfish feeling; she would have as soon made religion the mask of ambitious and interested views as have shrouded them under the opinions which she had been taught to think patriotism. Such instances of devotion were not uncommon among the followers of the unhappy race of Stuart, of which many memorable proofs will recur to the minds of most of my readers. But peculiar attention on the part of the Chevalier de St. George and his princess to the parents of Fergus and his sister, and to themselves when orphans, had riveted their faith. Fergus, upon the death of his parents, had been for some time a page of honour in the train of the Chevalier's lady, and, from his beauty and sprightly temper, was uniformly treated by her with the utmost distinction. This was also extended to Flora, who was maintained for some time at a convent of the first order at the princess's expense, and removed from thence into her own family, where she spent nearly two years. Both brother and sister retained the deepest and most grateful sense of her kindness.
PP. 129-130
Here’s the love interest’s rebel’s sister, who is a female version of him (with more scruples and with whom Edward is immediately taken. Displacement much?
ছ The whole, therefore, appeared a formed plan to degrade him in the eyes of the public; and the idea of its having succeeded filled him with such bitter emotions that, after various attempts to conceal them, he at length threw himself into Mac-Ivor's arms, and gave vent to tears of shame and indignation.
It was none of this Chieftain's faults to be indifferent to the wrongs of his friends; and for Edward, independent of certain plans with which he was connected, he felt a deep and sincere interest. The proceeding appeared as extraordinary to him as it had done to Edward. He indeed knew of more motives than Waverley was privy to for the peremptory order that he should join his regiment. But that, without further inquiry into the circumstances of a necessary delay, the commanding officer, in contradiction to his known and established character, should have proceeded in so harsh and unusual a manner was a mystery which he could not penetrate. He soothed our hero, however, to the best of his power, and began to turn his thoughts on revenge for his insulted honour.
Edward eagerly grasped at the idea. 'Will you carry a message for me to Colonel Gardiner, my dear Fergus, and oblige me for ever?'
PP. 163
And finally, this is when the hero throws himself into his love’s arms. No, wait, they are friends, but they cry in each others’ arms because... Yeah, I don’t know either.
* The retreat had continued for several days, when Edward, to his surprise, early on the 12th of December, received a visit from the Chieftain in his quarters, in a hamlet about half-way between Shap and Penrith.
Having had no intercourse with the Chieftain since their rupture, Edward waited with some anxiety an explanation of this unexpected visit; nor could he help being surprised, and somewhat shocked, with the change in his appearance.
+war, *read for university, @_england, @_scotland, #novel, 2012, 2012: novel, book-2012, #novel, *author: male, @read in english, [quotes], [quotes] books, +historical, scottish literature, english literature, +social issues, @_scotland, @_england
09.03.2012
So... I was reading this perfectly awesome book and then I got hit by a big dose of misogyny. Which was later proven to be untrue in the case of the heroine, although I’m not sure if the implication is that it’s untrue in other cases (that women will fake diseases/set fire to things to get attention). The narrator, who is a modern man, normally tells you what he means so I’m waiting for him to clarify. Ok, finished. Misogyny not too bad for a book published when this was, like, to normal levels? I was terribly bothered by it later on because the narrator is a Brian Kinney type of asshole, he insists on telling the truth about everything and everyone and that results in a lot of veiled insults that make you laugh coz they are pretty true. I do wish the heroine had been more of a person and less of a 'mystery' (as a teacher pointed out, the mystery of Sarah was that there was no mystery). Her actions remain unexplained even when she gives an explanation and if that flew with any men because they could not understand women in their lives, it certainly doesn't with me.
✡ Perhaps you suppose that a novelist has only to pull the right strings and his puppets will behave in a lifelike manner; and produce on request a thorough analysis of their motives and intentions. Certainly I intended at this stage (Chap. Thirteen—unfolding of Sarah’s true state of mind) to tell all—or all that matters. But I find myself suddenly like a man in the sharp spring night, watching from the lawn beneath that dim upper window in Marlborough House; I know in the context of my book’s reality that Sarah would never have brushed away her tears and leaned down and delivered a chapter of revelation. She would instantly have turned, had she seen me there just as the old moon rose, and disappeared into the interior shadows.
But I am a novelist, not a man in a garden—I can follow her where I like? But possibility is not permissibility. Husbands could often murder their wives—and the reverse—and get away with it. But they don’t.
