Reading Wednesday

[laceblade]

• What are you currently reading?
I'm returning to Anna Karenina because the book group discussing it meets again on Sunday. I am woefully behind, & also now freaking out about the cult of domesticity surrounding "reading books in the home of an all-woman group" b/c it seems like this entails "make a dish/appetizer to pass, & it better taste good & be a good idea!" Maybe I'll post extensively on this in its own post -__- (CAN BOOK CLUBS JUST BE ABOUT BOOKS?! I guess food prep/content doesn't make others so anxious.)
I've started carrying around my e-reader. Although I don't care for the translation nearly so much as the Pevear/Volokhonsky one, it's much easier on my back.

I finished up the rest of Part 2, & I still really like Kitty. I wish I had finished it before the last book discussion, because I would have defended her a little better, I think. Especially being surrounded by sick people in Germany, it's like she finds these female mentors & starts to consider NOT getting married & is focused on HERSELF/her desires/etc. Then her dad shows up & everything's out the window.
Regardless, I'm excited to see how her arc progresses.


• What did you recently finish reading?
The Female Man by Joanna Russ. Or, as much of it as I'm going to read, anyway.
It's hard to articulate the way I feel about this book. It's good but not good?! I spent a lot of time flailing around because I couldn't figure out who the fuck was narrating. And sometimes JR would get to the end of a passage & there would be a single sentence that would make the entire previous passage make sense (by identifying the narrator, etc.), and I would be all, "WELL I'M NOT FUCKING REREADING IT NOW!"

I really liked how sometimes Russ would get into a good rhythm, but then she'd generally beat that rhythm to death.
Example of the build-up-and-crush that I liked:

I found Jeannine on the clubhouse porch that evening, looking at the moon. She had run away from her family.
"They only want what's good for you," I said.
She made a face.
"They love you," I said.
A low, strangled sound. She was prodding the porch-rail with her hand.
"I think you ought to go and rejoin them, Jeannine," I said. "Your mother's a wonderful woman who has never raised her voice in anger all the time you've known her. And she brought all of you up and got you all through high school, even though she had to work. Your brother's a firm, steady man who makes a good living for his wife and children, and Eileen wants nothing more in the world than her husband and her little boy and girl. You ought to appreciate them more, Jeannine."
"I know," said Jeannine softly and precisely. Or perhaps she said Oh no.

But then there are two passages following it that do the same thing - "Don't care," said she. Or was it Not fair?" "Not Cal." Ah, hell."
Just one, please!

I don't think that the feminism in this book is "outdated" or etc. There is still anger that resonates with me.
[And some that doesn't. It makes me lol to think of wearing makeup FOR my boyfriend.]
But it is very much a white middle class woman's feminism. The book was critiqued for this when it came out in 1975.

I would very much like to read, "When It Changed," the short story that focuses on the possible Earth-future, Whileaway, where there are no men.

When discussing it in beer_marmalade, someone noted that this book is sort of less accessible than feminist theory.

Someone else said that the book sort of disorients you & angers you (in the way it is somewhat confusingly written), which is sort of like life - it's how the protagonist(s) felt.

I think jesse_the_k mentioned Samuel Delany's response, which I can't find online unless it's this:

What does one do with an SF novel like The Female Man, which demands its politics be taken seriously, and presents those politics without naivete or bombast, but rather through a whole host of distancing devices that make it an "epic novel" in almost exactly the way Brecht used the term "epic theater"?

Related link: Review by a member of my book club.

So yeah. I'm glad I read it. I probably won't read it again. I still really liked How to Suppress Women's Writing, though, & wouldn't mind trying her other stuff.

• What do you think you’ll read next?
I'm pretty focused on these right now!
However, I haven't read any Glee fic in a while & I'd really like to.
I also need to get through the first part of Cyteen for April, for beer_marmalade. For now, though: All of the Anna Karenina!

Comments

[futuransky]

I liked reading your response to The Female Man... I find it both amazing and infuriating. I haven't read it in years, though; I think it's one of those books that is different every time.

For your future reading pleasure, here is a link to a scanned copy of "When It Changed" that I uploaded for my grad class. I think I appreciate the story more every time I read it... It's so lean and understated yet there's so much depth. http://americanfuturesiup.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/russ-when-it-changed.pdf

[laceblade]

Amazing/infuriating seemed to be our group's consensus, bahaha.

Thank you so much for the link!!

[liseuse]

The only book group I have ever been in was mostly about alcohol. We just used to meet, drink cocktails (for a loose definition of cocktail where it means alcohol and a mixer), and then sort of vaguely go "yeah, I liked the book" through a haze of spirits. It would probably have benefited our livers if there had been food, but usually everyone brought their own snack for their own consumption.

I really want to re-read Anna Karenina now, and I have no time whatsoever for that. *whinge*

[laceblade]

This is sort of how beer_marmalade started, in a bar. We then met in a place sort-of-on campus, & just tried a coffee place. I really, really, really like meeting on neutral ground. Nobody has to clean, nobody has to worry if their place is big enough, nobody has to prepare food, blah-blah.

Sorry to have caused book!envy!

[liseuse]

Yeah, we just descended on one of the student bars, and drank a lot. If people wanted food, you either brought some in a bag and hid it, or you ordered bar food. No one ever really ordered the bar food, because that would have diluted the spirits and we were young and stupid (she says, as if she doesn't still do this, ummm ...). I feel like the lack of cleaning and space was the big thing for us.

Basically every single Wednesday Reading Meme entry from anyone on my rlist causes me book-envy. So many books, so little time.

[pretty_panther]

That sort of thing is what puts me off a bookclub. I'd want to just sit and geek over the book and I'd be worried others would be more concerned with food/drinks/making sure everything had what they needed ect. Plus, I'd just want to read sci-fi books. Oh dear. XD

[laceblade]

omg, I wish you could come to our beer_marmalade book club!
Feminist sf/f, & we meet in a bar/coffee house/other place that isn't someone's house, bahaha.

[pretty_panther]

* pines * XD