aelfgyfu_mead (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aelfgyfu_mead) wrote2010-07-04 02:42 pm
aelfgyfu_mead) wrote2010-07-04 02:42 pm
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Recent reads
The depressing part of today's post is realizing that my last post reviewing two novels was nearly six months ago. I'm really hoping I've forgotten one or more books here. I'll make a new post if I am, but I fear I am not. Oh, dear. (I have been rereading the Narnia books with Small Child, but they perhaps deserve their own post. I haven't been thinking of them as my reading, either. I still enjoy them but am aware of flaws that I didn't see when I was a child.)
I'm writing my reviews for those who haven't read the books, then adding spoilery discussion at the end of the post. I'm trying to make it easy to skip the parts you don't want.
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
I'm not certain I'd have bought this book had I realized it's the first in a post-apocalyptic trilogy. I've enjoyed a lot of Atwood's writing, but she can really get me down, and I'm really not that into the apocalypse. I don't read apocafic in fanfic because I don't want to see my favorite characters enduring that level of disaster (which they have obviously been unable to stop); I make very few exceptions, and I virtually always regret those. I can read other kinds of post-apocalypse fiction because I meet the characters there; their lives and world were ruined before I met them. Somehow, that makes it tolerable. It's never fun.
Oryx and Crake is never fun, but it is worth reading. It starts with Snowman after some disaster has occurred. The novel has two timelines: what happens after we meet Snowman, and the memories he confronts as he goes through the action set in the book's 'now.' The two interwoven stories are mostly linear, but, not surprisingly, the memories sometimes jump around. I never found Snowman entirely sympathetic, but I wasn't completely unsympathetic, either. I do need a character for whom I have some sympathy, or I really don't relate to a novel. Atwood has imagined a not-so-distant future in great detail (as usual), and it's frighteningly realistic. She has done a lot of research, but only a few times did I stop to reflect on that (ideally, I never do—but as an academic, I find myself doing it more and more).
I'd recommend it to anyone who likes post-apocalyptic drama and doesn't mind, or wants, a trilogy. Now I kind of want to read the rest, but it seems that at least the second book involves other characters. I can get enmeshed in a whole new bunch of screwed-up characters' lives! I haven't decided yet whether I want to do this.
I suppose a warning that the book is depressing isn't needed given its premise. I do have a spoilery warning for people who are sensitive to certain subject matter. Highlight to read:
One of the characters is a survivor of multiple forms of abuse: sold off by family and exploited in various ways, including sexually. It's not graphic, but I did find it disturbing.
Watership Down by Richard Adams
I have very mixed feelings about this book. I missed reading it when I was the target audience, and I'm simply too old and too critical to read it the way I think I ought. It's a children's book, so it's kind of useless for me to complain that I could never keep some of the minor bunnies straight at all: insufficient character development! I did find it highly imaginative, and I certainly enjoyed it enough to keep reading. I was fond of the main characters. Brilliant Husband's warning "That's so sad" was off target; I did not find it sad.
Complaints involve spoilers and so belong at the end. I think Small Child may enjoy it, and I will see if she wants to read it and then discuss it when she has read it.
More thoughts on Oryx and Crake
I got really frustrated with the characters. I wanted to sympathize with Oryx, but she was always too distant from the point of view we were offered to feel that I knew her well enough to sympathize. Of course we get much dramatic irony from the very structure of the novel, because we know from early in the book that Snowman blames Crake for the disaster, long before we know what that disaster was. We also know about the new race of people he created. The effect makes most of the events feel inevitable, at least to some extent. I find the writing effective because it conveys Jimmy's sense that he's never really in control of anything until it's too late to stop the disaster, but I also found it really frustrating. I think that's part of the point.
I also became very frustrated with characters' attitudes towards sex, and I wasn't sure if that was also part of the point, or a divergence between my views on sex and other people's. Sex seemed largely divorced from love and commitment. Then again, I'm not all that interested in reading about sex. It's not awfully graphic in this novel, but it seemed to come up a lot (I tried that sentence two or three ways, and I can't avoid some kind of lame double entendre). Maybe it was a sign of Jimmy's shallowness that he seemed obsessed with it when a lot more was at stake.
More thoughts on Watership Down
My friend G was complaining about someone's feminism a while back, and I said, "I'm a feminist!" He said, "Yeah, but you're not always on your soapbox." I still don't know whether I should take this as a compliment, a mark of weakness in my feminism, or neither. I'm taking it as neither for the time being.
I finished Watership Down, but I think I would have finished it sooner but that the sexism really bothered me. I sometimes found myself thinking that I had time to read it, but I'd rather read something else. Yes, Adams did his research, and it's more the male rabbits who move away from the home warren, have adventures, and fight. But this man told the story to his daughters, in 1972. I can tolerate complete Bechdel fail in Chaucer a lot easier than I can tolerate it in a novel written in the 70s for girls.
