"...family has never been about the promotion of rights but about the surrender of them – by both the man and the woman."

 What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: why happiness eludes the modern woman by Danielle Crittenden

My instantaneous, knee-jerk reaction to this book I have already recorded; now it's time for the more sensible, thoughtful comments that I must have within me somewhere. I really did appreciate and like this book. Thing is, I don't know if anyone with an opposite viewpoint would ever be able to not throw it across the room. No offense to the sexually-liberated feminists; I would totally understand. But I wish they would all read it anyhow - I try to be omnivourous with the stuff I read, instead of sticking to things I agree with and I find it really interesting, sometimes, though difficult. The idea of the book is that modern feminism has, inadvertently, done as much to disempower women socially as it has to enfranchise them. A daring concept, I know. And the book makes its point fairly well, describing how the breaking down of social structures has damaged male-female social relations, going through such issues as co-ed bathrooms and sexual harrassment lawsuits. The arguments made seem to me very relevant - particularly as regards the divisive issues of work vs family, divorce, biological clocks, the feminine 'disease of compassion', equality within marriage, one night stands, the guilt of daycare, single parenthood, and all their attending pros and cons.

On the whole, I don't know how to adequately sum up or pick apart What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us on my own - I would dearly love to discuss this book with a person who disagreed with it and see what kind of conclusions we came to.

"No one compels us to have babies. When we do bear them, we have an obligation to care for them, no matter how dull and tiring it may be.. The local Humane Society will not let you adopt a puppy if you work full-time, Why should our standards for children be any less? Yet the feminist wisdom has been that the child should always be the first spinning plate a woman drops even if it's the one most precious to her."

I rant unreadably about Lewis Carroll.

Howdy howdy howdy.

Sooo... my recent readings:

Lewis Carroll: A Biography

I love Lewis Carroll. I mean, I really really really love Lewis Carroll. I know about six of his poems, have read all of his children's books - even Sylvie and Bruno - and I just love love love him as an author. One of my favourite memories of my childhood is snuggling up in bed on a winter's night with my hot water bottle (really an empty orange juice cask with hot water from the tap in it - ah the residual smell of hot orange juice!) and a battered old copy of Through the Looking Glass. A while ago - last year or the year before - I read Lynne Truss's book Tennyson's Gift: historical fiction about my favouritest group of writers ever, namely, the Victorians. It's all about a summer in which Lewis Carroll (or Charles Dodgson, to give him his real name) visited Tennyson on holidays like the sorta crazy fanboy he was. I thought I would love this book - the subject matter was awesome, Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves already had me gunning for her, everything about it seemed to beg me to read it.
I hated Tennyson's Gift. I will never deliberately read a ficitonal book about real people with an eye to enjoyment again. Truss took my favourite authors and made them look like mean, unhappy idiots, all for comedic effect. If they were fictional people to begin with I could probably shrug it off - Jasper Fforde can do that, I don't mind. I rather enjoy it. But I just can't hack seeing real people I have real respect for being used and abused in a work of fiction. I can't.
 And she made Charles Dodgson out to be a closet paedophile. Humourously.

Dude. What the Heck?
This is not OK on so many levels. Charles Dodgson is one of the most enigmatic, paradoxical, fascinating people I have ever read about. Reading his prayers and pleas with God over some unnamed sin, I feel actually humbled. I can see how people read this stuff and say 'paedophilia!' The man had thousands of child friends! There was something wrong in his head!
Thing is, my diary reads like this a lot of the time. Particularly when I was younger: lots and lots of weepy grovelly 'God help me to change my horrible ways!' type stuff. But writing this stuff down helped me. I am a more sane person to this day because I wrote and prayed all the heavy feelings out of my head. And, to this day, all the hundreds of child friends who talked about Dodgson never ever made any sort of claim that he ever behaved around them in an inappropriate way. Victorians were way uptight, too, as you probably know. Some relative of Dodgson's posthumously crossed out a passage in his diary about how the real Alice (Alice Liddell) was grumpy when she was sick. That's the kind of stuff they censored! I don't think we need worry about worse things having been edited out, somehow.
Dodgson was a walking talking paradox. A stern and serious professor of mathematics who was all propriety and manners with adults and a clergyman who played games with children and wrote Alice in Wonderland for a group of little girls. An awkward, stammering man who invented a type of bicycle and wanted to bowlderise Bowlder's version of Shakespeare so little kids could read it. A conscientious man who held radical views about church and charity. The universally acclaimed best photographer of the 19th century.

My favourite story in this book is about a time he was invited to a kids' birthday party. He showed up, the servant let him into the drawing room and formally announced 'Charles Dodgson, ma'am,' to its occupants... Dodgson decided to get down on all fours and pretend to be a bear for the children. He got into the middle of the room, looked up... and found out that he was in the wrong house. So he gets up and gets out of the room without a word to any of the no doubt electrified Victorian tea pary! I CAN RELATE!

So... yeah. The book was good.

Greetings.

Just this morning I finished a book I got on my kindle called Dreaming Anastasia. I got it for free (for some reason, can't remember why. Promotion or something.) I don't read a lot of young adult fiction, for the simple reason that most of it is really, really, really bad. What is it about a young adult audience that attracts the worst writers with the most cliche ideas?
When push comes to shove I don't actually believe in writing for a specific audience that way: in my way of thinking, books are either good art or bad rubbish, with the occasional forgettable mediocrity thrown in for good measure. Winnie the Pooh is worth a read and a re-read, no matter the age of the reader, for the simple reason that it is good. I'm not saying that everyone's taste must be the same, but this is what classics are for! A classic is a book which has been preserved for posterity by a genuinely deserved popularity. Usually.
I remember reading an article in a magazine once by a person who was genuinely disgusted to find adults reading Harry Potter books. 'There are plenty of books written for adults' she asserted, smugly decrying the many people she knew of who had been seen reading a 'children's' series of books. Don't get me wrong, I haven't even READ Harry Potter! It could be Satanic propaganda, for all I know. But the argument of 'not your age group' really doesn't cut the mustard. This is another reason that gratituous sex, gore and obscenity really get my goat, especially in literature: if you want to write a classic (and, really, we should aim for the moon every time, I reckon!) don't fill it so full of filth that parents feel a need to shelter their children from it. Take a look at To Kill A Mockingbird. This truly classic novel deals with issues like racism, rape, prejudice and single parenting, but manages to do so with a full allowance of dignity and a refreshing lack of obscenity.
Sorry, where was I? Got completely caught up in a gigantic rant, there, in case you hadn't noticed. (I kid. You noticed.)
Back to Dreaming Anastasia. I didn't like this book. I didn't hate it either, if that makes things any better - which it doesn't. It was just so cliché! I mean, it was a (cliche!) OK idea: the young girl has mysterious connection to historical figure, only the girl can save said historical figure, mysterious magic and high jinks ensue! Buuut, because... well, just cuz, I guess, the entire plot turns into an awkward mutual crush romance... between an adolescent girl and a ridiculously good-looking, angsty, supernatural dude, who's cursed with immortality. Yep, you heard me. That's not familiar at all! (I haven't read Twilight either, actually, but it's surprising what popcultural osmosis can do to you.) And this ridiculously good-looking, flawless man-babe has the bluest blue eyes you ever did see. No, seriously, the blueness of his eyes is only mentioned about three hundred times.
There was no character development, bargeloads of boring exposition, random useless characters I forgot in between chapters, an unconvincingly 'ambiguous' witch, plotholes galore and an anticlimactic ending.
So... Dreaming Anastasia... not my favourite book.

Although, this ad makes it look pretty cool: