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alisarae's Reviews (1.65k)
#AlisaReadsTheWorld: Iceland
I was so excited to finally read a book from Iceland. What with Jolabokaflod, the country with the most books published per capita, QR codes on park benches so you can listen to audiobooks, and where 1 in 10 people will become published authors... I was dying to see what that literary atmosphere would produce.
Sooo, what I thought this book was about: a quirky comedy about a young woman who wants to be a writer and bucks stereotypes and expectations by her non-traditional presentation at a beauty contest (read: Dumplin' but in Iceland).
What this book is actually about: in the 1960s a young woman who wants to be a writer and her gay best friend try to carve out the best life they can, given the conservative patriarchy of the times.
I have to say that the cover through me off. Some of the other editions have covers that give a better sense of the mood of the story—a bit melancholy, a lot is left unsaid. The writing is deceptively simple and I took the mechanics of the story for granted. But after I finished, I deeply appreciated the contrasts of the characters' decisions that were at play.
For example, Hekla and her girl friend both write and keep their writing a secret from their male partners. The friend ultimately gives up writing and decides to find fulfillment in her traditional family structure; Hekla eschews a traditional marriage in favor of writing yet ultimately still sacrifices her work to the demands of patriarchy.
And pay attention to the results of women's desire: Hekla's mom's wishes for her children, Hekla's boyfriend's mom literally can't finish a sentence without her son completing it for her, how the women at the hotel restaurant voice their complaints, Hekla's husband's response to her writing, etc.
Nature, as you might imagine when you think about Iceland, is an important part of the novel: new islands being birthed, volcano eruptions and smoke, farming, the rain and snow and ice. And it cracked me up when Jon John tells Hekla, "In Denmark it gets dark at night in the summer!"
It paired very well with [b:The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; Dependency|53317528|The Copenhagen Trilogy Childhood; Youth; Dependency|Tove Ditlevsen|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1593377780l/53317528._SY75_.jpg|62438608] which I also finished this month. They have similar themes: women in post-war Nordic countries struggling to make a career out of writing in spite of the constant "women aren't authors" rhetoric. Miss Iceland even gives a nod to the book.
I'd recommend this book, but be aware that it's a translation and has some rough edges.
Food pairing: Haddock and potato chowder with a thick slice of rye and butter.
I was so excited to finally read a book from Iceland. What with Jolabokaflod, the country with the most books published per capita, QR codes on park benches so you can listen to audiobooks, and where 1 in 10 people will become published authors... I was dying to see what that literary atmosphere would produce.
Sooo, what I thought this book was about: a quirky comedy about a young woman who wants to be a writer and bucks stereotypes and expectations by her non-traditional presentation at a beauty contest (read: Dumplin' but in Iceland).
What this book is actually about: in the 1960s a young woman who wants to be a writer and her gay best friend try to carve out the best life they can, given the conservative patriarchy of the times.
I have to say that the cover through me off. Some of the other editions have covers that give a better sense of the mood of the story—a bit melancholy, a lot is left unsaid. The writing is deceptively simple and I took the mechanics of the story for granted. But after I finished, I deeply appreciated the contrasts of the characters' decisions that were at play.
Spoiler
For example, Hekla and her girl friend both write and keep their writing a secret from their male partners. The friend ultimately gives up writing and decides to find fulfillment in her traditional family structure; Hekla eschews a traditional marriage in favor of writing yet ultimately still sacrifices her work to the demands of patriarchy.
And pay attention to the results of women's desire: Hekla's mom's wishes for her children, Hekla's boyfriend's mom literally can't finish a sentence without her son completing it for her, how the women at the hotel restaurant voice their complaints, Hekla's husband's response to her writing, etc.
Nature, as you might imagine when you think about Iceland, is an important part of the novel: new islands being birthed, volcano eruptions and smoke, farming, the rain and snow and ice. And it cracked me up when Jon John tells Hekla, "In Denmark it gets dark at night in the summer!"
It paired very well with [b:The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; Dependency|53317528|The Copenhagen Trilogy Childhood; Youth; Dependency|Tove Ditlevsen|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1593377780l/53317528._SY75_.jpg|62438608] which I also finished this month. They have similar themes: women in post-war Nordic countries struggling to make a career out of writing in spite of the constant "women aren't authors" rhetoric. Miss Iceland even gives a nod to the book.
I'd recommend this book, but be aware that it's a translation and has some rough edges.
Food pairing: Haddock and potato chowder with a thick slice of rye and butter.
#SundayPoetry
I really love poetry that is based on history. The title poem for this collection is about the Native Guard, the black troops sworn into the Union army during the Civil War. The collection is also about Trethewey's complex personal roots in the South.
I really love poetry that is based on history. The title poem for this collection is about the Native Guard, the black troops sworn into the Union army during the Civil War. The collection is also about Trethewey's complex personal roots in the South.
