What are you reading February 2013

A little late getting this started. I've finished a few really great books by women in the past 2 weeks: Mrs Woolf and the Servants which is a very complex treatment of Virginia Woolf's antipathy to servants due to her rather snobbish upbringing and her abhorrence of her body due to the sexual repression of the day and her own sexual assault by her half brothers. She hated being dependant on servants who represented to her the physical side of life, also she and her husband were quite tight with the penny. Also, much as she chided the servants and made fun of their mindlessness, she was very disappointed when they weren't slavishly loyal to her. I also finished, finally, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell which I loved until the end which I found emotionally unsatisfying. A Brief History of Montmaray which was a good historical fiction featuring brave and intelligent young women, though the ending, again, was less than satisfying. I read Mothers & Daughters: An Exploration in Photographs which had beautiful photographs and poetry and a very perceptive essay by Tillie Olsen and her daughter. Then just today I finished the other cream of the crop The Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo and found it to be a very complex study of the history of the Congo, sex, violence, war, love, marriage, forgiveness (which I did not always agree with) science and academia. This is such a wonderful book. I would love to visit Lola the Bonobo sanctuary, but wouldn't even consider going to the Congo to do it. This is a very brave woman.
The book I'm reading now on my Nook, Bad Blood is pretty disappointing - an autobiography of miserable people in a little English village where everyone just gets more and more miserable in different ways - god forbid anyone would find joy in her or his life - work hard and suffer and make sure the rest of your family does too seems to be the motto. Lorna Sage says some perceptive things about the place of women in the society, but all in all it's pretty much of a downer so far.

Six books in two weeks! Citizenjoyce, I envy you.

For my birthday the other day I picked up Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood, by Fatima Mernissi, a lightly fictionalized memoir of her childhood in Morocco, and have been caught up in it ever since.

I, too, loved Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell, and I too was a bit mystified or dissatisfied at the ending. I think what I liked best about the book was simply the reading of it -- the savoring of the writing style and all its quirks and oddities -- like taking a long, long (long!) walk on a twisting country lane with many unexpected detours and surprises. The plot, in a way, was almost incidental.

I also adored JS & Mr. N, and like you was somewhat dissatisfied with the ending. But on a rereading of it last summer, I think I finally got it, and now I think it works quite well. I wonder if she'll write more in that world?

I also loved A Brief History of Montmaray, but wasn't as enchanted with the two sequels.

I like and agree with your assessment of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Essa. And, Marissa, you re read it? Wow, that's commitment. As Essa says, it's a long, long, long walk.

#3 Well, she has written The Ladies of Grace Adieu - a collection of short stories set there. I'm much more a fan of novels though and the short stories felt more like the quick snack you grab an hour after a really good meal. I reread it too and loved it both times - a sequel would be amazing.

#1 I actually just finished a book by Vanessa Woods's husband, co-written with her, about dog cognition (The Genius of Dogs). He mentions the trip to Congo and the insights that bonobos provided in his studies about anthropological biology, but there wasn't any material about him and Vanessa in it--now I feel I've got to read Bonobo Handshake to learn more about them!

Sara, reading about the relationship between Brian and Vanessa is not going to be an uplifting experience. In Bonobo Handshake he comes off as self centered, controlling and borderline violent - rather like a chimpanzee to Woods's bonobo. I would say he suffers from an overload of testosterone, though their studies with bonobos show that it's the bonobo's high testosterone level that allows them to use sex as a tool for tolerance and cooperation rather than resorting to the violence of the chimpanzee. If Vanessa were your daughter, I doubt you'd want her in a relationship with this man; though it has opened up a world of scientific exploration that she probably wouldn't have had access to otherwise.
I'll have to look for the dog book. It looks interesting.

Before I take Mothers & Daughters: An Exploration in Photographs back to the library I want to share just a little.
I loved this poem:

Brushing out my daughter's dark
silken hair before the mirror
I see the grey gleaming on my head.
the silver-haired servant behind her. Why is it
just as we begin to go
they begin to arrive, the fold in my neck
clarifying as the fine bones of her
hips sharpen? As my skin shows
its dry pitting, she opens like a small
pale flower on the tip of a cactus;
as my last chances to bear a child
are falling through my body, the duds among them,
her full purse of eggs, round and
firm as hard-boiled yolks, is about
to snap its clasp. I brush her tangled
fragrant hair at bedtime. It's an old
story -- the oldest we have on our planet--
the story of replacement.
Sharon Olds

and a little bit of the essay by Tillie Olsen and, who I assume is her daughter, Julie Olsen Edwards talking about the challenge of raising daughters:

