Lesbian Novels? More Like....Yeah, No, Lesbian Novels

I've read a WHOLE bunch of lesbian fiction in the last year, and I can't think of anything else to write about, so I'm just gonna list some and whether they suck or not. It should probably be noted that I am not into contemporary fiction overall (aw, but you knew that), so if it's a set-in-modern-times book it's already got one strike against it. Also because this is a minority genre, the pool of authors is already small, so the amount of good lesbian fiction is going to be WAY SMALLER than for other genres. Except for like, fiction for hermaphroditic Polynesians. Those people are fucked.

An Emergence of Green - The back of this says "From the moment she meets Val Hunter, Carolyn Blake's married life begins to unravel until she is torn apart by erotic depths she can neither resist nor control." Erotic depths, people. I mean, it's set in 1984, and not in a fun Orwellian way. More a "we're going to wear hilarious clothing seriously" way. And it's very "Bored housewife coming to terms with who she really is," but FOR THE TIME that was not as clichey as now. My main issue with it was the husband is SO EVIL. Damn you, men and your manly manness. But for lesbian novels from the mid-'80s set in California, this is the best I've read.

The Haunting of Hill House - This was on a list of gay novels and IT IS SO NOT GAY. Or rather, it's kinda sorta gay for the '50s. Which is not very gay at all. I don't do well with subtext. I don't get that two ladies are into each other unless the book is like "AND THEN THEY WERE MAKING OUT AND TOTALLY INTO EACH OTHER. AND ALSO GAY." So thanks for the veiled allusions, Shirley Jackson. I didn't get any of them.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit - I cannot stand Jeanette Winterson. As an author. I'm sure she's AWESOME as a person and probably bakes cookies for her friends when they're having a bad day and housesits and doesn't ask for anything but instead BAKES MORE COOKIES for when you come home. But this book? Jeanette Winterson is the Queen of Vague Writing and General Subtextery. Meaning for this whole novel, I was going "Wait, is she 12? 18? Is she saying she likes ladies? OMG WHAT'S HAPPENING WITH THE NEIGHBOR ARE THEY HAVING SEX GOOD LORD I HOPE SHE ISN'T 12."

Kissing the Witch - These are interwoven fairytales that've been kinda redone by Emma Donoghue, who is a badass at writing. I'm on my fourth book of hers and this one is STILL my favorite (the others I've read are Landing, which is contemporary and not amazing but not bad, Slammerkin, which I super-enjoyed but is not gay and not as good as this [not because of the not-gay thing], and I've started Room, which I am WAY not into).

Tipping the Velvet - This is like the Holy Grail of lesbian novels. Sarah Waters is SUPER-smart AND writes about Victorian England. She said the purpose behind TtV was to show different types of Victorian lesbian relationships, and man, she succeeds. Because the heroine, Nan, is all OVER the place and probably gets like 50 diseases, but they are tastefully not mentioned. And Flo is in it, and Flo is awesome. Kitty is also awesome, but more in a bitchy way that destroys your life.

Fingersmith - (feel free to snicker at the title) This is pretty heavily influenced by The Woman in White, so I'm glad I read it before WiW, because otherwise I might've been all indignant instead of "OMG SO MANY TWISTS." It's got an insane asylum featured, and who DOESN'T love Victorian novels about insane asylums?

Affinity - Remember when I was all "I'm reading a Victorian lesbian ghost novel" and it was awesome because that's the best cocktail party sentence ever, only then it's not because it's not that lesbiany, but the movie TOTALLY IS and should be watched? The book's ok.

*cue sexytime music*

The Color Purple - I mean, this whole book is kind of painful but awesome? I didn't think about the lesbian part too much, because whenever that came up I remembered that Alice Walker had been in a relationship with Tracy Chapman and then I'd start wondering if Tracy Chapman sang "Give Me One Reason" to her and then I was like "She probably sang other songs; that's just the only one you know, so this is really you displaying your terrible musical knowledge." Then I'd have to figure out where I was again. But this is REALLY good and REALLY sad.

I want to mention there's a kind of amazing series called Elite Operatives, which is way trashy but STILL amazing, because it's all like, lesbian assassins falling in love with their targets who are super-sexy reporters. I might've only read part of one, but I assume they all have the same plot.

And therein ends my knowledge, with the exception of some other '80s and YA novels. And who wants to hear about those? NOBODY BUT MY JOURNAL.

Alice's Canadian Adventure: Drunk Book-Buying and Eating Multiple Pieces of Cake

It has been so long, my blogging peoples. SO LONG. But I have returned from the wilds of Canada, and ne'er shall stray no more (false -- except for the returning part).

I told my totes BFF that we had to do something bookish or how could I blog about the trip, and she balked until we got drunk one night and wandered into Indigo Books.

