1997, 1999 Harvard University Press edition
Deborah L. Rhode
Speaking of Sex: The Denial of Gender Inequality
Possibly bought new for $17.95
Worn paperback
B-
Almost 30 years after Caroline Bird wrote Born Female: The High Cost of Keeping Women Down, and of course later in the decade of Backlash, comes this update on women's status in America. As the title and subtitle suggest, people would rather talk about sex in the sense of intercourse than sex in the sense of gender, and women's progress is used to deny that they haven't yet reached equal rights. Like Faludi, Rhode discusses the ways that feminism is blamed for inequality (when inequality is admitted), but unlike Faludi, she's also able to comment on the beginnings of the MRA, Men's Rights Activism, as well as the early Internet.
Although the book is fairly intelligent, I didn't find it either focused or specific enough. Interestingly, she criticizes Naomi Wolf more than she agrees with her. I could've sworn that Wolf in Fire with Fire used the Baby-Sitters Club series as an example of girls taking pride in making money, but I can't find the reference now. (I'm sure Wolf would've agreed with that idea though.) It's telling that Rhode just sees the "down" side, the "boy-chasing" titles like Stacey's Big Crush. Even more than Faludi, she's stacking the cards by accentuating the negative.
On the other hand, I do appreciate that, more than most of the feminists I've examined so far (Patricia J. Williams of course excepted), she actually talks at length about race and class, and not just when it comes to the '80s and '90s attacks on "welfare mothers." And she does have some useful statistics, and some recommendations for everyone to take more responsibility in achieving equality for all. That women have progressed from 77 cents on the dollar from 1997's 70 cents is still not enough progress. (I know I said in my review of Born Female that it was 81 cents, but it depends how it's measured. Not that 81 cents would be anything to cheer about.)
Friday, November 8, 2013
Thursday, November 7, 2013
The Subtle Knife: His Dark Materials, Book II
1997, 2003 Laurel-Leaf edition
Philip Pullman
The Subtle Knife: His Dark Materials, Book II
Original price $6.99, purchase price $2.80
Slightly worn paperback
C+
This is the book that introduces Will Parry, from "our world," when the title object cuts "windows" between worlds. While he's got a fairly interesting back-story, with his father turning out to be not-actually-beheaded Grumman from the first book, I didn't really like him, and I especially didn't like his effect on Lyra. While there's still some of her spunkiness from before, she spends too much of the book following his "orders." I also didn't feel like the other characters were woven in as well as before, although Lee Scoresby has some good scenes. (The witches are again "ragged" and "elegant.") And the scene where Will meets his father and they realise each other's identities was packed with cliches, including the dad's death.
Still, the idea of the knife and the parallel worlds is interesting. Pullman gets more obviously anti-church, with one of the characters saying that all churches are evil. This doesn't make Pullman anti-Christian exactly, and the prophecy about Lyra indicates that she'll be "the new Eve." We'll see how it's all resolved in The Amber Spyglass in 2000, but I can say now that The Cincinnati Enquirer review quoted on that book in this, "Pullman has created the last great fantasy masterpiece of the twentieth century," had already been proven wrong by another series that had begun the year this came out. (OK, not a masterpiece, but better than this series.)
Philip Pullman
The Subtle Knife: His Dark Materials, Book II
Original price $6.99, purchase price $2.80
Slightly worn paperback
C+
This is the book that introduces Will Parry, from "our world," when the title object cuts "windows" between worlds. While he's got a fairly interesting back-story, with his father turning out to be not-actually-beheaded Grumman from the first book, I didn't really like him, and I especially didn't like his effect on Lyra. While there's still some of her spunkiness from before, she spends too much of the book following his "orders." I also didn't feel like the other characters were woven in as well as before, although Lee Scoresby has some good scenes. (The witches are again "ragged" and "elegant.") And the scene where Will meets his father and they realise each other's identities was packed with cliches, including the dad's death.
Still, the idea of the knife and the parallel worlds is interesting. Pullman gets more obviously anti-church, with one of the characters saying that all churches are evil. This doesn't make Pullman anti-Christian exactly, and the prophecy about Lyra indicates that she'll be "the new Eve." We'll see how it's all resolved in The Amber Spyglass in 2000, but I can say now that The Cincinnati Enquirer review quoted on that book in this, "Pullman has created the last great fantasy masterpiece of the twentieth century," had already been proven wrong by another series that had begun the year this came out. (OK, not a masterpiece, but better than this series.)
