Reading Wednesday
Aug. 10th, 2016 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
The Gentleman by Forrest Leo. A comedy novel set in Victorian London (...sort of. It's not remotely historically accurate, though to be fair, it's really not trying to be) about a shallow feckless poet who marries for money, loses his muse when he realizes that having to spend your life with someone you can't stand sucks, accidentally sells his wife to the Devil (yes, the literal Devil), is overcome by the realization that he actually is in love with her, and sets out to rescue her with a zany cast of supporting characters that includes his super-competent butler, an Arctic explorer, the inventor of a flying machine, and an overly curious 16-year-old girl. Also the whole book is being edited by the poet's disgruntled cousin-in-law, who frequently butts in via footnotes to critique the poet's style or disagree with his assertions.
That's a lot of stuff for one novel! Unfortunately it ends up being merely a bit silly rather than laugh out loud funny. The blurb made comparisons to Wodehouse and Monty Python, and while I can see their influence, this book isn't quite up to either's standard. But that said, it was a fun read and kept me turning the pages; it's certainly not at all a bad debut.
There was one thing that annoyed me. I hate to single out Leo for this, because it does show up everywhere, but this was such a blatant example of it that I couldn't skim past it:
Lancaster and I give voice to our displeasure. Lizzie stamps her foot again. There is as much threat in the stamp of that little foot as in the negligent handling of two loaded weapons.*
* This is unquestionably the case. I have become very dear friends with Miss Savage, and I do not think she would be offended to hear me say that her anger, on the rare occasions it is displayed, is more frightening than anything I have yet witnessed.—HL.
No, it is not unquestionably the case. A sixteen-year-old throwing a tantrum is not as threatening as a loaded weapon, and it is unbelievably patronizing to pretend otherwise. (This isn't the only time Lizzie is described this way. It appears over and over again throughout the book, by everyone who meets her – though again, she is a normal, unarmed, not particularly aggressive teenage girl.) It is not a compliment to women to pretend to be afraid of them; actually, I find it just the opposite – an insult bordering on outright misogyny. If you want to write female characters who are scary, do so. Don't act like a stomped foot or raised voice is the equal of actual violence, or would be enough to make reasonable adults cower. It's an over-the-top exaggeration that suggests you don't take women's real anger seriously, and it irritates me enormously every time I see it.
Anyway. The rest of the book really is fine! I just couldn't let that go. Overall it's a pleasant way to waste an afternoon, if a bit forgettable once you've finished.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present by Alison Matthews David. An academic book on dangerous clothes, focusing on the late 1700s to the early 1900s in western Europe and America. Most of the stories here are fairly well-known – arsenic green, mad hatters, flammable clothing, body lice, Isadora Duncan's scarf, the health issues of workers in textile factories – but David tells them with a great depth of detailed research and an engaging prose style that makes the book worth reading even if you're familiar with the topic. Fashion Victims was written in conjunction with a museum exhibit, which for the reader means there are lots and lots of pictures. And not just photos of the items of clothing themselves (which are not always the most interesting thing, to be honest), but of historical advertisements, postcards, political cartoons, and more. These vary from hilarious to strangely disorientating – the past is a different country indeed, as radium hospital blankets, asbestos yarn, and lucky lice make clear. Though despite that, David does an excellent job of pointing out that it's easy to laugh at the past, and fashion today is not nearly so safe and blameless as we might like to believe.
If the topic sounds interesting at all, this is definitely a fascinating read. Highly recommended!
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
What are you currently reading?
Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrooke Lane: A True Story of Victorian Law and Disorder: The First Unsolved Murder of the Victorian Age by Paul Thomas Murphy. That is too much subtitle, dude. But at least it conveys everything you could possibly need to know.
The Gentleman by Forrest Leo. A comedy novel set in Victorian London (...sort of. It's not remotely historically accurate, though to be fair, it's really not trying to be) about a shallow feckless poet who marries for money, loses his muse when he realizes that having to spend your life with someone you can't stand sucks, accidentally sells his wife to the Devil (yes, the literal Devil), is overcome by the realization that he actually is in love with her, and sets out to rescue her with a zany cast of supporting characters that includes his super-competent butler, an Arctic explorer, the inventor of a flying machine, and an overly curious 16-year-old girl. Also the whole book is being edited by the poet's disgruntled cousin-in-law, who frequently butts in via footnotes to critique the poet's style or disagree with his assertions.
