December reading I forgot, Jan reading
Feb. 17th, 2021 10:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahn...yes, I am this much behind :P
December reading that I forgot to post about in December
I had beta reading I didn't post about, plus one more!
Red, White, and Royal Blue (McQuiston) - This wish-fulfillment exercise where a serial-numbers-filed-off female president's son has a gay romance with a prince of England was quite cute! I read people's reviews before reading it and many people found it a little too... wish-fulfillment... given the last several years... and while it didn't bother me early on, it did start being a little too much that way for me in the last half, idk why it took until then. Also, I'd heard that it was very light on actual knowledge about British politics but given that my knowledge is probably lighter, that didn't bother me too much, but it did bother me that I felt weirdly like Prince Henry didn't actually sound like any sort of British person to me -- like, he would occasionally use British-English words, but something about the diction otherwise sounded very American. Did anyone else have that problem?
Call Me By Your Name - uh, DNF. I would have been all over this book twenty years ago; at this point in my life adolescent sexual angst (gay in this case, but also would apply to het) wasn't something I wanted to read a whole book about unless it was written in Gilded Age Wharton pastiche in which case bring it on!!
Book of Mormon - Because I had committed to run this church reading group, I finally read the whole thing from 1 Nephi to the end of Moroni for the first time in more than fifteen years. (It comes around every four years in the scripture rotation, and many members read it every year. My not reading it has been something of a personal act of quiet intransigence, plus which I honestly don't think I could have taken it before last year.) It was... an interesting experience. There are some things about it that are really compelling, actually; reading it in 2020, I was particularly struck by, and posted about various times in reading group, the repeated message over many books and generations that reaching out to the Other, the one who is unlike you and whose views you may not understand or accept, is important; and when one turns away from the Other, that is the start of a process that leads to cataclysm. (Particularly resonant in this year because the reading group I was heading has a large political variety, even if we don't talk about it explicitly.)
January reading
Candide (Voltaire) - Norton Critical Edition - okay, I haven't finished all the essays at the back, but I did finish Candide, which was much funnier a) now that I'm in the middle of a Voltaire bio b) with the footnotes. (I got this edition because of the footnotes.) One day I will get around to putting my writeup in![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rheinsberg...
Gap Cycle books 1-3 (Donaldson): The Real Story (reread-skim), Forbidden Knowledge (reread), and A Dark and Hungry God Arises - soselenak had this post on Die Walküre, which is one of my favorite operas ever, and in addition to my snarfing up the Met 2011 one with Kaufmann/Terfel/Voigt/Blythe (which I liked! but which did not unseat the Chereau in my heart! but hopefully I will post more on this later) I of course was reminded of the excellent Ring synopsis at the end of The Real Story, and iberiandoctor had also recommended to me, and from there I had to read the thing.
Basically, the five-book Gap series is space opera inspired by and in dialogue with the Ring Cycle, although I'm not sure I'd call it Space AU Ring Cycle, because Donaldson really does an excellent job of broadening and expanding the universe and the characters so that it's more than just a Ring retelling, even a worldbuilding-heavy one, but rather something that is its own creation where you can see the roots of the Ring in it. It's really twisty and dense and plot-and-worldbuilding-heavy and I'm enjoying the heck out of it.
On the other hand...! D described it as "classic Donaldson," in that everyone just is put in horrible situations all the time so that they can angst dreadfully about it. As part of this, there is a lot of rape. There is a lot of rape and/or seriously nonconsensual sex -- or, well, the first two books are particularly awful that way, but actually I'm midway through book 4 and I don't think any rape has happened since... book 2?... so hopefully we're out of that part -- and various men (who are not raped, although one of them has memories of it) have things happen to them that... are described as "like rape." (This has not stopped, midway through book 4.) Yeah, these books are like that. Very 90's. I give Donaldson points for saying in the afterword to The Real Story that he worried when he wrote it that people would side-eye his subconscious. I mean... self-awareness is half the battle? :P
It's also very 90's in the assumptions it makes about men and women and the way it's totally trying to be feminist (and, like, is an improvement on other stuff I was reading at the time, to be fair) by having a few awesome kick-butt women characters (basically the Sieglinde and Brünnhilde and Valkyrie-sisters and Norn characters) but... idk... it's a universe that has built into it a lot of male-power-dominating assumptions (as you can kind of see from all the rape going on) in ways that are sort of brought out given that the last space operas I read were Memory Called Empire and the Ancillary series, neither of which... are like that.
Also -- and this was the most annoying thing of this type -- he makes Fricka a GUY! I mean, a slimy guy, but WTF. Fricka is awesome and I am not cool with her part being given to a guy, even if he's also made Fricka a bad (or at least slimy) guy, which ALSO WTF (but which makes more sense under the rules of his universe). This would have been less not-OK if, say, Loge had been female, but noooooo.