You may think novelists always have fixed plans to which they work, so that the future predicted by Chapter One is always inexorably the actuality of Chapter Thirteen. But novelists write for countless different reasons: for money, for fame, for reviewers, for parents, for friends, for loved ones; for vanity, for pride, for curiosity, for amusement: as skilled furniture makers enjoy making furniture, as drunkards like drinking, as judges like judging, as Sicilians like emptying a shotgun into an enemy’s back. I could fill a book with reasons, and they would all be true, though not true of all. Only one same reason is shared by all of us: we wish to create worlds as real as, but other than the world that is. Or was. This is why we cannot plan. We know a world is an organism, not a machine. We also know that a genuinely created world must be independent of its creator; a planned world (a world that fully reveals its planning) is a dead world. It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live. When Charles left Sarah on her cliff edge, I ordered him to walk straight back to Lyme Regis. But he did not; he gratuitously turned and went down to the Dairy.
Oh, but you say, come on—what I really mean is that the idea crossed my mind as I wrote that it might be more clever to have him stop and drink milk ... and meet Sarah again. That is certainly one explanation of what happened; but I can only report—and I am the most reliable witness—that the idea seemed to me to come clearly from Charles, not myself. It is not only that he has begun to gain an autonomy;
I must respect it, and disrespect all my quasi-divine plans for him, if I wish him to be real.
In other words, to be free myself, I must give him, and Tina, and Sarah, even the abominable Mrs. Poulteney, their freedom as well. There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist. And I must conform to that definition.
The novelist is still a god, since he creates (and not even the most aleatory avant-garde modern novel has managed to extirpate its author completely); what has changed is that we are no longer the gods of the Victorian image, omniscient and decreeing; but in the new theological image, with freedom our first principle, not authority.
✡ Mal (if I may add to your stock of useless knowledge) is an Old English borrowing from Old Norwegian and was brought to us by the Vikings. It originally meant “speech,” but since the only time the Vikings went in for that rather womanish activity was to demand something at axeblade, it came to mean “tax” or “payment in tribute.” One branch of the Vikings went south and founded the Mafia in, Sicily; but another—and by this time mal was spelled mail—were busy starting their own protection rackets on the Scottish border. If one cherished one’s crops or one’s daughter’s virginity one paid mail to the neighborhood chieftains; and the victims, in the due course of an expensive time, called it black mail.
#novel, *author: male, author: john fowles, @read in english, book-2012, book-2012 [novel], +modernist, [quotes], [quotes] book, +family, *read for university, #audiobook, +romance, +social issues, +gender
This starts with Ben’s first ‘passion’ for a boy at 12 and follows him through his mostly really lonely and hard life, for all his grandparents try and be the family his dead mother and absent father can’t. We meet Victoria, who is The Woman of his life and then there’s Ray Vecchio, who Frase has not a passion for. And finally, Ray Kowalski, maybe just as messed up as Fraser. It’s an understated story, mostly told through flashbacks and confessions but it’s Cesperanza so that still means pretty amazing.
1rst: 24.05.2009
2nd: 25.03.2012
ছ Ray had also saved his proverbial bacon more than once. Just recently, Ben had attempted to stop a robbery in progress, and he had nearly gotten his ever-loving head blown off. He had been unarmed, of course, when he'd felt the gun muzzle press against his head. In what must have been a second's worth of time he thought, Well, this is it, you've tried this one too many times. Bold action, you thought; bold action overwhelms most men, because most men are crippled by their own cowardice and hindered by their lack of moral vision. Not knowing what to do they do nothing, and this gives the advantage to the decisive man, the clearheaded man. Except you've finally met someone as decisive as yourself; someone capable of meeting your action with an equal and opposite reaction. Only a matter of time, really. The same thing happened to your father—except he didn't want to think about his father right now.
ছ "Pathetic." Ray seemed to force a smile. "I couldn't make myself let go of her. Even after it was perfectly clear that she would rather be fucking lawyers and I would rather be fucking guys. Because I couldn't handle being bisexual and I couldn't handle being alone. Even though I was already alone." Ray sighed. "And you know, it's easier to be alone by yourself."
"True, but..." Ben pulled Ray's hand to his half-hard erection, "...surely it's easier to be bisexual with someone else?"
Passion by Cesperanzaauthor: cesperanza, 2012, 2012: due south fic, due south fic, fanfic-2012, @read in english, fanfiction, due south fic: Fraser/Kowalski,*fanfic-novella-2012, 2009, fanfic-2009, *fanfic-novella-2009, due south fic: recs
The imagery in all of these is stunning.
The door in the air: I liked the cyclical form and I liked the girl rescuing the boy.
The two sisters: I had heard of this one. Twin sisters are each sold to the darkness and light and grow up one unable to cry, the other to laugh. The cruelty is obvious but I didn’t see the point of the story.
The bridge builder: Possibly my second favourite. The descriptions of the bridges alone... (spiderweb with dew!)
