Category Archives: books

Thanks for the link, Scotty.
It seems most of my friends are now on the search for interesting active female characters.
The basic rules?
1. there will be 2 or more female characters, and they will talk to each other about something other than men.
2. they will kick arse.
The second is pretty ambitious, considering how difficult it is to fulfill that first rule (can’t remember where I read that one, either, sorry – props to whoever it was). But we are on the case.
Perhaps some of the scribblers out there could consider scribbling a female protagonist who meets these criteria… and a couple more?
3. her costume will cover her arse and her tits and her belly. It will not be skin-tight (but it will be well-made, well-cut and comfortably ‘cool’). She will not wear high heels.
4. she will kick arse.
I am currently reading a series of freakin’ awesome sf books by Karen Traviss (I’d link to them within the site but it’s got some nasty frame-type action happening). The protagonist is a woman. An angry woman. There are ongoing discussions about what it means to be ‘human’, a ‘person’, in a relationship (where matriarchal polyamoury is the norm), a parent, a soldier, an ‘environmentalist’, a woman or a man.
I try not to read these before bed because I end up staying up really late because I can’t put the damn things down.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read female characters who actually work for me – lots of female characters talking to each other about things other than men. Traviss’ Shan Frankland reminds me of Bet Yaeger from C J Cherryh’s Rimrunners.
…and while I love this stuff, why is it that the best female characters have to be miserable sods? Guess we’ve got Tanya Huff for happy female space soldiers who can still kick arse and the women Miles pines for in Lois McMaster Bujold‘s (fab) books.
–:Edit:– You can read a bit more about ‘the rules’ here

Tigtog’s writing about the following list of SF here. These are apparently the

“Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years” .

Because I’m feeling exceptionally lazy, here are her follow-up comments (which make the whole thing far more interesting), cut and pasted:

The Bechdel-Wallace test/rule (originally applied to films – the rule’s origins are noted here), asks does the book have:
1. At least two female characters, who
2. talk to each other, about
3. something besides a man?
If the book/film passes the BW test, it has at least a glimmering of women as fully realised characters beyond being mere love interests competing for male attention. It may not have much more than that, but at least it has that much.
The BW test means that a book doesn’t get a pass for having a single strong, fascinating, female character who is an exceptionalist token, displaying her considerable strengths only in discussions with men (e.g. Eowen from LOTR or Trillian from HHGTTG). It should be easy for SF&F generally to hurdle this low bar, as there’s important quests/missions and esoterica regarding magic/technology for people to talk about with each other in a natural fashion. But how well does the listed SF&F actually do?
The idea is to mark the books you’ve read in bold, which I’ll do. I’ll also note how they score on the BWT (from memory, so please correct me if I’ve forgotten a crucial conversation that would allow the book to hurdle the bar).

