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what i'm reading wednesday
I'm going to start trying to do this and separate out my reading from my life updates.
What I finished in the last week:
+ The Woman in White. Gosh, what a good book, period-typical sexism/classism/fatphobia aside. It's a banger! I'd only read it once before, probably ten years ago? And I was a bit worried it wouldn't hold up, but it did. A much better read than The Moonstone, imo.
The plot, the characters, the narrative voices! The switch in perspectives, the voices of all the characters, the creation of suspense! If I had been reading in serialized form as it was originally published, I would simply have lost my mind. I would not have survived. Cause of death: Wilkie Collins making me wait to find out what happens next. Easily one of my favorite Victorian novels.
Also what’s so interesting is that so much of the horror of the book is off the page and has historically probably remained unnoticed by many male readers. The implications of the marriages between the villains and their victims is…beyond harrowing. We know almost nothing about what Madame Fosco has gone through but the implications are worse than anything someone could have published in the mid-19th century. We get more of a look at what Lady Glyde suffers, but we don’t see those first six months of her marriage and we don’t see what happens when they’re alone, and I can’t even bring myself to think about it.
I know Collins had ~unorothodox~ views on marriage, particularly for a man of his time, but I can’t imagine that even he knew just what he was doing in proving the truth that the true horror, for most women throughout most of time, has been the institution of marriage.
Anyway, I love that book, and I was packing up my books this week I realized I have two copies. In hardback. Shall have to decide which one to keep.
I refuse to watch the fairly recent adaptation despite my desire to see Charles Dance as Frederick Fairlie because I do not approve of the rest of the casting. Jessie Buckley is Marian. JESSIE BUCKLEY. I adore her as an actress, but she is not ugly and Marian has to be ugly. Also the guy they cast as Fosco was not nearly old enough. Just: no.
+ The Tainted Cup, a second-world murder mystery. I enjoyed this a lot! Flashy but grounded worldbuilding (with one aspect that super reminded me of Felicia Davin's The Gardner's Hand books), good characters (especially Ana), a satisfyingly twisty mystery. I definitely look forward to reading more books in this series and I guess I'll need to read more Robert Jackson Bennett.
What I'm currently reading:
Homegrown about Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing, an occurrence of which I have very vivid childhood memories. The author is interested in situating McVeigh in the wider project of white nationalist violence in this country, an approach I approve of. I wish it weren't so clear that he went back through right before publication and put in a lot of "just like the uprising on January 6th!" lines because I actually think the connection between the 90s violence of Ruby Ridge/Waco/Oklahoma City and the violence of today is a hugely important thing and deserves more attention. I wish he'd had more time before the book came out to really dig into those parallels instead of just putting in some perfunctory edits. But there are other people doing that, I'm sure.
But it's incredibly well-researched and this guy is not pussyfooting around when it comes to how dangerous the right in this country is.
Books I want to give away: At a previous job, I obtained a collection of the Phryne Fisher novels. I have all of the first 19 except for Murder in Montparnasse. All of them are like-new paperbacks except for Blood and Circuses, which is a hardback former library book.
If any of you in the continental US (sorry, Hannah!) want these books and are willing to pay for shipping, I will happily send them to you. Otherwise they're going to go to the library booksale since nobody on the local Facebook groups wants to come get them.
What I finished in the last week:
+ The Woman in White. Gosh, what a good book, period-typical sexism/classism/fatphobia aside. It's a banger! I'd only read it once before, probably ten years ago? And I was a bit worried it wouldn't hold up, but it did. A much better read than The Moonstone, imo.
The plot, the characters, the narrative voices! The switch in perspectives, the voices of all the characters, the creation of suspense! If I had been reading in serialized form as it was originally published, I would simply have lost my mind. I would not have survived. Cause of death: Wilkie Collins making me wait to find out what happens next. Easily one of my favorite Victorian novels.
Also what’s so interesting is that so much of the horror of the book is off the page and has historically probably remained unnoticed by many male readers. The implications of the marriages between the villains and their victims is…beyond harrowing. We know almost nothing about what Madame Fosco has gone through but the implications are worse than anything someone could have published in the mid-19th century. We get more of a look at what Lady Glyde suffers, but we don’t see those first six months of her marriage and we don’t see what happens when they’re alone, and I can’t even bring myself to think about it.
