I keep reading and reasonably enjoying Ken MacLeod's books, and i'm not entirely sure why. This one starts out with a really intriguing social-sf ques...moreI keep reading and reasonably enjoying Ken MacLeod's books, and i'm not entirely sure why. This one starts out with a really intriguing social-sf question - should a woman have to take a simple pill, with no side effects, to make sure her unborn child is healthy - and degenerates into (totally unrelated to the question) silly science subplots, ideological wankery and lame thriller-lite evil-government shenanigans. That said, I still think it's a step up from his recent books - the characterization is better, the pace is spot on and and it doesn't completely dissolve in terms of plot and theme.
Unfortunately, theres just too many...potshots. The "opposition" are ridiculous caricatures and the whole thing appears to be based on a slippery slope argument, (laws against smoking in pubs>get hauled in by the police for going into a building someone smoked in once while pregnant.) The ideological questions get explained instead of actually being expressed in the book (characters sit around telling each other about Foucalt,) and everything has to be an extension of a current political process in a neat way "...her mother's generation, in a moment of frivolity, had surrendered feminism..." THIS IS YOU, LADY, YOU FOLLOW?!) And theres that now frankly disturbing fetish for the Labour Party again, (you should get that looked at, Mr. MacLeod), though at least they're evil in this one.
It's a shame, as theres a really, really interesting book buried somewhere in here, about the tug between individual freedom and social contract, about women and women's bodies, about the construction of religion and ideology and the way individuals function and make decisions in that...it just got lost somewhere, to wander amongst the tachyons, time travelers and torturers of the Outer Hebrides instead.
Oh, and it's not actually clear if Scotland is independent. (less)
Does just what it says on the tin. Good material overview. Interesting how some desperately obvious things (Handling of money by women, for example) r...moreDoes just what it says on the tin. Good material overview. Interesting how some desperately obvious things (Handling of money by women, for example) remain kind of mysterious because they must have been so obviously and unintrusively part of the every-day that no one actually bothered to ever write about them much. The transition into recognizable modernity is also sort of neat to observe, paralleling processes that would go on taking place around the world for decades yet (and still are, in a few places.) The book is rather too brief to make a strong case for middle class woman driving domestic progress, but it does seem like an intuitive conclusion. (less)
This was much more strangely interesting (and interestingly strange) than expected, for an academic study, and mostly in ways only tangentially relate...moreThis was much more strangely interesting (and interestingly strange) than expected, for an academic study, and mostly in ways only tangentially related (but no unrelated either) to Victorian Honeymoons.
Michie analyzes dozens of diaries and letters from the period, trying to suss out what the hell actually went on during a Victorian Honeymoon, but the whole thing soon gets tangled up in layers and layers of context and interpretation and historiography. I actually quite appreciated the way she drew attention to the primary sources as written works, and tried to take into account 'genre', as it were. It made conclusions - ie, what happened more difficult (impossible) to draw, but also kind of made the historical personages come alive a bit - we might not really know what they're saying, but we know they thought about the way they said it in ways that are immediate and familiar. Who would read it? What would that reader understand? What could they say outright and what had to stay between the lines? (I pity the researcher of centuries hence who tries to figure out the nuances of some attitude of ours from the subtleties and ommisions of the way we use our Goodreads reviews and Facebook statuse and Twitter feeds...etc)
Theres a bit of geography stuff too, trying to understand how people would have experienced those landscapes as honeymooners and what they would have meant to them, as well as some looking into pamphlets, guides, encyclopedias, etc to try and work through their available sexual knowledge, (conclusion: who knows?) There's also actual literary analysis of Victorian novels that feature honeymoons. I think the assumption is that those novels might have been one of the sources of information and general cultural sense of what was supposed to happen (no, not just that) about honeymoons for the honeymooners (the conclusion is the all literary honeymoons are awful and everyone would have been filled with a terrible sense of foreboding. And death. Because gothic and victorians, yeah.) It's kind of interesting, but at some point loses the plot, so to speak, imo.
And then theres the weird creative writing bit and, well, the author. Basically, Mitchie forms a particular attachment to one particularly meticulous diarist - but one who for all her prolixity is still a frustratingly incomplete and mysterious figure. What drives her emotions during her honeymoon remains resolutely unknowable. So Michie succumbs to temptation and writes her, piecing together clues and making assumptions and guesses to create a bit of narrative fiction - which she cheerfully acknowledges is now victim to it's own problems of being text, and subject to it's own genre limitations.