I’ve just cut and pasted tigtog’s list with comments re the BWT criteria below. If it’s bold, I’ve read it. If it’s got no comments, tigtog didn’t read it. Even though I read a LOT of SF, I haven’t read all that many on this list (though I suspect I have and have just forgotten them – my ps have a massive, comprehensive collection and I read my way through it when I was young. Oh, how I miss getting out of bed in the middle of the night with a torch to go find something new to read from the shelves). These days I don’t read many male authors and re-read a lot of my favourites.
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien Yes No No.
[I’m not a fan of Tolkein, because I DON’T like his gender politics. Lots of virgin/whore, evil/good dichotomy action.]
The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov Yes No No
Dune, Frank Herbert Yes Yes Yes
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein Yes, Yes, No
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin Yes Yes Yes
[I think it’s important to note that Tehanu, the final book in the Earthsea series, while not listed as ‘the most important’ of these books, is actually my favourite and deals in detail with the effects of violence on children and women. The whole Earthsea trilogy has lots to say about childhood and creativity and violence and abuse, but these things get neglected. Which is why people like to list the first book, and not the later ones, as the ‘most important’.]
Neuromancer, William Gibson
[Tigtog didn’t read it. I did. Sure, there are ladies in this book, they talk to each other, and about things other than blokes, but there are some problems with the definition of ‘women’ in this context. I’m thinking of the ‘female’ AIs specifically. I’m actually not going to allow Neuromancer as an ok-for-sisters book. I think it’s actually way up there on the misogyny list, and cyberpunk generally is very much an adolescent boys wanking over chicks who beat the shit out of them.]
Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke Yes, No, No
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick Yes, No, No
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley Yes, Yes, Yes
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury Yes, Yes, Yes
The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe Yes, No, No
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr. No No No
The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov Yes No No
Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
Cities in Flight, James Blish Yes, ?, ? (guessing no)
The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett Yes, Yes, Yes
Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison Yes, Yes, No
Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester Yes, Yes, No
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
Dragonflight, Anne McCaffreyYes, Yes, Yes
[I’m actually a bit sceptical of Ms McCaffrey’s work. Sure, the chicks are happily saving worlds with their dragony/spaceship/pilot mates, but they also like to rush into the kitchen to make their men dinner and spend FAR TOO MUCH of their time wishing they had a man. McCaffrey often sports some scary arse gender politics. I give her a thumbs down on the good-for-sisters scale.]
Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card Yes, No, No
The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson Yes, Yes?, Yes?
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman Yes, ?, ?
Gateway, Frederik Pohl
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling Yes, Yes, Yes
[This stuff sucks arse. Give me The Worst Witch any day.]
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams No, No, No.
[Hm, Trillian is a lady, and she’s in this one, right? Adams isn’t good on the gender politics, though.]
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin Yes, Yes, Yes
Little, Big, John Crowley
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick Yes, ?, ?
Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon Can’t remember
The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
On the Beach, Nevil Shute Yes, Yes, ?
Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke Yes, No, No
Ringworld, Larry Niven Yes, No, No.
