End of year reading
Jan. 2nd, 2023 02:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeThe last books of December!
Field Work: What Land Does to People and What People Do to Land by Bella Bathurst (2021). Found while browsing the shelves at the library, where I thought, ooh, a book all about modern farming, that's something I should know more about. Bathurst intersperses memoir-ish sections about the farm where she has lived (as tenant of the farm cottage) for some years and the family who own it with chapters describing her investigations into various aspects of farming and related business—visiting and interviewing a range of people involved in agriculture and describing their work. It's interesting stuff, and there's some really fascinating detail about things as varied as the day-to-day work of knackers, the complex psychology of family farms and the ways in which farmers are changing and diversifying their businesses to remain viable in the modern economy. But, given that subtitle, I was hoping for a bit more about the actual ecological detail of the processes of farming, of which there is not much. Also Bathurst's prose is sort of slick in a way I find unpleasant and untrustworthy (a complaint I have about a lot of modern non-fiction), and she has an irritating habit of bringing up controversial topics like anti-TB badger culls with an air of going 'look, I am not afraid to tackle controversial topics!' and then not actually saying anything about why there's a controversy or what she thinks the correct view of the issue is anyway.
Re-read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (2004), which is just about my favourite book ever. While I think I would have liked it less if I'd first read it more recently and with more experience of old books, it remains an excellent example of modern historical fiction as well as the best fantasy book there is. This time I appreciated Stephen's character even more, was intrigued by the ambiguity of his ending (good thing there was so much good Yuletide fic exploring what happens to him afterwards :D ) and apart from that just had a few random lingering questions, like why on earth does Lascelles—totally groundlessly, incorrectly and without any actual consequences—try to accuse Henry Woodhope of being in love with Strange in chapter 57???
Sixpenny Octavo by Annick Trent (2022). Disclaimer that the author is someone I know :) I was excited to see this appear! It's an f/f historical romance novel set in/around London in the 1790s, a time of political upheaval and repression by the British Government as the effects of the French Revolution are felt across the Channel. One of the main characters, Hannah Croft, is a clockmender whose best friend and business partner is arrested and imprisoned—erroneously but implacably—for sedition after the reading club they attend is raided by the authorities; the other, Lucy Boone, a servant recently out of work after her employer was also arrested for sedition and transported, may be able to give evidence that could help free Molly, Hannah's BFF. Working together, Lucy and Hannah fall in love... In case that summary didn't make it clear, there is a world of fascinating historical detail in this book: about the political atmosphere; about the jobs Lucy and Hannah do (Lucy decides to leave service and ends up making a living through more uncertain, specific and interesting work; meanwhile we hear a lot about Hannah's and Molly's clockmending), the places they go and their and their friends' lives in general; about reading and literacy and their place in eighteenth-century working-class life (Lucy learns to read over the course of the book, and the reading club where she becomes a regular attendee is an important setting throughout). I absolutely loved all that; and like Beck and Call, the other book of Trent's I have read and enjoyed, there's a lovely sense of the social-historical atmosphere, of the tasks that fill the characters' days and the places and social circles they inhabit. I was not so keen on the romance: the characters confess their feelings and begin their relationship long before they really trust or understand each other, which is not my thing, and there's some jealousy around Hannah/Lucy vs. Hannah's friendship with Molly which I did not like (really I think I dislike relationship jealousy in fiction generally, unless it's the sort resolved by the character deciding to remove themselves from the situation causing it). Also the prose style is more modern than I like (including in the made-up contemporary Gothic novel read by the reading club from which we get several excerpts, which was disappointing). There's some good exciting plot stuff, especially towards the end when the reading club identify the informer who was responsible for that raid in the first place—when the informer is unmasked they start complaining about how it's not fair, the Government don't even pay them, which made me laugh as I immediately thought of Pickle :D Oh, and I liked Lucy's friendship with her new employer Mr Raeburn, and the various ways they help each other. On the whole, the book is a very good one! Lots to like, and most of what I didn't like was a matter of taste—highly recommended.