Sometimes You Have to Lie: The Life and Times of Louise Fitzhugh, Renegade Author of Harriet the Spy
When I was 12 years old, I read Harriet the Spy at least a dozen times. I finished it for the first time and immediately turned back to chapter 1 to read it again. I don't think that it was particularly enchanting or exciting compared to other books I enjoyed reading at the time. I believe its subversion attracted me more than anything else.
I wanted to read this biography of Harriet's creator, Louise Fitzhugh, because I had heard about the lesbian subtext in Harriet and wanted to learn more about who this woman was in life. I learned that she was outspoken, unapologetic, quarrelsome, and yes, openly queer even in high school--a big thing for a Memphis society girl in the 40s.
She had a pampered life, tempered by tense family relationships, and lived off an allowance from her father until she was able to fully support herself in her 30s. She moved to New York in her 20s and immediately fell in with the lesbian artist set. Concerned with civil rights, gender equality, and economic disparity, she frequently wove these themes into her work. She considered herself to be a painter first and a writer second, even after she found success in publishing--books were meant to supplement her income so she could paint.
I must say though, she did catch several lucky breaks in publishing. The first was with the immediate sale and success of a satirical children's book, Suzuki Beane, that a friend wrote and she illustrated. This success led to her second piece a luck: a meeting with Ursula Nordstrom, the influential editor of E.B. White, Shel Silverstein, and Laura Ingalls Wilder, among others.
Nordstrom met with Fitzhugh before she even had a draft or outline of Harriet the Spy, and coaxed and coached the story to its final form. Fitzhugh, for her part, was uncharacteristically pliable and open to edits, a posture she refused to take again with subsequent works. The book was an immediate success and got a lot of buzz for its realistic portrayal of children without pushing a big moral lesson.
Her lucky streak continued when a trifecta of events all hit at the same time: in response to the unprecidented number of baby boomer kids entering the public education system, congress freed up funding for tons of new schools and libraries to be built. Nordstrom pounced on this windfall by convincing her publisher to start printing trade paperback editions; prior to this, paperbacks were only for comic books and pulpy genre novels. Libraries, schools, and readers snapped up the more affordable edition of Harriet by the thousands.
Fitzhugh's life was plagued by rocky relationship drama. She always prioritized her work above all else, she was uncompromising and brutally honest with others... ironic that Harriet learns how to successfully navigate relationships with "a little lie" in a way that Fitzhugh never did. This fierce bristling to any sort of perceived slight or criticism made her a nightmare to work with, and she cut off relations with Nordstrom in spite of Nordstrom's tireless efforts to get material, any sort of material, out of Fitzhugh to be published. She cycled through various lovers and other personal relationships until her sudden death at the age of 46.
I liked how this book filled out the scenery of NYC in the 50s and 60s--what people were reading, wearing, and drinking; gossip and politics. It is a fair look at Fitzhugh's life. She was a bold personality, but I guess it's easy to be brash when you are wealthy enough to afford to.
I wanted to read this biography of Harriet's creator, Louise Fitzhugh, because I had heard about the lesbian subtext in Harriet and wanted to learn more about who this woman was in life. I learned that she was outspoken, unapologetic, quarrelsome, and yes, openly queer even in high school--a big thing for a Memphis society girl in the 40s.
She had a pampered life, tempered by tense family relationships, and lived off an allowance from her father until she was able to fully support herself in her 30s. She moved to New York in her 20s and immediately fell in with the lesbian artist set. Concerned with civil rights, gender equality, and economic disparity, she frequently wove these themes into her work. She considered herself to be a painter first and a writer second, even after she found success in publishing--books were meant to supplement her income so she could paint.
I must say though, she did catch several lucky breaks in publishing. The first was with the immediate sale and success of a satirical children's book, Suzuki Beane, that a friend wrote and she illustrated. This success led to her second piece a luck: a meeting with Ursula Nordstrom, the influential editor of E.B. White, Shel Silverstein, and Laura Ingalls Wilder, among others.
Nordstrom met with Fitzhugh before she even had a draft or outline of Harriet the Spy, and coaxed and coached the story to its final form. Fitzhugh, for her part, was uncharacteristically pliable and open to edits, a posture she refused to take again with subsequent works. The book was an immediate success and got a lot of buzz for its realistic portrayal of children without pushing a big moral lesson.
Her lucky streak continued when a trifecta of events all hit at the same time: in response to the unprecidented number of baby boomer kids entering the public education system, congress freed up funding for tons of new schools and libraries to be built. Nordstrom pounced on this windfall by convincing her publisher to start printing trade paperback editions; prior to this, paperbacks were only for comic books and pulpy genre novels. Libraries, schools, and readers snapped up the more affordable edition of Harriet by the thousands.