A work of art: This one was hilarious. Mahy makes fun of the art establishment with a cake that captivates everybody’s attention... “Sometimes a cake is just a cake”
The wind between the stars: I seriously wish I knew what's going on here. Death?=
Perdita and Maddy: a bit obvious. The bookish and the adventurous sisters exchange places accidentally.
The house of coloured windows: My favourite, I think. After much pining, a girl walks into the house of coloured windows, from each window you can see a different world. She looks through them all and insists she can’t find the world where she wants to live in. The wizard hesitates and says there is a last door but he thinks she won’t be interested in it. She asks to see it and immediately walks out through it... into her own world. I liked how it illustrates the fact that we long for choice even if have everything we want/need because that is our very nature.
The hookywalker dancers: Least favourite, there’s a few bothersome details (it’s the female wolf who cares, the other dancers who don’t like the main character are simply jealous because they are fat, can’t have a good reason!)
The magician in the tower: Kinda scary, although very interesting philosophically. Can someone be one with the world and live in it at once? I liked the casual mention of the protagonist's lover.
The two sisters: I had heard of this one. Twin sisters are each sold to the darkness and light and grow up one unable to cry, the other to laugh. The cruelty is obvious but I didn’t see the point of the story.
The bridge builder: Possibly my second favourite. The descriptions of the bridges alone... (spiderweb with dew!)
A work of art: This one was hilarious. Mahy makes fun of the art establishment with a cake that captivates everybody’s attention... “Sometimes a cake is just a cake”
The wind between the stars: I seriously wish I knew what's going on here. Death?=
Perdita and Maddy: a bit obvious. The bookish and the adventurous sisters exchange places accidentally.
The house of coloured windows: My favourite, I think. After much pining, a girl walks into the house of coloured windows, from each window you can see a different world. She looks through them all and insists she can’t find the world where she wants to live in. The wizard hesitates and says there is a last door but he thinks she won’t be interested in it. She asks to see it and immediately walks out through it... into her own world. I liked how it illustrates the fact that we long for choice even if have everything we want/need because that is our very nature.
The hookywalker dancers: Least favourite, there’s a few bothersome details (it’s the female wolf who cares, the other dancers who don’t like the main character are simply jealous because they are fat, can’t have a good reason!)
The magician in the tower: Kinda scary, although very interesting philosophically. Can someone be one with the world and live in it at once? I liked the casual mention of the protagonist's lover.
14.03.2012
The article seemed like common sense to me. In Africa, why not do African lit/culture (in Swahili and other languages) instead of letting all education turn around an English Department? While also having English and French lit, besides other literatures that have influenced African culture. My classmate presenting it, though, claimed that it was better to keep English because it gave one a ‘global view of the world’. Never was an statement that ironic. Sadly enough everybody seemed to agree with him, teacher included. The more time I spent at Glasgow University the more horrified I am at how ANGLOcentric they are and how unaware of it, even with all their talk of post-colonialism.
#non-fiction, #essay, 2012: essay in english, 2012, book-2012 [essay], book-2012, @read in english, *author: male, +academic, *read for university, +social issues, +postcolonialism
¿Cuentan todas las veces que escuché la canción de Mianovich? Pero incluso sin contar eso, este es uno de esos poemas que termino reencontrando y releyendo cada dos por tres. Es un poco comunista desde mi moderna perspectiva pero bueno...
( Read more... )
2010, 2007, [quotes], [quotes] complete poem, #poem(a), 2012: poesía, 2012, book-2012 [poema], book-2012, @leído en castellano, *author: male, author: mario benedetti
05.02.2012
Heterosexism is bad. Good examples.
[quotes], [quotes] books/non-fiction, #non-fiction, #essay, 2012: essay in english, 2012, book-2012 [essay], book-2012, @read in english, *author: male, *author: female, +academic, *read for university
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.7){kind=small}
thehoyden13.12.2011
12.02.2012
Harry visits the Opera for a case, he ends up interrumping Marcone’s meeting with some mafia associates, to avoid them panicking he introduces Harry as his companion and proceeds with the meeting. He also introduces Harry to everyone and proposes they return the next weekend to investigate the “the ghost”. Harry more or less stumbles into his arms.
Very charming and fun.
dresden files fic: dresden/marcone, 2012, 2011, 2011: dresden files fic, fanfiction, *fanfic-novelette-2011, *fanfic-novelette-2012, fanfic-2012, @read in english, other fic: recs
08-02-2012
The Road to Wigan Pier is a book by the British writer George Orwell, first published in 1937. The first half of this work documents his sociological investigations of the bleak living conditions amongst the working class in Lancashire and Yorkshire in the industrial north of England before World War II. The second half is a long essay on his middle-class upbringing, and the development of his political conscience, questioning British attitudes towards socialism. Orwell states plainly that he himself is in favour of socialism; but feels it necessary to point out reasons why many people who would benefit from socialism, and should logically support it, are in practice likely to be strong opponents.