Anyway, it's just impossible for me not to slather on that extra layer (on the fourteen or so there are already) of reading the researcher. The whole book is concerned with the difficulty and trickery of trying to read primary sources and stripping away our own view, and then the base of this whole thing is honeymoons, which Michie emphasizes must have been all about - especially for the Victorians - getting to know another person and probably failing, negotiating the place they give another person in their conception of themselves, tearing down and rebuilding their definitions of privacy. So, what the hell, I thought - let's join in. Inevitably, Michie became the unreliable narrator of the books she wrote that I read.
It's all ends up being a truly strange, multilayered metafictional thing about trying to know people, about trying to know history, about reading. To top it all off, for me, Michie's favorite diarist was a prolific reader who made snarky comments about the books she read (Dickens - yay, Bulwer-Lytton - not so much) and could have been on Goodreads. I recognize the way she read.(it's impossible to ignore myself as yet another reader here, of course.) It's like reading goddamned Borges with a headache, only having to deal with it as reality. Sort of. Somehow.
But I now know less about what Victorians were like than I did 250 and pages ago, so I guess that's a good thing, overall. (less)
Pretty good, plays interesting games with the notion of genre, the act of immersion in fantasy and the purposes of it. Brushes up against the fourth w...morePretty good, plays interesting games with the notion of genre, the act of immersion in fantasy and the purposes of it. Brushes up against the fourth wall, with one strand of the story analyzing and explaining another even as Ursula Le Guin and John Clute are being quoted.
There still manages to be a good, sad story at the heart of it, with well drawn, sympathetic characters at war with themselves. I'm not quite sure how to take the main character - admirable or bratty or both, all teenaged self importance or genuinely profound, and how to regard the muggle reality of everyone else brushing up against her. (I thought the ending was a touch too neat as well, all the unbelievers shamed and the faithful rewarded, but it's a quibble.)
The writing is very...blunt. It breaks a lot of those show-don't-tell rules sometimes, but the effect is to make the story very intense and vivid rather than distant, so it worked.
Like all the other Kate Griffin books i've read, this one is a fast, entertaining, wonderfully imaginative extravaganza. And it's a bit disappointing....moreLike all the other Kate Griffin books i've read, this one is a fast, entertaining, wonderfully imaginative extravaganza. And it's a bit disappointing. It's almost entirely, really, a sequence of action scenes. They're peppered with intense but tiny moments of characterization and story, glimpsed out of the corner of the narrative eye. I always wish - always expect, actually - that sooner or later the book must turn to them, that these are what it's all about! The problem is, what arrives instead is the end of the book. It gradually becomes doubtful that theres really any there there if we should look there, which makes me sad.
It's all done with such wit and charm and creativity that I can almost overlook it, but not quite, after five books in the series. This is almost a book about community, almost about the city, almost about growing up, almost about sacrifice, almost about loneliness. In other words, it's almost a book about people. Unfortunately, it's mostly a book about things blowing up. (less)
Not too in depth and often really clunkily written, but it makes up for it by being, well, not too in depth and rabidly enthusiastic about the subject...moreNot too in depth and often really clunkily written, but it makes up for it by being, well, not too in depth and rabidly enthusiastic about the subject. Much use of the delighted exclamation mark. ("Maybe soon there will be no more cars!") Wolmar also pays a lot of attention to the experience of being a railway traveller throughout history - times, conditions, classes, stations, food, etc. It's unusual and much appreciated. (less)
I liked this book, and the hell with the naysayers. It's not great literature, and it's not Harry Potter either, but it's just so goddamned honest abo...moreI liked this book, and the hell with the naysayers. It's not great literature, and it's not Harry Potter either, but it's just so goddamned honest about what it's trying to say that I couldn't help but like it. (It's also extremely well crafted and readable, but that's almost a given with Rowling.) She clearly utterly, totally, uncompromisingly loathes these people and their snobbishness, parochialism and racism and all the rest, (or whoever these fictional people are a stand in for,) and would really like to beat them all to death with a hammer. That, however, being illegal, she wrote this book instead. (less)
So that was...interesting if eventually tedious. Great effect with the endless layered - and, well, duh, ultimately 4th wall - analysis of life record...moreSo that was...interesting if eventually tedious. Great effect with the endless layered - and, well, duh, ultimately 4th wall - analysis of life recorded as text, devolving to the attempt to live life as text. I am displeased by the book's ultimate forgiveness of the...inadequacy of it's male characters. All that torment skimmed away into neat endings. (less)
Is it an adage that the extraordinary and calamitous is what tends to make it into the historical record? This book, therefore, is somewhat filled wit...moreIs it an adage that the extraordinary and calamitous is what tends to make it into the historical record? This book, therefore, is somewhat filled with collapsing roofs, corrupt abbots, pregnant nuns, criminal monks, hallucinations, suicides, things catching fire and a really extensive collection of unpleasant illnesses. Its a bit of a puzzle to piece together what was actually ordinary daily life, not to mention finding the gap between the rules of what was supposed to go on (nothing leavened by singing) and what actually went on in the regular course of things (shenanigans!)
