Bibliography
Jul. 29th, 2012 07:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyThe Leopard - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
When I said I was reading this, I suddenly found out that an awful lot of people think it's very good. That would be because it is - really excellent. The book is set on Sicily at the period of Italian unification (Garibaldi et al), and revolves around Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, and his family as they try to deal with the shifting political and social changes of the time. Corbera's nephew ends up marrying the daughter of a nouveau riche, for example, leading to the beginning of the breakdown in social convention between classes. Said nephew also gets involved in the army and in politics, while Corbera himself stays well away from it all, deliberately choosing to align his loyalty elsewhere. There are passions and rivalries between the members of the family, and the novel captures a sense of time and place beautifully well. It's very evocative, with fanastic images (I particularly liked the depiction of the Prince getting out of his bath described as a Hercules of Farnese arising from the soapy water). As a depiction of the changes during this historical period, it's well written, and quite fabulous. Definitely worth a read - and I'm looking forward to watching the film.
The Help - Kathryn Stockett
There's been a lot of hype about this, especially as it's just been made into a film. I am... not sure how I feel about it. I can see why it has gone down so well, why it has been so popular, and why it was a book that needed to be written. It challenges, it pushes, it excavates. It's set in Jacksonville, Mississippi, in the early 1960s, and is told in a number of voices - those of the white women of the town and the black women who work for them as household help, raising their children and cleaning their houses. It tries to capture stories of pain, of suffering, of injustice, of failing to see what's in front of your eyes. Of the women who thought they were being good employers whilst at the same time perpetrating daily small acts that reminded their employees exactly what their place was. One of these white women, Skeeter, desperately wants a career as a writer, and hits upon the idea of gathering the stories of the help about what it's like working for her friends - without quite realising that this is exactly what will sell and sell in a country going through the birth pangs of the civil rights movement, or grasping the risks which she asks these women to take in order to speak to her.
The story works two ways - Skeeter's slow and painful realisation of exactly how much there is to lose in all of this, including her own social standing; and the gradual trust of Aibileen and Minny, two of the maids, that this might actually make a difference, however small. There's some really good stuff that goes on here in terms of opening up and exploring historical reality through fiction. It's far from perfect - the dialect is problematic, black men don't feature, the ending is a bit fairytale, and there's obviously been a bit of play with historical reality to emphasise the central themes that the author is interested in. But it's not a bad book - it had me gasping with horror at one particular event which threatened to blow the whole secret-book-writing sky high. It's nicely paced. But it's also not going to change the world of literature as we know it, and I seriously doubt whether the film does a decent job of dramatising the story.
A Game of Thrones - George R. R. Martin
I quite enjoyed this, but only because I was watching the first series of A Game of Thrones in the HBO adaptation in parallel! I think that made reading the book more critically engaging - you notice a lot of things in terms of serious thematics that the TV adaptation leaves out, for instance. There's a lot of backstory and history which the book works in really well, but obviously the series hasn't got space for - so reading the book lets you look into a very well thought-through world.
In terms of what actually happens... well, it's a lot more political than a lot of this stuff usually is, and there's no sympathy about killing off characters. Plus the ones who haven't got killed off are, to my immense surprise, not just men! My immediate thought was it was rather like Shakespeare's history plays transported into a parallel universe, with the expected politicking, killing off of favourite/well-developed characters, power struggles and alliances and so on. The decision to write from various characters' PoV limits what you can show, but also allows shades of memory, recollection, interpretation, inner life and so on to come through rather well. It was interesting enough that I'll see how I get on with the second book.
Perfume - Patrick Süskind
Cor, this really is a cracker, and I'm a bit sad it's taken me as long to read it as it has. The main character is a young man with the most perfect smell sense memory, but no actual smell himself. He eventually realises that he wishes to make the most perfect perfume of all time - the smell of a young beautiful woman just reaching sexual maturity. It is a well-crafted, creepy but exquisitely realised book, which gives you insight into the mind of this monstrous creature, and represents the world of scent in a compelling and convincing way. It's only a short book, but it's absolutely brilliant.
The Mystics of the Church - Evelyn Underhill
I think this is the fourth time I've attempted to read this... not that I've not managed it because the text is badly written or the subject is uninteresting, but it's the sort of book you need to sit down and do more or less in one more or less uninterrupted sitting (or, as it might be, over a couple of days of concentrated reading whilst on holiday). Underhill charts the development of mysticism in the church from the Bible up to her own time (around the 1920s), pointing out features of the spiritual and contemplative life that share in common in the works written by such individuals, grouping them according to chronology and geography, and directing the reader to the most appropriate works by each contemplative she mentions. It's a good introduction to the subject, even if the discussion has aged a bit, and I'm glad I've finally made it all the way through!