That's a lot of stuff for one novel! Unfortunately it ends up being merely a bit silly rather than laugh out loud funny. The blurb made comparisons to Wodehouse and Monty Python, and while I can see their influence, this book isn't quite up to either's standard. But that said, it was a fun read and kept me turning the pages; it's certainly not at all a bad debut.
There was one thing that annoyed me. I hate to single out Leo for this, because it does show up everywhere, but this was such a blatant example of it that I couldn't skim past it:
Lancaster and I give voice to our displeasure. Lizzie stamps her foot again. There is as much threat in the stamp of that little foot as in the negligent handling of two loaded weapons.*
* This is unquestionably the case. I have become very dear friends with Miss Savage, and I do not think she would be offended to hear me say that her anger, on the rare occasions it is displayed, is more frightening than anything I have yet witnessed.—HL.
No, it is not unquestionably the case. A sixteen-year-old throwing a tantrum is not as threatening as a loaded weapon, and it is unbelievably patronizing to pretend otherwise. (This isn't the only time Lizzie is described this way. It appears over and over again throughout the book, by everyone who meets her – though again, she is a normal, unarmed, not particularly aggressive teenage girl.) It is not a compliment to women to pretend to be afraid of them; actually, I find it just the opposite – an insult bordering on outright misogyny. If you want to write female characters who are scary, do so. Don't act like a stomped foot or raised voice is the equal of actual violence, or would be enough to make reasonable adults cower. It's an over-the-top exaggeration that suggests you don't take women's real anger seriously, and it irritates me enormously every time I see it.
Anyway. The rest of the book really is fine! I just couldn't let that go. Overall it's a pleasant way to waste an afternoon, if a bit forgettable once you've finished.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present by Alison Matthews David. An academic book on dangerous clothes, focusing on the late 1700s to the early 1900s in western Europe and America. Most of the stories here are fairly well-known – arsenic green, mad hatters, flammable clothing, body lice, Isadora Duncan's scarf, the health issues of workers in textile factories – but David tells them with a great depth of detailed research and an engaging prose style that makes the book worth reading even if you're familiar with the topic. Fashion Victims was written in conjunction with a museum exhibit, which for the reader means there are lots and lots of pictures. And not just photos of the items of clothing themselves (which are not always the most interesting thing, to be honest), but of historical advertisements, postcards, political cartoons, and more. These vary from hilarious to strangely disorientating – the past is a different country indeed, as radium hospital blankets, asbestos yarn, and lucky lice make clear. Though despite that, David does an excellent job of pointing out that it's easy to laugh at the past, and fashion today is not nearly so safe and blameless as we might like to believe.
If the topic sounds interesting at all, this is definitely a fascinating read. Highly recommended!
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
What are you currently reading?
Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrooke Lane: A True Story of Victorian Law and Disorder: The First Unsolved Murder of the Victorian Age by Paul Thomas Murphy. That is too much subtitle, dude. But at least it conveys everything you could possibly need to know.
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no subject
Date: 2016-08-11 03:25 am (UTC)I kept reading and reading that title and thinking that sure there must be a loose italics tag there somewhere and this was actually, like, four separate books :P
Also: ...lucky lice? O.o
no subject
Date: 2016-08-11 03:39 am (UTC)I know! Unfortunately I can't find an image of the specific postcard, but it featured a WWI soldier coming back from the front to spend the night with his girlfriend. Afterwards, she pulls a louse out of her nightgown and is all "He left me a present! Sexy memories!" and the whole thing is labelled as good luck. THE PAST IS WEIRD.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-11 04:01 am (UTC)And I was envisioning a much earlier time period being associated with "lucky lice", so that's even more O.o than I was thinking XP
no subject
Date: 2016-08-12 06:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-16 06:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-18 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-11 09:12 am (UTC)... I don't mean this comment to come off as a paean for Agent Carter; it's just something the show does that I've rarely seen done quite so consistently elsewhere, especially in media.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-12 06:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-11 04:08 pm (UTC)This is a real question: as a form of humor, how is this trope supposed to work? Is the idea simply that women are so rarely angry, it is terrifying and bewildering and totally impossible to cope with when it actually happens? Depicting women's anger as "the stamp of [a] little foot" is just patronizing, obviously, but I'm trying to figure out why the whole thing is supposed to be funny in the first place.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-11 10:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-11 11:12 pm (UTC)I guess it's true that some joke aren't funny even when explained.
(Thank you for the clarification.)
no subject
Date: 2016-08-12 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-12 02:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-12 07:03 pm (UTC)