Fitzhugh's life was plagued by rocky relationship drama. She always prioritized her work above all else, she was uncompromising and brutally honest with others... ironic that Harriet learns how to successfully navigate relationships with "a little lie" in a way that Fitzhugh never did. This fierce bristling to any sort of perceived slight or criticism made her a nightmare to work with, and she cut off relations with Nordstrom in spite of Nordstrom's tireless efforts to get material, any sort of material, out of Fitzhugh to be published. She cycled through various lovers and other personal relationships until her sudden death at the age of 46.
I liked how this book filled out the scenery of NYC in the 50s and 60s--what people were reading, wearing, and drinking; gossip and politics. It is a fair look at Fitzhugh's life. She was a bold personality, but I guess it's easy to be brash when you are wealthy enough to afford to.
I was absolutely captivated by this book. It's the best I've read in years. The storytelling and language work in tandem to make even the most mundane incidents fascinating. If you have heard me talk about [b:The Goldfinch|17333223|The Goldfinch|Donna Tartt|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1378710146l/17333223._SY75_.jpg|24065147], you know I both loved it and love complaining about it, but The Secret History is pure love. I stayed up well into the night multiple times while reading—especially as the characters began spiraling toward mental breakdowns under the stress of all they had done.
A couple notes, iykyk:
- My girl Judy is the best person in the book. Let us praise how her no-nonsense attitude gets stuff done, she has a good head on her shoulders, and she always has the low-down on key bits of gossip. Richard thinks she is vapid and superficial, but she saves him so many times.
- I did NOT like the epilogue. Why is that even there ruining the story like that?? I think Tartt couldn't let go of the characters and was dying to tell us all about her character notes for them. Big TMI energy here.
- Can we have more backstory psychoanalyzing Charles, please? Like who the heck cares that he ends up living in Texas, what we really want to know is what led him to that enmeshment with Camilla. Of all the characters, we learn the least about him and his personality is mostly: alcoholic. It occurred to me that their relationship serves as merely a plot device to make the story mimic a Greek epic, but still.
- Is the big beast that appears in the road the thing that really killed the farmer? And the fallout afterwards is all for naught? There are so many unanswered little mysteries like this sprinkled throughout the book, I love it.
A couple notes, iykyk:
- My girl Judy is the best person in the book. Let us praise how her no-nonsense attitude gets stuff done, she has a good head on her shoulders, and she always has the low-down on key bits of gossip. Richard thinks she is vapid and superficial, but she saves him so many times.
- I did NOT like the epilogue. Why is that even there ruining the story like that?? I think Tartt couldn't let go of the characters and was dying to tell us all about her character notes for them. Big TMI energy here.
Spoiler
- Can we have more backstory psychoanalyzing Charles, please? Like who the heck cares that he ends up living in Texas, what we really want to know is what led him to that enmeshment with Camilla. Of all the characters, we learn the least about him and his personality is mostly: alcoholic. It occurred to me that their relationship serves as merely a plot device to make the story mimic a Greek epic, but still.
- Is the big beast that appears in the road the thing that really killed the farmer? And the fallout afterwards is all for naught? There are so many unanswered little mysteries like this sprinkled throughout the book, I love it.
This collection of poetry is very today, speaking specifically to the Black Lives Matter conversations of 2020 (and ongoing). Heavy handed but good. I liked three specific moments:
1) When McGowan describes the exhaustion of having to teach another white person, again, basic conversations about being Black in the US, and how it usually ends up being a field trip for the white person but a daily struggle for McGowan.
2) A reflection on the term BIPOC as yet another tool for othering.
3) "Tolerate is not a word that describes friendship"
1) When McGowan describes the exhaustion of having to teach another white person, again, basic conversations about being Black in the US, and how it usually ends up being a field trip for the white person but a daily struggle for McGowan.
2) A reflection on the term BIPOC as yet another tool for othering.
3) "Tolerate is not a word that describes friendship"
Happy Easter!
This book is deceptively rich—much richer than it looks at first glance. It's a daily devotional, divided into weekly themes. Each week follows the spiritual journeys of one of the "companions" by giving a mini bio and a discussion of their personal discoveries and teachings: Thomas Traherne, Bede, Aelred of Rievaulx, The Cloud of Unknowing, John and Charles Wesley, John Donne, and Julian of Norwich. At the end of each week is a list of actions to take to put some of that wisdom into practice. I regret not taking full advantage of that this Lenten season, but it inspired me to try to do some of those suggestions during other months this year (along with reading the books listed in the bibliography!).
One of the best things about having a spiritual practice is that the more you practice, the more it seems there is an eternity of discovery and re-discovery ahead of you. Have a good pilgrimage, friends.
