Sally's Journal

I had an odd experience yesterday while reading on the plane. I picked up a copy of a book I'd read and loved as a teen - the House by the Dvina by Eugenie Frasier - the story of her childhood in Russia just before the Revolution.

I remembered it as being a bit like Agatha Christie or Gwen Raverat' s memoires - you know - lots of adorable stories about eccentric relatives and rocking horses. And I thought it would be a comfy airport read.

My reading journey went something like this...

...oh. She's a bit bitter about the Bolsheviks, isn't she?

...yeah, she's definitely in favour of the old regime. Makes sense, as her family were pretty aristocratic in Russia. Except for great-grandmother who was a serf.

...so, World War One went badly. I knew that. Also, goddamn Britain treated Russia badly.

...wow. She used the word 'insolent' to describe how some revolutionary spoke to her mother. Check your privilege, Eugenie!

...um. And then the revolutionary arrested her elderly grandfather for no reason and sent men to ransack their family home every couple of days for months.

...oh. And the local Bolsheviks would randomly confiscate anyone's stuff they wanted. I guess it is a revolution and Eugenie's family had been very well off before.

...and they raped and murdered people who objected. Whole families died. That's...

...ok. Now she's telling the tale of a mass execution she and her friends witnessed while playing in the woods as children, and how one of the people executed was a teenage boy in his school uniform.

...and how this same group of friends once chased a stray goat down so they could take turns trying to milk it because they were starving due to civil war. This is one of the upbeat comic interludes in the civil war section of the book.

...phew. She, and her mother and brother managed to escape as refugees, because her mother was Scottish and they were able to get exit papers on that basis. Now, I wonder what happens to the rest of her wonderful, loveable, larger than life family and friends that she's been describing this whole book.

...they are all murdered. Well, some die of starvation. A few more a murdered by Nazis and not communists. And two commit suicide to avoid being executed. One disappears. Probably executed. And the rest are all murdered. Every single one. Mostly under Stalin.

And I sort of sat there in horror. Yeah, too right she is bitter about the Russian Revolution. And what's worse is that I hadn't expected it. I mean, I kind of knew Stalin was bad and the Russian Civil War was awful. I've seen death stats. I did know. Yet it hadn't properly connected. For Chrissakes, as a teenager I had a hammer and sickle badge on a jacket (I thought it was cool). In my twenties I role played cool Russian revolutionaries in LRP where I never would have thought of playing a Nazi. I laughed at "how retro" when I saw protestors with the hammer and sickle outside the American Embassy in London when I'd never have done that over a swastika.

No real moral lesson. Just a weird sense that somehow we as a society aren't great. Probably because we don't believe in evil without atrocity photos and case studies.

By the way, it's a good book.

So, after some consideration, I've decided to do another 50 book challenge. This time, however, I am not just doing the 50books_poc challenge. Oh no! Instead I am combining that with the queerlit50 in a giant quest to read books by the marginalised, to support diversity within the publishing industry and, in all honesty, to kick myself into reading books which aren't just trash. Which isn't to say I won't read trash, but I think it would do me a lot of good to stretch myself occasionally.

I'm using this entry to keep track of the books I've read and link to the reviews that I've written of them. And hopefully, this will be useful in the future.

( My List )

So, I've now read the eARC of Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, the latest (and I suspect last) in the Vorkosigan series, as it's up at Baen books.

( Thoughts with spoilers )

I’ve been reading Jerusalem: The Biography for some time now (it is a big book, in mental more so than physical terms) and am finding it amazing, depressing, fascinating, and horrifying. It is the history of the city, from the days of King David, onward. So far I’ve just got to the fall of Jerusalem to the Ottoman Turks in the 13th century, and I’m already feeling exhausted. So far I feel like I’ve learnt that Jerusalem has mostly created bloody handed psychopaths, and that the three faiths who have based their creed around the city seem to have been shaped by men who cared less for God and more for power. Or maybe more for mass public executions, which may or may not have been designed to gain power. They might just have liked killing people.

The review I linked to comments that this book is likely to confirm atheist prejudices, and I must admit, I found it more effective at seriously denting my faith than anything Richard Dawkins has ever written. How many massacres were carried out by the early Christian Church? The Jewish theocratic state did what?