It is my voice (and being) that must try to translate society's standards, realities, imperatives to her -- and it is I who will receive her despair, anger, rebellion over those lessons, over those realities.
Worse: mine may be the situation in which (having no choice) like the mothers with bound feet in old China, who were required to bind the feet of their daughters; knowingly or unknowingly, willingly or unwillingly; I must bear complicity in fitting her into those maiming realities...
Those terrible realities, at war with her needs, her capacities, her potentialities
The war in her;
The war in me, too.
Ally, or foe, or both?
The tender pride in her young worth, her promise--like our old tactile pleasure in washing, brushing, braiding her hair; seeing her "presentable"--have a corrosion breeding in them now, that of the world's standards: too thin, too fat, too tall, too short, too smart, too dreamy, too athletic, too serious, too this too that;
It is the time when obsession with appearance, body, clothes begins (compelled obsession for females--but she may not know that yet, if ever). The blossoming being must be gendered.
They have eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen-year-old bodies; pregnable women's bodies in a country where sexuality is accorded primacy--where the hunger for belonging, independence, for verification of selfhood, the need to test oneself in the unknown, is too often channeled into the sexual arena.

That last statement reflects so much of what I see in literature about women, that their hunger for adventure is too often satisfied with only sexual adventure.

#7 How interesting, and slightly distressing, to hear, Citizenjoyce. Not that in his book he comes across as warm and fuzzy or anything, but most of his personality that comes across has to do with his being a life-long friend to dogs (his childhood dog Oreo prompted his study of "dognition").

The book is fascinating, actually. The basic premise is that the unique genius of dogs is their instinctive ability to understand and interpret the social gestures of humans, in ways that our closest genetic relatives, and even dogs' closest genetic relatives, are unable to do (monkeys and chimps have no inherent instinct for this, although ones raised by and around humans have developed the skills to interpret humans better. Dogs, in contrast, universally display this ability with no training whatsoever, even from a young age as puppies, even without much human contact). This has allowed dogs to flourish at a time when most species have been disadvantaged by human expansion. Their very ability to be "man's best friend" has ensured the success of the species, to the extent that dogs live in our homes, in their own trendy tote carriers, even in our beds, are left money in wills, etc etc.

While I was away, I read Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies and Connie Willis's Doomsday Book.

> 8 Thanks for sharing, those were interesting reads.

I finished The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making and I enjoyed the plot (quite unusual) but found the writing a little over-flowery and self-consciously clever. Not sure if I'd want to read her adult books.

I also just finished The Watch Tower by Elizabeth Harrower, a neglected Australian classic. Set in the 1940s (written in the 60s) in Sydney, it revolves around two young women who are abandoned by their self-centered and uncaring mother. The eldest, Laura, gives up her dreams of being a doctor (or an opera singer) to take a job in a box factory to support her (useless) mother and keep her younger sister in school. Then their mother leaves them, and Laura marries the much older owner of the factory for security. And then he turns out to be completely controlling.

NOT a happy read, and I'm generally not a fan of dysfunctional families (an overdone trope in Australian literature, IMO) or deeply psychological reads, but I was quite gripped. It was a fascinating setting, beautifully written, and I do recommend it. Kudos to Text Publishing (founded by Diana Gribble) for bringing a whole raft of Australian classics back into print.

Because of someone's mentioning it last month, I just started an audiobook of Divergent by Veronica Roth - a dystopian novel about a population divided into factions based on personality types in which males and females have equal talents and abilities. I'm liking it very much so far.

And I've now started Among Others by Jo Walton and am enjoying it immensely.

just started emma donoghue's the sealed letter. very nicely written victorian (?) drama. deals with female friendships, soap opera style intrigues, and the beginnings of feminism in that era (late 19th century). lovely read so far ^_^

>15 riida: Sounds interesting. I just added it to my TBR pile.

#15/16 Move it up that pile, sweetiegherkin (great name, btw). It's a fascinating book.

> 17 Thanks! :)

I'm reading a non-fiction book The Bronte Myth, and just found that I have the audio book for Wuthering Heights sitting on my computer, so I put it on my iPhone. I read it about 10 years ago and have often wanted to reread it but never make time.

I just finished Divergent and had to immediately start the second in the trilogy, Insurgent. I love the way she portrays girls as strong, competent, brave and intelligent.

OtherJoyce - my daughter is obsessed with those books right now.

I can see why. Tris is a great Y A character. Having just read Call It Sleep, a classic novel about Jewish immigrants in which most of the female characters, of whatever age, exist only for mothering and sex, it's so good to encounter this well rounded girl.