[Woah – Niven has some SCARY ARSE gender shit going on.]
Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien Yes, No, No
Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson Yes, Yes, Yes
Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner Can’t remember
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein Yes, ?, No
Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks Gah! but Yes, Yes, Yes
Timescape, Gregory Benford Yes, ?, ?
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer Yes, ?, ?
I’m not actually digging this list (which came from the news blog via tikistitch), and is actually a list of (note the dates):

The Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years, 1953-2002

produced by the The Science Fiction Book Club, and apparently some sort of promotional thingy. So we should be a bit sceptical.
Authors I’d add (if I was ignoring the dates problem and the number limit):
H.G. Wells. Of course. But fails the lady-test.
Iain M. Banks (yes yes yes to the lady-test… though he does weird stuff with gender (ie many of his characters can and do change gender at will, especially in the Culture books) and robots and things – you’d have to have a think about the way ‘gender neutral’ is gendered by these blokes).
Madelaine L’Engle (yes yes yes to the lady-test), probably for A Wrinkle in Time
Lois McMaster Bujold (yes yes yes to the lady-test – plus she writes good bloke characters). For any of her Miles Vorkosigan books.
C.J.Cherryh (for Cyteen) (yes yes yes to the lady-test – plus she writes good bloke characters)
Diana Wynn Jones (yes yes yes to the lady-test – plus she writes good bloke characters)
Tanya Huff (yes yes yes to the lady-test – plus she writes good bloke characters)… in fact, there aren’t enough lady sci-fant authors on this list – and scifant has a MASSIVE lady fandom.
something from Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover stuff. Probably Thendara House or perhaps one of the earlier ones… (yes yes yes to the lady-test – plus she writes good bloke characters)
Octavier Butler! Holy shit, how can she not be on this list?!
James Tiptree Junior! Because she totally fooled the entire universe – they all thought she was a bloke FOREVER! (yes yes yes to the lady-test – plus she writes good bloke characters)
C.S.Lewis (because he was important and influential)
Alan Dean Foster (for the Flinx books) (yes yes yes to the lady-test – plus he writes good bloke and young bloke characters)
Sherri S. Tepper (yes yes yes for the lady-test)
Margaret Attwood (for influential, but not as a ‘stayer’ in the sf world).
Joanna Russ’s Female Man would be a better hardcore feminist option, I think.
Kim Stanley Robinson (for the Red/Blue/Green Mars stuff) (yes yes yes to the lady-test – plus he writes good bloke characters)
Joan D. Vinge (yes yes yes to the lady-test – plus she writes good bloke characters)
Vonda McIntyre! (yes yes yes to the lady-test)
R.A. McAvoy (yes yes yes to the lady-test) – another good scifant lady author.
ANDRE NORTON!
Susanna Clarke should be there for the Mr Strange/Dr Norrel stuff, but that’s post 2002.
Other authors: Jack Vance, Spider Robinson,
…in fact, I’m surprised the Hugos aren’t better represented.
I think I want to add more young adult sf, but will have to settle for Wynn Jones and L’Engle (John Marsden, for example, while I don’t particularly like him, has been important in the young adult world).
I’d drop Rowling (what the fuck? She’s had an impact, but that is some shithouse sf).
I also have some problems with who might have put this list together and what their criteria were. There are quite a few of those cross-over genre bender pink book authors who should be on this list, simply because they contributed to the whole genre bending thing – bringing new readers and writers to sf. There are a zillion women reading those things and they sell like hot cakes. But I bet they don’t get counted because there’s all that talk about clothes and kissing. Girl germs.
I still hold by the thought that the newer sf really can’t cut it when compared with some of the bigger guns of the olden days.
Frankly, if you want influential, you have to add L. Ron Hubbard.
NB the SF ladies are talking about this list here

