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Other January reading
Annals of the Parish by John Galt (1821). A novel in the form of 'annals' written by a clergyman, the Reverend Micah Balwhidder, chronicling the history of his Ayrshire parish during his ministry from 1760 to 1810 (coinciding perfectly, as the staunchly loyal Balwhidder points out, with the reign of George III up to the start of the Regency). As such much of it reads more like particularly colourful and literary local history than a novel, and there are all sorts of good historical bits: the prevalence and decline of smuggling, of which Mr Balwhidder thoroughly disapproves as it lowers the morals of the parish; the introduction (via smuggling) of tea, about which Mr Balwhidder changes his mind and which he decides is actually a healthy, non-intoxicating and generally pleasant drink; the rapid growth of industry, with the building and expansion of a new cotton mill in the parish; the French Revolution (Mr Balwhidder thoroughly disapproves of the iniquitous Jacobins—but at one point he gets accused of being a Jacobin because he preaches against industrialists hoarding wealth and exploiting workers!); and the effects of all these dramatic changes on culture and society. Also loads of fascinating little details, like the live turtle (tortoise?) transported from Glasgow and eaten at a dinner given by the mill-owner. Apparently this book originated the term 'utilitarian' to describe a certain kind of industrial secular moral philosophy, and it was only later adopted by people who actually agreed with the idea! Altogether a very interesting portrait of Lowland Scottish society and Presbyterian religion shortly after the period of my Jacobite fandoms, very much worth reading.
The Ladies of Lyndon by Margaret Kennedy (1923). This book could have been subtitled 'Society is silly and awful; autistic people have the right idea'. I liked it immensely. It follows Agatha Cocks, a young lady who makes a highly suitable marriage to Sir John Clewer, owner of the Oxfordshire estate of Lyndon, after having been persuaded to abandon an entirely unsuitable youthful romance with her cousin Gerald. Later Agatha is established and unhappy in her conventional life at Lyndon, surrounded by her variously unpleasant in-laws, and of course Gerald turns up again and things go generally pear-shaped. But the most important character in all this is Agatha's new brother-in-law James Clewer, who is regarded by the family as 'abnormal' and 'not quite all there' and who was almost certainly intended to read as autistic as far as a character written in 1923 could be. James is awkward and 'shy' in social situations, and doesn't see the point in following conventions which he regards as silly. He knows what he wants out of life, and in the background of the novel he quietly goes and gets it: an artistic career, and a happy marriage to the housemaid who was his childhood BFF. The family are never quite sure what to do with him, by turns troubled, scandalised and attemptedly sympathetic, but he evades their attempts to hem him in and does what he wants. He's a kind of contrast to Agatha, stifled by her social surroundings until she can't take it any more. I liked James very much and really liked this story! There were one or two places where James's 'revenge' on the family who have mistreated him and go on being socially silly crossed the line into being too really bad to sympathise with; but the main problem I had with the book was there just wasn't enough of James. He remains in the background and we never really see his point of view on things; I did like Agatha, but keeping the focus on her made for a much less interesting novel.
Pagan's Crusade by Catherine Jinks (1993). I picked this up from![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dolorosa_12's fandom manifesto, because the history and characters sounded good. The history is indeed good, and made an interesting change from my usual historical reading: it's set in and around Jerusalem in 1187, during the Crusades and leading up to this debacle. Our main character is sixteen-year-old Pagan Kidrouk, who joins the Knights Templar as a squire and sees pilgrimage, crusade and battle alongside his knight, the personified chivalric ideal that is Lord Roland. There is a lot to like there, especially in the historical setting and in some of the character development; but unfortunately it was ruined for me by the prose style, which is an extreme of the sort of modern writing I do not like at all. The book opens with five sentences an average of five words long and with not a single verb between them, and it never really gets better from there; almost every sentence is either directly-quoted thoughts of the narrator or a brief, verbless statement of some character or object, with almost none of what I (raised on Victorian novels) would call telling a story. I found it actually difficult to follow at times (to be fair, I expect someone more used to this style wouldn't), and annoying pretty much all the time. The character of Pagan, who narrates in first person, didn't help: he's bitterly sarcastic and takes nothing seriously or in good faith, and while I can acknowledge that characters like this might have hidden depths of goodness and be worth exploring to find them, I don't like them and am not particularly interested in sticking around to see that happen. I did find him a bit more palatable later on, as he grows closer to Lord Roland and stops mocking him so much, and some of those hidden depths come to the surface alongside some interesting commentary on whether the Crusades were really such a good idea after all; but this wasn't enough to make up for everything else. It's a good book and you may well like it if this sounds more like your kind of thing, but sadly 'twas not mine.
