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Aug. 9th, 2008 01:55 pmAll booklogging, all the time! No spoilers on anything, but cut for length.
After the surreality that was The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, I dove way, way back into my comfort zone with a reread of Jane Austen's Persuasion. ( I blame you guys. )
I also reread Lynne Flewelling's The Bone Doll's Twin, ( which involves gender-bending and angry baby ghosts. ) The book is nicely creepy much of the time, but - speaking from my point of view as a sort of expert on the Girl Disguised as a Boy Phenomenon - it never explores the really potentially interesting sex-and-gender questions of the premise nearly as much as I want it to. (It also doesn't take the creepiness as far as it could, either.) I do want to read the rest of the series, though, in hopes that it takes the concept further once the main character figures out she's female. And also because (shockingly!) I really like her sidekick.
Arthur Phillips' Angelica, by contrast, goes way into the Interesting Psychological Questions of the ghost story - ( actually they're pretty much the point of the book. ) I think the book was interestingly constructed, and I didn't hate it, but it didn't work for me nearly as well as his earlier novel The Egyptologist, which is much more fun as an Experiment in Unreliable Narration because a.) you're not actually expected to sympathize with the characters and b.) it's basically the Egyptologist version of the Msscribe wank, and how is that not entertaining?
And, in a return to Dead White British Women, I continued my Education in Virginia Woolf by reading Orlando . . . ( and I kind of loved it. ) Anyways, I would definitely recommend this to Beginners to Woolf who want enjoyable and fantastical reading. With illustrations! (Most of them actually photographs of Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf's real-life lover, which is . . . possibly kind of potentially creepy inasmuch as it blurs the line between fiction and reality. But anyways.)
After the surreality that was The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, I dove way, way back into my comfort zone with a reread of Jane Austen's Persuasion. ( I blame you guys. )
I also reread Lynne Flewelling's The Bone Doll's Twin, ( which involves gender-bending and angry baby ghosts. ) The book is nicely creepy much of the time, but - speaking from my point of view as a sort of expert on the Girl Disguised as a Boy Phenomenon - it never explores the really potentially interesting sex-and-gender questions of the premise nearly as much as I want it to. (It also doesn't take the creepiness as far as it could, either.) I do want to read the rest of the series, though, in hopes that it takes the concept further once the main character figures out she's female. And also because (shockingly!) I really like her sidekick.
Arthur Phillips' Angelica, by contrast, goes way into the Interesting Psychological Questions of the ghost story - ( actually they're pretty much the point of the book. ) I think the book was interestingly constructed, and I didn't hate it, but it didn't work for me nearly as well as his earlier novel The Egyptologist, which is much more fun as an Experiment in Unreliable Narration because a.) you're not actually expected to sympathize with the characters and b.) it's basically the Egyptologist version of the Msscribe wank, and how is that not entertaining?
And, in a return to Dead White British Women, I continued my Education in Virginia Woolf by reading Orlando . . . ( and I kind of loved it. ) Anyways, I would definitely recommend this to Beginners to Woolf who want enjoyable and fantastical reading. With illustrations! (Most of them actually photographs of Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf's real-life lover, which is . . . possibly kind of potentially creepy inasmuch as it blurs the line between fiction and reality. But anyways.)