This book is deceptively rich—much richer than it looks at first glance. It's a daily devotional, divided into weekly themes. Each week follows the spiritual journeys of one of the "companions" by giving a mini bio and a discussion of their personal discoveries and teachings: Thomas Traherne, Bede, Aelred of Rievaulx, The Cloud of Unknowing, John and Charles Wesley, John Donne, and Julian of Norwich. At the end of each week is a list of actions to take to put some of that wisdom into practice. I regret not taking full advantage of that this Lenten season, but it inspired me to try to do some of those suggestions during other months this year (along with reading the books listed in the bibliography!).
One of the best things about having a spiritual practice is that the more you practice, the more it seems there is an eternity of discovery and re-discovery ahead of you. Have a good pilgrimage, friends.
Not my usual cup of tea: I don't generally read novels by men, and I'm not big on satire or off-beat comedy books. They are hard to do well. This book was certainly not ha ha funny for me, though I could understand that some elements were meant to be funny. Also, the pacing was all over the place and the end was like "that escalated quickly." Good audio performance though.
This is a really fun book to listen to. I believe all poetry needs to be spoken, all the more so when so much care was taken with the translation.
I listened to the version translated from middle English by Simon Armitage, who explains in the introduction that when making the choice between a literal translation and a completely different word that rhymes or alliterates, he would choose a different word. So the nuts and bolts of the story are the same, but the details can be quite different. Personally, I'm glad this version exists because it really adds to the fun of the story.
That said, I noticed that Armitage was very careful with his word choice, as very few words in the poem were Latin-based (possible none). That was an extra delectable treat for me. Because I am an English teacher in Brazil, at times I get so irritated at the amount of people who claim to be advanced English speakers yet don't understand/recognize non-Latin-based words. It pisses me off because the source of this problem is laziness. Students don't read books (any books, even in Portuguese), they don't sit down and study, and then they whine and complain that "this is old fashioned no one talks like this". WRONG. Sorry about the rant, but I get seriously exhausted hearing only half the language all the time and arguing with students over whether or not a term is "used" and the frequency of its use and what generation of people say the word instead of them just accepting that English has roughly double the amount of available vocabulary as Portuguese. SO, going back to this translation.... Armitage renders the poem into completely modern and contemporary English (fight me on this one, just try) yet keeps it free of Latin seepage. Just listening to it put a smile on my face. I need more books like this in my life.
Besides that, there is a plot twist, sexy times, and blood and guts. What more do you want in a story?
PS the audiobook has both the modern and middle English versions if you get curious about cross-checking the translation, hehehe.
I listened to the version translated from middle English by Simon Armitage, who explains in the introduction that when making the choice between a literal translation and a completely different word that rhymes or alliterates, he would choose a different word. So the nuts and bolts of the story are the same, but the details can be quite different. Personally, I'm glad this version exists because it really adds to the fun of the story.
That said, I noticed that Armitage was very careful with his word choice, as very few words in the poem were Latin-based (possible none). That was an extra delectable treat for me. Because I am an English teacher in Brazil, at times I get so irritated at the amount of people who claim to be advanced English speakers yet don't understand/recognize non-Latin-based words. It pisses me off because the source of this problem is laziness. Students don't read books (any books, even in Portuguese), they don't sit down and study, and then they whine and complain that "this is old fashioned no one talks like this". WRONG. Sorry about the rant, but I get seriously exhausted hearing only half the language all the time and arguing with students over whether or not a term is "used" and the frequency of its use and what generation of people say the word instead of them just accepting that English has roughly double the amount of available vocabulary as Portuguese. SO, going back to this translation.... Armitage renders the poem into completely modern and contemporary English (fight me on this one, just try) yet keeps it free of Latin seepage. Just listening to it put a smile on my face. I need more books like this in my life.
Besides that, there is a plot twist, sexy times, and blood and guts. What more do you want in a story?
PS the audiobook has both the modern and middle English versions if you get curious about cross-checking the translation, hehehe.
This was the first time I've read Harriet as an adult. I loved it as a tween but not because it was such a well written book--I liked playing spy and town and writing, too. From experience, I can tell you that spying in a rural town is much harder than it appeared to be for Harriet. But anyways, it was good to see the story through adult eyes. Harriet's parents seem pretty normal instead of the idiots I used to think of them as. And none of the characters are role models, not even Ol Golly, which is hard for a kid to understand when we've been trained to look for role models in literature. I also liked a lot of the adult jokes that completely went over my head as a kid.
Finished this for #AxeTheStacks. Finally. Ha
Basically I didn't understand Lyra's motivation for her "main quest", so a significant part of the book seemed pointless to me. I thought Mary's time with the antelope elephants was neat. And the ending was sweet.
Basically I didn't understand Lyra's motivation for her "main quest", so a significant part of the book seemed pointless to me. I thought Mary's time with the antelope elephants was neat. And the ending was sweet.