I question your display names, Canada

I think this is the happiest anyone's ever looked while holding
We Need to Talk About Kevin

I don't really drink, but my friend is an awesome influence on me, so most of the trip was that plus Designing Women. Oh, Designing Women. Will Charlene ever find true love? Will Mary Jo rise above her insecurities? Will Julia ever stop ranting indignantly? Will Suzanne stop having the most kickass smile ever? (yes, maybe, hell no, nooooo)

I bought People of the Book, because the hardcover was on sale, and We Need to Talk About Kevin. Drunk book buying. This is what it gets you. I also bought my friend a book about best friends that featured animal photos. All I remember is one of the elephants looked like it was trying to get it on with another elephant, and I was like "THIS DOES NOT APPLY," but the one with the kitten hugging the dog or something totally does.

Did I argue about the Canadian healthcare system with a Banana Republic salesman? Am I still indignant about the price of shredded cheese? Do the walk signs in Toronto all look much closer to a '70s Stayin' Alive walk than our boring ones? All yes.

I can't help if it your less imaginative

brain doesn't hear disco music

when you see this. Oh, I'M the one with

the problem?

I read parts of The Bloggess's Let's Pretend This Never Happened in the lovely early hangover phase each morning, and it is STILL FUNNY when you have to look at it all bleary-eyed. And BFF bought a copy, which is a big deal because she does not buy books. That is how awesome it is, people. READ THE BOOK.

Hopefully everyone has been having a stellar time this past week. I plan on writing an actually coherent post one of these days, but for at least today that is an impossibility. I leave you with poutine.

Ready Player One: Full of Shininess and Unicorns (note: contains no actual unicorns)

Ready Player One is precisely calculated to make geeks and nerds slap themselves in the face with joy.

So it's the not-so-distant future, society's decayed quite a bit, primarily because of an energy crisis (those fossil fuels that take millions of years to make? yeah, we ran out of them), and our hero, Wade Watts, lives in a futuristic trailer park known as "the stacks" (because...they stack trailers).

He's obsessed with winning a contest begun by the world's greatest video game designer, recently deceased and worth ridiculous amounts of money (which is the prize, btw). What game did he design? Oh, ONLY THE OASIS, which is like World of Warcraft and The Sims, but way way awesomer? Look guys, the last video game system I played was the Super Nintendo. This is not my area of expertise. Basically the OASIS is an immersive virtual reality, and totally amazing and people spend all their time there because HEY real life is depressing.

And rather than spend a lot of time talking about how unfortunate it is that people aren't living in reality, the book is pretty much like "LOOK AT ALL THIS AWESOME STUFF THE OASIS HAS -- LOOK I'M A WIZARD NOW."

So the contest for all this money and power and so forth is that you have to find the Egg. An Easter Egg hidden in the OASIS. But you have to find three keys and go through three gates first. And each one has a challenge associated with it, all of which involve '80s pop culture. Oh yeah, the super-rich video game guy was obsessed with the '80s, so HELLO BLADE RUNNER.

The entire novel is pretty much references to tv, movies, music and video games, so I fricking love this book. Does the author repeat information a lot in the beginning? Yes. Is his flirting with the "hopefully a girl" girl he meets in the OASIS super-nerdy and very very very much what guys into MMORPGs say? Yes (he calls her "enchanting" -- no one should say this who isn't a skeezy Nazi trying to be smooth with the hero's ladyfriend).

But oh, oh the friendships! Oh the Star Wars planet where you can visit Uncle Owen's moisture farm! The daring escapades! The evil corporation that tries to win the contest! The cliched Monty Python and the Holy Grail references!

Even with some rough patches in terms of style/writing, I LOVED this book. My only quibble was that there were no Doctor Who references. And sure, you can say "Well, you can't include ALL nerd culture," but IT'S DOCTOR WHO. This isn't like fricking Babylon 5. Doctor Who. It owns nerdery. But this is ok. Because the author obviously has a liking for Japanese culture, and THOSE references take up a decent amount of space. To each his own (even if it's the wrong own).

If you really, really like books that make pop culture references, and if you don't hate video games, here is the book for you. ALL THE '80s THINGS. Read it. Enjoy it. Talk to me about how Star Wars is better than Star Trek (even though the two shouldn't be compared).

Sci-Fi and Why I Know Too Much About It

I have a weird relationship with science fiction. I don't seek it out, and when I have, I'm usually not that interested in it (with stellar [hah! i pun] exceptions like Ender's Game and Fahrenheit 451, which should maybe count?).

But everyone's family influences them, and my dad is an aerospace engineer, and my older brothers are biochemists and motion graphic artists. And they all love sci-fi.

My dad was a teenager in the '50s, so the movie October Sky was basically him, minus the coal mining and father issues. So really 'was basically him' means 'he launched rockets with his friends.' In my parents' basement we have a wall lined with copies of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, as well as novels by Asimov, Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. Lately he's told me how much he loves Kurt Vonnegut (a lot, it seems).