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
The Adventures of Captain Underpants
1997, possibly first edition, from Scholastic
Dav Pilkey
The Adventures of Captain Underpants
Original price $4.99, purchase price unknown
Very, very worn paperback
B-
The first in the still ongoing series, this introduces not only the title character but his mentors/nemeses 4th-graders George and Harold. (Kudos for Pilkey in making George black, but describing him as "the kid...with the tie and the flat-top.") They are good-natured trouble-makers who, in addition to all their pranks, self-publish a comic book about the captain. With a 3-D Hypno-Ring, they hypnotize their cruel school principal into thinking he's the captain, and yes, he strips down to his underpants. Perhaps it's not surprising that this series was still among the most challenged/banned books in 2012.
Pilkey anticipates the controversy with his "Extremely Graphic Violence Chapter," an example of how, despite the "dumb humor," there's some cleverness. (My favorite was all the spins on the "four-to-six-weeks" it takes for the ring to arrive.) I wouldn't say this is a great children's book, and I probably most enjoyed Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants, mostly because that's the one with the "Name Change-o-Chart." But this is certainly a book that's better than its title might suggest.
Dav Pilkey
The Adventures of Captain Underpants
Original price $4.99, purchase price unknown
Very, very worn paperback
B-
The first in the still ongoing series, this introduces not only the title character but his mentors/nemeses 4th-graders George and Harold. (Kudos for Pilkey in making George black, but describing him as "the kid...with the tie and the flat-top.") They are good-natured trouble-makers who, in addition to all their pranks, self-publish a comic book about the captain. With a 3-D Hypno-Ring, they hypnotize their cruel school principal into thinking he's the captain, and yes, he strips down to his underpants. Perhaps it's not surprising that this series was still among the most challenged/banned books in 2012.
Pilkey anticipates the controversy with his "Extremely Graphic Violence Chapter," an example of how, despite the "dumb humor," there's some cleverness. (My favorite was all the spins on the "four-to-six-weeks" it takes for the ring to arrive.) I wouldn't say this is a great children's book, and I probably most enjoyed Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants, mostly because that's the one with the "Name Change-o-Chart." But this is certainly a book that's better than its title might suggest.
Rachel's Holiday
1997, 2012 Penguin edition
Marian Keyes
Rachel's Holiday
Original price unknown, purchase price $5.00
Surprisingly worn paperback considering its age, and I've only read it once
C
This is definitely the weakest of the "Walsh sisters" series, not only with some of the flaws of Watermelon, but with flaws of its own. To begin with, this time instead of gratuitous slurs against lesbians and Italians, we've got not-quite-so-gratuitous slurs against lesbians and Latinos. While Claire just made random insults, Rachel (the middle sister and our "heroine" here) actually seems to be saying that, promiscuous as she is (especially when she's stoned and/or drunk), even she has her limits. Her roommate Brigit dates Latinos, but Rachel finds them ridiculous and too little. (And, yes, she's a size queen, in height and penis length, just like Claire, so that when she finally sleeps with her crush Chris, she's disappointed that he's smaller than her ex-boyfriend Luke, of whom more shortly, no pun intended.)
As for the lesbians, Rachel clearly has an unknowledged crush (maybe asexual but still strong) on beautiful, glamourous Nola, but Keyes makes it clear that both Rachel and her mother regard it as more shameful for the neighbour lady to have a lesbian for a daughter than for Mrs. Walsh to have an addict daughter. Also, there's a New York lesbian, "a beefy, short-haired, moustachioed woman, who answered to the name of Brad" (subtlety is not Keyes's strong point), and who has an acknowledged crush on Rachel. As Van Leer's Queening of America showed, in his discussion of Heartburn and Breakfast at Tiffany's among other works, sometimes authors will make fun of gays and lesbians to distance their protagonists from their own queerness, a literary sleight-of-hand.
You see, it's not enough that Rachel keep pining for Luke, or at least pining for his attention. Not only is there much more emphasis on whether or not he loves her than if she loves him, but Keyes makes Luke, a '70s throwback, in the macho, not the sensitive sense: "a Real Man." While there's a lot about Rachel's lust for him, we also hear about her fear and repulsion. There's a scene where he "punishes" her for cock-teasing him earlier while high, "men don't like that," by making her strip for him. She finds this sexy, but it's also clear that she's afraid of him, and it comes across as approaching rape, even if it's "consensual." (She thinks she should say no, but doesn't.)