Read: 02.2012 (audiobook)
Comments: So George Orwell is a real downer to read, I knew this from my experience with 1984 (which I never finished, I abandoned it when *spoiler* they get captured because bleak I could do, absolutely tragic was just too much). The fact that this is an account of his real investigations does not really make it any better, although he makes an effort to be objective. I'm convinced he was a masochist (and sometimes one's tempted to indulge him, because vegatarianism/feminism = bad name for socialism?) but mostly I'm horrified and fascinated both by how he keeps visiting the worse places on Earth, apparently to check them out and explain to us why things are as they are. Either his intellectual curiosity was amazingly powerful or he was, indeed, a masochist. The prologue points out his worse priggishnesses, also that he doesn't bother to define either socialism or its greatest enemy; fascism.( Read more... )
08.02.2012
This is fresh and funny. Flora is this crazy stereotype of a city girl who shows up at her distant family's farm and starts applying her commonsensical principles right and left. Her family members are reluctant but end up giving in.
Quotes: ( Read more... )
“Why gay marriage IS the End of the World (or the queer world, at least)” by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore . [essay] . [N7]
04.02.2012
Very interesting issues raised. It is a bit ridiculous to make gay marriage the main issue of the GLTB movement, on the other hand, the whole point of the GLTB movement is equality. That includes equality of rights. And this includes the right to marry, it matters little if I personally find the marriage institution objectionable, the choice should be available to everybody. Thing is, being gay does not really mean being queer, a great lot of gay people just want to live quiet peaceful lives, to "pass", to be normal, queerness, this open admission of being different and embracind that difference, does not call to them. And it's cool! I love some people who are obssessed with being well-dressed, too. If we accept sexuality is not a choice then we can't demand that a sexual orientation count as a lifestyle choice and include nonconformist in the "basic gay list of traits". It'd be quite different if we did not accept that... but that's getting too complicated and I don't know anybody but me who even wonders about it.
#non-fiction, #essay, 2012: essay in english, 2012, book-2012 [essay], book-2012, @read in english, *author: female, +queer issues
01.02.2012
Extremely interesting, if rather depressing. Turns with are trapped in ideology and the Matrix was sort of true, after all.
#non-fiction, #essay, 2012: essay in english, 2012, book-2012 [essay], book-2012, @read in english, *author: male, +academic, *read for university
31-01-12
Scary portrayal of a possible future world but just a portrayal, no story.
book-2012, @read in english, *author: male, #science fiction, #cuento/short-story, book-2012 [short-story], #audiobook, 2012, +social issues
Surprisingly readable, although I listened instead of reading, tbh. I made the mistake of trying to read A Room of One’s Own, which has great bits but starts with a prolonged description of food and gardens that I did not feel was very relevant to writing by women, and imagined somehow that Woolf had only written one good book (an excellent one, Orlando) but I’m glad I was wrong. I’m very much looking forward to exploring all she produced :)
Quotes:
( Read more... )
30.01.2012
Art is classist. It requires a knowledge of the history and context of art objects, since although anybody can see the superficial characteristics, accessing the deeper meaning requires training and exposure to art. Thus rich people who get exposed during childhood have an advantage. Recognizing styles, schools and periods is something done almost unconsciously, with a implicit knowledge based on numerous previous experiences with that style and others.
Non-elite people insist on judging art by its functions, expecting every image to signify or make a reference. They often use morality or agreeableness to evaluate art. Their appreciation always has an ethical basis.
This is reflected on food choice. The taste of necessity, which favours the most “filling” and most economical foods, and the taste of liberty - luxury - which shifts emphasis to the manner of presenting, serving, eating, etc. And tends to use stylized forms to deny function.
Taste of sense (of the senses, literally) vs taste of reflection (pure pleasure, pleasure purified of pleasure, a symbol of moral excellence and measure of the capacity for sublimation which defines the thruly human man). -- WHY? KEEP BOTH, DUDE. The more pleasure, the better!
...the superiority of those who can be satisfied with sublimated, refined, desinterested, gratuitous, distinguished pleasures forever closed to the profane. Art is thus predisposed to fulfill a social function of legitimizing social differences.
Very interesting but I don’t quite agree the division has to be that absolute. Although I admit I have struggled to explain how there is not pleasure to be had in fiction that is thoughtless (racist, mysoginistic, etc) to non-professional watchers/readers. This is also what I kept being told about studying literature, that people do not want to study their pleasures. As if thinking about them would ruin all the fun. Beyond me.