My older brothers are six and four years older than I am, so I looked up to the oldest and hated the other growing up, but we stopped hitting each other with pillows whenever Star Trek: Next Generation aired. We for some reason (one of the only tvs was there maybe?) always watched it in my second oldest brother's room, and there was a ready supply of pillows. Just to let you know we COULD have been hitting each other.

So this has always been around me, and I have a decent amount of sci-fi knowledge that was picked up by osmosis. I remember almost zero actual plotlines of STNG, but I can tell you all the characters' names and most of the actors who played them (the opening titles are memorable). I haven't read Dune, because I tried and it was boring. I kind of hate Heinlein because of his polygamy thing, and I feel like Asimov has awesome ideas, but can't write. I haven't tried Clarke. The only one I really enjoy is Ray Bradbury.

Do families tend to have one genre define them? The only other one I can think of in my household is true crime. I grew up watching my mother read things like The Night Stalker, which I subsequently picked up. It probably warped my mind to some extent, but nah, everything's fine. My family's sci-fi grouping was seemingly predetermined by my father's interest being so overwhelming as to lead to his career. Is this the case with others, or how does a preferred genre have an impact on a family's bonding?

Top Ten Tuesday: Our Lives Apart from Books

Ok, this Top Ten Tuesday was hugely embarrassing, because I realized I do not go to that many websites. AND THE INTERNET IS SO VAST. But I remain within my tiny comfort zone. Alas.

Hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

Doing it backwards like Alley, because she's cool.

10. Jezebel - ALL THE HILARIOUS FEMINISTY THINGS. Plus one of their writers, Lindy West, is SO VERY FUNNY and I want us to hang out and watch movies while eating chocolate covered pretzels, and then she will make fun of the movies and let me have the last pretzels and it will be the best friendship ever.

9. The Onion - Oh, Onion. You have been my favorite for so long. Where else can I read the King Tut commentary Hey, Where Did All My Stuff Go? or Ghost of Anne Frank: 'Quit Reading My Diary'?

8. Are You Married, River? - Yeah. So. Uh. This is basically run by the Queen of the Doctor/River shippers, and it's one of the only tumblrs I check consistently. If something Doctor/River Song-related is worth reblogging, it'll probably be reblogged by her (which, if you don't know tumblr, is 'reposted'). She also writes fic, which I have spent hours reading. Hooooours.

7. Amazon (DO NOT KILL ME) - LOOK IT'S EASY OK? And I have a Kindle, so it's where I get my Kindle books, other than the library. Although really it's mostly the library.

6. IMSLP - Ah, the International Music Score Library Project, which keeps getting shut down due to lawsuits and then brought back up due to loopholes. Basically it has a ridiculous amount of free sheet music, which is SO helpful to poor people who don't have time to go to the library (comme moooooi).

5. YAP Tracker - Young Artist Program Tracker. This is where you try to find an audition for an opera program that will allow you to become a grateful indentured servant for a summer or season.

4. The Bloggess - OBviously. You're not following her? You're ridiculous.

3. Rachel Maddow Audio Podcast - Video at work is rightfully discouraged, so I listen to the Rachel Maddow Show via audio. Which is a bit unfortunate when she says things like "Yup, you read that right," and I'm like "WHAT? WHAT DID I READ RIGHT? RACHEEEEEEEEL!" But mostly it works out fine.

2. Livejournal - Awwww, Livejournal. Remember Livejournal? Yeah, so, I've had one since 2002 and I refuse to get rid of it. Because it's been 11 years, and that's a COMMITMENT, damnit. Plus some of the best internet people I know I met through LJ. Mostly by posting picspams and then experiencing mutual flailing.

And I'm out of things. So here's a website I went to every day when I was 12.

1. Deidre Hall

"We have ways of making you pronounce the letter 'O'"

My family has the kind of ridiculous situation where three of the four kids were born within a week of each other (in different years, of course -- my mother is not some alien pregnancy monster). So this last weekend was Birthday Weekend, which mainly involved a dinosaur cake and me making tacos. Oh, tacos. Would that I could wear you in a locket near my heart. But eventually that would get really smelly. And not in a good, taco-y way.

My little brother got me a merchandised copy of River Song's Diary. I plan on using this to write adventures involving her and the Doctor while drunk. I don't trust my sober mind to be creative (note: all of these stories will, in all likelihood, end with making out).

In other news, Chicago has thus far not been destroyed by NATO incidents (we were told it might be) and I have still not gone to Canada. I've just been talking about it for ages because I am SO EXCITED. But Thursday-Tuesday of THIS WEEK are when I shall be eating poutine and other gross, delicious things while I feel exotic about being in the country that inspired the classic hit Canadian Bacon (Canadian Bacon is not a classic hit).