Now, some of this may be related to her low self-esteem and addiction. But he's never held accountable for it, or any of his other mind games, as Brigit is accountable for liking being the saner roomie. Instead, we keep hearing how "sweet" Luke is, and Nola thinks he's a "dote." (I hoped at first that was just her mispronouncing "dolt.")
Even when Rachel is sober, after going through a rehabilitation program that takes up much of the book (with flashbacks throughout), she and her world are as shallow as Suzanne and Hollywood in Fisher's Postcards from the Edge (1987). Rachel is arguably a more dislikable person, but she does have what Suzanne didn't have, an interesting family.
This is set roughly two years after the events of Watermelon (which came out two years earlier), with Claire now 31, Helen now 20. Helen is again scene-stealing, although unfortunately we get less of her than before. We do get our first real glimpses of second-eldest Margaret, "the lickarse," i.e. the dependable sister. And we see a bit more of Anna, who is a more casual drug-user than Rachel, and apparently the sweetest of the sisters. (Not that there's much competition.) The parents aren't as funny as before, even when Dad has a role in Oklahoma, although Mum has a few moments, like when the women are ogling Harrison Ford.
I will say that, Luke aside, the characterisation seems more consistent than in Watermelon. Admittedly, I didn't really buy it when Rachel, who has a very hard time getting into anyone else's viewpoint, decides she'd like to become a psychologist, but it's less of a leap than Anna's career choice in her book. But first I'll take a look at Maggie (Margaret) in 2002's Angels....
Marian Keyes
Rachel's Holiday
Original price unknown, purchase price $5.00
Surprisingly worn paperback considering its age, and I've only read it once
C
This is definitely the weakest of the "Walsh sisters" series, not only with some of the flaws of Watermelon, but with flaws of its own. To begin with, this time instead of gratuitous slurs against lesbians and Italians, we've got not-quite-so-gratuitous slurs against lesbians and Latinos. While Claire just made random insults, Rachel (the middle sister and our "heroine" here) actually seems to be saying that, promiscuous as she is (especially when she's stoned and/or drunk), even she has her limits. Her roommate Brigit dates Latinos, but Rachel finds them ridiculous and too little. (And, yes, she's a size queen, in height and penis length, just like Claire, so that when she finally sleeps with her crush Chris, she's disappointed that he's smaller than her ex-boyfriend Luke, of whom more shortly, no pun intended.)
As for the lesbians, Rachel clearly has an unknowledged crush (maybe asexual but still strong) on beautiful, glamourous Nola, but Keyes makes it clear that both Rachel and her mother regard it as more shameful for the neighbour lady to have a lesbian for a daughter than for Mrs. Walsh to have an addict daughter. Also, there's a New York lesbian, "a beefy, short-haired, moustachioed woman, who answered to the name of Brad" (subtlety is not Keyes's strong point), and who has an acknowledged crush on Rachel. As Van Leer's Queening of America showed, in his discussion of Heartburn and Breakfast at Tiffany's among other works, sometimes authors will make fun of gays and lesbians to distance their protagonists from their own queerness, a literary sleight-of-hand.
You see, it's not enough that Rachel keep pining for Luke, or at least pining for his attention. Not only is there much more emphasis on whether or not he loves her than if she loves him, but Keyes makes Luke, a '70s throwback, in the macho, not the sensitive sense: "a Real Man." While there's a lot about Rachel's lust for him, we also hear about her fear and repulsion. There's a scene where he "punishes" her for cock-teasing him earlier while high, "men don't like that," by making her strip for him. She finds this sexy, but it's also clear that she's afraid of him, and it comes across as approaching rape, even if it's "consensual." (She thinks she should say no, but doesn't.)
Now, some of this may be related to her low self-esteem and addiction. But he's never held accountable for it, or any of his other mind games, as Brigit is accountable for liking being the saner roomie. Instead, we keep hearing how "sweet" Luke is, and Nola thinks he's a "dote." (I hoped at first that was just her mispronouncing "dolt.")
Even when Rachel is sober, after going through a rehabilitation program that takes up much of the book (with flashbacks throughout), she and her world are as shallow as Suzanne and Hollywood in Fisher's Postcards from the Edge (1987). Rachel is arguably a more dislikable person, but she does have what Suzanne didn't have, an interesting family.
