(no subject)

[skygiants]

First, an OFFICIAL-TYPE ANNOUNCEMENT for fma_ladyfest types: genarti reminds me that we are halfway through the writing period, and probably should make mention of this! And thefore I would like to take a moment to remind people that there are two weeks left to finish (or start) your brilliant assignments and send them in to us. A few people have already sent stuff in; Gen and I are united in thinking that these people are AWESOME and also being a little bit terrified of them. (But, you say, as mods, surely you guys should already have your fics done and betaed well in advance and be prepared to dive into the process of being responsible and organizational! I think we would also be united in responding to you with hollow laughter.)

Something in which Gen and I are not united: our reading habits. Every few months Gen and I have the same discussion, and it goes something like this:

BECCA: Well, I will read this book that you recommend to me next time I have a slot for it in my reading quota system, which should be . . . hmmm, approximately four book from now.
GEN: I find your reading quota system strange and lolarious.
BECCA: See, if I did not mentally schedule my reading, I would pretty much just always read YA fantasy and never read nonfiction at all. And I want to read nonfiction, because learning things is useful and interesting, but it has less immediate appeal to me when I am grabbing the first book to catch my eye.
GEN: I do not understand this problem of yours. Nonfiction catches my eye all the time, it is enormously appealing! It is much more guaranteed to be interesting than fiction.
BECCA: But . . . plot! And characters! Make things much easier to read! Boring nonfiction is a lot harder to get through than boring fiction.
GEN: But if a novel is boring or frustrating, then it's just pointless and I don't care. At least in nonfiction you are guaranteed to learn some facts!
BECCA: BUT WHAT IF THEY'RE BORING FACTS, GEN. WHAT THEN.

Despite giving myself the last word in this fictionalized version of our debate, I think Gen probably has the moral high ground in this argument. But I stand by my position all the same.

As a partial result of these differing literary worldviews, pretty much every time Gen and I see each other, I foist some fantasy off on her and she foists some nonfiction off on me. The most recent trade ended up in me reading Women in the Middle Ages: The Lives of Real Women in a Vibrant Age of Transition. Fortunately this is not the kind of nonfiction book that is full of boring facts! The first half is pretty 101 on The Middle Ages, These Were Women's Roles, They Were More Interesting Than you Might Think; the second half is more specific, and traces the documented lives of some actual ladies, ranging from politically powerful noblewomen to guildswomen suing their employers to upwardly mobile merchant's wives defending their lands from siege by their neighbors. I wouldn't recommend it to the medievalists on here, but for someone who doesn't know that much about the era - or would just like a better idea of some of the scope available for a lady at that time period - it's pretty interesting. I don't really have that much more to say about it, though, so, instead: a poll!

[Poll #1622741]

Comments

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

About 80% of Agatha Christie's efforts, somewhat similar for Ellis Peters, and maybe 50% of Dorothy Sayers. :-)

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Ahhh. My Mom reads them sometimes. I have a tendency to read mysteries with dogs in them.

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

Dogs in them? Like Hound of the Baskervilles or dog detectives? Or dog victims? I can see how that would be less fluffy. (Robert Rodriguez claimed that the reason no one minds the violence in Once Upon a Time in Mexico is because the dog survives.)

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Dog detectives, private eyes with dogs, dog trainers who solve mysteries, that sort of thing.

I'm just fond of dogs. Hence my user name.

...and I agree, I get rather upset when something happens to the dog in a movie or a story or...probably why I'll never see some certain movies.

(Granted, I feel the same way about kids in movies.)

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

That sounds fun! Any recommendations?

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Any of the Rachel and Dash novels by Carol Lea Benjamin (http://www.carolleabenjamin.com/). Rachel is a dog trainer and Dashiel Hammett is her pit bull she rescued from a fight ring.

Any of the Holly Winter novels by Susan Conant (http://sites.google.com/site/conantparkmysteries/doglovers%27mysteries). Holly writes for a dog magazine and, when his owner gets killed, adopts malamute Rowdy. If I remember correctly, my favorite of this series is Bloodlines, which deals with puppy mills.

There are other authors - Rita Mae Brown (and her cat, Sneaky Pie), write the Mrs. Murphy mysteries, with Harry and her cat, Mrs. Murphy and her corgi, T-Tucker. This is one of mysteries where the animals talk. I stopped reading those around the sixth or eighth novel, as the publisher/editor made a rather grave mistake halfway through the novel by changing the sex of Tucker. However, the Foxhunter mysteries are a delight to read, and concentrate on an older female foxhunter, her dogs, her horses and the foxes.

That should be plenty to get you started. :D However, Virginia Lanier's Bloodhound (http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/l/virginia-lanier/) series is also a lot of fun.