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evelyn_bWhat I've Finished Reading
Aphra Behn: The English Sappho by George Woodcock, another biography by a guy who isn't going to bother trying to hide his crush on his subject. Why should he? Aphra Behn is great. It's a lot of fun just to get a guided tour through the (to me) very weird world of late 17th century England, and to feel as if I can almost, sort of, barely tell the difference between the shoddy literary hackwork of the day and the genuine breath-of-fresh-air wit. Woodcock's a little too easily impressed at times, and too ready to jump to conclusions about which rumors would or wouldn't be in character for Behn, from whom we have acres of mostly fictional words, but hardly anything near a complete record. Sometimes it's clearly just his crush talking. He's also needlessly impressed by paradoxes that aren't really - for example, he expects his readers to be unable to reconcile Behn's commonsense feminism with her support of an absolute monarchy, and I can't see why he would.
First Book in Physiology and Hygiene is a 1908 elementary textbook about - well, just what it says. I fully expected the sermons on the evils of tobacco and alcohol, but the dire warning against corn syrup took me by surprise. I knew there was an anti-corn-syrup campaign, but I didn't expect it to have begun until sometime around 1965.
I'd like to say something about What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, a much newer book, but it'll have to wait until next week (or whenever I get around to catching up.
What I'm Reading Now
I'm really enjoying Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore. I've been seeing it around for years and finally bought it at the library book sale, thinking it would be a good companion read for Norman Mailer's The Gospel According to the Son. After two thousand-odd years as a corpse, Biff is unceremoniously resurrected by a dunderheaded angel and bundled off to a Ramada Inn to write a new gospel. It's earthy but not actually impious, if you care about the distinction. Some of the jokes haven't aged well at all and some of them are ageless, and then there's a lot in between that are half and half. Biff's a good buddy for all his teasing, and Josh is a touching and frustrating future messiah - a new Easter classic, only about a week too late.
What I Plan to Read Next
Other books I bought at the library sale: a beautiful first edition of Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes by Stephen Jay Gould, a three-novel Sue Grafton omnibus feat. menaces D through F, a Maigret novella, and a gigantic picture book about Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald called The Romantic Egoists, which I shouldn't have bought at all except that I'm an unbelievably easy sucker for facsimiles of postcards with people's handwriting all over them. And the next batch of 99 Novels, which I haven't even started yet. (I was crushed to find that Goldfinger is missing, presumed lost, so my discovery of Ian Fleming will have to be delayed).
Aphra Behn: The English Sappho by George Woodcock, another biography by a guy who isn't going to bother trying to hide his crush on his subject. Why should he? Aphra Behn is great. It's a lot of fun just to get a guided tour through the (to me) very weird world of late 17th century England, and to feel as if I can almost, sort of, barely tell the difference between the shoddy literary hackwork of the day and the genuine breath-of-fresh-air wit. Woodcock's a little too easily impressed at times, and too ready to jump to conclusions about which rumors would or wouldn't be in character for Behn, from whom we have acres of mostly fictional words, but hardly anything near a complete record. Sometimes it's clearly just his crush talking. He's also needlessly impressed by paradoxes that aren't really - for example, he expects his readers to be unable to reconcile Behn's commonsense feminism with her support of an absolute monarchy, and I can't see why he would.
First Book in Physiology and Hygiene is a 1908 elementary textbook about - well, just what it says. I fully expected the sermons on the evils of tobacco and alcohol, but the dire warning against corn syrup took me by surprise. I knew there was an anti-corn-syrup campaign, but I didn't expect it to have begun until sometime around 1965.
I'd like to say something about What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, a much newer book, but it'll have to wait until next week (or whenever I get around to catching up.
What I'm Reading Now
I'm really enjoying Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore. I've been seeing it around for years and finally bought it at the library book sale, thinking it would be a good companion read for Norman Mailer's The Gospel According to the Son. After two thousand-odd years as a corpse, Biff is unceremoniously resurrected by a dunderheaded angel and bundled off to a Ramada Inn to write a new gospel. It's earthy but not actually impious, if you care about the distinction. Some of the jokes haven't aged well at all and some of them are ageless, and then there's a lot in between that are half and half. Biff's a good buddy for all his teasing, and Josh is a touching and frustrating future messiah - a new Easter classic, only about a week too late.
What I Plan to Read Next
Other books I bought at the library sale: a beautiful first edition of Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes by Stephen Jay Gould, a three-novel Sue Grafton omnibus feat. menaces D through F, a Maigret novella, and a gigantic picture book about Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald called The Romantic Egoists, which I shouldn't have bought at all except that I'm an unbelievably easy sucker for facsimiles of postcards with people's handwriting all over them. And the next batch of 99 Novels, which I haven't even started yet. (I was crushed to find that Goldfinger is missing, presumed lost, so my discovery of Ian Fleming will have to be delayed).
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Date: 2018-04-11 08:59 pm (UTC)As someone who's only recently finished reading The TIme Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain we may share our secret 17th C time travellers' handshake at this point. ;-)
a three-novel Sue Grafton omnibus feat. menaces D through F
lol.
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Date: 2018-04-12 01:12 am (UTC)The library also has an audiobook version of The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England. Hmmm. I'll have to think about whether these would be a useful sort of book to audiobook.
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Date: 2018-04-12 08:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-12 01:09 pm (UTC)I think I ought to give it a try, for science. If I decide I'd really rather read it in print format I can always switch over.
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Date: 2018-04-12 04:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-12 01:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-12 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-12 01:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-12 01:55 pm (UTC)