This is set roughly two years after the events of Watermelon (which came out two years earlier), with Claire now 31, Helen now 20. Helen is again scene-stealing, although unfortunately we get less of her than before. We do get our first real glimpses of second-eldest Margaret, "the lickarse," i.e. the dependable sister. And we see a bit more of Anna, who is a more casual drug-user than Rachel, and apparently the sweetest of the sisters. (Not that there's much competition.) The parents aren't as funny as before, even when Dad has a role in Oklahoma, although Mum has a few moments, like when the women are ogling Harrison Ford.
I will say that, Luke aside, the characterisation seems more consistent than in Watermelon. Admittedly, I didn't really buy it when Rachel, who has a very hard time getting into anyone else's viewpoint, decides she'd like to become a psychologist, but it's less of a leap than Anna's career choice in her book. But first I'll take a look at Maggie (Margaret) in 2002's Angels....
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos
1997, first edition, from HarperCollins
Jim Hightower
There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos
Original price $23.00, purchase price unknown
Hardcover in pretty good condition
B-
Molly Ivins's friend and fellow Texan Hightower, not to mention the former state Agriculture Commissioner, obviously shares her progressiveness and down-home wit. He focuses on economics much more than Ivins does, and he blasts not only greedy corporations but the politicians, including Clinton, who egg them on. Even when he's writing about pollution or the media, it comes back to the corporations. As such, the book gets a bit redundant as it goes on. Probably the best essay/subsection is "Vernon Jordan's Dream," where Hightower manages to be quotable at least four times in six pages:
If I remember correctly, Helen Caldicott's book was the first of mine to mention an author's website, although her address has changed in the past 16 years. But the URL mentioned on this dust jacket, www.jimhightower.com, is still going strong. And I've got one of his later books, Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush, coming up in 2004....
Jim Hightower
There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos
Original price $23.00, purchase price unknown
Hardcover in pretty good condition
B-
Molly Ivins's friend and fellow Texan Hightower, not to mention the former state Agriculture Commissioner, obviously shares her progressiveness and down-home wit. He focuses on economics much more than Ivins does, and he blasts not only greedy corporations but the politicians, including Clinton, who egg them on. Even when he's writing about pollution or the media, it comes back to the corporations. As such, the book gets a bit redundant as it goes on. Probably the best essay/subsection is "Vernon Jordan's Dream," where Hightower manages to be quotable at least four times in six pages:
- "smarter than a tree full of owls"
- "I was one of the few delegates who did not claim to be an F.O.B. (Friend of Bill), if not actually claiming to have been his roommate at Oxford (of course he didn't inhale, the room was too filled with roommates to breathe!"
- "As blues master Albert Collins put it in one of his songs: 'Too many dirty dishes in the sink for just us two/ You got me worried, baby/ Who made them dirty dishes with you?'"
- And quoting Mr. Jordan, "'This is why we must have Bill Clinton, a Democrat, in the White House. Miller beer is owned by Philip Morris, and I represent them in Washington. I want you to know that I'm tired of taking my clients in to see a Republican President, I want them to be able to walk into the Oval Office and be greeted by a Democrat!' And you say there is no idealism, no crusading spirit, no dreamers left in the Democratic Party."
If I remember correctly, Helen Caldicott's book was the first of mine to mention an author's website, although her address has changed in the past 16 years. But the URL mentioned on this dust jacket, www.jimhightower.com, is still going strong. And I've got one of his later books, Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush, coming up in 2004....
Holding My Own in No Man's Land
1997, possibly first edition, from Oxford University Press
Molly Haskell
Holding My Own in No Man's Land: Women and Men and Film and Feminism
Original price $25.00, purchase price $12.50
Hardcover in good condition
B-
Although there were times when I didn't feel like Haskell was being very clear, this does overall feel less confusing than her From Reverence to Rape (1974), ironically considering it's deliberately less focused. It includes essays and columns from roughly 1972 to the-then present. Much of it is interviews with Hollywood legends, from John Wayne and Doris Day to Meryl Streep and Liv Ullman. But she also discusses television (quite a bit on The Carol Burnett Show, with quotes from Burnett's autobiography), literature (including Jane Austen's Emma), and some not directly media-related concerns, like make-up. I thought the most interesting essay was "Rape: The 2,000-Year-Old Misunderstanding." Since Haskell parts company with many feminists on some topics, I was intrigued by her belief (as always of course, not terribly well expressed) that when some women say "rape fantasy," they mean something more like a seduction, in which the man's/men's desire is what matters, while some men's "rape fantasies" more often emphasize the violence and domination.