I know Collins had ~unorothodox~ views on marriage, particularly for a man of his time, but I can’t imagine that even he knew just what he was doing in proving the truth that the true horror, for most women throughout most of time, has been the institution of marriage.
Anyway, I love that book, and I was packing up my books this week I realized I have two copies. In hardback. Shall have to decide which one to keep.
I refuse to watch the fairly recent adaptation despite my desire to see Charles Dance as Frederick Fairlie because I do not approve of the rest of the casting. Jessie Buckley is Marian. JESSIE BUCKLEY. I adore her as an actress, but she is not ugly and Marian has to be ugly. Also the guy they cast as Fosco was not nearly old enough. Just: no.
+ The Tainted Cup, a second-world murder mystery. I enjoyed this a lot! Flashy but grounded worldbuilding (with one aspect that super reminded me of Felicia Davin's The Gardner's Hand books), good characters (especially Ana), a satisfyingly twisty mystery. I definitely look forward to reading more books in this series and I guess I'll need to read more Robert Jackson Bennett.
What I'm currently reading:
Homegrown about Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing, an occurrence of which I have very vivid childhood memories. The author is interested in situating McVeigh in the wider project of white nationalist violence in this country, an approach I approve of. I wish it weren't so clear that he went back through right before publication and put in a lot of "just like the uprising on January 6th!" lines because I actually think the connection between the 90s violence of Ruby Ridge/Waco/Oklahoma City and the violence of today is a hugely important thing and deserves more attention. I wish he'd had more time before the book came out to really dig into those parallels instead of just putting in some perfunctory edits. But there are other people doing that, I'm sure.
But it's incredibly well-researched and this guy is not pussyfooting around when it comes to how dangerous the right in this country is.
Books I want to give away: At a previous job, I obtained a collection of the Phryne Fisher novels. I have all of the first 19 except for Murder in Montparnasse. All of them are like-new paperbacks except for Blood and Circuses, which is a hardback former library book.
If any of you in the continental US (sorry, Hannah!) want these books and are willing to pay for shipping, I will happily send them to you. Otherwise they're going to go to the library booksale since nobody on the local Facebook groups wants to come get them.
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Sir Percival usually ends up having raped Anne, either as an adult or when she was a child to be extra abhorrent. Presumably because being illegitimate is the one thing he's actually not at fault for (he couldn't help the state of his parents' marriage or lack of same), so on the surface, I get why producers must have insisted the secret should be some actual crime for the modern reader. But the thing is, part of the horror in the book is as you say the complete power a husband - any husband has over his wife. And the other inequalities. In Victorian society, if Sir Percival rapes someone of Anne's low status, no one cares, she has no legal repercussions. And of course short of murder, he can do pretty much anything he wants to Laura. Whereas that same society very much cares whether or not he himself is legitimate, it's key for his material status quo as well (re: inheritance), and this being the secret is very much an indictement of said society.
Ugly Marian: not a single actress ever that I've seen. Not one. To be fair, she's in good company with all the beautiful Jane Eyres and handsome Rochesters, both characters their book insist are plain (not pretty) and ugly respectively. It's as if the idea of a non-beautiful heroine is offensive.
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feels the need to either change the nature of Sir Percival's secret, make Marian and Walter lovers (with Laura conveniently dying) or both, and I just can't. Way of misising the point.
NOPE. Why are so many of my favorite Victorian novels (I'm thinking of Dracula, too) just NEVER adapted faithfully? Ever?
Presumably because being illegitimate is the one thing he's actually not at fault for (he couldn't help the state of his parents' marriage or lack of same), so on the surface, I get why producers must have insisted the secret should be some actual crime for the modern reader.
I can see why they think that, but the way he treats Laura is MORE than enough for me to want him dead, so I don't need them to change the other stuff!
Whereas that same society very much cares whether or not he himself is legitimate, it's key for his material status quo as well (re: inheritance), and this being the secret is very much an indictement of said society.
Exactly! It hits so hard that the only thing he's done that's really illegal is passing himself off as legitimate, when that is the last of the morally abhorrent things he's done.
Ugly Marian: not a single actress ever that I've seen. Not one. To be fair, she's in good company with all the beautiful Jane Eyres and handsome Rochesters, both characters their book insist are plain (not pretty) and ugly respectively. It's as if the idea of a non-beautiful heroine is offensive.
Yes and it drives me crazy! Somehow even more so with Marian than with Jane and Rochester, although that's plenty annoying too.
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