Books read, early September

[mrissa]

L.M. Boston, The Chimneys of Green Knowe. It's fascinating how racist a book that was attempting to be anti-racist can look after this many years. Ms. Boston clearly meant terribly well, but it seems worth flagging.

Marie Brennan (swan_tower), In Ashes Lie. Stuart fairy fantasy! If you are wondering why the Tudors always get the fairy fantasies, wonder no more! So much chewy politics. Yum.

W.E.B. Griffin, Honor Bound. Grandpa's. I had a Moment early on in this book when I thought, "Really? I'm reading a book wherein the main character is named Cletus? Really?" But I got over that part. Mostly. (Cletus? Really?) I was surprised to find that my main complaint about this book boils down to buymeaclue's, "Too much boyfriend, not enough roller derby." In this case, it was, "Too much love life, not enough demolitions." There was a demolitions expert! He did not demolish a great deal! This was frustrating to me, but I will read the next one in hopes of more demolition. I can also see how these might be very good comfort reading for someone who was not looking for more demolitions in their comfort reading. Also I had a moment when the G.O.U showed up on stage when I started singing under my breath, "In June of '43 there was a military coup; behind it was a gang called the G.O.U. who did not feel the need to be elected...oh, crap, I know what's about to happen in these books!" (This one was set in mid-'42.)

Lev Grossman, The Magicians. The lesson of this book is that if you are an unpleasant, pretentious whiner, you can make a magical school or an entire secret magical country completely miserable. Goody. The main character is exactly the sort of person we all avoided at college: the sort who was convinced that general cleverness made him awesome but who never had ideas or projects or anything really other than a sense of his own awesomeness. Meh.

Ulrich Herz, Stig Stromholm, Stellan Arvidson, and Tore Sellberg, Profile of Sweden. Grandpa's. Kind of fun to see what a bunch of Swedes were concerned about telling the rest of the world in the early 1970s. There was an element of, "we are obsessively self-critical so you don't need to criticize us because we will already have thought of it," that did not work for a friend of mine and does not work for countries, either, but was mildly amusing anyway.

Lynn M. Homan and Thomas Reilly, Images of Aviation: Pan Am. Grandpa's. A mostly-photographic history of a defunct airline. Grandpa was, I think, particularly interested in the seaplanes. Possibly I am projecting because I thought they were the coolest part.

Lynne Jonell, Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat. This was quick fun, but it had a strong moralistic/lesson-y tone. I agreed with the lessons about giving your kids time to explore and play and figure things out without grown-up intervention and scheduling every moment, and about time together being more important than things, but I'm not sure how they would play to a young audience: interesting, obvious, irrelevant? The rats were cool, though, and I'm wondering if my godson, who keeps rats, would like this one. (The rats were positive rats, not creepy/icky rat caricatures.)

James Morrow, The Philosopher's Apprentice. You know how James Morrow books go? This one goes like that, too. If you don't know how James Morrow books go, this is not in my opinion the strongest place to find out. At this point I'm ready to just return to earlier Morrow books when I'm in the mood for them, because he's gotten to the point of thematic repetition that feels frustrating to me.

Roger Tory Peterson, A Field Guide to the Birds: Eastern Land and Water Birds. Grandpa's. I know one doesn't customarily read this sort of thing cover-to-cover, but nevertheless I recommend doing something similar if you write speculative fiction or poetry. Letting the birds and their characteristics wash over you is sort of like listening to lyrical music in a language you don't speak. I think it's good for a person and good for the work eventually, in weird ways that don't pop out immediately. Of course if you are a bird person it won't work that way. Possibly they have a reptile field guide or something like that, that birders could use the same way. I haven't looked into it.

Silvan Schweber, Einstein and Oppenheimer: The Meaning of Genius. Thoughts about the way these two scientists who became media giants handled their role in the media, in the scientific community, and in the larger community. I particularly liked that Schweber did not try to do everything with this book. It is not a good candidate for "the only" book anybody ever reads about either figure, or about physics in the early 20th century, but it's a very good addition to a reading list for somebody who already knows a bit about any of those topics.

Comments

[kizmet-42.livejournal.com]

The Chimneys of Green Knowe? I thought I'd read the whole series. I don't remember this one.

Oh, it's The Treasure of Green Knowe. I vaguely remember that one.

Racist, you say? I think I was 8 or 9 at the time, I'd have to reread it. But it is rather startling to go back and reread some of the classic children's tales and think about what the underlying messages contain.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The overt messages were that people who were mean to black kids sucked. So that was good. But the idea of slave culture of the time, and the idea of what a proper marriage and career for the black kid were, and how to achieve them...um. Well.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I really liked it when I was six. I don't remember the marriage and career bit, even though I must have read it as recently as ten years or so ago. What I remember is the blind child and the black child and the house.

In Anticipation on the re-reading panel, txanne talked about how sometimes the suck fairy visits books you used to love, with the racism and sexism fairies, and inserts suckage, racism and sexism into them. I am so unhappy to hear this has happened to The Chimneys of Green Knowe that I actually twice misread your mention of it as being about that other Green Knowe book that I don't actually like much, the one in the modern day when kids from around the world come to visit. Which just demonstrates how much "la la I can't hear you" I'm prepared to do.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, and for me it dated the book rather than making it unreadable. It's just that I don't want it to blindside people.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

It was published in the States as The Treasure of Green Knowe. It's the one with the blind girl and her best friend who happens to be a slave.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

Did you know you are often brilliant in unexpected ways? Yes.