In OTHER other news, people say really dirty things about Eva Green on Tumblr. Have some RESPECT, people. Also I have now seen Dark Shadows twice and I would like to say dirty things about Eva Green but I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DO THOSE THINGS because I grew up with films that were made under the Hays Code and they get about as racy as this:

"But the BOOKS, Alice, what of the BOOKS?" Honestly? You want books in EVERY post? Fine. Very quickly, let's talk about The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie. Which I have read almost none of, BUT I have things to say. I am mainly reading this because 1) It seems funny, and 2) I have never read any of Little House on the Prairie and do not understand the appeal, so I'm hoping this book will shed some light on it, while also giving me enough pop culture knowledge about the series so I can answer Trivial Pursuit questions about it.

But really, the prairie? Deprivation? Salt pork? I do not understand it.

Volcano? More Like...Sad Book About Things. Also There's a Volcano

Hokay, so people in the Classics-something group on Goodreads were approached about reviewing two Japanese novels. I looked at them and said I'd review the shorter one, because I am BU-SY watching Modern Family and don't have time for things like long books.

So, I'm not so into the Romantic concept of the pathetic fallacy (surely one of the weirder-named devices). The pathetic fallacy is the "treatment of inanimate objects as if they had human feelings, thought, or sensations" (thank you, Wikipedia). The shorter book I chose, Volcano by Shusaku Endo, kiiiind of does this.

Ok, so there're two guys, one who studied this volcano nearby (Akadake, which is SO much fun to say), and a former priest. And they're old. LIKE THE VOLCANO. And they're dying. LIKE THE VOLCANO. And they were formed by tectonic plates merging. LIKE THE--wait, no.

So the volcano doesn't necessarily have feelings, but it's treated like an extension of these men a lot. Like...a lot. You could say that, or that they relate to it a whole bunch. Did I mention I hate metaphors that hit you over the head? Yeah. So there's that.

There was an interesting part in the intro where the translator talks about Endo and says that Volcano "depicts the sad state of human life when it is devoid of deep love." Which is what first made me think 'Hmmmmm' about the book (in a positive way), but of course that sort of thing put into practice makes for Not the Most Up Novel. But look at how pretty the cover is!

The lives in it are devoid of deep love in that none of the characters have fulfilling relationships with each other. It makes life for them a tedious quest of solitude and sadness. If you can read this sort of thing without feeling like Eeyore, then go to. I mean, some people like Murakami, and he's depressing as hell.

SO. If you like kind of depressing novels with a dose of Catholicism (Endo was Catholic), then LOOK NO FURTHER. Here is the book for you. And there's a volcano in it! Albeit not one of those exciting volcanoes that goes "PHWOOOOOOM!" (I'll bet the people who asked me to review this are really congratulating themselves right now)

It's not so much for me, but what do I know? I'm the kind of person who likes THIS:

You can check out more info on it HERE, and it's available at fine online retailers that are not Amazon (psst -- don't shop at Amazon).

Alison Bechdel Wears Smart People Glasses

Two years ago, I was linked to a vlog called Feminist Frequency. The subject was the Bechdel Test, which succinctly is:

1. Does a movie have at least two women in it

2. Do they talk to each other

3. About something other than a man

At the very least, it's eye-opening about how for-granted we take a scarcity of women in film, despite us making up, what, 51% of the global population now?

This test was invented by Alison Bechdel in her comic strip 'Dykes to Watch Out For.' I did not know the latter; I thought it was in a scholarly paper or something. But then I saw she was coming to Chicago to speak about her new book/graphic novel, so -- ! She writes graphic novels! Very well then.

I picked up her first, Fun Home, as well as the newest, Are You My Mother?. They're both memoirs about her family: Fun Home is about her father and his possible suicide, and Are You My Mother? deals with psychoanalysis and her mother. I've read about half of the latter and all of the former.

Fun Home is EXCELLENT and I recommend it to everyone. I don't usually do graphic novels (they feel like cheating?) but she is SO smart and SO articulate, and the drawings are clear and communicative. And she talks about James Joyce! Whom I don't even like, but how impressive! What more could you want? Go check it out.

Are You My Mother?, I'm more reticent about. I haven't finished it yet, but I spoke to some people in line at the reading, and apparently it continues in the same vein for the rest of the book. Namely, she keeps on about psychoanalysis. Now I am FINE with this branch of study as long as it's not being used as fact. Because we really, really can't know. But my issue with this book is she seems to take it and treat it as a definite. As in "Oh, this thing from when I was three months old is why I do this," or "I got hit in the face with a branch because my unconscious was telling me something."

I mean, maybe. But since I'm guessing a fair number of her readers don't heart-and-soul buy psychoanalysis, it just seems a bit alienating. She does, however, talk about Virginia Woolf, and I have Learned Things from the book.

