Christmas music time!
Dec. 15th, 2024 08:53 am
(I am usually loyal to the Steeleye Span version, but I've recently learnt of the existence of this one, and I love it.)
(I am usually loyal to the Steeleye Span version, but I've recently learnt of the existence of this one, and I love it.)
Recent reading
Sep. 8th, 2023 03:31 pmThe New Road by Neil Munro (1914). A tangential Jacobite novel, set in the 1730s around the building of General Wade's roads. The main character, Æneas MacMaster, is a young man from Inveraray who's sent on a business mission in the north for his merchant uncle, accompanying Ninian Campbell (a name changed from MacGregor), an agent of the Duke of Argyll carrying out political dealings in the Highlands. The book is largely about the question of historical progress, the 'civilising' of the Highlands and the new ways vs. the old, and its perspective is decidedly ambivalent, combining romanticisation of the old Highlands with a firm belief that Barbarism is Bad and Civilisation is Good. (It's also made me realise one curious thing about FotH; though Broster does romanticise the Highlands in some ways, there's one thing that most romantic-Highlands authors do that she never does, and that's talk about Ossian; the debates about the poems' authenticity seem to have been long-running and complicated, so I'm not sure how far this is because they had been conclusively determined to be fakes by her time but not by the time of earlier authors. Stevenson never mentions them either, of course.) All this is worked out through a complicated plot of mystery, adventure and political intrigue, in which the characters solve a decades-old murder mystery and an ongoing political tangle and meet various historical figures including Simon Fraser of Lovat and Duncan Forbes of Culloden. I was prejudiced against the book by the pretty clear fact that it owes something to Kidnapped, but a) both main characters are not only Whigs but Campbell-affiliated Whigs and b) any slashiness there might have been in the central relationship—and there might have been some—is safely defused via a love interest who makes them future father- and son-in-law. One of the early reviews of FotH compares Broster's skill to Munro's; there is certainly a lot of landscape description in this book, some of it very nice, but on the whole I think it feels more artificial than Broster's. Hmm. I will probably read more of Munro's books at some point—Doom Castle is a difficult title to resist—but I might leave it a while.
The Scouring of the White Horse by Thomas Hughes (1859). More from the author of Tom Brown's School Days; this book is based on Hughes's visit to the Uffington White Horse (pictured in my icon) during the semi-regular festival in which the chalk figure is cleared up or 'scoured' with the accompaniment of a big party, fictionalised as the account of a London clerk who goes to Berkshire on holiday. Hughes makes a lot of what was then apparently the most popular theory about the Horse's origin—that it was made on the orders of King Alfred to commemorate the Battle of Ashdown. It's now known that the figure is much older than that (the meaning of its origin is mysterious, but it dates to the Bronze Age), and all the banging on about Saxons is both a) frustrating in light of now knowing how irrelevant it is and b) definitely an avenue for the less savoury of the conservative-progressive Hughes's political views to get an airing. There's also a rather hilarious passage in which the characters vigorously defend the violent games played at the fair (a subject that also comes up in Tom Brown; the right of honest red-blooded Englishmen to give themselves severe head injuries was a subject about which Hughes felt passionately), and then, upon hearing that women used to run races at the fair, opine on how it's a jolly good thing all that's been stopped in these enlightened times. I say hilarious, but, despite the really interesting historical detail in this book, it's difficult to take Hughes very seriously.
Anna of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett (1902). About a young woman who lives in a thinly-fictionalised Stoke-on-Trent under the rule of her miserly and subtly-tyrannical father. On turning twenty-one Anna Tellwright inherits a fortune, but the power this might give her to decide her own fate is denied her, not so much by outright rules as by her father's more pervasive oppressive influence and by the equally oppressive background of expectations for women that have between them shaped her character and constrained her options. She falls in love and gets engaged, but it becomes increasingly clear over the course of the book that this relationship is neither a very good thing for Anna in its own right nor any kind of meaningful escape; Bennett is refreshingly, if depressingly, clear-sighted. It's a beautiful and very, very sad portrayal of the complexities of how all these things work. I loved Anna herself (she's apparently been compared to Fanny Price, a long-time fave of mine, and I can see why), and I loved Bennett's writing style, which is both very detailed (about things like how much different types of houses cost to rent, what the characters eat for their meals, how the potteries work, etc.) and beautifully eloquent. A really good book, but not a happy one. (Incidentally, the conurbation of Stoke-on-Trent was actually formed from six towns; apparently Bennett decided 'the Five Towns' was more euphonious, so he got rid of one of them. That's much funnier than anything in the book.)