Particularly striking for me, aside from the amazing love for for drawing blood (who came up with that?!) was how deeply god was in everything to them. Nothing was ever mere chance or plain unrelated, in a way that sounds frankly like wishful thinking pretty often, but maybe illuminates how deeply incomprehensible everything, from the weather to the body, must have been. A world without explanation or coincidence.
Interesting throughout, and with refreshingly straightforward, clear and accessible writing, especially for a fairly academic work. Not sure how thorough it is or where it fits into the scholarship of the subject, but perfect for my needs in fleshing out a praxis for a character in a fantasy book ;-).(less)
Theres a revolution in this book, but it turns out you need to care about the past for it's shattering to have any emotional or narrative impact. When...moreTheres a revolution in this book, but it turns out you need to care about the past for it's shattering to have any emotional or narrative impact. When one character accuses the protagonosts of trying to destroy her world, it means nothing, as we never got to have any real sense of her world and why it would matter to her. This is odd, given the slow, slow start and generally langurous pace, but this is all concerned with the rather tedious childhood of the protagonist and manages to never get across much real worldbuilding.
Its possible that it merely aims not to glamorize the past, but the book is explicitely about the act of the revolution itself, not the doctrinal differences between the fantasy capitalism and (failed) fantasy syndicalism of before and after. As such, it's vauge, dreamy atmospheric vibe holds up well the confused, frustrated loneliness of the arcs of it's heroes. The protagonist tries to substitute unrequited longing for a relashionship and politics for wonder, and the revolution merely goes round again. It fails to fulfill desire and the personal remains the personal. The revolution becomes a hollow shell over the skeleton of the magical, that the characters turn to again and again to provide that which reality cannot.
It's ultimately a powerful notion, that our own flawed needs and weaknesses, our need to be someone we are not, underpin the structures of oppression. Its just too long by half and could have used more of a plot.
Recommended for those more interested in reflection that action. (less)
What have I learned? England runs on alcohol. When preformed by men all forms of social behaviour, like speech and clothing, are gay. Being middle cla...moreWhat have I learned? England runs on alcohol. When preformed by men all forms of social behaviour, like speech and clothing, are gay. Being middle class, and worse yet middle-middle class, is inescapably pathetic in every respect. People really do hang out in pubs unironically and 'upper class poor' isn't an oxymoron. Who knew?
At the same time, exotic as all this is, i'm not entirely convinced there is such a thing as a national character at all now. I'm from a country who's shorthand attributes are diametrically opposed to the English - intensely opinionated, direct, classless, warm, rude, familial, informal, etc. Nevertheless, talking about money is poor taste, interactions with service workers are self consciously awkward, bragging is obnoxious, and so on. I'm reasonably sure these are human universals and every culture attempts to peg the good implications to itself.
On the other hand...reading this book on a bus at 7 am, filled with loud, pushy religeous fanatics with no sense of private space (ie, your cross section of the Jerusalem population,) could occassionaly be wonderfully soothing. Something about the endless recursive indirectness, the quickly slightly stale humour, the ever so gently patronizing tone, quaint, delicate dullness and, well, general, Englishness of the thing, I suppose. (less)
1.The Work of Work - serfdom/labour in language, literature. Class theories.
2.Desire, Descendants and Dominance - rape and slavery, gender conflics,...more1.The Work of Work - serfdom/labour in language, literature. Class theories.
2.Desire, Descendants and Dominance - rape and slavery, gender conflics, marriage as commodity, legitimacy. Post modernisms.
4. The Labour Structure of Aelfrics Colloquy - language, analysis of educational text (?) - occupations with lower marginal value of workers (farmers, shepherds, hunters vs. cook, merchant, craftsmen) justified due to inherent utility. "Total servitude is indeed useful to everyone but its preformers, so there is great incentive to preserve it." Natural structure supporting the labour of the monk - prayer. (Lots of untranslated Latin. I don't know Latin! (language of the occupation.) (less)
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