[quotes], [quotes] books/non-fiction, #non-fiction, #essay, 2012: essay in english, 2012, book-2012 [essay], book-2012, @read in english, *author: male, +academic, *read for university
"An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness" by Chinua Achebe . [literary criticism, essay] . [N6,5]
24.01.2012
Achebe is understandably pissed that a racist work like HoD has gotten so much praise and it's *still* considered one of the masterworks of English literature. Having failed to read it for stylistic reasons (as in, it was so dense I fell asleep every time I opened it or tried to listen to the audio version) i can't but agree. Equally, I have worried before about this "forgiving them because of their historical context" excuse everybody has for the role of women in pre-modern books. Like being a bad person is contextual... Obviously if you grow up being told women are inferior you're bound to at least internalize some of that but every single one of these authors are supposed to have been of above average intelligence so when they couldn't tell they were being mysoginistic and xenophobic? They were being assholes. Assholes in mitigating circumstances but nonetheless. If every single one of them did it, it's still true and it was not the case.
Anyway, moderately interesting article.
#non-fiction, #essay, 2012: essay in english, 2012, book-2012 [essay], book-2012, @read in english, *author: male, +academic, *read for university, +literature, +racism, +colonialism
23.01.2012
Individuality is bad. The poem should be impersonal. WTF. That's all I got.
#non-fiction, #essay, 2012: essay in english, 2012, book-2012 [essay], book-2012, @read in english, *author: male, +academic, *read for university, +literature
21.01.2012
Mars-Jones seems quite bitter. Some of his criticisms are valid, from what I can recall of Winterson's work but the tone of the whole thing is that of someone with a bone to pick. Not very ethical to just diss and old acquaintance, especially when you can’t show how her personal failings connect to her literature. Didn't enjoy it.
#non-fiction, #essay, 2012: essay in english, 2012, book-2012 [essay], book-2012, @read in english, *author: male, +academic, +literature
novembersnow20.01.2012
30.000 words. Deaged!Harry is taken in by Potion Master Draco, who is partly responsible for the deaging and finds himself utterly charmed by the child.
This is WAY too fluffy, the writing is mediocre and I think I might no longer remember it tomorrow, even though I've read very few deaging stories at all.
2012, 2012: harry potter fic, harry potter fic, fanfic-2012, fanfiction, @read in english, harry potter fic: Harry/draco, *fanfic-novella-2012
14.01.2012
Gracioso, extraño. Una banda de bandidos raptan a la bibliotecaria para pedir recompensa al govierno, porque obvio que sin ella la biblioteca no puede funcionar XD. Es cortito y todo es sorprendente y genial así que no digo más, me alegro de haber encontrado el ebook y a Margaret Mahy en general.
El secuestro de la bibliotecaria, publicado en 1978, es quizás el libro más difundido. Este libro, con ilustraciones de Quentin Blake, narra las disparatadas aventuras vividas por una joven bibliotecaria en compañía de unos bandidos, quienes seducidos por sus lecturas deciden abandonar su poco ortodoxa profesión y dedicarse a la narración y préstamo de libros.
*author: female, author: margaret mahy, 2012, book-2012, book-2012 [novel], +adventures, @leído en castellano, #novel, #infantil (children’s lit), +bookish, book-2012 [novela corta]
Sarah Rees Brennan (
sarahtales) has been going on about this book in her blog for ages but although I normally adore her writing, her taste in books does not correspond with mine often (there are exceptions, Black Cats, P&P, Hana Yori Dango but it’s hit or miss). Well, I admit I was wrong. I should have read The Changeover ages ago. It’s a brilliantly writing story about a subject I can profoundly sympathize with (little siblings, almost like our own, in danger!) and Sorry Carslile is obviously the model for many versions of fanon!Draco (I’m sure you can guess which in particular). ( Read more... )"The Night Bookmobile" by Audrey Niffenegger . [illustrated book] . [N7]
07.01.2012
What if Heaven was made of all the books in existence? Would you want to live? Niffenegger reminds us of how much we give up to be readers, how many experiences and people and successes and how we are all convinced it’s worth it.
I didn’t think the book was that great but the afterword made me cry so...
#picture book, 2012: picture book, 2012, book-2012 [picture book], book-2012, *author: female, author: audrey niffenegger, #fantasy, #urban fantasy, +bookish
*Read twice this year* So very quotable but it’s a 1000 words so I’m refraining.