At the reading last night, she showed some slides of pages of the book while reading aloud, and then there was a Q&A (I asked why she didn't use psychoanalysis in Fun Home as opposed to the second book -- short answer: it didn't fit in Fun Home). And then a signing! Hurrah! I asked her to write one of her favorite words:

A word I was very excited about until my best friend texted me that it means "A large genus of about 600 species of plants -- including buttercups."

I thought it meant this:

Buttercups? I think not.

She was very nice, though, and my friend John came with me, despite being one of about four males at the event. And they had free cheese! Which basically had me doing a little dance at the table. 

All-around a good event. Read Fun Home. The end.

C.S. Lewis Is Disliked By Uncool People. You Don't Want to Be Uncool...Do You?

Been some late nights, kids. I wouldn't blog, but who else would take this space and write whatever comes into their head? Probably someone really lame. I don't even want to think about it.

C.S. Lewis. If you're a teenager and on your Christian intellectual high horse, this is what you read. You also read him if you're an awesome person, but that's beside the point.

Some people don't like him. We call these people "super-uncool," but they usually say they just don't like 'hit you over the head' allegory. Poppycock is what I say to that. Ok, so this allegory is mainly in The Chronicles of Narnia. Here's my deal with Chronicles:

The BBC made some really low budget movies of books 1-4, and I watched them ALL. THE. TIME. as a child. But did I get any Christian parallels? No. No I did not. This culminated in a scene betwixt my brother and myself where Aslan says "You know me there by another name," referring to our world, and I turned to my brother and asked in an extremely frustrated tone (because I had watched this scene so many times) "WHAT other name?" And he just stared at me. "GOD, Alice."

So that's how hit-you-over-the-head the allegory is when you're seven. These books are not for adults.

But I loved the books from age eight onwards. My favorites are The Last Battle and Magician's Nephew, mainly because everything goes to shit in The Last Battle and it's exciting, and Magician's Nephew has a MASSIVE, evil, powerful lady who can vault over the walls of the Garden of Eden. So great.

After the Narnia phase was over and I became a fo' reals Christian, I read The Great Divorce (amazing), Screwtape Letters (double-amazing), Till We Have Faces (s'ok), The Four Loves (eh), Out of the Silent Planet (yessssss), and Perelandra (OMG so good).

The latter two are from The Space Trilogy, which is obvs sci-fi. I don't remember much about Silent Planet, but Perelandra involves a sci-fi Adam and Eve and it is SO GOOD. If you had to read two C.S. Lewis books, I would without a doubt recommend Screwtape Letters and Perelandra.

Screwtape is a demon writing letters to his nephew, advising him how to tempt man. My favorite quote from it, at age 19, was:

At the very least, they can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers; for they constantly forget, what you must always remember, that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls.

Oh, C.S. Lewis. You were so wise.

The Great Divorce, which is also excellent, is about Purgatory and the souls living there trying to make it to Heaven. It involves a bus trip. Also George MacDonald, whom Lewis was way into and who wrote The Princess and the Goblin (ALSO really good).

Basically, he was really smart and vaguely down to earth and EXTREMELY adept at pinpointing commonalities. Meaning I'd be reading and go "Oh OTHER people feel that way?" He's clear and interesting and should be read more. Also don't discount his work for adults just because you don't like Chronicles. Only suckahs do that.

If This Blog Were a Superhero

It's Sunday night and this is naturally what I'm thinking about.

Alyson of Bathe is my nemesis. Always has been, always will be. And by 'always,' I mean 'since that time on twitter I asked if we could be nemeses, 'cause that's awesome.' Which was a few months ago.

Meg's blog is engaged to mine, so I guess she's the Kirsten Dunst/Maggie Gyllenhaal here, who ACTS in a vaguely feministy way, but isn't really, 'cause those movies are made by dudes. (note: Megs would totally be actually feministy)

Contractually Obligated to Like Books would be like Alfred the Butler, because she would sigh or make hilariously snobbish remarks about my chosen plans for the evening. Which would be something like Rescuing Rick Riordan's Books from a Lack of Editing (for serious -- they're wildly popular, and yet there are at least three errors in every book).

What Red Read and Devouring Texts are my sidekicks (sorry, guys — I'll be your sidekick if you want me, but in this story, I am Batman). Whenever a hilarious book needs to be read, we will be there. Whenever one of us reads a terrible book, we will be there to say 'I am not reading that then' in the comment section. And whenever one of us gives a book away, we will be the only people to enter.

As the Crowe Flies and Reads is the wise mentor who actually works at a bookstore and is all professionally bookish. I would visit her when things get darkest (i.e. when Alyson and I disagree on a book and I get put out) and she would offer her counsel (which would hopefully be something like 'Not everyone likes the same books, Alice').