The Spirit of the Quakers, edited by Geoffrey Durham (2010). A varied and thought-provoking introduction; it's made up mostly of short excerpts from a wide range of writings from across the history of the Quakers, and while in some ways I was more interested in the seventeenth-century stuff than the modern writings, it was all meaningful in its way. And of course that structure means it's given me a lot of ideas for other things to look up and read!
Quaker-Shaped Christianity by Mark Russ (2022). Largely about the author's working out of his particular Quaker Christian theology. Frustrating in some ways (I liked the bit about not wanting to get lost in rational arguments in religion, but I feel you can't really do that and then base your faith on empirical beliefs that IMO require rational justification) and Russ is more of a Christian than I am, but it's an interesting and good perspective to have, and some of the theological ideas were especially interesting (though the book is very short, this stuff is complicated and it's doubtless all developed much more elsewhere).
The Scouring of the White Horse by Thomas Hughes (1859). More from the author of Tom Brown's School Days; this book is based on Hughes's visit to the Uffington White Horse (pictured in my icon) during the semi-regular festival in which the chalk figure is cleared up or 'scoured' with the accompaniment of a big party, fictionalised as the account of a London clerk who goes to Berkshire on holiday. Hughes makes a lot of what was then apparently the most popular theory about the Horse's origin—that it was made on the orders of King Alfred to commemorate the Battle of Ashdown. It's now known that the figure is much older than that (the meaning of its origin is mysterious, but it dates to the Bronze Age), and all the banging on about Saxons is both a) frustrating in light of now knowing how irrelevant it is and b) definitely an avenue for the less savoury of the conservative-progressive Hughes's political views to get an airing. There's also a rather hilarious passage in which the characters vigorously defend the violent games played at the fair (a subject that also comes up in Tom Brown; the right of honest red-blooded Englishmen to give themselves severe head injuries was a subject about which Hughes felt passionately), and then, upon hearing that women used to run races at the fair, opine on how it's a jolly good thing all that's been stopped in these enlightened times. I say hilarious, but, despite the really interesting historical detail in this book, it's difficult to take Hughes very seriously.
Anna of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett (1902). About a young woman who lives in a thinly-fictionalised Stoke-on-Trent under the rule of her miserly and subtly-tyrannical father. On turning twenty-one Anna Tellwright inherits a fortune, but the power this might give her to decide her own fate is denied her, not so much by outright rules as by her father's more pervasive oppressive influence and by the equally oppressive background of expectations for women that have between them shaped her character and constrained her options. She falls in love and gets engaged, but it becomes increasingly clear over the course of the book that this relationship is neither a very good thing for Anna in its own right nor any kind of meaningful escape; Bennett is refreshingly, if depressingly, clear-sighted. It's a beautiful and very, very sad portrayal of the complexities of how all these things work. I loved Anna herself (she's apparently been compared to Fanny Price, a long-time fave of mine, and I can see why), and I loved Bennett's writing style, which is both very detailed (about things like how much different types of houses cost to rent, what the characters eat for their meals, how the potteries work, etc.) and beautifully eloquent. A really good book, but not a happy one. (Incidentally, the conurbation of Stoke-on-Trent was actually formed from six towns; apparently Bennett decided 'the Five Towns' was more euphonious, so he got rid of one of them. That's much funnier than anything in the book.)
The Spirit of the Quakers, edited by Geoffrey Durham (2010). A varied and thought-provoking introduction; it's made up mostly of short excerpts from a wide range of writings from across the history of the Quakers, and while in some ways I was more interested in the seventeenth-century stuff than the modern writings, it was all meaningful in its way. And of course that structure means it's given me a lot of ideas for other things to look up and read!