It's telling that the glowing reviews on the back cover are from such definitely not-feminist men as Richard Schickel and Lionel Tiger. But Haskell would likely say, as she does in her introduction, that this is because feminists don't understand her. If you can get past the martyrdom of that attitude (as suggested by the title, which she admits swiping from Gilbert and Gubar although for a different purpose), she does provide food for thought.
Molly Haskell
Holding My Own in No Man's Land: Women and Men and Film and Feminism
Original price $25.00, purchase price $12.50
Hardcover in good condition
B-
Although there were times when I didn't feel like Haskell was being very clear, this does overall feel less confusing than her From Reverence to Rape (1974), ironically considering it's deliberately less focused. It includes essays and columns from roughly 1972 to the-then present. Much of it is interviews with Hollywood legends, from John Wayne and Doris Day to Meryl Streep and Liv Ullman. But she also discusses television (quite a bit on The Carol Burnett Show, with quotes from Burnett's autobiography), literature (including Jane Austen's Emma), and some not directly media-related concerns, like make-up. I thought the most interesting essay was "Rape: The 2,000-Year-Old Misunderstanding." Since Haskell parts company with many feminists on some topics, I was intrigued by her belief (as always of course, not terribly well expressed) that when some women say "rape fantasy," they mean something more like a seduction, in which the man's/men's desire is what matters, while some men's "rape fantasies" more often emphasize the violence and domination.
It's telling that the glowing reviews on the back cover are from such definitely not-feminist men as Richard Schickel and Lionel Tiger. But Haskell would likely say, as she does in her introduction, that this is because feminists don't understand her. If you can get past the martyrdom of that attitude (as suggested by the title, which she admits swiping from Gilbert and Gubar although for a different purpose), she does provide food for thought.
Monday, November 4, 2013
The Memoirs of Cleopatra: A Novel
1997, possibly first edition, from St. Martin's Press
Margaret George
The Memoirs of Cleopatra: A Novel
Original price $27.95, purchase price unknown
Hardcover with stains and broken spine
B-
While there were times I thought this book might deserve a B, there were things that bothered me consistently throughout. One is that George often forgot how much time had passed, so, for instance, it was unclear if Cleopatra was eighteen or twenty-one when she met Caesar. And when the queen is involved with Caesar, and later with Marc Antony, she sounds like Pat Benatar, as she compares lovemaking to war-making. (It may've been true to her character though.) Thirdly, George couldn't seem to make up her mind whether Cleopatra was regal or almost democratic, or a combination of both, with her closest friendships with her servants and employees, to the point that her childhood-chum/physician Olympos can call her "dearest." (And, no, it didn't seem to fit his character.)
Still, the book for the most part held my interest, which is saying something when it's almost one thousand pages long. Unlike Michael Grant's nonfiction approach, there was no shortage of gossip here. I think I'd most like to read a book on a topic that's just touched on there and here, the propaganda against Cleopatra. Octavian was not the military leader that either Caesar or Antony was, but the man sure won the battle of images and legends. Well, in his time. In the long run, Queen Cleo obviously beat out "Augustus."
Margaret George
The Memoirs of Cleopatra: A Novel
Original price $27.95, purchase price unknown
Hardcover with stains and broken spine
B-
While there were times I thought this book might deserve a B, there were things that bothered me consistently throughout. One is that George often forgot how much time had passed, so, for instance, it was unclear if Cleopatra was eighteen or twenty-one when she met Caesar. And when the queen is involved with Caesar, and later with Marc Antony, she sounds like Pat Benatar, as she compares lovemaking to war-making. (It may've been true to her character though.) Thirdly, George couldn't seem to make up her mind whether Cleopatra was regal or almost democratic, or a combination of both, with her closest friendships with her servants and employees, to the point that her childhood-chum/physician Olympos can call her "dearest." (And, no, it didn't seem to fit his character.)
Still, the book for the most part held my interest, which is saying something when it's almost one thousand pages long. Unlike Michael Grant's nonfiction approach, there was no shortage of gossip here. I think I'd most like to read a book on a topic that's just touched on there and here, the propaganda against Cleopatra. Octavian was not the military leader that either Caesar or Antony was, but the man sure won the battle of images and legends. Well, in his time. In the long run, Queen Cleo obviously beat out "Augustus."
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