And now I am out of comic book types. Plus I want to go take a bath.

Friday Posts Require No Coherency. Thus Sayeth Me.

I had a dream about Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart last night. But I spent part of it telling him his fake vampire teeth were protruding and looked stupid. So I'm gonna go ahead and say that makes it okay and not think about why they were in my dream in the first place.

You know how sometimes you find a really good blog and you're like "WHY AM I EVEN TRYING THIS HAS WON EVERYTHING." By which I mean the internet. Yeah. That's also how I felt when I saw a particularly amazing Doctor/River vid. "WHY AM I SPENDING SO MUCH TIME ON MINE IT WILL INEVITABLY FAIL NEXT TO THIS." (oh WHAT'S that? you want me to link to my vid? why, surely: Doctor/River vid of Immense Sadness)

Yeah, so, I think we should keep trudging on despite these clearly superior specimens of internettery. Because what does the internet need more of? CONTENT. ALWAYS. ALWAYS MORE. This stream of consciousness isn't going to write itself. Wait...that's probably somehow wrong.

ANYWAY. Continuing after that brief crisis.

I cannot take Dashiell Hammett seriously, and it's so not his fault. I feel awful about it, but his "entirely unique" (said the NYT) style has been so copied by absolutely everything concerning detective fiction that it's difficult to read without laughing. It feels like a parody of itself.

For example, the second sentence of The Thin Man is "She was small and blonde, and whether you looked at her face or at her body in powder-blue sports clothes, the result was satisfactory."

Right?? It is NIGH IMPOSSIBLE to read Dashiell Hammett the way people in the '30s read him. The Maltese Falcon is equally if not more ridiculous. I enjoyed The Thin Man, because hello Nick and Nora Charles, but Maltese is pretty much the fount from which all detective cliches spring.

Maybe if you took a hill person and taught them to read and then gave them some Hammett, they could give us some idea of how people saw it back then. Or one could read reviews from the '30s. Either one.

Virginia Woolf, Sugared Almond-Pelter

FIRST, regarding yesterday:

Now that's done.

14 days away from hilarious pictures of me searching for a maple leaf and then calling Toronto unpatriotic.

How do we all feel about Virginia Woolf? She's one of those authors whose non-fiction I enjoy, but whose fiction I turn at different angles with a puzzled look on my face.

This is basically all me at 19, though. I haven't read anything by her in years. So here's my almost-eight-years-out-of-date opinion:

A Room of One's Own. What a fantastic book. I mean, damn. Because what is Woolf not afraid to be? A snob. OH SUCH A SNOB. She basically says "You can't write well unless you have enough money and leisure time to do it, so leave off, Poor Women." But she offers convincing reasons for this! Leaving me going "Bu--oh, well you make some good points."

And in case you have not heard Virginia Woolf speak, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD CLICK THIS NOW. Because it explains everything.

So after reading A Room of One's Own, I was all "Oh! I should read Mrs. Dalloway! That's famous!" So I did. And most of that book was me going "I know this is supposed to Mean Something. But I do not know what." Damn symbolism.

I seem to be one of those people who keeps thinking she'll love Woolf if she keeps reading her, so in a fit of confidence, I asked for The Years and Orlando for Christmas some years back. I think I read the first page of Orlando and then my confidence wavered and I went off to read something like Mrs. Piggle Wiggle (we can get into my love for her later).

I've been told To the Lighthouse is brilliant, but I'm thinking Woolf is maybe not my cup of tea, because what do I like in books? Characters, love story, humor. What do I not care so much about? Metaphor, Symbolism, Ideas. And many people do and that is FANTASTIC. But they are not for me.

There is, by the way, a hilarious essay by Leonard Woolf (Virginia Woolf's husband in case that wasn't somehow clear) called Hunting the Highbrow that I found in the stacks at my university's library. It's very very short and has lines like "The Aeneid is indisputably a great poem, but however educated the world might be, it would always exasperate and bore the vast majority of its inhabitants."

Maybe there's a novel of hers I'd like. And maybe now I'm less of an idiot than at 19. But that seems unlikely. I am a person who last weekend bought a giant mug with Winnie the Pooh on it.

George Eliot Wrote Rather Long Books

The many phases of George Eliot. First you think 'Oh, a dude.' But no. Then 'Wait, which is George Eliot and which is George Sand? And why was 'George' the preferred pseudonym for mid-19th c. ladies?' And then 'Middlemarch is SO LONG OMG' and then 'Middlemarch is SO AWESOME OMG.' Then 'Wow, that was not an attractive woman.' THEN, 'I shall now be reading all her books.'

I grant that this might not be the order for everyone. And I still have The Lifted Veil and Daniel Deronda, but I have read EVERYTHING ELSE she wrote. Which I will now be discussing.

