![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slemslempikeMay
Nervous Conditions - Tsitsi Dangarembga
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
Alice on Her Way - Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
My Story - Emmeline Pankhurst
Arabella - Georgette Heyer
Notes from the Hard Shoulder - James May
I Think the Nurses are Stealing My Clothes - Linda Smith
Nervous Conditions is set in Zimbabwe, about a girl growing up in a traditional rural family, particularly her desire for education (which she gets when her brother dies), and how she has to negotiate not only her family politics, but her race and especially her gender when she moves to her uncle's house and then eventually to a convent school.
I have to confess I didn't get into The Master and Margarita at all until the second half. I rather love the story Margarita tells the boy "first she cried and then she was wicked". I am glad to have read it because I can see where other books I've read have drawn on it, but I didn't particularly enjoy reading it.
I really love the earlier Alice books, and I still like her now that she's growing up, but somehow they seem much more didactic. They were always issuesy, but funny too. I do like that they touch on difficult things like abuse within a lighter style than lots of books that are Entirely About Problems, but there is a strange thing where Alice is always the norm.
The Emmeline Pankhurst was written for an American audience, which was really useful for me because it meant she explained things about the England of the time more clearly, and didn't assume that you knew the intricacies of the political system, which I don't. I think from the introduction that this was put together by a friend of hers, from talking to Emmeline? If so, you can see why people responded to her so well. I really appreciated having the steps up to militancy explained to me, and the comparison with the treatment meted out to male movements at the time.
Arabella! Not quite as good as The Grand Sophy, but better than Friday's Child. She tries to get her husband to adopt a prostitute called Leaky Peg! I am now reading An Infamous Army, in which Charles is a little bit patronising but still quite good.
The last two were my birthday presents from my housemates who were fortunately able to combine my tastes and theirs to add to the literature in our house. Alice has cruelly dragged me into an interest in Top Gear, and James May is by far the best, and in fact only bearable, member of that programme. Admittedly he does not have terribly stiff competition, but he acquits himself readably even in the Torygraph. Linda Smith is of course wonderful. Little bit annoyed by the bits from her friends that kept mentioning "oh, she wasn't one of your typical female comedians - never heard about her menstrual cycle!!" as if that was the highest accolade. Most of the excerpts were very easy to hear her saying, and the earlier bits about the miners' strike was really interesting.
Nervous Conditions - Tsitsi Dangarembga
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
Alice on Her Way - Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
My Story - Emmeline Pankhurst
Arabella - Georgette Heyer
Notes from the Hard Shoulder - James May
I Think the Nurses are Stealing My Clothes - Linda Smith
Nervous Conditions is set in Zimbabwe, about a girl growing up in a traditional rural family, particularly her desire for education (which she gets when her brother dies), and how she has to negotiate not only her family politics, but her race and especially her gender when she moves to her uncle's house and then eventually to a convent school.
I have to confess I didn't get into The Master and Margarita at all until the second half. I rather love the story Margarita tells the boy "first she cried and then she was wicked". I am glad to have read it because I can see where other books I've read have drawn on it, but I didn't particularly enjoy reading it.
I really love the earlier Alice books, and I still like her now that she's growing up, but somehow they seem much more didactic. They were always issuesy, but funny too. I do like that they touch on difficult things like abuse within a lighter style than lots of books that are Entirely About Problems, but there is a strange thing where Alice is always the norm.
The Emmeline Pankhurst was written for an American audience, which was really useful for me because it meant she explained things about the England of the time more clearly, and didn't assume that you knew the intricacies of the political system, which I don't. I think from the introduction that this was put together by a friend of hers, from talking to Emmeline? If so, you can see why people responded to her so well. I really appreciated having the steps up to militancy explained to me, and the comparison with the treatment meted out to male movements at the time.
Arabella! Not quite as good as The Grand Sophy, but better than Friday's Child. She tries to get her husband to adopt a prostitute called Leaky Peg! I am now reading An Infamous Army, in which Charles is a little bit patronising but still quite good.
The last two were my birthday presents from my housemates who were fortunately able to combine my tastes and theirs to add to the literature in our house. Alice has cruelly dragged me into an interest in Top Gear, and James May is by far the best, and in fact only bearable, member of that programme. Admittedly he does not have terribly stiff competition, but he acquits himself readably even in the Torygraph. Linda Smith is of course wonderful. Little bit annoyed by the bits from her friends that kept mentioning "oh, she wasn't one of your typical female comedians - never heard about her menstrual cycle!!" as if that was the highest accolade. Most of the excerpts were very easy to hear her saying, and the earlier bits about the miners' strike was really interesting.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-06-02 12:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-04 09:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-10 02:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-10 09:57 am (UTC)