I would turn to paganism, but then someone would cruelly give me an account of the Boudiccan revolt and the sacrifices she made to Andraste, and then I’d just have to give up and settle for a God of my own invention. I could call him ‘Flufficus, the Ever Loving’ and pray for chocolate and soft bath towels every night.

I think I understand that there is no faith, no creed, no philosophy which a flawed human race cannot pervert. But still, I sometimes wince when I think just how effective mankind has been at doing this. And the history of Jerusalem is a painful and unflinching example.

So, it's the fiftieth anniversary of 'To Kill A Mockingbird', and there are lots of essays on it all over the internet. Some of them are very clever, so I linked to them here.

Reconstructing Atticus Finch. Was he really that good a lawyer?

Malcolm Gladwell on Atticus Finch and Southern liberalism.

A defense of To Kill A Mockingbird

I must admit, my experience of 'To Kill A Mockingbird' comes from having to study it at GCSE. I suspect this both ruined the book for me (as studying a book at GCSE almost always does), and also was a bit of a waste of time as far as teaching my class any of the lessons Harper Lee wanted to teach the children who read the book. We were a vile collection of privileged white kids in rural Berkshire, who really had little interest in racism, and that which we did pick up mostly taught us that it was something that happened in the American Deep South, which seemed almost entirely alien. We also studied 'Roll Of Thunder, Hear My Cry', which had much the same effect. Neither White nor Black Southern society seemed anything like our own, the characters felt utterly 'other' and the whole thing became a long grind about strange foreign people doing awful things to other strange foreign people.

I also found Scout very tedious from the word 'go'. This didn't help.

I wish now we'd studied something else if the school wanted us to learn about racism, something which didn't let us opt out of the whole learning process quite so much. Even something about British history in that time period, like the 'Jewel in the Crown' series might have been a bit more useful. But my school determinedly decided to teach us about racism, focusing on racism in the American Deep South. These days, I suspect that might sum up everything that's wrong with the British attitude towards race and racism.

1) I have World of Warcraft again, and got a small cute penguin pet in return for merging my WoW account with a battlenet account. This makes me happy. It's also Hallow's End which is really really fun.

2) Work is going really well - my boss said my first week's work was 'excellent', and my first school trip was a huge amount of fun. I got to do the lightning experiment and play with the tesla coil. And lo! It was glorious!

3) There's a really lovely small gelateria just up from Embankment which I discovered yesterday. Amazing dark chocolate ice cream, and wonderful rum and raisin. It's like ice cream heaven.

4) I get paid this week. Then I get paid again on the 13th November. So, I'm about to enter a short and glorious period of being rich! I may go quite mad with wealth.

5) I have just discovered a new, and very entertaining trashy historical writer. 'Mistress of the Art of Death', or CSI: 1172. It makes very little sense, but is great fun. I do recommend it. Oh, and if you're one of the very few people on my flist who likes romance novels, I also want to recommend Sherry Thomas for the most amazingly cheerful and non-creepy alpha male-tastic set of costumed romps I've ever encountered.

So, this is me. How are you?

Don't take too long to think about it. 15 books you've read that will always stick with you. They don't have to be the greatest books you've ever read, just the ones that stick with you. First 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

1) Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
2) Hard Times - Charles Dickens
3) A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula le Guin
4) Anil's Ghost - Michael Ondaatje
5) Sword at Sunset - Rosemary Sutcliff
6) A House at Pooh Corner - AA Milne
7) The Emperor's Babe - Bernadine Evaristo
8) The Murder of Roger Akroyd - Agatha Christie
9) The Black Riders - Violet Needham
10) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
11) War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
12) Through Violet Eyes - Stephen Woodworth
13) The Russian Century: A History of the Last Hundred Years - Brian Moynhan
14) Cordelia's Honour - Lois McMaster Bujold
15) Collapse: How Society's Chose To Fail Or Survive - Jared Diamond

With alasdair's variation: If you'd like to know more about a book, or what it means to me, leave a comment explaining what you'd like to know about my relationship with that book, and I'll tell you.

In other news, I'm feeling really quite depressed by current online race related issues. As you may or may not know Pat Wrede recently announced a new book. Set in an America without any Native Americans. And a lot of people were upset, and then Lois McMaster Bujold tried to defend Pat Wrede, by saying a bunch of dumb stuff including 'PoC SF fans didn't exist before the internet', which went down like a lead balloon.