I’ve been thinking about that Australia Day meme and how I couldn’t answer the questions properly. And especially, I’ve been thinking about why I don’t much like Tim Winton or those other difficult authors. I mean, the people who write miserable stories about nice things or heart warming stories about miserable things or uplifting stories about people triumphing in spite of adversity.
By the way, I’ve remembered another Australian author I used to quite like: Sue Woolfe. Especially Leaning Towards Infinity. And I like Nicki Gemmel. I know that that last one’s not cool (nor correctly spelt, I suspect), but fuck. And I like Peter Carey’s short stories (but not novels). And there’s an Australian bloke who writes crime novels (one was called Iron Rose) which/who I liked. And I like Shane Maloney’s stuff about Coburg and Melbourne)
Anyway, back on track, here.
So, about all these difficult books.
I’m sure I’ve said it before. But.
I read almost nothing but SF. That’s either science fiction or science fantasy. Sometimes I read crime novels as well, but not too often as I tend to get upset by the implication that you’re supposed to get some sort of readerly pleasure from the in-depth description of torture and serial killers going about their work. Smacks of voyeurism to me. And I don’t like it. For the same reason I don’t like watching SVU. Somehow I feel that I’m to enjoy (or participate in?) the systematic subjugation torturing, killing and general Bringing Low of women and other vulnerable people. No thankyou.
So I read books about space. And about dragons. But only well written ones.
But lately I think I’ve strayed into even darker territory. I’ve just finished this. I have no excuse other than the fact that my mother sent it to me in a package from Tasmania with chocolate. And it’s easy to read. And it has vampires in it. And a sassy female protagonist. And now I’m reading the second one (that’s it to the left, the image lifted from the site linked above). And before these I read another one by another author called … Pat something.
This stuff reminds me of Tanya Huff, except without the… well, the good stuff. I think I might have strayed into that land of no-longer-pink books.
I’m not sure if you know, but romance novels went genre bending a few years ago (I know because my mother is a mad pink book fiend and I’ve had to spend far too many hours in Rendezvous Romance (don’t ask me to relive that, please)). So, you know that romance novels (or pink books as they’re known in our family, because they are used to be pink) are massively popular, right?
Well, you might also know that women are the big readers in Australia as well (I think that’s true. If not, I made it up, and it’s a myth I’m sticking with).
So anyhow, a few years ago, as I’ve said, the pink books went genre bending. They starting moving beyond ‘real world’ plots, settings and characters and introduced detectives. Then they introduced vampires. And vampire hunters. Of all sexes. And then they suddenly exploded and were going crazy with the whole sf/speculative/fantastic fiction thing. And they no longer had pink covers – they had black covers. And were about three times as long as the normal pink books. But they were still all about romance. And had female protagonists. And somewhat objectified male love interests.
Now, all this, on the one hand, is vaguely nauseating. But on the other – this is some fascinating shit. Sounds like chick flicks to me. Can anyone else smell Sistahhood? Well, ok, so I’m exaggerating on the feminist political theme thing. But still.
Anyhoo, when I was browsing in a certain SF bookshop whose name I can’t remember (but it’s worth knowing about – they sell novels at $15 or a bit less, have a shop in The Arcade on Elizabeth, sort of under Melbourne Central. It’s a bit of a pathetic arcade, but it has a Dick Smith and this bookshop. Which sells only SF. Yay.) I realised I couldn’t tell if I’d wandered out of the Normal Books and into the formerly-known-as-pink book section. But all the authors were women. And all the protagonists were female. The covers were black, we were talking serious demon hunting and vampyr slaying narrative action. But suspicions were raised by the humourous (sp?) subplots and lengthy discussions of clothing. And lame puns. Not that lame puns are anything new in SF. SF is all about dag (goddess bless).
I was kind of getting worried – I didn’t want to spend perfectly good book cash on something where the hero(ine) would end up spending every second page fussing over her makeup. But I didn’t want to miss the demon-slaying/arse-kicking female protagonist action. The guy who runs the shop couldn’t help. Even the matriarch, who knows All Pink Books and has now begun flogging some of her (zillions and zillions – fuck, googleplexes) of pink books off on ebay couldn’t help me. And now, even after two and a half of them, I’m not sure.
Here’s what I do know:the authors are shocking dags – there are far too many discussions of ‘ankle high, vampire-made leather boots’ and “fingers flicked about the deep v-neck of her spandex shirt tucked into her leather pants” (The good, the bad and the undead, p 61). In fact, I think I need to continue with the fashion descriptions, because these books seem to spend more than a little time discussing who’s wearing what. I smell pink book:

“Ready?” Ivy said brightly as she finished adjusting her jacket. She was dressed in her usual black leather pants and silk shirt, looking lanky and predatory. The only color to her face was her bright red lipstick. A chain of black gold hung about her neck in place of her usual crucifix -which was now tucked into her jewelry box at home. It matched her ankle bracelets perfectly. She had gone further to paint her nails with a clear coat, giving them a subtle shine (same book, pg 100).

It’s kind of a give away when a paragraph like that is about a quarter of a page. And is preceded by a series of paragraphs explaining every character’s outfit. And please – black gold ankle bracelets???
BTW: what the FUCK is a duster? It’s an item of clothing. I think it’s a long scarf. Apparently vampires dig them. I shudder at the thought. No capes!
So, ok, I think we can assume I’m in pink book territory. If only because we’re looking at a particular female readership. Which, apparently, I am part of.
It’s worth pointing out that Ivy is the protagonist’s flatmate. And a vampire (I can’t explain the crucifix thing here, ok). And has a massive hawt thing for the protagonist. Both of them are tall and thin. The protagonist (a witch, by genetics, with an athletic build, sparse bosom and curly/frizzy red hair) is heterosexual. And Ivy has a massive boner for her. The whole vampire-sex-violence-pain thing is kind of overworked, but … the thing is. It’s not like in Tanya Huff’s books where queer characters are very much ‘normal’ – bi, lesbian, gay bloke, trannie, some combination thereof, whatever. Nor is it like Buffy where the characters deal with coming out and move on – monster attacks kind of taking precedence.
In this stuff the queer thing is kind of background static – I smell ‘bi-curious’ and ‘female queer fantasy’ action where the women ‘are all lesbians’ but don’t do no deep sea diving. It’s titillating, but there’s no real action. The protagonist and Ivy do not get it on. We’re left hanging for a shag. Rather, for them to shag. In fact, there’s a lot of saucy talk and innuendo, but no real action. Kind of like a level 3 pink book. Where level 10 is out and out pron (you have to read it to believe it – those pink book shops, while they’re full of gauzy curtains and New Zealand bees wax candles and posters of chocolate are also stuffed to the gills with all manner of hawt lady pron action. Actually, if you’re easily shocked, you’d best not read it. This is real erotica for women. And hold the feminist Message).
…which is interesting in itself, but I digress.
Basically, think Charmed, but with a bit more grit. Though a similar obsession with shoes, female ensemble casts and male eye candy.
So this is what I’m reading right now. I’m also reading that book about Marconi and wireless telegraph and a crime novel the Supes leant me, but right now I can’t put this particular book down.
I’m not sure what my point is. But I think I’m wanting to say something about ‘literature’ and ‘reading’. And gender. And possibly hang a bit of shit on the whole idea of literature.
Ok, so we all know that it’s nice to read a well-written book. I’m with you on that. But just because I also like trash (and baby, do I like trash – I have seen EVERY SINGLE CHICK FLICK EVER MADE. And I love them all), does that mean I’m somehow culturally deficient? I mean, I’m a cultural studies dood. I’ve read Modleski and Radway. I freakin’ wrote a thesis on pop culture. So how come I’m sporting this pink book anxiety?
I think, really, for me, this stuff is only one point on a continuum of cultural consumption/practice. I likes de trash (look, ok, I’m coming out on that one: I cannot read ‘real’ pink books, but I’m enjoying this stuff). I love chick flicks – lady films as they’re known in our house. I was a massive Spice Girls fan. I spent a lot of time in gay clubs as late teen/early twenties person, and not because I’m a fag hag. But because I like trashy music and trashy disco dancing…. mostly the dancing to trashy disco. I like silly television.
And I like to read science fiction. Why is it that I still feel like I’m not doing ‘serious’ reading when I’m reading SF? Even when the SF I read inolves massively fat books, complicated politico/socio/ideological themes and complex characters?
Is it unAustralian of me to not know the names of any of the 7 little Australians? Is it wrong for me to not read poetry (and to have pretty much sworn off it so as to avoid flashbacks to my teenaged poetry writing phase? Oh man, I’m totally having horrible flashbacks as I type this. No, please, no – no more! No more stream of consciousness poetry! No!)?
Fuck – look at the time. I told you!

What do people know about that Diary of a Geisha? Book or film.
I’ve avoided the book because it looked like soft porn.
The film previews look like CRAP: sort of a Woman’s Day story about hookers in the Mysterious Orient.
Has anyone actually read the book?

When I was at school I had an English teacher who kept me from year 10 to year 12. I say kept deliberately, because he wouldn’t let other teachers have me. I had mixed feelings about this at the time. Sure, it was nice to be wanted, but at the same time it would have been nice to have a teacher who actually taught me things, rather than just introducing me to book after book, poet after poet, author after author, play after play. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I dug the whole thing after thing thing, but still. It would have bee nice to learn about, say grammar.
At any rate, that teacher introduced me to Bolt’s Man for all Seasons, where I had to read Moore every class, just so’s he could read Henry VIII (he actually made a very good Henry). It was difficult, because the other kids had long since cottoned on to the fact that there was favouritism at work. It was also difficult because they’d stopped streaming our classes after year 9, which, while an admirable demonstration of integration or equity or something, was actually quite crap if you were book-girl at a really rough school where most people in my class were actually the first in their family to do more than year 10 at high school (this was 1991, btw).
So I liked the advantages of being favoured sometimes, but not really all the time or even mostly.
However, I did come out of that with a passion for some types of books and some types of plays and some types of authors. I loved Man for all Seasons, in part because it introduced me to the concept of hair shirts and martyrdom (and, conversely, gross indulgence. Do I need to mention which I favour(ed)?).
I also developed a fierce passion for Shakespeare. This time I was Lady M, of the hand washing. I loved the idea of the wood coming to Dunsinane. Of the unconscious mind’s struggle with guilt. Of a playwrite slightly misjudging his audience and distressing a king with so much blood and witchcraft.
I can only remember two parts of two poems from school –

I wondered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I spied a crowd
A host of golden daffodils.
Beside the lake,
Beneath the tree,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine…

(Wordsworth’s Daffodils or possibly I wondered Lonely as a cloud with hand gestures, from primary school).
and (much more excitingly),

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that does fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong,
Hark! Now I hear them – Ding-dong, bell.