Middlemarch - I read Middlemarch when I was 19 and got very, very into it. Its heroine, Dorothea Brooke, is my favorite literary heroine. Marian Halcombe now is a close second, but Dorothea is basically me at a very very conservative Christian age 19. 'Oh, I like horseback riding? Maybe I should give that up for God then...' And wanting to marry a great man in order to help him with his work? Yeah. THAT WAS A THING I WANTED TO DO. And Middlemarch is all "Yeeeeeah, no. Don't do that." Plus the characters are basically all complex and amazing and it should just be read.

Adam Bede - George Eliot is very, very into Masculine Men of the Land, with clear brows and penetrating eyes and big hands who make things. So that's kind of what Adam Bede's all about. Oh, and good people making bad decisions with far-reaching consequences. Also Methodists.

Scenes of Clerical Life - I love this book's face off. It was the first thing she published. It consists of three short stories, and they are all awesome and adorable. I bought a 1907 edition when I went to NYC this year, which is a thing I've been looking for for SEVEN YEARS. It was a good moment.

Me: "I GOT A 1907 TWO VOLUME EDITION OF GEORGE ELIOT'S SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE."

My mom: "Well. I'm sure that was about to be snatched up."

The Mill on the Floss - I loved Mill on the Floss until the last third, where it started SUCKING.

Felix Holt the Radical - I have a theory about this book (which is about the Reform Act of 1832 -- THRILLING STUFF). And that theory is that Eliot saw the misogynistic shitstorm that was Our Mutual Friend and went 'Oh no no no, I will do this but do it right.' And from that came Felix and Esther and general awesomeness.

Romola - Ugh. Yeah. This book. No.

One thing I find hilarious about George Eliot is that she wrote a lot about the country, and people praised this, but her brother was like "No no -- do not be fooled. When we lived on the farm, she did nothing. There was no charming milking-the-cows scene. She just sat around." Brothers.

Summer and Grammar Dickery

So I've been a bit spotty in terms of blogging because I was singing in a competition last Saturday, and got stressed beforehand due to a chest cold that WOULD NOT LEAVE. And so you got things about Realism and Hugo, which apparently is not what gets people all excited. WHY ARE YOU ARE HERE?

Oh. Right. This.

The month of May has been upon us for a good solid week now, and Chicago's weather is vaguely reflecting that. With May comes the approach of summer and reading outdoors/getting sunburned while reading outdoors and all sorts of lovely things of that nature. BLOGGERS, where do you like to read in the summer?

Because we're right on the lake, and not a crappy city, Chicago has a decent number of parks. I like Milton Olive Park, which is RIGHT next to giant tourist trap Navy Pier. You can also sit right in front of the lake down by Buckingham Fountain (this is a giant, giant fountain that's placed kind of in the middle of nowhere), but there is nothing to put your back against, because the homeless people grab all the good benches.

Can we segue into grammar really quickly? Okay, good. Because COME ON, PEOPLE. I complained about this on twitter last night, but evidently I AM NOT DONE, because it's still irritating me. Here is my position on grammar: I am for it, but I am not for being an ass about it. I think we should split infinitives. I think we should end sentences with prepositions if NOT doing so makes the sentence awkward. I think you can write pretty much whatever you want so long as your meaning is clear. Don't make me go all Samuel L. Jackson.

This is, of course, what I look like in real life

Grammar is nice. Being a dick is not.

Now I'm going to go listen to Julie Andrews sing The Lusty Month of May.

I'm French. Why do you think I have this outrageous accent, you silly king?

I'm going to talk about something I don't have a lot of background in (oh aren't you just SO excited already?). And that subject is the cool thing that happened in France in the mid-19th century.

Okay, so let's talk Romanticism. We have the Enlightenment, where everyone gets VERY jazzed about Reason and Science and the Progress of Man, and we have hilarious authors like Swift, Fielding and Pope. Then those people have kids and the kids say "Fuck this science shit!" And then they go off and contemplate the beauty of a daffodil.

And this hit Germany first. Why, I don't know. Again, this is all cursory knowledge that I've decided to take and write assertively about. As is usually the case here. SO, from Germany it travels to England, and creates a bunch of emo poets. And as time creeps on, the Romantics have kids and THOSE kids say "Fuck daffodils!" and they decide to be REALISTS.

What's oh-so-interesting about France in the mid-19th century is that Romanticism and Realism hit France AT THE SAME TIME. Meaning there are Important Authors in France concurrently writing in the two styles. The primary two authors? Balzac and Hugo. Balzac lived 1799-1850 and Hugo lived 1802-1885. And it's awesome, because they're obviously influenced by similar things in terms of culture and political climate, but they take it in opposite directions.

