January books

[slemslempike]

Somewhat late this month, but still.

The Good Terrorist - Doris Lessing
Strong Poison - Dorothy L Sayers
The Boys Next Door - Mary Hooper
Stagestruck! - Adele Geras
April Lady - Georgette Heyer
Pirates at Play - Violet Trefusis


Pirates at Play and The Good Terrorist were both very good indeed. Stagestruck! was appalling. I liked April Lady, with a slightly different plot than I was expecting, and obviously Strong Poison was wonderful. That's really all I have to say, largely because this month I forgot to keep a record and am piecing it together quite badly.

Yesterday I went to Borders and took advantage of their £5 of £20 offer. I had one transaction for work, with the Ethics collection of Foucault's interviews and short pieces, and Female Chauvinist Pigs. Then for me I bought Hard Work by Polly Toynbee (the account of her time living in a council estate on the minimum wage), Alan Hollinghurts's The Spell and a children's book, Exchange by Paul Magrs, which is apparently about a "great big book exchange". I also bought two magazines. I got Red Pepper, which I am really liking and considering subscriing to. The other magazine was an issue of something called what is enlightenment? which I got for work because it was a special thing called "Woman: A cultural Philosophical and Spirital Exploration" and has bits about contemporary feminism. It's a bit batshit. There is a rather strange rehashing of the whole girls gone wild phenomenon and lots of very odd articles.

I booked myself a ticket for the RSC's Taming of the Shrew in May. I was only checking to see what the prices were like and suddenly there I was, entering my credit card details.

Comments

[pescana.livejournal.com]

I'd love to hear what you think of Female Chauvinist Pigs. I read it a while back. From what I remember, it's very American-focused (it's been a long while so I could be wrong), so how does that work with your research?

I did the same thing buying a ticket for when Joe Jackson comes to town in May. It just happened, before I knew what I was doing I had the confirmation email.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I read FCP a while ago, but thought I'd probably need to look at it a lot more for my research. I thought it was interesting - it's a really difficult line to walk between coming off as very prudish and saying that so-called sexual liberation isn't as free as people think for women, and there are still problems.

The vast majority of the new feminisms books seem to be American, which is still useful, but makes it more tricky! I think especially with the internet, there's an argument to be made that they are still relevant to British research on feminisms.

I don't think we can be held accountable for things we find ourselves clicking.