We're more than halfway through the book (past page 200 of a little over 400 pages) before we really meet does, as they're called quite consistently, who have any part in the action. Male rabbits are "bucks" or "rabbits"; the default is male. The first does we meet who do take part in action are tame and don't have much action. We're past page 300 before we meet any does with anything like character. Some of them are named, but Bigwig escapes with a number of does, some of whom never receive names at all. Even though I can't tell you a thing about Acorn, he has a name. The bucks receive names in Lapine and English but are usually named in English, which makes it easier to remember their names and associate them with characters. The tame does have names in English, but the ones from the enemy warren have names in Lapine. We're given translations, but Hyzenthlay and the others are almost always called by those names, while Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, and so on are almost always called in English. We get female as Exotic Other.
In the end, a couple of the does do develop character, but they still seem slight next to the bucks. The bucks only wanted them in the first place to dig better tunnels and in the second place because they felt the urge to mate. Companionship isn't a consideration until near the very end.
I know it's a children's book*; I know they're bunnies and not humans. Still, the bucks act very human in most ways, and they're clearly the characters with whom readers relate; relating to the does is almost not an option, because they appear so rarely until late in the book. A father created this story for his daughters? As a girl, I really enjoyed reading about boys. I always preferred the Hardy Boys to Nancy Drew (but gave into pressure that I don't think my parents knew they were exerting to buy Nancy Drew books and just read my brothers' Hardy Boys). I don't doubt that his daughters enjoyed the stories he told about the bunnies. I am dubious, however, about how much I want my daughter exposed to that kind of attitude. I internalized certain kinds of behavior from books I read, tv I watched, and of course people in real life. I'm glad my daughter has a lot of tv shows about girls and even more books with girl protagonists. I didn't have that many. I won't stop her from reading Watership Down, but I can't recommend it highly. I think she'll enjoy reading about bunnies. If she's looking for a book, I may casually point it out to her.
*ETA:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
delphia2000 tells me that Watership Down isn't really considered a children's book: at her library, it's in the Adult section. That makes some sense, given the violence in it. And just because the author originally told the stories to his girls doesn't mean the final book is for children. Even his own girls were a lot older by the time it was published! The introduction to the edition I have notes how much trouble Adams had getting it published: the audience for bunny books were too young for the length and style of his book, and older children who could read his prose would, he was told, be too old for bunnies. (Now I'm also wondering how else the final book differs from the original stories, but that's probably impossible even for Adams to reconstruct. It's probably also a quirk of being a medievalist—or the quirk that made me a medievalist.)
I'm writing my reviews for those who haven't read the books, then adding spoilery discussion at the end of the post. I'm trying to make it easy to skip the parts you don't want.
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
I'm not certain I'd have bought this book had I realized it's the first in a post-apocalyptic trilogy. I've enjoyed a lot of Atwood's writing, but she can really get me down, and I'm really not that into the apocalypse. I don't read apocafic in fanfic because I don't want to see my favorite characters enduring that level of disaster (which they have obviously been unable to stop); I make very few exceptions, and I virtually always regret those. I can read other kinds of post-apocalypse fiction because I meet the characters there; their lives and world were ruined before I met them. Somehow, that makes it tolerable. It's never fun.
Oryx and Crake is never fun, but it is worth reading. It starts with Snowman after some disaster has occurred. The novel has two timelines: what happens after we meet Snowman, and the memories he confronts as he goes through the action set in the book's 'now.' The two interwoven stories are mostly linear, but, not surprisingly, the memories sometimes jump around. I never found Snowman entirely sympathetic, but I wasn't completely unsympathetic, either. I do need a character for whom I have some sympathy, or I really don't relate to a novel. Atwood has imagined a not-so-distant future in great detail (as usual), and it's frighteningly realistic. She has done a lot of research, but only a few times did I stop to reflect on that (ideally, I never do—but as an academic, I find myself doing it more and more).
I'd recommend it to anyone who likes post-apocalyptic drama and doesn't mind, or wants, a trilogy. Now I kind of want to read the rest, but it seems that at least the second book involves other characters. I can get enmeshed in a whole new bunch of screwed-up characters' lives! I haven't decided yet whether I want to do this.
I suppose a warning that the book is depressing isn't needed given its premise. I do have a spoilery warning for people who are sensitive to certain subject matter. Highlight to read:
One of the characters is a survivor of multiple forms of abuse: sold off by family and exploited in various ways, including sexually. It's not graphic, but I did find it disturbing.