Quaker-Shaped Christianity by Mark Russ (2022). Largely about the author's working out of his particular Quaker Christian theology. Frustrating in some ways (I liked the bit about not wanting to get lost in rational arguments in religion, but I feel you can't really do that and then base your faith on empirical beliefs that IMO require rational justification) and Russ is more of a Christian than I am, but it's an interesting and good perspective to have, and some of the theological ideas were especially interesting (though the book is very short, this stuff is complicated and it's doubtless all developed much more elsewhere).
Recent reading
Nov. 3rd, 2022 05:45 pmSouth Sea Tales by Robert Louis Stevenson (written and mostly published 1891-94; this collection published 1996). Robert Louis Stevenson spent the last few years of his life in the Pacific Islands, particularly Samoa, and his observations and experiences there furnished him with much material for writing. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
starshipfox recommended this collection to me back when I first read Kidnapped, and now that I've been getting more into that book and thought I should give some of his other stuff a try, I decided to check it out. There are two longer stories, 'The Beach of Falesa' and 'The Ebb-Tide', which focus on white characters and their experiences in island society; two fairytale-style stories, 'The Bottle Imp' and 'The Isle of Voices', starring native Pacific Islander characters and partly inspired by real Hawaiian folklore; and a couple of very short sketches. It's an odd and a fascinating mix. Stevenson seems to have had Views about the development of society in the islands, European imperialism, trade and missionary activity; his ideas about all this as expressed in the stories, particularly the two longer ones, are complicated and often pretty highly critical. 'The Beach of Falesa' is narrated by an unscrupulous British trader who tricks a native woman into a sham marriage (apparently a common practice!), but ends up really falling in love with her, having the marriage performed properly and working together with her in the story's main conflict against an even less scrupulous British trader. 'The Ebb-Tide' is a strange story of crime, dissipation and missionary religion and is rather memorably horrifying; but it also goes out of its way to highlight the mistreatment of native people by white colonists, as well as Stevenson's highly ambivalent thoughts about religion. Both of those are a lot to think about, but I enjoyed the two folklore-ish stories best, especially 'The Bottle Imp', a classic logic puzzle of a folktale whose solution—again significantly—relies on the wisdom, courage and loyalty of a Hawaiian woman and the folly and vice of a white man. The actual styles of the stories are highly variable—Stevenson has a lot of range in prose, mood and subject matter. Altogether very good stuff. I must read Treasure Island next!
For the White Rose by Katharine T. Hinkson (1905). I was delighted to discover another old historical novel about Jacobites, and even more so when a brief glance at this book suggested that it's about a loyal friendship between two women. It's narrated by Jane Evans, loyal and loving lady-in-waiting to the historical Lady Nithsdale who memorably contrived her husband's escape from the Tower of London where he was imprisoned awaiting execution after the '15: we follow Jane's early life and her decision to devote herself to the service of her beloved lady, their peaceful life in Scotland together before the Rising, and finally the '15 itself and the great adventure of the escape. (Whether Jane is supposed to be the Cecilia Evans who, according to Maggie Craig, was Lady Nithsdale's 'faithful companion' and actually assisted in the escape, I'm not sure; I suspect so, because the rest of the names of secondary players in Craig's account match those Hinkson uses). If you squint, it's kind of like Sutcliff's Bonnie Dundee if it was narrated by Darklis writing about Jean instead of Hugh about Graham. I did indeed greatly enjoy Jane and Lady Nithsdale's relationship, constant declarations of devotion and all (like Darklis, Jane has a love interest, but she nobly chooses to follow and serve her lady instead of settling down with him; this was a bit annoying, but never mind; and of course Lady Nithsdale's marriage is historical!).