(Shakespeare, a poem from The Tempest).
I fell in love with this bit of poetry instantly. I was flipping through a reader in class (which, I should note, we weren’t allowed to take home because they never came back, and our school was too poor to buy more. Even more crappy, 60s versions readers), and came across this bit.
It prompted an instant fascination for Shakespeare, and then (quite by accident), a fascination for Peter Greenaway, after seeing Prospero’s Books, just to see/hear this poem.
I can’t remember if the poem was actually in the film.
I was thinking of this poem this morning when I got up.
Shakespeare, I remember, is easy to memorise. Which helped, as I had to do a fair few performances of sections of his plays in English at school, and later Speech and Drama.
I’m not a literature studies person now, despite a major in ‘English’ in my BA which saw me suffer through a ‘modernism’ subject, to which I owe everlasting images of young men wrestling by the fireside and a disappointment in Virginia Woolf, who turned out to be more interesting than her books*. Or so you’d think from an experience in that subject.
In that major I also found myself enjoying ‘American Literature c’, the third in a series of subjects on the topic, and which i relished, particularly the bits on Toni Morrison, Don DeLillo and Truman Capote.
It was also where I discovered a great intolerance for Beat writers, particularly as I had just done a subject on women’s fiction of the era, a course which included Ann Petry’s The Street and contributed to my distrust of Jack Kerouac.
If it hadn’t been for an inspiring tutor and a sudden introduction to ‘screen studies’ (that’s what we called anything to do with telly and cinema, and – most recently – computers way back there in the early 90s), I might have muddled on through my Honours year with some book-related thesis, or perhaps something to do with Studies in Religion. Studies in Religion was my undergraduate passion – fuelled by an excellent Old Testament studies lecturer, a fascination with Old Testament stories, a series of enthralling subject on women in world religions and new religious movements, and a sudden realisation that the stuff I’d been learning about in English on active readership, canons and institutional uses of literature and story were the perfect complement to Studies in Religion.
As it was, I ended up writing about women, their violence and the State in action films, and American remakes of French films (La Femme Nikita and The Assassin, and The Long Kiss Goodnight). And did very well with it, thankyou.
So now, I read almost only science fiction and fantasy, children’s and adults. I was into crime novels for a while, but I found the violence distressing and disturbingly voyeuristic – I found no pleasure in reading, in careful detail, about other people’s suffering and humiliation.
But, I’ve been reading Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell for the past week (it got me through that week of illness admirably… though it’s a bit big for a weak invalid to hold up). I saw it on a friend’s bookshelf, and – prompted by a series of articles on Crooked Timber – borrowed it.
I love it.
It reminds me of Jane Austen (of course) – another person I was introduced to, at an impressionable age, by that English teacher**. I know that’s kind of the point, but I like it. I also like all the footnotes, and I’m suspecting (half way through) that that’s where the real story is. I also like the long, rambling narrative, and the way it wanders off to Spain and rural England, rather than staying on the topic.
On the other side of the … page? I’m also reading de Certeau’s Practice of Everyday Life in its entirety. It’s dreadfully dull. Well, chapter one is. Chapter two is looking better. Why is it that these doods are so much more interesting when read in the interpretations of other, more accessible writers? But I’m battling on, because I think it’ll be useful to start off the thesis using de Certeau to talk about Afro-American vernacular dance and poaching and then to discuss contemporary swing dancers in terms of Henry Jenkins, poaching, and his reading of fans as textual poachers via de Certeau and his stuff on tactics of resistance.
All this and I’m still trying to get done with that redrafting of the thesis. I’ve been ill all last week, and this week I’m only just out of bed, but my ears are really bad, so I’m getting tired very easily.
Christmas looks good, right?
No, I’m sure it will be nice. I just need to go SLOW so I don’t wreck myself!
*drowning yourself by filling your pockets with pebbles. Is there a theme here…?
**along with the Brontes, who I then followed up at uni, reading everything I could find.