osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2024-07-31 08:09 am
osprey_archer) wrote2024-07-31 08:09 am
Wednesday Reading Meme
An unusual edition of What I’ve Given Up Reading: I fell at the last hurdle of my Read All the Patrice Kindl project when I discovered that her final book Don’t You Trust Me? is narrated by a sociopath. I just don’t enjoy that sort of thing, and despite being so very close (so close!!!) to finishing Kindl’s entire oeuvre, I just couldn’t stick it out past the first couple of chapters.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Chantemerle! And indeed, just as I predicted, Louis lived through his terrible wounds to be reunited with Lucienne at the end, while Gilbert lies cold in his grave. Their father confessor M. de Graves assures us that Gilbert won the greater victory in triumphing over his own self-will and also dying for his cause… I think he would have preferred to be alive, though!
This is Broster’s first book, co-written with her friend G. W. Taylor. Her key themes of honor and hurt/comfort are already in place, but not as highly developed as they would become in later books. Louis in particular spends much of the book getting wounded, as befits the charmingly languid favorite with a not-so-secret core of steel.
I also limped to the end of Naomi Mitchison’s When the Bough Breaks, a collection of short stories set in the Roman Empire, mostly around the time of Vercingetorix’s rebellion. I really enjoyed the short stories and also the novelette, which is set during the age of the early Christian church and in fact appears to be fanfic for Paul’s Letter to Philemon - an interesting glimpse of various different belief systems in Rome at the time.
However, the final novella is about - well, like most of Mitchison’s work, it’s about a lot of things, but a couple of those things are “Women had it rough in classical antiquity,” and also “Women’s inability to control their own reproductive choices really limits their options in life, huh?” And, you know, fair enough, but I feel that I’ve gotten the message on this one, and if I never read another novel about it ever again that would be just fine.
I also found the ending very distasteful.At the end of the book, Rome is sacked,and Innocentia gets dragged out of the church where she sought sanctuary and raped by a runaway slave with whom she had flirted with in earlier days. When Innocentia makes complaint to the conqueror, our heroine Gersemi steps forward and says, basically, Innocentia flirted with him before, so it couldn’t be rape now! Jesus, Gersemi. And Jesus, Mitchison! Where did that come from?
The problem is that you can’t always tell at the outset how hard a book is going to lean on this angle. If I were too suspicious about “Is this a book about how it sucks to be a woman in classical antiquity?”, I would never have read Caroline B. Cooney’s Goddess of Yesterday, which I adored.
What I’m Reading Now
Ever since I’ve read Jeanine Basinger’s Silent Stars, I’ve vaguely intended to read an Anita Loos book, and a chance encounter with one of her novels in the Reading Room at Shakespeare and Company has at last lit a fire under me. Since you can’t buy the Reading Room books, I have contented myself with the Gutenberg version of Gentleman Prefer Blondes, the diary of a ditzy kept woman who is always wiring her admirer for more money so she can “improve her mind” by, say, buying a diamond tiara.
What I Plan to Read Next
Despite the aggravating aspects of When the Bough Breaks, it did whet my appetite for more novels set in ancient Rome. I think it is at last time for Robert Graves’ I, Claudius.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Chantemerle! And indeed, just as I predicted, Louis lived through his terrible wounds to be reunited with Lucienne at the end, while Gilbert lies cold in his grave. Their father confessor M. de Graves assures us that Gilbert won the greater victory in triumphing over his own self-will and also dying for his cause… I think he would have preferred to be alive, though!
This is Broster’s first book, co-written with her friend G. W. Taylor. Her key themes of honor and hurt/comfort are already in place, but not as highly developed as they would become in later books. Louis in particular spends much of the book getting wounded, as befits the charmingly languid favorite with a not-so-secret core of steel.
I also limped to the end of Naomi Mitchison’s When the Bough Breaks, a collection of short stories set in the Roman Empire, mostly around the time of Vercingetorix’s rebellion. I really enjoyed the short stories and also the novelette, which is set during the age of the early Christian church and in fact appears to be fanfic for Paul’s Letter to Philemon - an interesting glimpse of various different belief systems in Rome at the time.
However, the final novella is about - well, like most of Mitchison’s work, it’s about a lot of things, but a couple of those things are “Women had it rough in classical antiquity,” and also “Women’s inability to control their own reproductive choices really limits their options in life, huh?” And, you know, fair enough, but I feel that I’ve gotten the message on this one, and if I never read another novel about it ever again that would be just fine.
I also found the ending very distasteful.At the end of the book, Rome is sacked,and Innocentia gets dragged out of the church where she sought sanctuary and raped by a runaway slave with whom she had flirted with in earlier days. When Innocentia makes complaint to the conqueror, our heroine Gersemi steps forward and says, basically, Innocentia flirted with him before, so it couldn’t be rape now! Jesus, Gersemi. And Jesus, Mitchison! Where did that come from?
The problem is that you can’t always tell at the outset how hard a book is going to lean on this angle. If I were too suspicious about “Is this a book about how it sucks to be a woman in classical antiquity?”, I would never have read Caroline B. Cooney’s Goddess of Yesterday, which I adored.
What I’m Reading Now
Ever since I’ve read Jeanine Basinger’s Silent Stars, I’ve vaguely intended to read an Anita Loos book, and a chance encounter with one of her novels in the Reading Room at Shakespeare and Company has at last lit a fire under me. Since you can’t buy the Reading Room books, I have contented myself with the Gutenberg version of Gentleman Prefer Blondes, the diary of a ditzy kept woman who is always wiring her admirer for more money so she can “improve her mind” by, say, buying a diamond tiara.
What I Plan to Read Next
Despite the aggravating aspects of When the Bough Breaks, it did whet my appetite for more novels set in ancient Rome. I think it is at last time for Robert Graves’ I, Claudius.
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That's unexpected.
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Speaking of books about antiquity, is this the one you read where the young heroine marvels over (I think?) a glass bottle? Or some really common item she'd never seen before in her sheltered life? That detail in your review stuck with me, but I've completely forgotten what book it was.
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