Lochiel of the '45: The Jacobite Chief and the Prince by John Sibbald Gibson (1994). More Jacobite history reading, and more relevant material for my WIP! This book opens with a brief survey of Lochiel's family background and early life, but it's mostly about the '45: from Lochiel's agonising and historically pivotal decision to bring Clan Cameron to join Charles when he landed in Scotland, through the various parts played by Lochiel and the Camerons in the Rising itself, Lochiel's movements and plans in the months after Culloden and finally his unsuccessful Jacobite plotting in France in the last two years of his life. All fascinating stuff and highly relevant to Flight of the Heron! Some particularly interesting and noteworthy details:
Field Work: What Land Does to People and What People Do to Land by Bella Bathurst (2021). Found while browsing the shelves at the library, where I thought, ooh, a book all about modern farming, that's something I should know more about. Bathurst intersperses memoir-ish sections about the farm where she has lived (as tenant of the farm cottage) for some years and the family who own it with chapters describing her investigations into various aspects of farming and related business—visiting and interviewing a range of people involved in agriculture and describing their work. It's interesting stuff, and there's some really fascinating detail about things as varied as the day-to-day work of knackers, the complex psychology of family farms and the ways in which farmers are changing and diversifying their businesses to remain viable in the modern economy. But, given that subtitle, I was hoping for a bit more about the actual ecological detail of the processes of farming, of which there is not much. Also Bathurst's prose is sort of slick in a way I find unpleasant and untrustworthy (a complaint I have about a lot of modern non-fiction), and she has an irritating habit of bringing up controversial topics like anti-TB badger culls with an air of going 'look, I am not afraid to tackle controversial topics!' and then not actually saying anything about why there's a controversy or what she thinks the correct view of the issue is anyway.
Re-read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (2004), which is just about my favourite book ever. While I think I would have liked it less if I'd first read it more recently and with more experience of old books, it remains an excellent example of modern historical fiction as well as the best fantasy book there is. This time I appreciated Stephen's character even more, was intrigued by the ambiguity of his ending (good thing there was so much good Yuletide fic exploring what happens to him afterwards :D ) and apart from that just had a few random lingering questions, like why on earth does Lascelles—totally groundlessly, incorrectly and without any actual consequences—try to accuse Henry Woodhope of being in love with Strange in chapter 57???
Sixpenny Octavo by Annick Trent (2022). Disclaimer that the author is someone I know :) I was excited to see this appear! It's an f/f historical romance novel set in/around London in the 1790s, a time of political upheaval and repression by the British Government as the effects of the French Revolution are felt across the Channel. One of the main characters, Hannah Croft, is a clockmender whose best friend and business partner is arrested and imprisoned—erroneously but implacably—for sedition after the reading club they attend is raided by the authorities; the other, Lucy Boone, a servant recently out of work after her employer was also arrested for sedition and transported, may be able to give evidence that could help free Molly, Hannah's BFF. Working together, Lucy and Hannah fall in love... In case that summary didn't make it clear, there is a world of fascinating historical detail in this book: about the political atmosphere; about the jobs Lucy and Hannah do (Lucy decides to leave service and ends up making a living through more uncertain, specific and interesting work; meanwhile we hear a lot about Hannah's and Molly's clockmending), the places they go and their and their friends' lives in general; about reading and literacy and their place in eighteenth-century working-class life (Lucy learns to read over the course of the book, and the reading club where she becomes a regular attendee is an important setting throughout). I absolutely loved all that; and like Beck and Call, the other book of Trent's I have read and enjoyed, there's a lovely sense of the social-historical atmosphere, of the tasks that fill the characters' days and the places and social circles they inhabit. I was not so keen on the romance: the characters confess their feelings and begin their relationship long before they really trust or understand each other, which is not my thing, and there's some jealousy around Hannah/Lucy vs. Hannah's friendship with Molly which I did not like (really I think I dislike relationship jealousy in fiction generally, unless it's the sort resolved by the character deciding to remove themselves from the situation causing it). Also the prose style is more modern than I like (including in the made-up contemporary Gothic novel read by the reading club from which we get several excerpts, which was disappointing). There's some good exciting plot stuff, especially towards the end when the reading club identify the informer who was responsible for that raid in the first place—when the informer is unmasked they start complaining about how it's not fair, the Government don't even pay them, which made me laugh as I immediately thought of Pickle :D Oh, and I liked Lucy's friendship with her new employer Mr Raeburn, and the various ways they help each other. On the whole, the book is a very good one! Lots to like, and most of what I didn't like was a matter of taste—highly recommended.
