February books
Mar. 3rd, 2009 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slemslempikeA Good School - Richard Yates
Sit-down Comedy: Stand-ups Swap the Stage for the Page - Malcolm Hardee and John Fleming
Rearview Mirror - Caroline B Cooney
Sand Trap - Caroline B Cooney
Size Fourteen is Not Fat Either - Meg Cabot
I bought A Good School because I'd got a voucher for money off at Borders and had realised that one of the only two books I'd packed for Scandinavia (I am trying to travel with little to no pleasureable reading material in order to force myself to work - mostly what happens is that I panic-buy more books than I otherwise would, which goes against my attempt to read what I've already got instead of acquiring ever more volumes) was something I had already read. And this said it was about a boys' boarding school with posh traditions. I thought that there would be a great deal more sex than there was, and it was upsettingly un-boysown. It was like they didn't care about the Honour of the School! Basically, in the future I am going to stick to girls and Britain. These are the ingredients for my happiness when it comes to school stories. (OOH, and I saw that Keira Knightley is reported to be starring in Never Let Me Go, which I have never read, but seems to involve a school of some description. I'm sure that the film will absolutely butcher the deathless prose etc, etc, but I LOVE HER, and so my plan is not to read the book until after the film so that hers will always be the definitive portrayal for me. Yay.)
Sit-down Comedy is a collection of short stories by various stand-ups, including Tim Vine, Stewart Lee and Ed Byrne. I sort of thought that it was going to be more longer narrative forms of their act (so I have no idea what form I thought Tim Vine's would take), but it was weird, good stories about comedy and comedians instead. (Except Ed Byrne, whose story was pretty much like his stand-up is). I don't remember who wrote the one about the traditional comedian living with his mum was, but that was brilliant.
Caroline B Cooney is my favourite YA novelist, so over the past year or so I've been tracking down all her books that aren't Point Horror, part of a syndicated series like Cheerleaders, or some sort of romance fiction version of Choose Your Own Adventure. Anyway, I have pretty much everything from before the books went a bit patchy in the early 1990s. Rearview Mirror and Sand Trap were the last ones I got to read before I didn't have anything new-to-me left. And now I am sad, but thinking of mopping up that sadness by buying all the Cheerleaders series, even the ones she didn't write.
Anyway, I thought that these were going to be teen books along the lines of Emergency Room or Flight 116 is Down, with suspense, trauma, and eventual heterosexual relationship all safely contained within the confines of writing for children. They are not. They are, as far as I can tell, adult books. Though her writing style is pretty much the same as in her teen books, the stories are more graphic, so that within the first chapter or so of Rearview Mirror, there is a dead baby in a binbag floating down the river, then impaled on a fishing hook to get dragged out. Pretty soon after that, there are graphic threats of rape. They are still good, just not as pleasantly escapist as I was imagining.
However, although the heroines of both books are beaten up pretty badly by the baddies, and are in danger of being raped and killed, they are still cool. They don't just panic all over the place and scream, they plot, and when those plots go wrong, they bide their time and plot again. In Rearview Mirror, the protagonist bargains with her kidnapper that if he takes her to a motel, she will have sex with him, planning to enlist the motelkeeper in helping her get away. Unfortunately, the kidnapper takes her to a deserted motel in the middle of a forest, and when she grabs the gun and shoots him, it's out of bullets. So she beats him to death with a chair. Janney, in Sand Trap, has more outside help from various men, but still mostly saves herself. She is trapped in a bunker on a golf course with her partially-paralysed stepson, with the killer, and being shot at by frankly imbecilic police officers, and she pretends to be kissing the killer's feet to plead for her life, but actually she's tying his shoelaces together, so that when she stands up again and smashes her head into his chin to knock him over and grab the gun, he can't chase after them.
Size Fourteen is Not Fat Either was roughly as rubbish as I'd thought it was going to be. I got it from the bookswap because I'd read Size Twelve is Not Fat a while ago, and thought if it was going free I might as well see what happened next. EXACTLY THE SAME AS BEFORE, is what happens next. I hate Heather Wells. I hope the next time a serial killer pops up in her stupid dorm, it gets her first, and they she won't have to prat around the place not being listened to by the police, having misunderstandings with her love interest and being told that she would look like that singer Heather Wells if she weren't so fat. OH. And I hate the whole way she deals with fatness. It's like Meg Cabot has never been larger than a size two (I have no idea if this is the case or not), and imagines that none of her readers can possibly be larger than maybe a SIX, if they're still reading the original Sweet Valley, so she throws in all these references to eating, and clothes being too tight, in order to remind us that OMG SHE'S FAT, YOU GUYS! It's weird, right, because you think she's NORMAL, because she's JUST LIKE US, having crushes on cute boys, and being a total ditz, but ACTUALLY SHE'S FAT. Huh. It's almost like it's not the shameful, disabling tool we all thought. Also, where is she going to go next? Is Size Sixteen still Not Fat? Will Size Eighteen be Pushing It A Bit, Actually? Surely no-one could claim that Size Twenty is anything other than Disgustingly Obese? This is the problem with pretending that there is an actual thing of "fat" that just needs to be redefined rather than refusing to engage with the whole body-shaming discourse.
