RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

[spiralsheep]

What are you reading?

Murderbot community discussing the books and tv series at murderbotbookclub.

Comments

[drawnecromancy]

I finally picked back up the Hawkmoon series by Michael Moorcock... same guy who wrote the Elric of Melnibone books (I have not read Elric at all). I forgot how batshit they were but at least it's really, REALLY funny in a "put your brain down and stop thinking" sort of way.

I think last week I was talking about reading wuthering heights, which I did finish in the meantime. My heights WERE thoroughly wuthered, and I am fascinated by the characters. I need to pick them apart like bugs. You know ? Fascinating.

[spiralsheep]

Earlier this year I read a book about the Brontes from the perspective of a local man walking where they walked, and linking the places they lived, and although it wasn't a great book it gave me a more useful perspective than any amount of literary criticism, for Emily and Anne especially (Charlotte's work is more amenable to conventional analysis now, even though she was pushing boundaries at the time). Maybe because the way people behave in classic literature is often inexplicable except by shrugging shoulders and admitting that characters can be obviously very human while behaving as outliers? Or perhaps I approach everything on foot because I am extremely pedestrian, lol.

[drawnecromancy]

Ohhh, interesting !

I honestly have not read much of any literary criticism around Wuthering Heights, despite there being a whole "introduction and commentary" with the French translation I read. (Maybe I'll read it in english eventually, it was just that I found that translation for free in a book box). I honestly gave up on reading the "introduction and commentary" pretty much the moment the writer was like "she was SO YOUNG you WOULD NOT BELIEVE how YOUNG she was when writing this, SUCH A YOUNG GIRL" and that's like okay, she died when she was 28, but there's a chance she didn't write that book when she was literally 12. It felt very, uh... demeaning ! Even though I think it was meant as a compliment on how a young writer can write really good stuff, it felt a little bit like repackaged infantilization of women, so I didn't give more time to the literary analysis within.

I do think your approach is one I would vibe with more, lol.

[spiralsheep]

I mean, yes, they were young but they had been through a lot. They travelled to learn and to teach, which was a surprising amount of moving around for young women of their class and historical period. They would have met a wide variety of people in their father's parish, and making visits as teachers (to chaperone their students). And they read and had imaginations too.

[drawnecromancy]

Exactly ! So it's a bird weird to insist on how young she was, and while "jeune fille" is used slightly more widely in french than "young girl" is in english, I still believe that choice of word is very infantilizing.
So. Yeah