Reading Wednesday

[brigdh]

What did you just finish?
Nothing, whoops!

What are you currently reading?
Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War by Tony Horwitz. Ah, this is so good! An in-depth look at a fascinating/tragic/horrifying piece of American history that I didn't know very well at all. It keeps making me think of rebuttals to that annoying dude who was on the Daily Show a few weeks ago, as though I'm ever likely to encounter him on the street and start discussing the Civil War.

The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye. So, I was afraid this book would be colonialist, and it turns out I was right! D: As well as being terrible in all sorts of ways. Rather than detail them all, I think I'll just excerpt this bit for your enjoyment (the context is that Anjuli, an Indian princess because of course she is, has snuck out alone to meet privately with Ash, a British dude):

"If it is for yourself that you are afraid," said Anjuli sweetly, "you have no cause to be, for I sleep alone and therefore no one will miss me. And if I feared for myself, I would not be here."
Her voice was still barely more than a whisper, but there was so much scorn in it that the blood came up into Ash's face and for a fraction of a second his fingers tightened cruelly about her wrist.
"Why, you little bitch," said Ash softly and in English.

OUR HERO, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. And no, why her not being afraid should make her a 'bitch' makes no more sense in context. If anything, it's more shocking because the rest of the book treats swearing much as 19th-century literature would– that is, avoids it nearly entirely.

There's also plenty of narrative discourse expounding upon the foreign ways of the East (crafty, prone to lying, intricate) and how they differ from the ways of the West (straightforward, honest, fair) and how impossible it is that ever the twain should meet. However, Our Hero Ash was raised as an Indian for most of his childhood and thus can cross the lines. The example given for this is whenever he's asked a general polite question ("What's your opinion?" or "How are you?") he answers honestly, even when one is expected to tell a white lie. And this shows how foreign he is from those straightforward British! I don't know why it bothers me that the author can't keep her racism straight, BUT IT DOES.

I'm going to read the next 800 pages anyway, because I have a Thing about finishing books I've started, but it's totally going to be a hate read.

Comments

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

WHAT. How is any of what she said deserving of "bitch"?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I have no idea! There's also the scene where Ash makes fun of a friend (or maybe 'acquaintance' is a better word) who committed suicide. I kinda hate Ash.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

WHAT. Ash is a jerk, seriously. Ithink you should drop the book, it will only make you miserable.

Speaking of jerks, LJ is/was being really weird today/yesterday and I haven't been getting notifs for half my comments, including my reply to your comment in my latest entry. Did you get a comment for that? /LJ's jerk ways are funny

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

HE IS. But I am stubborn and refuse to give up on books. At least it usually makes for amusing rants?

I did get it! Despite LJ's best efforts.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

As long as your enjoyment of the rants is enough to sustain your hate for the books.

Sorry if that came across as being pushy/needy, I was just curious. The way notifs do or don't get sent when LJ hiccups are so so weird.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oddly, it usually is. I continue to tell stories about a book I read in 2008, because it was just that terrible. (IT HAD BROTHER/SISTER INCEST AND THEN THE SISTER WAS TORTURED BY PRIESTS BECAUSE SHE WAS CAUGHT NO LONG BEING A VIRGIN AND THE TORTURE CHANGED HER INTO SOME SORT OF "HUMAN PYRAMID" AND SHE JOINED A "FREAK SHOW" BUT SHE WAS SO POPULAR SHE BECAME SUPER-RICH AND LEFT ALL HER MONEY TO THE BROTHER, WHO THOUGHT SHE WAS DEAD, AND SHE NEVER TOLD HIM OTHERWISE SO SHE DIED IN LONELY TRAGEDY AND HE ONLY FIGURED IT OUT YEARS LATER. And this was a minor subplot!)

No, it's fine! Ha, if I hadn't got the notification, I'm sure I would have gone to your LJ to check for myself.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

I am suddenly weirdly fascinated by how horrible this book seems to have been. tell me more?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

See the pleasures of bad books? This one is 'Aztec' by Gary Jennings.

In another part of the book, the hero meets a pair of identical twin sisters, gets injured, and is nursed back to health by them. He falls in love with one of them and marries her. Later on, she dies, and the other sister comes to live with the guy to help him raise the children, but she's very withdrawn and avoids him and he assumes she hates him. He eventually realizes that OBVIOUSLY she's been in love with him all along (although it takes him literally years to do so), but she was avoiding him because she thought he didn't love her. Then he realizes he actually fell in love with her first, but married the wrong sister due to the whole "identical twin" thing.

I also have graphic memories of the scene where Spanish conquistadors show up and complain about the local women, because they "like our whores to be hairy".

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

I already read a review (http://ferretbrain.com/articles/article-810) of this book, but it's like it gets worse every time I hear about it.