Lots of people have written about this so far. They've all said far cleverer things than I ever will, and so I'm just left feeling depressed.

Why am I so depressed?

Because Pat Wrede and Lois McMaster Bujold are amongst my favourite writers. Pat Wrede has written some glorious silly books set in Regency England, but with magic. Lois McMaster Bujold wrote the Vorkosigan saga, which as well as being fabulous also had the first bisexual hero I ever found (and he was tough, and sexy, and not a bad stereotype). She had crossgender characters, and characters from different cultures who's cultures were still portrayed as valid and worth something. She wrote this big, mixed up diverse universe, or so it seemed to me, and I loved it.

And now...

Now I feel let down. God knows why. It's not fair to expect authors to live up to some kind of magical standard I've created in my head. Authors aren't perfect. They shouldn't be. But I really really loved the Vorkosigan books. I really loved what I knew of Lois McMaster Bujold's mind, and now I don't.

Bah.

Am I sure she and Patricia Wrede are in the wrong?

Yes. Yes, I am.

I think that wiping away the Native Americans from the history of America is something that has been done quite enough in the past. I've been to American museums, which have a single display of these pre-Colombian people, and then only silence. I've read the children's books which pretty much push a myth of an empty continent, of a world in which the pioneers are the heroes, moving into a landscape that is theirs by right of progress. It's a horrible racist myth, and it's one that books about brave Europeans battling mammoths and monsters on an empty America buys right into.

And I think it also sucks that no one is saying 'sorry'. I understand that Pat Wrede is Lois McMaster Bujold's friend. I understand she wants to stand up for her friend, and I understand that both of them are middle aged ladies, trying to deal with a situation that their upbringing and social conditioning leaves them woefully ill equipped to cope with, but that doesn't really make it OK. It doesn't make it OK because what it also is are two white, class privileged, well educated and powerful women with voices that a lot of people listen to closing ranks firmly against those people who's voices have been silenced for a very long time. What it also is is another author saying that the history of America - the history that matters - is a white person's history. And it's also two women in a position of power deciding that they don't have to listen.

So, it's not OK. And it's horrible and depressing that it's two of my favourite writers who are doing the Not OK stuff, but it's still Not OK. And that's something I need to wrap my head around.

*sighs*

There's probably more I could say, or a conclusion I could reach, but I am lacking one today. Just that I'm depressed, and mildly despondant as a result today.

So, I'm slowly working through the 'Read 50 books by PoC Authors in a Year Challenge'. This means reading a lot more books. I wander into Waterstones, looking for said books. I find a lovely big bookshelf entitled 'Black authors'. I think 'this is fab', and I pick out an interesting looking novel called 'White Oleander', which I've vaguely heard of. It sounds interesting.

I come back to work, and go online to add it to my list of books I'm reading for the challenge. I pause, just before adding it, and decide to check that the writer is definitely a PoC.

She isn't.

Why that book got shelved with 'Black authors', I've no idea. I'm now feeling all stroppy and grumpy. At least the book does look interesting and wasn't one of my insane literary experiments.

Does anyone have any good recs for non-white authored books, of any genre, that they would like to pass on to me to brighten my day?

I am Vexed.

I am Vexed because a woman called Maria V Snyder has failed me. She's failed me badly.

Once upon a time, I bought a book called 'Poison Study'. It was a trashy low fantasy novel about a girl training to be a poison taster. It wasn't exactly high class literature, but it was quite a good read, with a very interesting back story, some morally ambiguous characters, and a lovely world.

Now, three books later, Snyder has done an Anne McCaffrey. That is to say, her lovely scruffy little heroine is apparently The One Hope For Mankind, has Special Magic Powers Known To None, and is Loved By All.

She doesn't have violet eyes, but apart from that, she's scoring rather alarmingly highly on the Mary Sue litmus test. The novel is also clunking along rather depressingly, and I'm increasingly finding myself getting more involved with the Nomad Clothing website than chapter 12.

Bah. And humbug.

In other news, I'm finding myself confused as to what my plans are for the rest of the week.

I think I'm going to see Winterset and Billy Bragg tomorrow night, then skating on Thursday, and then I hit a blank.

What am I missing? Who have I already promised to see?