(Also, the Wotan analogue is sooooo much more noble and awesome than his opera counterpart, it's a little annoying also.)
This is the third time I've attempted it (the first time I couldn't find all five books, the second time I lost the third book and only found it months later, at which point I'd lost my momentum) so we'll see if I finish it this time... I'm enjoying it a lot and I hope to finish it! But yeah, it's very 90's and although I am enjoying it because I first read the first of these in the 90's, I would really feel very weird recommending it to anyone else in 2021.
December reading that I forgot to post about in December
I had beta reading I didn't post about, plus one more!
Red, White, and Royal Blue (McQuiston) - This wish-fulfillment exercise where a serial-numbers-filed-off female president's son has a gay romance with a prince of England was quite cute! I read people's reviews before reading it and many people found it a little too... wish-fulfillment... given the last several years... and while it didn't bother me early on, it did start being a little too much that way for me in the last half, idk why it took until then. Also, I'd heard that it was very light on actual knowledge about British politics but given that my knowledge is probably lighter, that didn't bother me too much, but it did bother me that I felt weirdly like Prince Henry didn't actually sound like any sort of British person to me -- like, he would occasionally use British-English words, but something about the diction otherwise sounded very American. Did anyone else have that problem?
Call Me By Your Name - uh, DNF. I would have been all over this book twenty years ago; at this point in my life adolescent sexual angst (gay in this case, but also would apply to het) wasn't something I wanted to read a whole book about unless it was written in Gilded Age Wharton pastiche in which case bring it on!!
Book of Mormon - Because I had committed to run this church reading group, I finally read the whole thing from 1 Nephi to the end of Moroni for the first time in more than fifteen years. (It comes around every four years in the scripture rotation, and many members read it every year. My not reading it has been something of a personal act of quiet intransigence, plus which I honestly don't think I could have taken it before last year.) It was... an interesting experience. There are some things about it that are really compelling, actually; reading it in 2020, I was particularly struck by, and posted about various times in reading group, the repeated message over many books and generations that reaching out to the Other, the one who is unlike you and whose views you may not understand or accept, is important; and when one turns away from the Other, that is the start of a process that leads to cataclysm. (Particularly resonant in this year because the reading group I was heading has a large political variety, even if we don't talk about it explicitly.)
January reading
Candide (Voltaire) - Norton Critical Edition - okay, I haven't finished all the essays at the back, but I did finish Candide, which was much funnier a) now that I'm in the middle of a Voltaire bio b) with the footnotes. (I got this edition because of the footnotes.) One day I will get around to putting my writeup in
rheinsberg...Gap Cycle books 1-3 (Donaldson): The Real Story (reread-skim), Forbidden Knowledge (reread), and A Dark and Hungry God Arises - so
selenak had this post on Die Walküre, which is one of my favorite operas ever, and in addition to my snarfing up the Met 2011 one with Kaufmann/Terfel/Voigt/Blythe (which I liked! but which did not unseat the Chereau in my heart! but hopefully I will post more on this later) I of course was reminded of the excellent Ring synopsis at the end of The Real Story, and iberiandoctor had also recommended to me, and from there I had to read the thing.Basically, the five-book Gap series is space opera inspired by and in dialogue with the Ring Cycle, although I'm not sure I'd call it Space AU Ring Cycle, because Donaldson really does an excellent job of broadening and expanding the universe and the characters so that it's more than just a Ring retelling, even a worldbuilding-heavy one, but rather something that is its own creation where you can see the roots of the Ring in it. It's really twisty and dense and plot-and-worldbuilding-heavy and I'm enjoying the heck out of it.
On the other hand...! D described it as "classic Donaldson," in that everyone just is put in horrible situations all the time so that they can angst dreadfully about it. As part of this, there is a lot of rape. There is a lot of rape and/or seriously nonconsensual sex -- or, well, the first two books are particularly awful that way, but actually I'm midway through book 4 and I don't think any rape has happened since... book 2?... so hopefully we're out of that part -- and various men (who are not raped, although one of them has memories of it) have things happen to them that... are described as "like rape." (This has not stopped, midway through book 4.) Yeah, these books are like that. Very 90's. I give Donaldson points for saying in the afterword to The Real Story that he worried when he wrote it that people would side-eye his subconscious. I mean... self-awareness is half the battle? :P
It's also very 90's in the assumptions it makes about men and women and the way it's totally trying to be feminist (and, like, is an improvement on other stuff I was reading at the time, to be fair) by having a few awesome kick-butt women characters (basically the Sieglinde and Brünnhilde and Valkyrie-sisters and Norn characters) but... idk... it's a universe that has built into it a lot of male-power-dominating assumptions (as you can kind of see from all the rape going on) in ways that are sort of brought out given that the last space operas I read were Memory Called Empire and the Ancillary series, neither of which... are like that.
