Week of May 15-21 (belated)

[mrissa]

One rejection, from a market I'd long since given up on, so the story had already been sent out somewhere else.

markgritter and I are home safe after our weekend in GR. Matt's graduation went smoothly, and I really think the President (of the US, not of Calvin College) was making his best effort at a brief, nonpartisan graduation speech. The phrase "faith-based organizations" came up a lot, but anyone's going to hit a few of their buzzwords pretty hard. I feel like a bait-and-switch has been pulled, though, when this President talks about "supporting institutions that hold our society together" immediately after mentioning things like garden clubs, book clubs, and soup kitchens. After all, who could oppose book clubs? But who, listening to the rest of the President's policy, believes that he only means garden clubs when he uses a phrase like that? Still, it could have been much worse in almost every direction.

I read Bill Holm's Eccentric Islands (thanks, misia! even when I wanted to call him up and say, "Holm, you're full of it," I was still interested in him being full of it), Sigrid Undset's Return to the Future (MEH), and Minister Faust's The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (started slow and had some weak spots, but I'd definitely pick up another of his books). I'm now mostly through Helen Oyeyemi's The Icarus Girl, which is not a bad book but suffers greatly in comparison with Susan Palwick's Flying in Place. If you read them both, read Oyeyemi first.

The rugby team on the plane with us could have been a lot rowdier, as rugby teams go, but they were drinking bourbon and amaretto-Cokes on the plane, so my nose was extremely grateful when the flight was over.

I thought that I had plans for every day this week except tomorrow, but I was wrong: I have plans for tomorrow, too.

Comments

[tmseay.livejournal.com]

Lucky! Elizabeth Dole gave a blatantly partisan, pro-war speech at my graduation ceremony. I was annoyed.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Oh, my. I must go find this book.

signed,
the person who has given away at least six copies of Coming Home Crazy

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think you would really like it. There are some things Holm understands about Iceland that strike me as important to understand when one is writing about Iceland.

My biggest complaint with him -- and I'm interested to see if this is the same in the China essays -- is that he's too prone to asking binary questions like, "Are they sane and healthy, or are we?" when the answer can very easily be both or neither.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I did not cry, but I was absolutely gripped by it. And I could see whole thing so clearly in my head.

Some of the Malagasy stuff was great, defintely. (It also contained the line I wanted to scream about the most, when they were talking about illiteracy in Madagascar, and Holm says he told them that in America it's mostly found in colleges, corporations, and government offices. Genuine illiteracy is a real live problem, here and especially there, and getting snotty about people who don't read as much as you'd like of what you'd like is not helpful from that perspective AT ALL!) Between that and Coyote Kings, I find myself wanting to listen to some different kinds of African music and see where the differences go.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

There was one unfortunate reference to watering the tree of liberty that made me wonder if anyone was not thinking of the "blood of patriots" line that goes with that. But hey, all blood was oblique reference rather than outright exhortation, so it sounds like Matt got to listen to a better graduation speech than you.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I'm in the middle of Kristin Lavransdatter. It's well-written but seems almost perfectly designed to push all my buttons, so I've been avoiding the last book. I'll have it read by the end of the summer. The hardest part is that it is impossible to tell how Undset feels about a lot of th issues she brings up; which is either a very good thing, or an extremely annoying one.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Oh, my; yes, please!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I've read the first one. I don't know if I'll have the later two read by the end of the summer. I expect probably the middle one, but I have a lot of books on my pile, and these are strictly a duty-read for me. I was hoping that Return to the Future would more kindly dispose me towards Undset, since it was billed as her "passionate journal" of her escape from Nazi-occupied Norway. It was neither passionate nor a journal. On the up side, it was short. (There's only so much nationalist essentialism I can stand.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Neat!

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Well, Undset is VERY Catholic, and a lot of the dogma just doesn't make sense to me. Some of the details and political stuff is interesting, but I find myself really upset both with Kristin and her situation. I want her to be a stronger and less religious person.

I'm guessing you're reading these as a Scandinavian obligation. I'm a much bigger fan of Selma Lagerlof (Swedish). Gosta Berling is a great read, and I really liked the Lowenskold Ring trilogy as well. Some of her other stuff gets a little weird, but those two I can definitely recommend, espcially Gosta Berling, which is a remarkably modern novel and has a touch of magical realism. Of course, you don't really need more books for your pile, do you?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes. In her nonfiction, some of the Catholicism comes out with statements like, "Martin Luther was a psychopath." Just, unsupported, out of the blue, as a general attack on Germans: Protestantism is bad because Germans are bad. Not very charming.

Yah, I've got some Lagerlof on my pile, too. I've read a fair amount of the obligatory stuff for a Scandolit geek, but I feel like I have to persevere.