Sit-down Comedy: Stand-ups Swap the Stage for the Page - Malcolm Hardee and John Fleming
Rearview Mirror - Caroline B Cooney
Sand Trap - Caroline B Cooney
Size Fourteen is Not Fat Either - Meg Cabot
I bought A Good School because I'd got a voucher for money off at Borders and had realised that one of the only two books I'd packed for Scandinavia (I am trying to travel with little to no pleasureable reading material in order to force myself to work - mostly what happens is that I panic-buy more books than I otherwise would, which goes against my attempt to read what I've already got instead of acquiring ever more volumes) was something I had already read. And this said it was about a boys' boarding school with posh traditions. I thought that there would be a great deal more sex than there was, and it was upsettingly un-boysown. It was like they didn't care about the Honour of the School! Basically, in the future I am going to stick to girls and Britain. These are the ingredients for my happiness when it comes to school stories. (OOH, and I saw that Keira Knightley is reported to be starring in Never Let Me Go, which I have never read, but seems to involve a school of some description. I'm sure that the film will absolutely butcher the deathless prose etc, etc, but I LOVE HER, and so my plan is not to read the book until after the film so that hers will always be the definitive portrayal for me. Yay.)
Sit-down Comedy is a collection of short stories by various stand-ups, including Tim Vine, Stewart Lee and Ed Byrne. I sort of thought that it was going to be more longer narrative forms of their act (so I have no idea what form I thought Tim Vine's would take), but it was weird, good stories about comedy and comedians instead. (Except Ed Byrne, whose story was pretty much like his stand-up is). I don't remember who wrote the one about the traditional comedian living with his mum was, but that was brilliant.
Caroline B Cooney is my favourite YA novelist, so over the past year or so I've been tracking down all her books that aren't Point Horror, part of a syndicated series like Cheerleaders, or some sort of romance fiction version of Choose Your Own Adventure. Anyway, I have pretty much everything from before the books went a bit patchy in the early 1990s. Rearview Mirror and Sand Trap were the last ones I got to read before I didn't have anything new-to-me left. And now I am sad, but thinking of mopping up that sadness by buying all the Cheerleaders series, even the ones she didn't write.
Anyway, I thought that these were going to be teen books along the lines of Emergency Room or Flight 116 is Down, with suspense, trauma, and eventual heterosexual relationship all safely contained within the confines of writing for children. They are not. They are, as far as I can tell, adult books. Though her writing style is pretty much the same as in her teen books, the stories are more graphic, so that within the first chapter or so of Rearview Mirror, there is a dead baby in a binbag floating down the river, then impaled on a fishing hook to get dragged out. Pretty soon after that, there are graphic threats of rape. They are still good, just not as pleasantly escapist as I was imagining.
However, although the heroines of both books are beaten up pretty badly by the baddies, and are in danger of being raped and killed, they are still cool. They don't just panic all over the place and scream, they plot, and when those plots go wrong, they bide their time and plot again. In Rearview Mirror, the protagonist bargains with her kidnapper that if he takes her to a motel, she will have sex with him, planning to enlist the motelkeeper in helping her get away. Unfortunately, the kidnapper takes her to a deserted motel in the middle of a forest, and when she grabs the gun and shoots him, it's out of bullets. So she beats him to death with a chair. Janney, in Sand Trap, has more outside help from various men, but still mostly saves herself. She is trapped in a bunker on a golf course with her partially-paralysed stepson, with the killer, and being shot at by frankly imbecilic police officers, and she pretends to be kissing the killer's feet to plead for her life, but actually she's tying his shoelaces together, so that when she stands up again and smashes her head into his chin to knock him over and grab the gun, he can't chase after them.
Size Fourteen is Not Fat Either was roughly as rubbish as I'd thought it was going to be. I got it from the bookswap because I'd read Size Twelve is Not Fat a while ago, and thought if it was going free I might as well see what happened next. EXACTLY THE SAME AS BEFORE, is what happens next. I hate Heather Wells. I hope the next time a serial killer pops up in her stupid dorm, it gets her first, and they she won't have to prat around the place not being listened to by the police, having misunderstandings with her love interest and being told that she would look like that singer Heather Wells if she weren't so fat. OH. And I hate the whole way she deals with fatness. It's like Meg Cabot has never been larger than a size two (I have no idea if this is the case or not), and imagines that none of her readers can possibly be larger than maybe a SIX, if they're still reading the original Sweet Valley, so she throws in all these references to eating, and clothes being too tight, in order to remind us that OMG SHE'S FAT, YOU GUYS! It's weird, right, because you think she's NORMAL, because she's JUST LIKE US, having crushes on cute boys, and being a total ditz, but ACTUALLY SHE'S FAT. Huh. It's almost like it's not the shameful, disabling tool we all thought. Also, where is she going to go next? Is Size Sixteen still Not Fat? Will Size Eighteen be Pushing It A Bit, Actually? Surely no-one could claim that Size Twenty is anything other than Disgustingly Obese? This is the problem with pretending that there is an actual thing of "fat" that just needs to be redefined rather than refusing to engage with the whole body-shaming discourse.
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Re: Fat
Date: 2009-03-03 06:09 pm (UTC)Re: Fat
Date: 2009-03-03 07:10 pm (UTC)ETA
Erm, sheepishly edited to add that whilst I can critique this in books and don't actually NOTICE the weight of people I meet, I am Just As Bad personally as all these women. Worse, in fact, because I *know* I'm being an idiot and yet still go on being the same old idiot.
Re: Fat
Date: 2009-03-03 07:43 pm (UTC)