This novel is a strange little reminiscence that takes place in multiple latitudes, timelines, and consciousnesses. It’s the story of a young French girl who lives in Indochina in the 1930s and 1940s who when she is a teen has a love affair with an older Chinese businessman. It’s strange because since the narrator and the author are an older women describing her sexual awakening, part of me is definitely like “Get it, girl” and because it involves a cross-racial relationship where the gross racism […]
Gentleman prefers Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
This book had me cracking up last night when I was reading it. The introduction more or less suggests that the author kept noticing that when she and her friends would go out, even though she would argue that they were of more or less even attractiveness her blonde friends would get a lot more attention. When she placed them side by side in terms of wit and intelligence, well, she could admit that she had them beat. It’s the blondeness again. I haven’t seen […]
Sigh, ok Margaret Atwood
I am nothing if not predictable. But if you asked me, would you like a 140 page collection of clever character sketches and thought problems in the form of stories, would you? I think I would say, umm no, I have always always always hated stuff like that. And then if you said, but what it was Margaret Atwood writing them? I would be even more annoyed because I like her long novels a lot. So here we are. I just feel like my time […]
Would you stay if she promised to you heaven?
Psych! Rhiannon is totally a dude. At least in this one. This is a pulpy sci fi/fantasy novel from the early 1950s. Leigh Brackett is most famous for writing the screenplay for The Big Sleep and for an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back before she died in the late 1970s. But this novel is more in the vain of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Princess of Mars) and Robert Howard (Conan), than space operas. It’s space in the sense that it takes place on “Mars” but it’s […]
Bohemian Rhapsody
My students asked me the other day why we have different accents in the US. And I said that’s a complicated question but one of the answers is because different parts of the country were inhabited by immigrants from different parts of the world, for different reasons. They also didn’t believe me or conceive of the idea that even though cultures and ethnicities were quite old in Europe, a lot of countries were not. About a 75% chance I mention to them that the main […]
She was bad…always
This is the best of the four Edith Wharton novellas I read this weekend. It’s the most clearly realized, the least clever (as its main appeal) and the most that has something important to say about the social politics of America, not a requirement to be good, but one thing lacking from the previous novellas. This story starts off with Mrs. Hazledean rushing away from a fire in the 5th avenue hotel, a tremendous events that surely everyone will talk about. The problem for her […]
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