So, I have a lot of books to tell you about. As usual, I'm going to group then thematically, so this post is all about non-fiction books. I've read three and a half of these so far (the half will be explained shortly).
First up is Angry White Pyjamas, a book about a really irritating, sexist man who decides that, since he's done nothing worthwhile with his life since moving to Japan to teach English, he'll join the Japanese riot police course and learn aikido, grading from novice to black belt in nine months - and taking the exam to become an instructor (sensei) three months after that. Words cannot express how much I dislike the writer: for his portrayal of the only two female aikidoka he meets as sex-crazed loonies who are each obsessed with their sensei; for his infantilisation of his Japanese girlfriend; for his offensively generalised and objectifying assertion that what Japanese girls lack in breasts they make up for in skimpy skirts. (Perhaps the book should be retitled Angry, Right Feminists.)
If you can see past this twattery, the discussion of his experience doing the riot police course is quite interesting. The senshusei (students on the course) are a fascinating mix of varying manifestations of crazy, and it seems the course itself, run largely by sadistic sensei (fainting will earn you burpees; leaving bloody patches on the mat is a good thing; broken bones earn you mere days of convalescence...) is designed to make you more machine than human. I found the whining of the author ("I'm in pain, but I can't quit because I hero-worship one of the sensei, and if I stop now my life means nothing") quite tedious, and his description of the injuries which were wilfully inflicted by sensei horrific; however, all in all, the huge culture shock made for fascinating reading. Seriously, what sane person puts themselves through that?!
Thankfully, the next book I read was a balm for my offended XX chromosomes: Fifty Shades of Feminism. (When discussing this, you have to say the title really quickly, otherwise people make snap judgements about your taste in literature...). This book is fab; it's a collection of fifty very short essays, written by notable women, on women's lives and experiences in 2013. They are all great, I'll just mention two which I found pertinent to my own politics. Firstly, Juliet Stevenson's discussion of how, in acting, the older you get, the more interesting the parts - if you're a man; if you're a woman they are few and far between and pretty simple in terms of character. For studies on this, look at the Geena Davis Institute's work. The second was Jeannette Winterson's pithy and deeply uncomfortable discussion of objectification being enforced by pornography. For studies on the under- and mis-representation of women in the media, see the resources produced by the EAVES charity. Fifty Shades of Feminism's greatest achievement, in my opinion, is that it concisely and articulately provides a starting point for a huge range of issues that, really, ought to be seen as important to (and by) everybody.
Here is where I explain the half book comment, and apologise to my father. Dad recommended that I read "anything by Stephen Jay Gould". I have tried. Honest I have. I downloaded Leonardo's Mountain of Clams (1998) and have been working my way through it, and I have really enjoyed some bits (for example, the history of the aquarium - they started in Victorian times, before that stable, watery communities did exist but were always viewed from above, consequently diagrams of sea-creatures changed in perspective with the introduction of aquaria, there are some hilarious anecdotes about the lengths people went to to populate their glassy mini-seas...it's fascinating stuff); however, I find it really hard to read long essays about non-Classical material - I feel like I'm missing so much of the background that it takes me a long time to process. Having said that, I just looked at the contents page and the essays I have left to go seem much shorter than the first half of the book - maybe I will finish it this year! For now, though, it is on the iBooks shelf.
The final non-fiction book so far is Further Voices in Vergil's Aeneid, which I borrowed from a library at university for an essay but only had time to read the relevant section. This book is amazing. The basic premise is that there is an epic voice (the one telling the story of the Trojan hero, who founds the Roman race) and then there are further voices - little hints and allusions to previous Classical authors, inviting us to question the validity of the story - saying, for example, is it all good? Is it alright to kill an enemy who has already been defeated? Is it okay to leave the woman you've been having a relationship with without so much as saying goodbye, just because your superior tells you to stop procrastinating and sod off to Italy? This is a great book, which has some really interesting ideas (eg, that bit in Aeneid IV when Aeneas is described as Apollo, looking good, with his clashing weapons, because he's so fit? Yeah, that's totally a reference to Apollo as the PLAGUE-BRINGER in Iliad I, because Aeneas is bringing DOOM to Dido. In fairness, I probably should have spotted that one myself, but it's still a great call.). I shan't go on, but if you've read the Aeneid, this is great, and if you haven't, do read the Aeneid, because it's a seminal work of literature and, although Aeneas is pretty much a dickhead (or, perhaps, *because* Aeneas is...), it's an awesome story.
To sum up, I find non-fiction slower-going but very interesting. Now, go and read Fifty Shades of Feminism. Off you go!
G xxx
Books completed in chronological order of reading:
Stabat Mater, Tiziano Scarpa (2011)
Facing Violence, Rory Miller (2011)
Un Lun Dun, China Mieville (2007)
Open Secrets, Alice Munro (1994)
The Dragon Queen, Alice Borchardt (2001)
Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Walters (1998)
The lost books of the Odyssey, Zachary Mason (2007)
The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien, (1937)
The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman, (1991)
The Hypnotist, Lars Kepler, (2012)
The Strain (2009), The Fall (2010), The Night Eternal (2011), Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, Philip Pullman (2010)
Angry White Pyjamas, Robert Twigger (1997)
50 shades of Feminism, ed Lisa Appignanesi et al (2013)
Further Voices in Vergil's Aeneid, R O A M Lyne (1987)
The Journal of Dora Damage, Belinda Starling (2007)
Hideous Kinky, Esther Freud (1992)
Percy Jackson and the Titan's Curse, Rick Riordan (2007)
Disgrace, Jussi Adler Olsen (2012)
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)
Romanitas, Sophia McDougall (2005)
Selected Poems, Sophie Hannah (2013)
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