More specifically, Balzac is like "Once upon a time -- right now -- there was a house, and here is a painstaking description of the house, and here is a gentleman of our time living in the house, and oh my, he's living in embarrassed circumstances; look at how FAMILIAR all this is!" And Hugo is more "Once upon a time -- LONG LONG AGO -- there was a deformed person and OH his emotions and OH society and OH I'm going to talk about the French Revolution for 50 pages now."

Hugo distanced his subjects and used enormous characters (not...not physically enormous. necessarily.), and Balzac made everything ridiculously current. And it was happening at the same time! Different movements! And they were both immensely popular! Fantastic. Good one, France.

Canada and the Betterment of Society

So, I was mainly trying to be hilarious yesterday, and everyone showed me up by being sympathetic and kind. So thanks, you nice bastards.

I am going to Canada in 22 days! Huzzahs all around. After making a very definite decision that this was going to be my 'non-historical' trip, i.e. where I don't try to visit every place where Someone Once Sat, it turns out I am going to Toronto the weekend of the War of 1812 BICENTENNIAL. And the way they've chosen to celebrate this is "ALL HISTORICAL SITES ARE FREE!!!"

...

I'm pretty pissed off about this, actually, because my plans were to drink with my best friend on her couch and not feel guilty about it. Possibly while watching medical documentaries. And now it looks like I have to tour some harbors. Oh, sorry, "harbours." Damnit, Canada.

Speaking of Old Things, I'm pretty sure this is how it would go if I ever time-traveled:

Me: *arrives in 1910* *passes out*

*ten minutes later*

Me: OMGTHEPAST OMG LOOK AT EVERYONE'S CLOTHES LOOK AT THIS EVERYTHING IS SO OLD AHHH.

Then some guy would walk too slowly in front of me on the sidewalk; I'd get irritated and be like "THIS IS LAME; I WANT TO GO BACK TO MY TIME." And then I'd teleport back and my adventure would be over.

I almost guarantee that is what would happen. Because judging by other time travel experiences from books, I'd otherwise either end up screwing the future and Hitler would win WWII because I bought a ham sandwich, OR I'd come back to 2012 being a preachy jackass (I'm looking at you, Time and Again).

Which brings me to my final point. Which is that people need to shut it about the current human race declining and being so much better in Ye Olden Times. Because while I think Ye Olden Times are hilarious and fun TO READ ABOUT, our current society, in terms of gender & racial equality, the class system, and overall social opinions of what is ok and not ok, is SO MUCH BETTER OFF NOW. Because even with something like gay rights, 20 years ago, if you condemned them, you'd probably have a decent amount of support. Now it is seen as embarrassing to have that opinion. Which is a hugely important step.

We're veering away from the death penalty. And while there may be a Republican/Democrat schism right now regarding whether or not there IS a pay gap between men and women, Republicans who say there isn't are at least acknowledging there shouldn't be. Which was not the case for mannnny people in recent decades. So yes. Man may be inherently flawed, but at least we're becoming less of a jackass species. In certain ways (looking at you, British Petroleum).

Could the people of the past have produced this?

So we have a lot of dystopian literature right now because a lot of shit's been happening in the world. Of course, if we look at any other time in any other country, a lot of shit's always been happening. So we might have a fairly bleak outlook on the world, but things are getting way, way better. It's not like we're 17th century Prussian milkmaids, getting murdered by rampaging Swedes (note: this happened).

In conclusion, I need to go look up Canada jokes. I'll bet my friend'll be really happy to hear a series of those during my stay.

Books I Have Decided On for Moping

It has been decided (by me) that today is Moping Tuesday. So this is me moping.

I've looked up books for moping in my own reading history, and they would be the following:

1. Catcher in the Rye - OBVS. The world is terrible and all the people in it are terrible (except for a couple of them) and what can you do? Nothing, that's what. Except maybe run around with some kids who aren't as terrible as everyone else.

2. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Oh look, everything horrible ever, plus a heroine you don't care about. "But is there a 2 a.m. baptism of a dead baby?" you ask? YES.

3. Ethan Frome - This was the ultimate emo book for teenage me. THEIR LOVE, IT WAS CONTROLLED BY FATE. Damn you, fate.

4. East of Eden - Things suck and people die, but there is HOPE. Somewhere.

5. Fahrenheit 451 - The world's probably fucked, but at least there'll always be some people who like books.

6. Main Street - Life sucks. No, it's really, really awful. Mainly because of monotony. So have fun with that.

7. Eugene Onegin - Good job with your life decisions, because they're all going to turn out wrong.

8. Sophie's Choice - The Nazis ruined everything. And some people are beyond help.

9. The Help - Skeeter is getting kicked out of the Junior League. Let's talk about how awful this is. Also there're some maids.

10. We Have Always Lived in the Castle - You can't trust people, but at least family's there.

I'm gonna go listen to some mopey songs. If you all have anything to add to this list, PLEASE feel free.