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And ne'er a word I spoke, tumbling down
Lately, I've been reading for comfort - Procrustean reading, to borrow![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
truepenny's terminology. Which means Air and Spin and A Dead Man in Deptford, among others, are staring down at me from my TBR shelf while I devour space opera and character-heavy fantasy. With one exception: Cherie Priest's Four and Twenty Blackbirds.
I don't read horror, normally. Or ghost stories, or anything in that vein. When I do read them, I don't enjoy them - I really don't enjoy having the shit creeped out of me.
Four and Twenty Blackbirds is eerie as all hell in places, but it never crosses the line into 'Not reading this after dark. Hell, not reading this in daylight, either,' territory. Largely because the heroine, Eden Moore, comes across as so genuinely capable that I couldn't help believing that when she found out what was going on, she was going to deal it.
I can like a character like that. In fact, I can like a book like that, too.
( And yea verily, more books: )
...I've just realised something about my reading preferences. The books I really like, the ones I like best - they either have female main characters, or they're by female authors (or female co-authors). The ones I fall head-over-heels for, usually both.
( list )
Which sort of helps explain why seven out of ten of the books on my yet-to-be-read shelf are written by men. But not really, since I have no real idea why I go back to the guys less frequently and with less great enthusiasm, in general, than the women.
And now, the non-fiction:
Outwitting the Gestapo, Lucie Aubrac. Aubrac's account of her Resistance activity during the nine months of her second pregnancy, where she met 'Max' (the alias of Jean Moulin, DeGaulle's envoy to and negotiator with the various resistance réseaux, who was arrested, tortured and killed by the Germans in France), assisted with the running of the local resistance, organised an attack to break her husband out of prison after his arrest (his third and most serious, as he was arrested in the company of Moulin), taught classes at the local lycée, and keep her family fed and together. Fascinating read.
Journey into the Whirlwind, Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg. A memoir of the gulag. Ginzburg recounts her arrest in the thirties (February 1937) during Stalin's purges, her initial interrogation, trial and sentencing (ten years under section 8 of Article 58 - the then maximum, it changed to twenty-five years with the year, short of death - the statute under which, ludicrously, thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of people were charged with terrorism or counter-revolutionary activity); her time in the Butyrki and the Lefortovo, and, after her sentence was pronounced, her two years in solitary in Yaroslavl until her transfer to the Magadan and Elgen hard labour camps in the Kolyma region.
Ginzburg was and remained a committed Communist. Journey ends in or around the early 1940s, when she escaped death by starvation and overwork by getting a 'trusty' job as medical attendant to the children of inmates at Elgen. In the (very short) epilogue, she says she spent eighteen years in the Gulag, making this remarkably incomplete as an autobiography, and remarkably unsatisfying as either history or memoir.
It is, however, quite fascinating as both.
Next up... Hmm. Plutarch, I suppose. Roman Lives. Or maybe McIntosh's Sisterhood of Spies, or Rediker's pirate history, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Or A History of the Ancient Near East, if I'm feeling virtuous, or maybe Sarah Pomeroy's Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity.
Or Harvey's American War of Independence history, A Few Bloody Noses. Or the one about Byzantine empresses, Herrin's Women in Purple. Or The Bible and the Ancient Near East. Or Ancient Mesopotamia. Or or or or --
-- Which to choose? So many books, so many. How am I supposed to pick just one (or two, rather, since the Plutarch is Designated Scholarly Reading Material, which really should be read for college)?
Um. Suggestions? Are solicited?
----
*Not all of these are precisely comfort reading, I must admit.
----
Oh, I'm reminded. The Admissions Office is pleased to inform me that the Senior Lecturer is permitting me to make the course transfer I applied for last May.
Last May. Oh, wheels of bureaucracy, who grindeth slow and exceedingly fine - thanks so much for letting me spend the last three months (three months!) worrying about this.
Lately, I've been reading for comfort - Procrustean reading, to borrow
truepenny's terminology. Which means Air and Spin and A Dead Man in Deptford, among others, are staring down at me from my TBR shelf while I devour space opera and character-heavy fantasy. With one exception: Cherie Priest's Four and Twenty Blackbirds.I don't read horror, normally. Or ghost stories, or anything in that vein. When I do read them, I don't enjoy them - I really don't enjoy having the shit creeped out of me.
Four and Twenty Blackbirds is eerie as all hell in places, but it never crosses the line into 'Not reading this after dark. Hell, not reading this in daylight, either,' territory. Largely because the heroine, Eden Moore, comes across as so genuinely capable that I couldn't help believing that when she found out what was going on, she was going to deal it.
I can like a character like that. In fact, I can like a book like that, too.
( And yea verily, more books: )
...I've just realised something about my reading preferences. The books I really like, the ones I like best - they either have female main characters, or they're by female authors (or female co-authors). The ones I fall head-over-heels for, usually both.
( list )
Which sort of helps explain why seven out of ten of the books on my yet-to-be-read shelf are written by men. But not really, since I have no real idea why I go back to the guys less frequently and with less great enthusiasm, in general, than the women.
And now, the non-fiction:
Outwitting the Gestapo, Lucie Aubrac. Aubrac's account of her Resistance activity during the nine months of her second pregnancy, where she met 'Max' (the alias of Jean Moulin, DeGaulle's envoy to and negotiator with the various resistance réseaux, who was arrested, tortured and killed by the Germans in France), assisted with the running of the local resistance, organised an attack to break her husband out of prison after his arrest (his third and most serious, as he was arrested in the company of Moulin), taught classes at the local lycée, and keep her family fed and together. Fascinating read.
Journey into the Whirlwind, Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg. A memoir of the gulag. Ginzburg recounts her arrest in the thirties (February 1937) during Stalin's purges, her initial interrogation, trial and sentencing (ten years under section 8 of Article 58 - the then maximum, it changed to twenty-five years with the year, short of death - the statute under which, ludicrously, thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of people were charged with terrorism or counter-revolutionary activity); her time in the Butyrki and the Lefortovo, and, after her sentence was pronounced, her two years in solitary in Yaroslavl until her transfer to the Magadan and Elgen hard labour camps in the Kolyma region.
Ginzburg was and remained a committed Communist. Journey ends in or around the early 1940s, when she escaped death by starvation and overwork by getting a 'trusty' job as medical attendant to the children of inmates at Elgen. In the (very short) epilogue, she says she spent eighteen years in the Gulag, making this remarkably incomplete as an autobiography, and remarkably unsatisfying as either history or memoir.
It is, however, quite fascinating as both.
Next up... Hmm. Plutarch, I suppose. Roman Lives. Or maybe McIntosh's Sisterhood of Spies, or Rediker's pirate history, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Or A History of the Ancient Near East, if I'm feeling virtuous, or maybe Sarah Pomeroy's Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity.
Or Harvey's American War of Independence history, A Few Bloody Noses. Or the one about Byzantine empresses, Herrin's Women in Purple. Or The Bible and the Ancient Near East. Or Ancient Mesopotamia. Or or or or --
-- Which to choose? So many books, so many. How am I supposed to pick just one (or two, rather, since the Plutarch is Designated Scholarly Reading Material, which really should be read for college)?
Um. Suggestions? Are solicited?
----
*Not all of these are precisely comfort reading, I must admit.
----
Oh, I'm reminded. The Admissions Office is pleased to inform me that the Senior Lecturer is permitting me to make the course transfer I applied for last May.
Last May. Oh, wheels of bureaucracy, who grindeth slow and exceedingly fine - thanks so much for letting me spend the last three months (three months!) worrying about this.