Also -- and this was the most annoying thing of this type -- he makes Fricka a GUY! I mean, a slimy guy, but WTF. Fricka is awesome and I am not cool with her part being given to a guy, even if he's also made Fricka a bad (or at least slimy) guy, which ALSO WTF (but which makes more sense under the rules of his universe). This would have been less not-OK if, say, Loge had been female, but noooooo.
(Also, the Wotan analogue is sooooo much more noble and awesome than his opera counterpart, it's a little annoying also.)
This is the third time I've attempted it (the first time I couldn't find all five books, the second time I lost the third book and only found it months later, at which point I'd lost my momentum) so we'll see if I finish it this time... I'm enjoying it a lot and I hope to finish it! But yeah, it's very 90's and although I am enjoying it because I first read the first of these in the 90's, I would really feel very weird recommending it to anyone else in 2021.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-18 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-19 05:19 am (UTC)Also, my favorite footnote: in Chapter 11, the Old Lady says: "I am in fact the daughter of Pope Urban the Tenth and the Princess of Palestrina." The footnote observes that Voltaire left a note behind on this passage, first published in 1829: "Note the extreme discretion of the author: hitherto there has never been a pope named Urban X; he avoided attributing a bastard to a named Pope. What circumspection! What an exquisite conscience!" :D
no subject
Date: 2021-02-20 02:54 am (UTC)I vaguely recall there was an Anabaptist character in Candide who actually got a pretty positive portrayal, despite prevailing opinions on anabaptists at the time, so I wonder who the Anabaptist was he met who was such a great guy :P
no subject
Date: 2021-02-21 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-21 04:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-18 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-19 05:24 am (UTC)not so much having my eyes opened to the associated male gaze/male mindset issues, as just losing the stomach for it.
I empathize with this so hard.
Honestly, I wouldn't have kept reading after the second book either if it hadn't been for the Ring resonances, which I just really love, and the twisty plot which is basically catnip for me. There's definitely a lot less rape in the third and fourth books, but it's still, like, rather present? Like, all three of the mains from the first two books are still hanging out together in Book 4, so every so often there's a "so yeah don't forget the backstory these guys have!!" kind of reminder, which I'm always like "actually I could have stood to forget??"
no subject
Date: 2021-02-19 03:30 am (UTC)You might not be surprised to learn my feelings about RW&RB the novel mirror yours, though you are being overly kind about my CMBYN fic! My enthusiasm for the fandom is, it's true, centred principally around the gorgeously-shot and beautifully-acted movie, though I will say I enjoyed the novel a great deal (I was that weird teen who didn't read a lot of explicit sexual angst, not unless you count the lowkey UST in the Arthurian cycle?). I mean, I found Aciman's prose is lovely and immersive and fresh, and I really enjoyed his young bisexual male protagonist (vs Elio's straight older protagonist dad in the sequel, which was very much a paint-by-numbers heterosexual relationship).
I think I'm sorriest about sending you back into the Gap cycle! Everything you said about Donaldson's torture porn and 90s-datedness and the datedness of the male-power-dominated worldbuilding sounded like something I remembered. I'm hoping you are at least having fun with worldbuilding and politics, and feel as if the torture porn is more coherently integrated into this part of the cycle, where the whole operatic metaphor comes together? I remember enjoying those aspects, very much -- but I obviously haven't read this in ages and ages, and it may well be that it just doesn't hold up; my taste for male-power-dominated worldbuilding has definitely diminished over the years. Also, I had forgotten about Fricka -- WTAF is up with that, Donaldson? +triple facepalm+
no subject
Date: 2021-02-19 05:32 am (UTC)Heh, I wasn't into explicit sexual angst as a teenager either, although since i read just about everything as a teenager I would have read that too :) I think it was in my 20s I read a bunch of it.
Aw, no, don't feel bad about sending me back to the Gap Cycle! I hope I made it clear that I'm enjoying the read very much! (And if I weren't I would have stopped, I don't finish books I don't like these days :) ) And I probably would have gone there anyway because of being reminded of Wagner, and because I really think his Ring Cycle afterword/synopsis is brilliant! I'm feeling like Book 4 is kind of amazing actually because yeah, the operatic metaphor is really coming into its own and I'm like... Sieglinde! Brünnhilde! Aaaaahhhhhh! :D
(And honestly I did not remember the male-power-dominated worldbuilding at all; I don't think I had any kind of view about what a non-male-power-dominated intergalactic society would look like at the time, so I didn't have any kind of framework for even thinking about it when I first read it!)