When I said I was reading this, I suddenly found out that an awful lot of people think it's very good. That would be because it is - really excellent. The book is set on Sicily at the period of Italian unification (Garibaldi et al), and revolves around Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, and his family as they try to deal with the shifting political and social changes of the time. Corbera's nephew ends up marrying the daughter of a nouveau riche, for example, leading to the beginning of the breakdown in social convention between classes. Said nephew also gets involved in the army and in politics, while Corbera himself stays well away from it all, deliberately choosing to align his loyalty elsewhere. There are passions and rivalries between the members of the family, and the novel captures a sense of time and place beautifully well. It's very evocative, with fanastic images (I particularly liked the depiction of the Prince getting out of his bath described as a Hercules of Farnese arising from the soapy water). As a depiction of the changes during this historical period, it's well written, and quite fabulous. Definitely worth a read - and I'm looking forward to watching the film.
The Help - Kathryn Stockett
There's been a lot of hype about this, especially as it's just been made into a film. I am... not sure how I feel about it. I can see why it has gone down so well, why it has been so popular, and why it was a book that needed to be written. It challenges, it pushes, it excavates. It's set in Jacksonville, Mississippi, in the early 1960s, and is told in a number of voices - those of the white women of the town and the black women who work for them as household help, raising their children and cleaning their houses. It tries to capture stories of pain, of suffering, of injustice, of failing to see what's in front of your eyes. Of the women who thought they were being good employers whilst at the same time perpetrating daily small acts that reminded their employees exactly what their place was. One of these white women, Skeeter, desperately wants a career as a writer, and hits upon the idea of gathering the stories of the help about what it's like working for her friends - without quite realising that this is exactly what will sell and sell in a country going through the birth pangs of the civil rights movement, or grasping the risks which she asks these women to take in order to speak to her.
The story works two ways - Skeeter's slow and painful realisation of exactly how much there is to lose in all of this, including her own social standing; and the gradual trust of Aibileen and Minny, two of the maids, that this might actually make a difference, however small. There's some really good stuff that goes on here in terms of opening up and exploring historical reality through fiction. It's far from perfect - the dialect is problematic, black men don't feature, the ending is a bit fairytale, and there's obviously been a bit of play with historical reality to emphasise the central themes that the author is interested in. But it's not a bad book - it had me gasping with horror at one particular event which threatened to blow the whole secret-book-writing sky high. It's nicely paced. But it's also not going to change the world of literature as we know it, and I seriously doubt whether the film does a decent job of dramatising the story.
A Game of Thrones - George R. R. Martin
I quite enjoyed this, but only because I was watching the first series of A Game of Thrones in the HBO adaptation in parallel! I think that made reading the book more critically engaging - you notice a lot of things in terms of serious thematics that the TV adaptation leaves out, for instance. There's a lot of backstory and history which the book works in really well, but obviously the series hasn't got space for - so reading the book lets you look into a very well thought-through world.
In terms of what actually happens... well, it's a lot more political than a lot of this stuff usually is, and there's no sympathy about killing off characters. Plus the ones who haven't got killed off are, to my immense surprise, not just men! My immediate thought was it was rather like Shakespeare's history plays transported into a parallel universe, with the expected politicking, killing off of favourite/well-developed characters, power struggles and alliances and so on. The decision to write from various characters' PoV limits what you can show, but also allows shades of memory, recollection, interpretation, inner life and so on to come through rather well. It was interesting enough that I'll see how I get on with the second book.
Perfume - Patrick Süskind
Cor, this really is a cracker, and I'm a bit sad it's taken me as long to read it as it has. The main character is a young man with the most perfect smell sense memory, but no actual smell himself. He eventually realises that he wishes to make the most perfect perfume of all time - the smell of a young beautiful woman just reaching sexual maturity. It is a well-crafted, creepy but exquisitely realised book, which gives you insight into the mind of this monstrous creature, and represents the world of scent in a compelling and convincing way. It's only a short book, but it's absolutely brilliant.
The Mystics of the Church - Evelyn Underhill
I think this is the fourth time I've attempted to read this... not that I've not managed it because the text is badly written or the subject is uninteresting, but it's the sort of book you need to sit down and do more or less in one more or less uninterrupted sitting (or, as it might be, over a couple of days of concentrated reading whilst on holiday). Underhill charts the development of mysticism in the church from the Bible up to her own time (around the 1920s), pointing out features of the spiritual and contemplative life that share in common in the works written by such individuals, grouping them according to chronology and geography, and directing the reader to the most appropriate works by each contemplative she mentions. It's a good introduction to the subject, even if the discussion has aged a bit, and I'm glad I've finally made it all the way through!
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