osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2015-11-20 09:24 am
osprey_archer) wrote2015-11-20 09:24 am
Belated Reading Meme
What I've Just Finished Reading
L. M. Montgomery's The Golden Road, the sequel to The Story Girl, which I actually ended up preferring to the original; I'm not sure if it's because it seems less episodic, with the Story Girl's stories better folded into the narrative, or if it's because I read it on vacation and that adds a charm to everything.
Also - drumroll, please! - I finished Margaret Oliphant's Miss Marjoribanks! Which I still think was a bit padded, and rather oddly shaped (the first two thirds of the book are about Miss Marjoribanks triumphant return to her hometown, and then abruptly there's a jump ten years into the future), but it was nonetheless enjoyable if you like this sort of thing, which I do.
Miss Marjoribanks herself is, IMO, the crowning achievement of the book: a formidable woman, self-assured, insightful, with a firm sense of her own importance; quite certain of her goals and how to reach them, but also willing to bend her plans as the need arises. The narrative notes repeatedly that if she had been a boy, she would have made a capital lawyer or doctor or member of Parliament. But she's a girl, and an exceptionally conventional one at that, and although she occasionally sighs about the narrow sphere for her ambitions, she's not in any kind of revolt against it.
I don't think I've read of another character who combined all those traits into one person before, and given how much I've read, that's rare in itself. The combination is both novel and fascinating.
I also read Elizabeth Gaskell's Lizzie Leigh, and I'm beginning to think that Cranford is the only Gaskell book for me, because I don't seem to enjoy any of her more "let's take on this social problem" works, and that seems to be most of her other stories. Lizzie Leigh is in many ways a reaction against early Victorian moralism: the heroine was a servant who lost her position after having sex and, it is heavily implied, fell into prostitution, and rather than die horribly as anyone might expect, she ends up going home to live with her loving mother in a bucolic cottage. (Her illegitimate daughter still bites the dust, though.)
But it's a very early Victorian rejection of early Victorian moralism, more like a tract than a story, and it wasn't to my taste.
What I'm Reading Now
The Martian, which I'm actually enjoying a lot. I suspect that seeing it after the movie actually enhances it a bit: I've brought the movie characterization to the experience, so I don't so much notice the flatness to the characterization that is the most common criticism I've seen of the book, and the book fleshes out a lot of the technical details in the movie.
What I Plan to Read Next
Marie Brennan's Voyage of the Basilisk.
L. M. Montgomery's The Golden Road, the sequel to The Story Girl, which I actually ended up preferring to the original; I'm not sure if it's because it seems less episodic, with the Story Girl's stories better folded into the narrative, or if it's because I read it on vacation and that adds a charm to everything.
Also - drumroll, please! - I finished Margaret Oliphant's Miss Marjoribanks! Which I still think was a bit padded, and rather oddly shaped (the first two thirds of the book are about Miss Marjoribanks triumphant return to her hometown, and then abruptly there's a jump ten years into the future), but it was nonetheless enjoyable if you like this sort of thing, which I do.
Miss Marjoribanks herself is, IMO, the crowning achievement of the book: a formidable woman, self-assured, insightful, with a firm sense of her own importance; quite certain of her goals and how to reach them, but also willing to bend her plans as the need arises. The narrative notes repeatedly that if she had been a boy, she would have made a capital lawyer or doctor or member of Parliament. But she's a girl, and an exceptionally conventional one at that, and although she occasionally sighs about the narrow sphere for her ambitions, she's not in any kind of revolt against it.
I don't think I've read of another character who combined all those traits into one person before, and given how much I've read, that's rare in itself. The combination is both novel and fascinating.
I also read Elizabeth Gaskell's Lizzie Leigh, and I'm beginning to think that Cranford is the only Gaskell book for me, because I don't seem to enjoy any of her more "let's take on this social problem" works, and that seems to be most of her other stories. Lizzie Leigh is in many ways a reaction against early Victorian moralism: the heroine was a servant who lost her position after having sex and, it is heavily implied, fell into prostitution, and rather than die horribly as anyone might expect, she ends up going home to live with her loving mother in a bucolic cottage. (Her illegitimate daughter still bites the dust, though.)
But it's a very early Victorian rejection of early Victorian moralism, more like a tract than a story, and it wasn't to my taste.
What I'm Reading Now
The Martian, which I'm actually enjoying a lot. I suspect that seeing it after the movie actually enhances it a bit: I've brought the movie characterization to the experience, so I don't so much notice the flatness to the characterization that is the most common criticism I've seen of the book, and the book fleshes out a lot of the technical details in the movie.
What I Plan to Read Next
Marie Brennan's Voyage of the Basilisk.
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Marjoribanks is so far the only comedy I've read of Oliphant's - similarly Cranford is the only really hilarious Gaskell I've read. But I don't think Lizzie Leigh is necessarily any more representative of her body of work than Cranford. On a scale from LL to Cranford, her other novels like North & South and Wives & Daughters fall in the middle - manners and romance, as well as class issues.
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I have read North & South, and the social issues rather spoiled it for me; I didn't dislike it, but I think Gaskell's much more deft at manners & romance than social issues.
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What other Elizabeth Gaskell have you read? I've only read Ruth which I liked well enough at the time, but which was heavily issues-y, and which I can't remember a thing about, now, without consulting the Internet.
Interesting that the movie helps bring The Martian alive!
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I've read Cranford and North and South, the second of which is also pretty issues-y. Gaskell's grasp of Issues simply never strikes me as nearly as deep or interesting as her grasp of human nature.
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