105, 106, 107.
Sunday, 19 August 2012 20:59![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
extemporallyI was tempted to create a Guardian account just to comment on this piece of shit article. Because, obviously, there's only ONE WAY to be gay and we have to stick to that ONE WAY because... culture! practice! solidarity! who the fuck knows. I'm all behind protesting and going to Pride, but 'having a diva' is SO essential to maintaining the white male face of LGBTQ culture, you guys. Sure, the article has some interesting ideas - he seems to be edging into a debate about separatism vs. assimilation here - but he seems to think that the best way to maintain a unique culture is by hearkening back to the worst bits of gay (and I do mean gay rather than LGBTQ) culture with all its white male privilege. Gross. Read this post instead. Resistance and self-critique 4eva.
Black Hearts in Battersea, by Joan Aiken.
So this book made me change my mind re: thinking of Joan Aiken as Dickensian - there's still a lot of Dickens about her here but you get the feeling that Black Hearts of Battersea sets the tone for much of the Willoughby Chase sequence. It's only the second book in the series but everything gets that much more strange and fantastical, whereas Wolves of Willoughby Chase is a fairly typical narrative about middle-class girls who get cruelly treated by double-faced villainy and how they make their daring escape. (We never hear from them again, as we do from Dido, who's introduced here - ostensibly they all go on to live very contented, utterly uninteresting lives.) In Black Hearts Joan Aiken is really far more fascinated by the extremes of the class spectrum and she brings them together in this symphony of cockneys and monarchs, royals and paupers. Simon is the link, obviously - as the boy who lived on his own in the wild, and as the art student without much to his name who turns out to be ACTUALLY A DUKE. It reminds me of Shakespeare, actually.
Joan Aiken doesn't do that thing, either, which Dickens does, where food is treated as social metaphor. She delights in food for its own sake - oysters, lobsters, salmon, turtle-soup, turbot, turkeys, chicken, beef, a roast pig, pasties, pies, salads, and fruit. SHAKESPEARE! I probably had more to say about this book (eccentric nobles, streetsmart cockneys, vaguely fantastical scenarios - Joan Aiken's world is so rich) but not really. Dido is my favourite.
The Amazing Maurice & His Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett.
Once a friend lent me a Discworld novel and I didn't really understand it because there wasn't enough exposition in my worldbuilding and I was like 'idgi' and she looked really disappointed. I could get into this, though. My problem with Terry Pratchett - and this is a really ridiculous problem to have, I grant - is that he was really funny and philosophical here and it was objectively great but there wasn't enough emotion in it to grip me? (I might get into the Tiffany Aching novels though, I read the first chapter of it at the end of the book here and really liked what I saw.)
Here's what I mean about his fantastic blend of humour and philosophy:
... so, yeah.
Dido and Pa, by Joan Aiken.
Eh, this was all right. I don't know how I felt about Simon's random proposal to Dido at the end of the book - how old is she even there? Is was introduced here and she wasn't as cool as she becomes in Is and Cold Shoulder Road, either. I do like Penny's redemption here, though, and Aiken has a gift for describing beauty - and music.
Black Hearts in Battersea, by Joan Aiken.
So this book made me change my mind re: thinking of Joan Aiken as Dickensian - there's still a lot of Dickens about her here but you get the feeling that Black Hearts of Battersea sets the tone for much of the Willoughby Chase sequence. It's only the second book in the series but everything gets that much more strange and fantastical, whereas Wolves of Willoughby Chase is a fairly typical narrative about middle-class girls who get cruelly treated by double-faced villainy and how they make their daring escape. (We never hear from them again, as we do from Dido, who's introduced here - ostensibly they all go on to live very contented, utterly uninteresting lives.) In Black Hearts Joan Aiken is really far more fascinated by the extremes of the class spectrum and she brings them together in this symphony of cockneys and monarchs, royals and paupers. Simon is the link, obviously - as the boy who lived on his own in the wild, and as the art student without much to his name who turns out to be ACTUALLY A DUKE. It reminds me of Shakespeare, actually.
Joan Aiken doesn't do that thing, either, which Dickens does, where food is treated as social metaphor. She delights in food for its own sake - oysters, lobsters, salmon, turtle-soup, turbot, turkeys, chicken, beef, a roast pig, pasties, pies, salads, and fruit. SHAKESPEARE! I probably had more to say about this book (eccentric nobles, streetsmart cockneys, vaguely fantastical scenarios - Joan Aiken's world is so rich) but not really. Dido is my favourite.
The Amazing Maurice & His Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett.
Once a friend lent me a Discworld novel and I didn't really understand it because there wasn't enough exposition in my worldbuilding and I was like 'idgi' and she looked really disappointed. I could get into this, though. My problem with Terry Pratchett - and this is a really ridiculous problem to have, I grant - is that he was really funny and philosophical here and it was objectively great but there wasn't enough emotion in it to grip me? (I might get into the Tiffany Aching novels though, I read the first chapter of it at the end of the book here and really liked what I saw.)
Here's what I mean about his fantastic blend of humour and philosophy:
"So," said the rat who'd raised the whole question about the invisible part, "when you wake up, where dos the dreaming part go? When you die, where does the bit that's inside you go?"
"What, the green wobbly bit?"
"No! The bit that's behind your eyes!"
"You mean the pinky-gray bit?"
"No, not that! The invisible bit!"
"How would I know? I've never seen an invisible bit!"
All the rats stared down at Fresh.
"I don't like this kind of talk," said one of them. "It reminds me of the shadows in the candlelight."
... so, yeah.
Dido and Pa, by Joan Aiken.
Eh, this was all right. I don't know how I felt about Simon's random proposal to Dido at the end of the book - how old is she even there? Is was introduced here and she wasn't as cool as she becomes in Is and Cold Shoulder Road, either. I do like Penny's redemption here, though, and Aiken has a gift for describing beauty - and music.