Watership Down by Richard Adams
I have very mixed feelings about this book. I missed reading it when I was the target audience, and I'm simply too old and too critical to read it the way I think I ought. It's a children's book, so it's kind of useless for me to complain that I could never keep some of the minor bunnies straight at all: insufficient character development! I did find it highly imaginative, and I certainly enjoyed it enough to keep reading. I was fond of the main characters. Brilliant Husband's warning "That's so sad" was off target; I did not find it sad.
Complaints involve spoilers and so belong at the end. I think Small Child may enjoy it, and I will see if she wants to read it and then discuss it when she has read it.
More thoughts on Oryx and Crake
I got really frustrated with the characters. I wanted to sympathize with Oryx, but she was always too distant from the point of view we were offered to feel that I knew her well enough to sympathize. Of course we get much dramatic irony from the very structure of the novel, because we know from early in the book that Snowman blames Crake for the disaster, long before we know what that disaster was. We also know about the new race of people he created. The effect makes most of the events feel inevitable, at least to some extent. I find the writing effective because it conveys Jimmy's sense that he's never really in control of anything until it's too late to stop the disaster, but I also found it really frustrating. I think that's part of the point.
I also became very frustrated with characters' attitudes towards sex, and I wasn't sure if that was also part of the point, or a divergence between my views on sex and other people's. Sex seemed largely divorced from love and commitment. Then again, I'm not all that interested in reading about sex. It's not awfully graphic in this novel, but it seemed to come up a lot (I tried that sentence two or three ways, and I can't avoid some kind of lame double entendre). Maybe it was a sign of Jimmy's shallowness that he seemed obsessed with it when a lot more was at stake.
More thoughts on Watership Down
My friend G was complaining about someone's feminism a while back, and I said, "I'm a feminist!" He said, "Yeah, but you're not always on your soapbox." I still don't know whether I should take this as a compliment, a mark of weakness in my feminism, or neither. I'm taking it as neither for the time being.
I finished Watership Down, but I think I would have finished it sooner but that the sexism really bothered me. I sometimes found myself thinking that I had time to read it, but I'd rather read something else. Yes, Adams did his research, and it's more the male rabbits who move away from the home warren, have adventures, and fight. But this man told the story to his daughters, in 1972. I can tolerate complete Bechdel fail in Chaucer a lot easier than I can tolerate it in a novel written in the 70s for girls.
We're more than halfway through the book (past page 200 of a little over 400 pages) before we really meet does, as they're called quite consistently, who have any part in the action. Male rabbits are "bucks" or "rabbits"; the default is male. The first does we meet who do take part in action are tame and don't have much action. We're past page 300 before we meet any does with anything like character. Some of them are named, but Bigwig escapes with a number of does, some of whom never receive names at all. Even though I can't tell you a thing about Acorn, he has a name. The bucks receive names in Lapine and English but are usually named in English, which makes it easier to remember their names and associate them with characters. The tame does have names in English, but the ones from the enemy warren have names in Lapine. We're given translations, but Hyzenthlay and the others are almost always called by those names, while Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, and so on are almost always called in English. We get female as Exotic Other.
In the end, a couple of the does do develop character, but they still seem slight next to the bucks. The bucks only wanted them in the first place to dig better tunnels and in the second place because they felt the urge to mate. Companionship isn't a consideration until near the very end.
I know it's a children's book*; I know they're bunnies and not humans. Still, the bucks act very human in most ways, and they're clearly the characters with whom readers relate; relating to the does is almost not an option, because they appear so rarely until late in the book. A father created this story for his daughters? As a girl, I really enjoyed reading about boys. I always preferred the Hardy Boys to Nancy Drew (but gave into pressure that I don't think my parents knew they were exerting to buy Nancy Drew books and just read my brothers' Hardy Boys). I don't doubt that his daughters enjoyed the stories he told about the bunnies. I am dubious, however, about how much I want my daughter exposed to that kind of attitude. I internalized certain kinds of behavior from books I read, tv I watched, and of course people in real life. I'm glad my daughter has a lot of tv shows about girls and even more books with girl protagonists. I didn't have that many. I won't stop her from reading Watership Down, but I can't recommend it highly. I think she'll enjoy reading about bunnies. If she's looking for a book, I may casually point it out to her.
*ETA:
delphia2000 tells me that Watership Down isn't really considered a children's book: at her library, it's in the Adult section. That makes some sense, given the violence in it. And just because the author originally told the stories to his girls doesn't mean the final book is for children. Even his own girls were a lot older by the time it was published! The introduction to the edition I have notes how much trouble Adams had getting it published: the audience for bunny books were too young for the length and style of his book, and older children who could read his prose would, he was told, be too old for bunnies. (Now I'm also wondering how else the final book differs from the original stories, but that's probably impossible even for Adams to reconstruct. It's probably also a quirk of being a medievalist—or the quirk that made me a medievalist.)