Zach Weiner doesn’t ~always~ get it right, but when he does . . .

And here’s what’s coming for what’s . . . left . . . of August:

• The Hemingses of Monticello–Annette Gordon-Reed
• Good Eggs–Phoebe Potts
• The Orchid Thief–Susan Orlean
• In a Paris Quartier–Diane Johnson
• Wolf Hall–Hillary Mantel
• The Rhetoric of Death–Judith Rock
  
• Gaudy Night–Dorothy Sayers
  
• Last One Down the Aisle Wins–Shannon Fox and Celeste Liversidge
  
• Blood, Bones & Butter–Gabrielle Hamilton
  
• The Luxe–Anna Godberson

Anyway, I think the next few days are going to be devoted to marriage. By sheer happenstance, I’ve been reading a lot about it lately. And it’s an important question: how does one reconcile traditional American/Western ideas about marriage with feminism? Can it be done? Or is it useless to try, even?

So we’ll begin tomorrow with a post about Phyllis Rose’s Parallel Lives, an excellent book which I feel contains a lot worthy of discussion.

I’m a big fan of the series (as is my good friend SQ), and we’ve been eagerly anticipating this release for, like, years.

And I can’t read it, because it was written by a dude.

*headdesk*

This is a self-imposed limitation, and really, if I were to read it, none of you blog-reading types would ever know if I didn’t tell you. But it would certainly be intellectually dishonest.

More to the point, if I may confess something, I’m finding reading only books written by women strangely restful. Sure they have their problems with racism and sexism and homophobia and all that jazz, but for the most part I haven’t been rolling my eyes at cardboard woman characters and appallingly blatant misogyny. In fact, Martin’s books are compelling reasons to keep doing what I’m doing.

SPOILER WARNING: Plot, A Game of Thrones

For example, when I read the scene where Dany is raped (let’s call a spade a spade, yes?) by her new husband, Kal Drogo, I thought to myself “this is what one man thinks a woman losing her virginity would feel like.” I didn’t think it rang true at all, and it made me very conscious of an alien, almost voyeuristic stance on the author’s part. Most of the rest of the book and series aren’t like this at all, to be fair, and there’s of course much to unpack and discuss about the role of women and sexuality in fantasy. But it’s been a long time since I read a scene in a woman-authored book that felt that way.

So I’ll keep to my project, and next year I’ll reread all of A Song of Ice and Fire. And I’ll blog about it then.

My mother left In the Woods at my house the last time she visited, and this time I packed it in my suitcase, thinking I would return it to her–and perhaps read it, why not? OMG peoples, I am positively ASHAMED that it took me this long to read it. (Here I must note that this is not Mom’s fault. She TOLD me I would like it.) As it is, I devoured it in a day, then talked said mother into buying The Likeness at Costco yesterday. My only regret is that I didn’t get French’s third book, Faithful Place, as well.

So after all this hype, what are the books about? Simply put, they’re about members of Dublin’s “Murder Squad” (a creation of French’s), and each novel addresses a particularly fraught murder case. So yes, they’re mysteries, but they’re not really whodunnits–more along the lines of why-and-how-and-can-we-prove-it-dunnits. The writing is superb, the characters are finely-drawn, and, well, Ireland. I think USians are particularly susceptible to its charms, and I’m no exceptions.

Just go read ‘em, okay?

Excellence of Writing: 10/10 As mentioned above. Very literary for murder mysteries, and I didn’t mind it a bit for once.

Feminist Cred: 5/10 French isn’t overtly concerned with advancing or detracting feminism; all her characters read like real people, women and men alike, and that’s more than many others in the genre.

How Much Do I Recommend It?: 10/10 Can I give an eleven? Let’s put it this way: these are the kind of books that you read in a day, resenting having to turn off the light at night.

Rather than a coherent narrative, I’m Sorry You Feel That Way is a series of essays in roughly chronological order. I personally prefer this arrangement, especially when there’s not a particular event or arc for the memoir to be built around. In Johnson’s case, she doesn’t bother messing around with childhood nostalgia or listing her mistakes. She prefers (evidently) to examine each relationship or situation on its own. And this woman–who is, in the words of the subtitle, “a daughter, sister, slut, wife, mother, and friend to man and dog”–has a lot of stories to tell.

What I most enjoyed overall was Johnson’s acknowledgment of the tension between fully embracing oneself and having meaningful relationships with others. She writes of her attempts to get her son (“the Boy”) to stop calling a girl in his yearbook “a slut”–does she reveal things about her own past? Will it shame him or annoy him or both? And should she need to tell him, anyway? As a feminist (or, I’d imagine, person of color or non-Christian religious person or gay person or so forth), you learn to pick your battles: which principles are flexible, which are worth ruining the afternoon over. Johnson portrays her own inner struggles deftly and with great humor.

Excellence of Writing: 9/10 Johnson teaches creative writing for a living but still appreciates a good f-bomb.

Feminist Cred: 8/10 Johnson makes no secret of her feminism, but she doesn’t make it the focal point of her writing.

How Much Do I Recommend It?: 8/10 Great for fans of the thoughtful memoir; bad for those who like a strong narrative arc.

One of the characters, Miss Williams, is described as follows: “From her spinster’s, governess’ life, there rose up a blast of fierce feminism. Nobody hearing her speak could doubt that, to Miss Williams, Men were the Enemy!” (117)

What surprises me here is not the stereotype of feminist as manhater, but its showing up in a book written in 1941. I’d always been of the impression that that characterization developed in the 70s in reaction to the second wave. Guess not!

In honor of the birth of our country, I’ll be reading The Hemingses of Monticello on the plane. What will you be reading?

By far the highlight of the month, at least in my opinion, was my discussion of bell hooks with Ily–if you didn’t read it then, read it now! (Part One and Part 2.)

I’m not going to post the usual list of upcoming reading for July, because I want to do it a little differently. This time I ask: what do YOU want me to read?