Unfortunately the book has two major flaws. Firstly it's very short—125 pages of fairly large type in the edition on archive.org—and far too brief. The early part of the book is taken up by what should have been—and would have been, if it was actually Sutcliff—the slow, long backstory to a much more developed main plot, but instead the main plot is told with very little change of pace and is over in two chapters. Parts of it felt almost like a summary of a longer novel rather than an appropriately-paced novella, and Jane and Lady Nithsdale's relationship inevitably suffered a great lack of development and complexity as a result. The second big flaw is that Hinkson does not care about history at all. She gets things wrong which I think, in order to know enough to have come up with the plot in the first place, she must have known were wrong, and which she seems to have done deliberately in order to play into the myth of the romantic Jacobites rather than the real history. Lord Nithsdale's house is correctly named but placed in the Highlands when it was really in Dumfries, and some other characters are inappropriately Highland-ised (most egregiously, Hinkson/Jane claims that Jacobite visitors to the Nithsdales' house all wear Highland dress, while the wearers of Lowland/English dress are universally Whigs); James VIII/III is shown arriving in Scotland before the '15 begins and cheering the hearts of his Highland friends, when really he only arrived after the defeat was virtually certain and couldn't have met Lord Nithsdale before his capture. All this was very frustrating, and certainly a let-down for a reader used to the meticulous historical writing of D. K. Broster.
Re-read Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (1814; audiobook read by Karen Savage, 2011). I decided to try out listening to an audiobook while walking to and from the office and other suitable walks; this was a cunning way to get more reading time, and generally enjoyable! I found it a good way to re-read an old favourite book, though it certainly wouldn't have worked for a new book—between thoughts wandering off, my auditory processing being what it is and the general loudness of the outside world, I definitely missed quite a lot of detail. (While reading I often pause briefly to think over a line or go back and re-read a passage to take in the meaning better or just enjoy it again; not being able to do this is a major drawback of audiobooks for me).
However, what about the book itself? Mansfield Park is my favourite Jane Austen, and I loved revisiting it. I love, admire and support Fanny Price more than ever, and am confirmed in my shipping decisions (Fanny/Mary in an 'aww, Fanny totally has a crush, but it probably wouldn't have worked as an actual relationship' way, Fanny/Edmund as 'hmm, I don't love it, but it's what she wants and I support her' way, Fanny/Henry as ultimate NOTP of all time). I appreciated how much the whole thing is pro-quiet, steady, rural life, and the complexities of the relationship between Fanny and Mansfield (the book's actual OTP). Austen's language, especially the humour in her narration, works especially well read out loud, and I enjoyed how Savage gives personality to the characters. She's recorded several other Austen books, and I think I'll try another next—Persuasion, maybe, or Pride and Prejudice?
Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life by Stephen Jay Gould (1999). Having enjoyed Gould's book about science and the humanities, I thought I'd see what he had to say about another (apparent) major conflict of science. In this book Gould propounds and develops his concept of 'non-overlapping magisteria', the idea that science and religion are compatible because they deal with totally separate areas of inquiry—science with empirical facts about the world, religion with questions of meaning and morality. I'd heard of this idea before, but enjoyed seeing it laid out here; Gould's writing is as erudite and eloquent as ever, a pleasure to read. I thought his actual arguments were pretty weak in places; he acknowledges that religion has historically laid claim to ground which he places under the magisterium of science, but seems not to appreciate or to acknowledge how important empirical claims about the world are to (much) religion and how much religion would have to change in order to fit a strict interpretation of his scheme. Gould is writing in an American context inevitably influenced most by (particular types of) Christianity; he says at the start of the book that his own perspective is that of a non-practising Jewish agnostic, but that he doesn't want to be too personal-essay-ish and won't say much about it—but I think I would have liked to see a bit more of that background brought in. I know that Judaism has much more of a tradition than Christianity of people who are atheist or agnostic and also religious, and I wonder if that context of compatibility influenced his ideas? I did enjoy the historical discussions—of the history of the myth of medieval belief in a flat earth (of surprisingly recent origin; Gould pinpoints it to the 1870s-80s and a specific, post-Darwin-influenced conception of the conflict between science and religion), and of the attempts by American fundamentalist Christians to ban the teaching of evolution in schools (obviously a bad and totally unjustifiable cause; but Gould explores how at least one major creationist was inspired in his views by a parallel and equally condemnable overreach on the part of scientists into the moral sphere of religion, using their interpretation of Darwinian evolution to support eugenic ideas).