I also read two chapters of the biography Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart by Frank McLynn—it's a bit of a brick and I will come back to the rest later, but I thought I'd just read the chapters, on the early 1750s, most immediately relevant to my current WIP. Very interesting stuff on the political background to the broad Elibank Plot, although McLynn does commit a bit of a howler about the Appin murder (saying that it took place in 1753 and, on the basis of this error, arguing that Alan Breck Stewart, who he claims was definitely the murderer, was motivated by revenge for Archibald Cameron's execution; it was actually 1752, a year before Dr Cameron was captured), which rather lowers my confidence in him as an authority.
And I re-read John Halifax, Gentleman by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, and... maybe I shouldn't have done. I love it dearly but it is a lot. There are many things that could be said about this novel and its treatment of history, social development, disability, queerness and so on; in my original review I said there was probably a fascinating thesis on the relationship between disability, gender and (queer) sexuality in Victorian literature to be written around this book, and lo, it seems someone is working on just that, or at least has written a good blog post about it. And I did develop my own thoughts about those things a bit, and maybe one day I'll be able to write interestingly happy slash fic criticising the book's ideas and finding a happier ending, but mostly it was just... aargh, Phineas. :(sanguinity, I remembered some of the things you've said about Horatio Hornblower; I think the way Hornblower's biggest fans feel about him is the way I feel about Phineas Fletcher.
;___;
The Ladies of Lyndon by Margaret Kennedy (1923). This book could have been subtitled 'Society is silly and awful; autistic people have the right idea'. I liked it immensely. It follows Agatha Cocks, a young lady who makes a highly suitable marriage to Sir John Clewer, owner of the Oxfordshire estate of Lyndon, after having been persuaded to abandon an entirely unsuitable youthful romance with her cousin Gerald. Later Agatha is established and unhappy in her conventional life at Lyndon, surrounded by her variously unpleasant in-laws, and of course Gerald turns up again and things go generally pear-shaped. But the most important character in all this is Agatha's new brother-in-law James Clewer, who is regarded by the family as 'abnormal' and 'not quite all there' and who was almost certainly intended to read as autistic as far as a character written in 1923 could be. James is awkward and 'shy' in social situations, and doesn't see the point in following conventions which he regards as silly. He knows what he wants out of life, and in the background of the novel he quietly goes and gets it: an artistic career, and a happy marriage to the housemaid who was his childhood BFF. The family are never quite sure what to do with him, by turns troubled, scandalised and attemptedly sympathetic, but he evades their attempts to hem him in and does what he wants. He's a kind of contrast to Agatha, stifled by her social surroundings until she can't take it any more. I liked James very much and really liked this story! There were one or two places where James's 'revenge' on the family who have mistreated him and go on being socially silly crossed the line into being too really bad to sympathise with; but the main problem I had with the book was there just wasn't enough of James. He remains in the background and we never really see his point of view on things; I did like Agatha, but keeping the focus on her made for a much less interesting novel.
Pagan's Crusade by Catherine Jinks (1993). I picked this up from
dolorosa_12's fandom manifesto, because the history and characters sounded good. The history is indeed good, and made an interesting change from my usual historical reading: it's set in and around Jerusalem in 1187, during the Crusades and leading up to this debacle. Our main character is sixteen-year-old Pagan Kidrouk, who joins the Knights Templar as a squire and sees pilgrimage, crusade and battle alongside his knight, the personified chivalric ideal that is Lord Roland. There is a lot to like there, especially in the historical setting and in some of the character development; but unfortunately it was ruined for me by the prose style, which is an extreme of the sort of modern writing I do not like at all. The book opens with five sentences an average of five words long and with not a single verb between them, and it never really gets better from there; almost every sentence is either directly-quoted thoughts of the narrator or a brief, verbless statement of some character or object, with almost none of what I (raised on Victorian novels) would call telling a story. I found it actually difficult to follow at times (to be fair, I expect someone more used to this style wouldn't), and annoying pretty much all the time. The character of Pagan, who narrates in first person, didn't help: he's bitterly sarcastic and takes nothing seriously or in good faith, and while I can acknowledge that characters like this might have hidden depths of goodness and be worth exploring to find them, I don't like them and am not particularly interested in sticking around to see that happen. I did find him a bit more palatable later on, as he grows closer to Lord Roland and stops mocking him so much, and some of those hidden depths come to the surface alongside some interesting commentary on whether the Crusades were really such a good idea after all; but this wasn't enough to make up for everything else. It's a good book and you may well like it if this sounds more like your kind of thing, but sadly 'twas not mine.I also read two chapters of the biography Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart by Frank McLynn—it's a bit of a brick and I will come back to the rest later, but I thought I'd just read the chapters, on the early 1750s, most immediately relevant to my current WIP. Very interesting stuff on the political background to the broad Elibank Plot, although McLynn does commit a bit of a howler about the Appin murder (saying that it took place in 1753 and, on the basis of this error, arguing that Alan Breck Stewart, who he claims was definitely the murderer, was motivated by revenge for Archibald Cameron's execution; it was actually 1752, a year before Dr Cameron was captured), which rather lowers my confidence in him as an authority.
