Wednesday Reading Meme
Jun. 12th, 2019 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
I finished George Gissing's The Odd Women, but my remarks about it got so long that I'm making them a separate post.
I also read Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (it's actually quite short, which surprised me), and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Miss Jean Brodie is a teacher of unorthodox methods at a girls' school in 1930s Edinburgh, who often tells her pupils to get out their history books just in case someone comes in and then regales them with stories of her youthful love affairs or her latest vacation to Italy, where she so admired the blackshirts.
She gathers around her six pupils who are her "set" - she invites them to teas and museum and the theater and so forth. But in the end, one of her own girls betrays her to the headmistress, at last giving her the ammunition that she has long desired to fire this troublesome teacher.
The thing that bothers me is that this betrayal seems oddly unmotivated, and not for lack of possible motives. Sandy could have been angry that Miss Brodie sort of maneuvered her into a love affair with the art master, whom Miss Brodie loved herself but renounced because he was married. She might have been genuinely disturbed by Miss Brodie's increasingly pro-fascist sentiments (the book ends in 1939). Or maybe she was appalled by Miss Brodie's casual admission that she encouraged another student's plans to go to Spain to fight for Franco, which ended in that student's death.
The juxtaposition of events suggests that it was this last that tipped her over... but it feels weird that the betrayer herself (whose POV we inhabit when the betrayal happens!) never offers up a justification for why she's suddenly decided Miss Brodie has to be stopped.
But I did think the book was awfully well-written - particularly the way that the girls talk about sex when they're eleven and twelve, when they've developed an intense theoretical interest/repulsion about sex. The girls are at once at once fascinated and repelled by the idea that Miss Brodie has a love life, that she might, you know, be doing it. With our art teacher! Gross! But also romantic!
I feel that this is not uncommon, and it's also something you rarely see reflected in books.
What I’m Reading Now
Jenny Han's To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before starts slowly - I've noticed this in other stories about fake dating, they often lurch a little as they get off the ground because the premise is sort of inherently unlikely - but Lara Jean and Peter Kavinsky are now safely fake-dating and the story is picking up speed.
And I've begun Henry James The Bostonians, but two chapters in I can already feel ennui descending upon me. We'll see if I get through it.
What I Plan to Read Next
I have Moderata Fonte's Floridoro, a chivalric romance poem written by an Italian woman in the 1500s. One way or another I feel this has to be pretty interesting.
I finished George Gissing's The Odd Women, but my remarks about it got so long that I'm making them a separate post.
I also read Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (it's actually quite short, which surprised me), and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Miss Jean Brodie is a teacher of unorthodox methods at a girls' school in 1930s Edinburgh, who often tells her pupils to get out their history books just in case someone comes in and then regales them with stories of her youthful love affairs or her latest vacation to Italy, where she so admired the blackshirts.
She gathers around her six pupils who are her "set" - she invites them to teas and museum and the theater and so forth. But in the end, one of her own girls betrays her to the headmistress, at last giving her the ammunition that she has long desired to fire this troublesome teacher.
The thing that bothers me is that this betrayal seems oddly unmotivated, and not for lack of possible motives. Sandy could have been angry that Miss Brodie sort of maneuvered her into a love affair with the art master, whom Miss Brodie loved herself but renounced because he was married. She might have been genuinely disturbed by Miss Brodie's increasingly pro-fascist sentiments (the book ends in 1939). Or maybe she was appalled by Miss Brodie's casual admission that she encouraged another student's plans to go to Spain to fight for Franco, which ended in that student's death.
The juxtaposition of events suggests that it was this last that tipped her over... but it feels weird that the betrayer herself (whose POV we inhabit when the betrayal happens!) never offers up a justification for why she's suddenly decided Miss Brodie has to be stopped.
But I did think the book was awfully well-written - particularly the way that the girls talk about sex when they're eleven and twelve, when they've developed an intense theoretical interest/repulsion about sex. The girls are at once at once fascinated and repelled by the idea that Miss Brodie has a love life, that she might, you know, be doing it. With our art teacher! Gross! But also romantic!
I feel that this is not uncommon, and it's also something you rarely see reflected in books.
What I’m Reading Now
Jenny Han's To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before starts slowly - I've noticed this in other stories about fake dating, they often lurch a little as they get off the ground because the premise is sort of inherently unlikely - but Lara Jean and Peter Kavinsky are now safely fake-dating and the story is picking up speed.
And I've begun Henry James The Bostonians, but two chapters in I can already feel ennui descending upon me. We'll see if I get through it.
What I Plan to Read Next
I have Moderata Fonte's Floridoro, a chivalric romance poem written by an Italian woman in the 1500s. One way or another I feel this has to be pretty interesting.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-14 02:25 am (UTC)