sarahmichigan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sarahmichigan) wrote2015-07-26 05:17 pm
sarahmichigan) wrote2015-07-26 05:17 pm
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What I've been reading
I have been reading more this year, in part because I'm listening to a lot of audiobooks now that I'm commuting to an office job 4 days a week. I think I'll probably come in at around 54-55 books at least this year. My two latest reads:
"Two Serious Ladies" by Jane Bowles. I found this book in an article about gay authors' favorite books, and this was mentioned multiple times. The title is like the book, both in earnest and in jest. The two "ladies" in question are Christina Goering and Frieda Copperfield, who both are trying to discover themselves in different but absurd ways. Goering is an heiress who moves out of her mansion into a desolate shack on an island, allows her house to be inhabited by gold-digging hangers-on, and finds herself going home with a series of disreputable men. Meanwhile, Copperfield goes to Panama with her husband, only to abandon him in order to take up with a teenage prostitute and the middle-aged proprietoress of a run-down hotel. For being published in 1943, it's quite frank about bodies and sexuality. It's oddly compelling and amusing, though I wasn't entirely sure what to make of it at times.
and
"Herland" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I'd read her novella, "The Yellow Wallpaper" in college English class, and I was curious about her novel about a feminist utopia. My husband listened to it as an audiobook (free via librivox.org) and said he liked it, so I gave it a try. I found it to be quite readable, though it does have the feel of a parable at times. Published in 1915, the novel starts when three explorers hear a tale about a country of all women. They make an expedition that upends a lot of their assumptions about the genders. The whole "Women would run the world better" theme got pounded in a little obviously at times, but overall, I did like it and would recommend it as a highly entertaining feminsit parable.
My full comments on both books here.
"Two Serious Ladies" by Jane Bowles. I found this book in an article about gay authors' favorite books, and this was mentioned multiple times. The title is like the book, both in earnest and in jest. The two "ladies" in question are Christina Goering and Frieda Copperfield, who both are trying to discover themselves in different but absurd ways. Goering is an heiress who moves out of her mansion into a desolate shack on an island, allows her house to be inhabited by gold-digging hangers-on, and finds herself going home with a series of disreputable men. Meanwhile, Copperfield goes to Panama with her husband, only to abandon him in order to take up with a teenage prostitute and the middle-aged proprietoress of a run-down hotel. For being published in 1943, it's quite frank about bodies and sexuality. It's oddly compelling and amusing, though I wasn't entirely sure what to make of it at times.
and
"Herland" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I'd read her novella, "The Yellow Wallpaper" in college English class, and I was curious about her novel about a feminist utopia. My husband listened to it as an audiobook (free via librivox.org) and said he liked it, so I gave it a try. I found it to be quite readable, though it does have the feel of a parable at times. Published in 1915, the novel starts when three explorers hear a tale about a country of all women. They make an expedition that upends a lot of their assumptions about the genders. The whole "Women would run the world better" theme got pounded in a little obviously at times, but overall, I did like it and would recommend it as a highly entertaining feminsit parable.
My full comments on both books here.