07.01.12
23.04.12
read2, #non-fiction, #essay, 2012: essay in english, 2012, book-2012 [essay], book-2012, @read in english, *author: male, +academic, +bookish
¿Es precioso, no? Y triste, tan triste, cuando sólo queda amar a alguien
*preces = prayers (suplicaciones, pregarias)
01.01.2012
Estás alicaído, estás dudando,
no te alcanzan las pruebas ni las preces,
cada Dónde te ofusca, y cada Cuándo
Recorres el confort, las estrecheces
que quedaron atrás y es razonable
que reclames la vida que mereces,
las ventanas en paz, el techo estable.
Pero yo, te confieso, prefería
(¿cómo querés hermano, que te hable?)
cuando tu vieja angustia estaba al día
con la angustia del mundo, cuando todos
éramos parte en tu melancolía.
Sé qué polvos trajeron estos lodos
pero saberlo no es la mejor suerte.
Inventaré quién sos. De todos modos,
inventarte es mi forma de creerte.
[quotes], [quotes] complete poem, #poem(a), 2012: poesía, 2012, book-2012 [poema], book-2012, @leído en castellano, *author: male, author: mario benedetti
01.01.2012
Borges me hace acordar a los poemas de Laila. Ahora quiero preguntarle si se inspiró en él pero ella es casi más inaccesible que él, a pesar de estar viva y todo eso.
El poema:
Ni el pormenor simbólico
de reemplazar un tres por un dos
ni esa metáfora baldía
que convoca un lapso que muere y otro que surge
ni el cumplimiento de un proceso astronómico
aturden y socavan
la altiplanicie de esta noche
y nos obligan a esperar
las doce irreparables campanadas.
La causa verdadera
es la sospecha general y borrosa
del enigma del Tiempo;
es el asombro ante el milagro
de que a despecho de infinitos azares,
de que a despecho de que somos
las gotas del río de Heráclito,
perdure algo en nosotros:
inmóvil.
Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923)
[quotes], [quotes] complete poem, #poem(a), 2012: poesía, 2012, book-2012 [poema], book-2012, @leído en castellano, *author: male, author: jorge luis borges
01.01.12
So I was re-reading "Athelas" (A Thor/Loki fanfic named after a powerful healing herb of Tolkien's invention) and found the word sordinn used as an insult against Loki, which prompted me to google and find this awesome article. It's really fascinating and not at all what I expected. I mean, divorce!bestiality! exposing babies! (ok, that last one wasn't so surprising). The style is very easygoing, if you just ignore all the quotes (most of them are in Old Norse anyway and you might not have a choice in the matter.)
Quotes:
During the Viking Age, however, women were in short supply, at least in Iceland. Exposure of infants (barnaútburðr) was a Viking Age practice, and female infants were preferentially exposed, leaving fewer women (Jochens 86). This meant that every woman who survived to reproductive age was going to be married to at least one man in her lifetime and would bear his children unless she were barren. This gave women quite a lot of their apparent power as reflected in the sagas, as a woman could control her husband quite well by threatening divorce (Clover 182).
Another aspect to the question of homosexuality is the fact that certain of the gods, heroes and highly respected priests of the gods, apparently indulged in homosexual, "unmanly" or "questionable" practices. Loki, of course, is clearly bisexual as he certainly took the female role sexually at least during the encounter with the giant's stallion in Gylfaginning, which says that "Loki had had such dealings with Svaðilfari (the stallion) that sometime later he bore a foal," the most wonderful of all horses, Óðinn's eight-legged steed Sleipnir (Sturluson, Prose Edda, 68).
Since these plaques in general are associated with weddings and sexual union, it is tempting to assume that these two same sex examples represent and/or commemorate homosexual relationships. Of course, the plaques in question could simply depict two friends embracing. Another possible explanation is that, in many cultures, people do not dance with the opposite sex, only with members of their own gender, and that therefore these figures may be representations of dancers.
[quotes], [quotes] books/non-fiction, #non-fiction, #essay, 2012: essay in english, 2012, book-2012 [essay], book-2012, @read in english, *author: female, +academic
"Res Ipsa Loquitur" by tammaiya
1.1.12
5000 words. First fic of the year! (and read thing). It was cute in that way predictable comedies are. Bit on the schematic side but that works since Danny is collecting proof he is <em>not</em> in a relationship with Steve.
hawaii 5-o fic, hawaii 5-o fic: steve/danny, fanfiction, 2012, 2012: hawaii 5-o fic, fanfic-2012, @read in english
31.12.2011 Bastante aburrido. 2011, 2011: cuento en castellano, book-2011, #cuento/short-story, *author: female, @leido en castellano, author: elsa borneman, +horror
05.03.
Don't really agree, although, obviously, I'm not published, I feel many people have found a way of being so and not ditching fandom.