And I re-read John Halifax, Gentleman by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, and... maybe I shouldn't have done. I love it dearly but it is a lot. There are many things that could be said about this novel and its treatment of history, social development, disability, queerness and so on; in my original review I said there was probably a fascinating thesis on the relationship between disability, gender and (queer) sexuality in Victorian literature to be written around this book, and lo, it seems someone is working on just that, or at least has written a good blog post about it. And I did develop my own thoughts about those things a bit, and maybe one day I'll be able to write interestingly happy slash fic criticising the book's ideas and finding a happier ending, but mostly it was just... aargh, Phineas. :(
sanguinity, I remembered some of the things you've said about Horatio Hornblower; I think the way Hornblower's biggest fans feel about him is the way I feel about Phineas Fletcher. That long, quiet Sunday, when, I remember, the sun never came out all day, but the whole earth and sky melted together in a soft, grey haze; when we lay on the common and heard church-bells ringing, some distant, some near; and, after all was quiet, talked our own old sabbath talks, of this world and the world to come; when, towards twilight, we went down into the beech-wood below the house, and sat idly there among the pleasant-smelling ferns; when, from the morning to the evening, he devoted himself altogether to my comfort and amusement—to perfect which required of him no harder duty than to be near me always;—that Sunday was the last I ever had David altogether for my own—my very own.
It was natural, it was just, it was right. God forbid that in any way I should have murmured.
;___;
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The academic behind that John Halifax article has also produced a critical edition of one of Craik's other works, which sounds similarly heavy on the disability themes: https://victoriansecrets.co.uk/book/a-noble-life/
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I saw that!—I've not read A Noble Life, and both it in general and that critical edition look very interesting. Disability is one of Craik's favourite topics—amongst the books I have read it's also prominent in Olive and turns up briefly but significantly in Agatha's Husband.
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And I almost regret having spilled so many pixels about Hornblower at you, for I am not altogether clear on which sentiment of his biggest fans you meant to reference!
But what a piteous passage! And just to check that I have everyone's names rightly, that 'David' there is the Biblical David, of Jonathan fame, yes?
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I am not altogether clear on which sentiment of his biggest fans you meant to reference!
Oh dear, there I go aiming for 'tastefully oblique' and hitting 'so vague no one can tell what you mean' again... *facepalm* I meant what you said in your last fic comment reply, amongst other things, about the inside of Hornblower's head—I am too intimately familiar with the inside of Phineas's head, and the particular presentation of it here is what makes the book A Lot.
And just to check that I have everyone's names rightly, that 'David' there is the Biblical David, of Jonathan fame, yes?
:D Ha, that's it—Phineas is talking about John, whom he often calls 'David' for exactly that reason.
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"loved him as my own soul" -- this is the sound of my lovelorn sigh!
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"loved him as my own soul" -- this is the sound of my lovelorn sigh!
:D It really is amazingly slashy—it starts like that and just keeps going, all the way through the 500-odd pages.
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<3 Yesss, Phineas absolutely deserves all the happy and slashy fix-it fic!
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In any case, I'm glad you gave the series a go, but am sorry it wasn't to your taste. It's the sort of thing where you need to really connect with the character if you're to have any chance of putting up with the writing style.
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It's the sort of thing where you need to really connect with the character if you're to have any chance of putting up with the writing style.
Yes, I think so—it was really the combination of not connecting with either... However, it is fun to read the occasional thing like this very different to my usual fare, and I did like aspects of the book, so I will say thank you for the rec anyway :)
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I am a little envious of all your reading; yesterday my only reading time was having my nose in my e-reader while walking to and from the tram stop, and while brushing my teeth, etc. I use the time while I am actually on the tram for writing fic. But possibly you are still writing up January books?
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Yes, these are from January; I've just caught up to now with my latest post. But I've read very little over the last few days—I have several books that I want to read soon but it's not quite time for any of them (or rather, one of them hasn't arrived in the post yet...), so I'm kind of stuck. I hope you can find some more reading time soon :)