Wtf "married the wrong sister" idc that they're identical twins, how do you not notice something like that ffs?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ah, that review was excellent! You know it's a bad book when I'd entirely forgotten "the evil female bisexual who makes Mixtli sketch her nightly escapades with various lovers; lovers that she then murders and has made into statues" because that would be the most memorable part of any other book.

I read it myself when I was on an excavation in Syria; this was in 2008, so it was before kindles or ipads, and we were in a rural enough location that we had no internet, no TV, no newspapers. I'd already read all the books I'd packed for myself, and borrowed 'Aztec' from another person.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

It doesn't even look like it's So Bad It's Good.

I am always fascinated when you mention archeology. Would you mind going into details?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha, I don't mind explaining, but I'm not sure there's much more to add! Most archaeological excavations (at least the academic sort rather than the 'quickly look at stuff before they build a highway on top of it' sort) tend to last between 4 weeks and 3 months. They also tend to be very rural, since anything in the middle of a city would have had a highway built through it at some point in the last five thousand years. The combination of length of time and rural means there's often not a lot to do in your free time other than read*, and you're stuck with whatever books you packed (and as books are one of the heaviest things to put in your luggage, it's never enough). This is changing quickly in the last few years, with ebooks and ipads and much greater internet connectivity, no matter how rural it is, but it used to be a universal.

*as by two weeks in you're almost certainly sick of the other 10 archaeologists with whom you've been working, eating, sleeping (occasionally in the sexual sense as well as the literal sense), and generally spending every single moment with.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

Was there lots of book sharing going on?

A propos of nothing, how did you come across the Benjamin January series?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Some, but not much. Some people are perfectly capable of packing one book and making it last the entire season. I, uh, cannot do that. It can be fun, though, when you do share! I once loaned 'The Grapes of Wrath' to an Indian woman I was working with, and then every day she had some question for me about it. Which was quite difficult because a) I hadn't read it myself yet, and b) I apparently know way less about the 1930s than I thought. (At least without google!)

I'd heard about it years and years ago, and had had it hanging around on my Nook waiting for me to get to it. I have a weird relationship with New Orleans- I've never actually been there, but it's been a sort of running joke in my life. All of my family is REALLY OBSESSED with professional football, and when I was young they said I had to choose a team to root for. So I randomly picked New Orleans, just because I liked their theme song. And then my family started to buy me things with the logo on it- coffee mugs, earrings, sweatshirts, etc- and when other people saw me wear them, they too would buy me things or tell me stories about New Orleans. When Katrina happened, I was actually away on an excavation, and ten people must have called me to make sure I'd heard the news. Right after my girlfriend and I started dating, she went on a business trip to New Orleans and bought me a fleur-de-lis necklace (it's the symbol of NO), and I've since been wearing it almost daily. Which leads to more people noticing and telling me stories... it's a sort of reinforcing cycle at this point. So when I heard about a series set in historical NO, I thought it would be a cool thing to read.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

Some people are perfectly capable of packing one book and making it last the entire season
Who are these people and how do they do it? (I love sharing books, it is one of my great pleasures in life.) I know nothing about Grapes of Wrath except that it's apparently depressing.

When you say football, I take it you mean handegg, that sports in which neither feet nor balls are involved yet somehow has more body armour on a single player than an entire rugby team? (Seriously, though, why is it called football?) Hum, I had no idea the fleur-de-lys was the symbol of New Orleans! I associate it pretty much exclusively with the French monarchy (also Québec, I guess). Thanks for answering.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I don't know! And one of the people I'm thinking of in particular, his season-long book was 'Vanity Fair', which he didn't like! IT IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE BOOKS. Clearly he is making all the wrong life-choices.

Ha, yes, American football. I think it originally involved more feet, and then gradually drifted away from that. I mean, I'm sure the monarchy and Quebec and New Orleans are all referring to the same idea, with the fleur-de-lis, but NO is fairly unique in the US for it. (It's also the logo of said football team; they're called "The Saints".)

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

I've never even heard of Vanity Fair, so I suppose my life-choices are a lot wronger than his.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by " I'm sure the monarchy and Quebec and New Orleans are all referring to the same idea, with the fleur-de-lis"? I think it looks really pretty though.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha, nah, it's much worse to know about it and chose to discard it than just to not know! It's from the mid-1800s, set in England, about Becky Sharpe, who is a clever, petty, manipulative, social-climbing anti-hero. It's supposed to be a satire, but is sort of undercut for the fact that Becky is AWESOME and you sort of want her to win. There's been several movie versions of it; I particularly like the one from 2004 starring Reese Witherspoon.

I just meant that I assume it's not a coincidence that they all use the same symbol; they're sharing the same cultural heritage.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

I'll see if I can it, it sounds pretty great.

Yeah, looking it up now, it looks like the fleur-de-lys is almost exclusively used in heraldry by places with French and/or Bourbon heritage.