#essay, #non-fiction, *author: female, +writing, 2011, 2011: essay in english, @read in english, book-2011
24.07.2011
Case 1 and Case 2 seem pretty much the same to me, even as they deal with different kinds of intersexuality and they have the same conclusion (it is my understanding that some intersex people feel gendered one way or the other and want to be completely that sex as well as gender).
2011, book-2011, 2011: comic in English, +family, +social issues, #novel, *author: female, @read in English, #manga, #graphic novel, +intersexuality, #queer literature, @_nipon
24.09.11
3000 words. Excellent analysis of the role of women in sci-fi.
Quotes:
Think about culture as a cult: a group of people with a particular worldview.
How do you deprogramme a cult member? You remove them from the influence of those who inculcate the cultish values.
In real life, you can't isolate women from men completely. But in SF you can: you can run a deprogramming simulation and see what happens.
Cute picture book. Sometimes picture books are awesome, Susana Tamaro wrote one called "Papirophobia" about this little boy whose parents wanted him to read everything all the time and who was made upset by books instead till someone sat down with him and showed him that stories were awesome. This one, i think, might just mean to teach children the use of "whose". Noble purpose and all but not that entertaining.
22.10.2011
I’m not very interested in Pope but I love what Rosslyn has to say about how differently writerly/readerly types see the world. I would have read more of this but it was from the short-term loan collection and I got fed up with renovating it.
Quotes:
ছ ...Chekhov’s opinion of what the literary life does to one’s humanity, expressed by a writer in The Seagull:
It’s such a barbarous life. Here am I talking to you and getting quite excited, yet can’t forget for a second that I ‘ve an unfinished novel waiting for me. Or I see a cloud over there like a grand piano. So I think it must go in a story. “A cloud like a grand piano sailed past.”.... I try to catch every sentence, every word you and I say and quickly lock all these sentences and words away in my literary storehouse because they might come in handy.... I feel I’m taking pollen from my best flowers, tearing them up and stamping on the roots - all to make honey that goes to some vague, distant destination. I’m mad, I must be. PP. 2
It follows from this that a literary life is not like the biography of a normal person. It has less to do with what actually happened to the poet than with what he made out of what happened. He lives in the most radical sense only from poem to poem: “For a poet poems are real experiences”... and “as a man may be changed by a love affair or a bereavement, so a poet may be changed by a work of imagination - somebody else’s or his own”
It follows from this view of the artist’s priorities that he does not so much write to live, as live in order to write..PP. 3
ছ The artist, I’m assuming, is always converting his experience into honey, and even painful, comic or repulsive experience is nectar to him. This makes the experience of being alive radically different for the artist and the Dunce. The artist may, at the human level, show rather less conscience: it is “barbarous”, as Trigorin says, to be collecting cloud-impressions while your interlocutor is falling in love with you; but that is because he needs all the conscience he has for the task of creation, without which nothing of the experience of being alive will remain. PP. 4
ছ This sounds like a version of the artist’s perennial interest in appearance and truth. How can life be nudged into the desired shape, without his apparent interference? How is the appearance of reality created, and how does the mind apprehend it? Living, as the artist does, between two worlds, the one already created and the other requiring to be born, he has a much more elastic sense of “reality” than the rest of us, and understands that “truth” is an honorific term we bestow on something that convinces us. It is not an ethical judgement at all, but a technical one; and his great aim in life is to understand how that triumph was achieved. PP. 5
*author: female, #non-fiction, 2011, 2011: essay in english, +literature, +bookish, #capítulo o fragmento, @read in english, [quotes], [quotes] books/non-fiction, book-2011
28.10.2011
Full of stereotypes, some understanding lines (by man’s oppression cursed) but mostly women are false, fickle and care only for power and pleasure. And that is not a feminist reading, that's what the poem says, I do not care if Pope says the woman he is dedicating the poem to is an exception, he still insulted the whole of the sex.
*author: female, +gender, #poem, book-2011, 2011: poem in english, 2011, @read in english, literature in english, literatura inglesa/english +literature, *read for university
27.08.11
2000 words. The book industry fails at feminism, basically.
#essay, *author: female, author: bookshop, book-2011, 2011: essay in english, @read in english, +feminism, +bookish, +gender issues
3000 words. Brilliant analysis of the different personalities' reactions to stress.
What they don't like is strong emotional expression directed at them and being denied the alone time that they need. If this goes on too long, they become highly stressed and may emphasize their logical thinking to the extreme. They become overly sensitive to relationships with others and can lash out emotionally. To achieve their normal state again, they need to be left alone and not asked about their feelings.