Lochiel of the '45: The Jacobite Chief and the Prince by John Sibbald Gibson (1994). More Jacobite history reading, and more relevant material for my WIP! This book opens with a brief survey of Lochiel's family background and early life, but it's mostly about the '45: from Lochiel's agonising and historically pivotal decision to bring Clan Cameron to join Charles when he landed in Scotland, through the various parts played by Lochiel and the Camerons in the Rising itself, Lochiel's movements and plans in the months after Culloden and finally his unsuccessful Jacobite plotting in France in the last two years of his life. All fascinating stuff and highly relevant to Flight of the Heron! Some particularly interesting and noteworthy details:
- The accounts of complicated clan rivalries, Cameron-MacDonnell and Cameron-Campbell especially. Lochiel's mother was a Campbell and so was his wife, whose family were Jacobite allies of the Camerons; writing about some of the retributive violence committed by the Argyll militia during the Rising, Lochiel describes the Campbells as his 'pretended friends' while recommending that the Prince 'hang a Campbell for every house that shall hereafter be burnt by them'!
- The focus on Lochiel's and others' continuing efforts to reignite the Rising after Culloden. I knew that Jacobites at the time didn't see it as the definite end, of course, but this book really makes the extent of that clear; Lochiel seems to have been actively planning immediate further Jacobite action more or less continuously from Culloden until his death two and a half years later. In this he was often stymied by the Prince, and he continually blames the Prince's advisors for it. Relatedly, Gibson's account of the movements of the Prince and other fugitive Jacobites across the Highlands after Culloden is much clearer in its discussion of their specific motives at each point than any of the other books I've read.
- The economic background of the Camerons of Lochiel: Gibson discusses the careers of Lochiel's brothers and his handling of his own role as clan chief. He was often pressed for money, and amongst other things sold a lot of timber from the estate around Loch Arkaig to try and get more; apparently this poverty was partly caused by his deliberately keeping the population of Clan Cameron as high as possible (rather than kicking tenants off the land and making 'improvements' that forced people to emigrate, as other chiefs were already starting to do) in order to keep up their fighting strength for a Jacobite rising—and partly by extravagant spending on his house and garden! I'm intrigued by how economically connected the Highlands are at this period, in contrast to the perception of them as a barbaric backwater and the real remoteness as regards the ordinary inhabitants' daily lives.
- Lochiel remained very active in Jacobite plotting in France after the '45—it was always the intention that the exile of the Jacobite chiefs was only temporary and they expected soon to return to make another attempt—but he disagreed with the Prince about what plans would be best, and in the end European politics intervened. Gibson portrays Lochiel's death as sudden and unexpected, rather than the gradual 'heartbroken' decline after the failure of the '45 which was the impression I'd got before.
- After his death Lochiel was lauded by a Whig poem published in the Scots Magazine, which, after quite a lot of genuine praise for his character and actions as chief despite his terribly mistaken politics, ends with the line, 'good Lochiel is now a Whig in heaven'. This seems to have been meant genuinely, but wow, what a way to insult your dead enemy!
- The book contains the full text of the Memoire d'un Ecossais, an account of the Rising written by Lochiel along with Lord Sempill and MacGregor of Balhaldie (Gibson thinks Sempill probably did the writing but the ideas are largely Lochiel's) in 1747, as part of their efforts in France to persuade Charles Edward to go along with their plans. Very interesting stuff to get in their own words! Particularly notable is its claim that the Duke of Cumberland offered Lochiel peace terms shortly after Culloden but he refused, 'with disdain'.