There was a demolitions expert! He did not demolish a great deal!

I believe this is akin to Chekhov's law about putting a gun on stage.

I will never be able to look at the name Cletus again with a straight face, and it's "The Simpsons"' fault. ("I can call mah maw from here. Hey, Maw!")

Seaplanes are cool.

You know how James Morrow books go? This one goes like that, too.

The problem is that this doesn't work on people who don't know how James Morrow books go, which is why these days I just hand people a copy of Only Begotten Daughter and say, "If you like this, there's more; if you don't like this, cross him off your list."

[columbina.livejournal.com]

P.S. I like James Morrow, but I can only read one book of his every few years or I'd slit my wrists.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine was told that while it's usually good to put one's middle name on one's resume, it is permissible to chop 'Cletus' down to a C.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

See, the problem is that I think we're also getting to the point where people who liked one of Mr. Morrow's thing, or even two or three or six of his thing, could wish that there was more than one general vein of thing going on.

[aedifica]

Oh, that was James Morrow? I liked it but not enough to look for more.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I agree on The Magicians. It felt like a reasonable reaction to both Narnia-type books and Harry Potter-type books, but more in the, "I'm going to make things cynically dark!" than, "Yeah, that's an oversimplification, here's what might actually happen." I'm glad I read it, but it didn't work as a book and I want to argue with the message. Now I can argue with it, at least.

Because really. You're going to take a bunch of crazy-smart people, some of which aren't very good at being anything other than crazy-smart, teach them incredibly difficult skills that give them huge amounts of power, and then... there's no point? You just let a bunch of college grads go into the world with no guidance whatsoever, apparently because you are so incredibly bored yourself? Why, then, do you keep bringing in new students?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And why do none of the new students come up with genuinely interesting stuff? Why do none of them want to use the huge amounts of power to accomplish anything? Because the world as shown in The Magicians was not a world where hunger and disease and poverty and halitosis and itchy socks had all been cured. I have a great deal more difficulty with, "If I can do anything I want, why bother?" when you have not, in fact, come close to doing everything one might want.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

He handwaved it a bit by saying some people went into government and such, but really. Unless the Magic Court he mentioned (once or twice, and never in a meaningful way) are way, way better at killing people who expose magic (in which case, we are dealing with a revolution story) why not? Even the potentially cool things were presented as horrible ennui.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, the, "What if they're really happy with their creative endeavors?" "NO THEY'RE NOT THEY'RE MISERABLE DAMMIT" exchange was really, um, quite telling.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Magic school taps me for magical grad school program, and you'd better believe I'm curing diseases. I am setting up my own colony somewhere in Pennsylvania. I am bringing back mammoths. And then I am getting a group of people together to invade Fillory on mammothback specifically to smack Quentin upside the head, the pissant. We may have side treks to Narnia, the Secret Country if we can find it, and Fionavar.

The throwaway line at the end, about the author Plover and Martin? Sums up the entire book's philosophy. Everything you thought would be good is actually poison at its heart.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Seriously. I mean, seriously.

And it's not like anything else replaces the things you thought would be good. It's just that some things are poison at their heart and some are poison immediately on the surface. Everybody sing!

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

Re The Magicians: is the unpleasant, pretentious whiner the hero or the villain? I have this on the request list at the library, but what you're saying makes me think I'll cancel the request.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I balk at calling him the hero. Let us say protagonist.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I'd say POV rather than protagonist; he doesn't protag very much at all.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

Hm. Have The Magicians in the reserve queue at the library. Thinking now that with school and work and graduate assistantship (both school and work!) that I will give it a miss for now.....

[zalena.livejournal.com]

The lesson of this book is that if you are an unpleasant, pretentious whiner, you can make a magical school or an entire secret magical country completely miserable.

Also your readers. But I already learned this from HP.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

If you are wondering why the Tudors always get the fairy fantasies, wonder no more!

Because the Stuarts were a bunch of rat bastards, is why. :-)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

But the Tudors were a shining bunch of angels!

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I liked 'em better than the Stuarts, at least.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, easier to like, sure, hard to get harder to like than a Stuart monarch. But sometimes I think there's something to be said for a complete bastard whose complete bastardy is less successful.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Actually, in this case I meant my terms broadly: "Stuarts" as "Stuart-period people" (ditto Tudors). There were rat bastards on both sides of that war. (Or really all sides, since it very disobligingly didn't stick with clear-cut affliations.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, "romantic but wrong" and "repulsive but right" actually translate to me as "repulsive but having one or two good points buried somewhere" and "ditto."

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

That sums it up very, very well.

[cathshaffer.livejournal.com]

traveling back in time to agree with you about the magicians. Quentin needed some damn prozac, and i'm pretty sure the author does, too. Quite frankly, I think it's copping out to portray a world without meaning and joy . I liked some of the dogged realism of the prose. On the other hand, if we're being realistic, why didn't jane give them some f-ing information. A debriefing on the situation and previous failed missions could have saved them a great deal of pain. Ultimately, I thought the plot was even more contrived tha the books he was deconstructing. Which is s shame because there's definitely "something there." also thought his use of some characters as "types" rather than people was kind of offensive. The punk. The goth. The christian. The heinleinian smart girl with the large breasts. The slut. The gay guy. It's as if he added more and more characters instead of developing what he had.