#essay, 2011, 2011: essay in english, @read in english, +psychology, *author: male, book-2011
This story makes me sad for the author of The Mediator series, it's seriously badly written. Either she's paying someone to ghostwrite for her and she chose really wrong or she's not aging well. Have a look at this line from a highschool jocker a unicorn is torturing by twirling him from his swimming trunks (which don't break or anything. Quality, let me tell you!):
“Hey!” Spank cried. “Stop taking pictures! Liz! Make your unicorn put me down! This isn’t exactly the most comfortable position to be in. Look, I swear I won’t do it again. I swear!”
Five seconds later, when her ex, a total douche, claims he doesn't carry what he owes her, that being, 1400 dollars, on him, her thoughts are: Liz realized he was telling the truth. He wasn’t exactly going to lie when there was an angry unicorn behind her, glaring at him with glowing red eyes. Naturally! You require a unicorn to be able to tell that an 18-year-old boy does not carry 1400 in his wallet? WHAT?
It only gets worse from there.
During the trip, during one of the periods in which Grunty is awake and the Captain unconscious (the travel method renders someone smaller so for longer periods) he discovers the loverbirds are telepaths and they know his secret, the secret desire that rules his world and that he has managed to balance with his reality in a way that leaves him happy enough. Of course, it all depends on it staying secret, especially from the captain, and Grunty *spoilers* decides even killing the prisoners is justified to keep it. They know what he is planning, naturally, but they don’t try to stop him (and he thinks “A species that can’t defend itself, does not deserve to exist” in all of our Darwinian fanatism), instead they reveal to him that their fugitive status is due to the fact that they are both male. That, alien as they are, they understand him better than anybody in his closeminded world ever has, that they know him and don’t hate him for being who he is. He lets them go, instead. When he wakes up the Captain decides, more or less all on his own, that Grunty let the “faeries” escape so the captain wouldn’t kill them, thus, he did it to protect the captain.
They tell Dirbanu the prisoners are dead. Dirbanu mentally checks if they are faking it, but, of course, their absence is equal to death telepathically speaking. Which brings the point home, why would they care if they are death as long as they are not in Dirbanu? When they make it very clear they want NO contact with Earth whatsoever in any case? What is this relentless need humans feel to seek out that which is different to them and destroy it even when it’s not interfering with their own lives?
There is simply something tantalizing about Sturgeon's writing. You read him and feel that on the other side there's this amazing creature, someone who can really look beyond the obvious, who gets things. But only ocassionally are you smart enough to understand those things he's trying to tell you. Like "Grumpy", Sturgeon caged in by language's limitations, even as he stretches language's limits as much as he can.
Quotes:
☀ They were primitives, both of them, which is to say that they were doers, while Modern Man is a thinker and/or a feeler. The thinkers compose new variations and permutations of euphoria, and the feelers repay the thinkers by responding to their inventions. The ships had no place for Modern Man, and Modern Man had only the most casual use for the ships.
☀ Doers can cooperate like cam and pushrod, like ratchet and pawl, and such linkage creates a powerful bond.
There was that about Grunty which made moments of isolation a vital necessity, for a man must occasionally be himself, which in anyone's company Grunty was not. But after stasis shifts Grunty had an hour or so to himself while his commander lay numbly spread-eagled on the blackout couch, and he spent these in communions of his own devising. Sometimes this meant only a good book.
@read in english, +gay, author: Theodore sturgeon, *author: male, 2011, book-2011, #cuento/short-story, #science fiction, @_space, 2011: short-story in english, to re-read
27.12.2011
27.12.2011
This is something I have tried to explain to people many times. Being an Other yourself, say, a woman, say, fat, makes you conscious that if the standard you're being told to live up to makes no sense then maybe other standards, like having white skin or being able-bodied, don't either.
"Turn a New Page, Tear the Old One Out"
26.12.11
8000 words. I was very excited to see new Bender/Brian slash for yuletide but I'm afraid this doesn't quite work. It simply has no depth. Bender's parents and Vernon are all immitigated assholes with no redeeming qualities. Bender is the victim. It's like 16 year old John Bender wrote this and he was hardly a connoisseur of human motivations. Unlike Bender in "Higher Education", he does not realise the world is a more complex place, but finds some good people and gets all his suspicions about those he thought despicable confirmed.
other fic, 2011, @read in english, 2011: other fic, fanfiction, other fic: slash, *fanfic-novelette-2011, fanfic-2011
So, it's a parody of the theater crew of the time. Didn't get much out of it myself. But it was short.
*read for university, 2011, book-2011, 2011: play in english, *author: male, @read in english, +theater
04.11.11
Two very shy guys meet for a blind date, it's unexpectedly not a total disaster.
2011, 2011: short-story in english, book-2011, #cuento/short-story, *author: male, @read in english, +gay, #queer literature