starshipfox recommended this collection to me back when I first read Kidnapped, and now that I've been getting more into that book and thought I should give some of his other stuff a try, I decided to check it out. There are two longer stories, 'The Beach of Falesa' and 'The Ebb-Tide', which focus on white characters and their experiences in island society; two fairytale-style stories, 'The Bottle Imp' and 'The Isle of Voices', starring native Pacific Islander characters and partly inspired by real Hawaiian folklore; and a couple of very short sketches. It's an odd and a fascinating mix. Stevenson seems to have had Views about the development of society in the islands, European imperialism, trade and missionary activity; his ideas about all this as expressed in the stories, particularly the two longer ones, are complicated and often pretty highly critical. 'The Beach of Falesa' is narrated by an unscrupulous British trader who tricks a native woman into a sham marriage (apparently a common practice!), but ends up really falling in love with her, having the marriage performed properly and working together with her in the story's main conflict against an even less scrupulous British trader. 'The Ebb-Tide' is a strange story of crime, dissipation and missionary religion and is rather memorably horrifying; but it also goes out of its way to highlight the mistreatment of native people by white colonists, as well as Stevenson's highly ambivalent thoughts about religion. Both of those are a lot to think about, but I enjoyed the two folklore-ish stories best, especially 'The Bottle Imp', a classic logic puzzle of a folktale whose solution—again significantly—relies on the wisdom, courage and loyalty of a Hawaiian woman and the folly and vice of a white man. The actual styles of the stories are highly variable—Stevenson has a lot of range in prose, mood and subject matter. Altogether very good stuff. I must read Treasure Island next!For the White Rose by Katharine T. Hinkson (1905). I was delighted to discover another old historical novel about Jacobites, and even more so when a brief glance at this book suggested that it's about a loyal friendship between two women. It's narrated by Jane Evans, loyal and loving lady-in-waiting to the historical Lady Nithsdale who memorably contrived her husband's escape from the Tower of London where he was imprisoned awaiting execution after the '15: we follow Jane's early life and her decision to devote herself to the service of her beloved lady, their peaceful life in Scotland together before the Rising, and finally the '15 itself and the great adventure of the escape. (Whether Jane is supposed to be the Cecilia Evans who, according to Maggie Craig, was Lady Nithsdale's 'faithful companion' and actually assisted in the escape, I'm not sure; I suspect so, because the rest of the names of secondary players in Craig's account match those Hinkson uses). If you squint, it's kind of like Sutcliff's Bonnie Dundee if it was narrated by Darklis writing about Jean instead of Hugh about Graham. I did indeed greatly enjoy Jane and Lady Nithsdale's relationship, constant declarations of devotion and all (like Darklis, Jane has a love interest, but she nobly chooses to follow and serve her lady instead of settling down with him; this was a bit annoying, but never mind; and of course Lady Nithsdale's marriage is historical!).
Unfortunately the book has two major flaws. Firstly it's very short—125 pages of fairly large type in the edition on archive.org—and far too brief. The early part of the book is taken up by what should have been—and would have been, if it was actually Sutcliff—the slow, long backstory to a much more developed main plot, but instead the main plot is told with very little change of pace and is over in two chapters. Parts of it felt almost like a summary of a longer novel rather than an appropriately-paced novella, and Jane and Lady Nithsdale's relationship inevitably suffered a great lack of development and complexity as a result. The second big flaw is that Hinkson does not care about history at all. She gets things wrong which I think, in order to know enough to have come up with the plot in the first place, she must have known were wrong, and which she seems to have done deliberately in order to play into the myth of the romantic Jacobites rather than the real history. Lord Nithsdale's house is correctly named but placed in the Highlands when it was really in Dumfries, and some other characters are inappropriately Highland-ised (most egregiously, Hinkson/Jane claims that Jacobite visitors to the Nithsdales' house all wear Highland dress, while the wearers of Lowland/English dress are universally Whigs); James VIII/III is shown arriving in Scotland before the '15 begins and cheering the hearts of his Highland friends, when really he only arrived after the defeat was virtually certain and couldn't have met Lord Nithsdale before his capture. All this was very frustrating, and certainly a let-down for a reader used to the meticulous historical writing of D. K. Broster.
Re-read Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (1814; audiobook read by Karen Savage, 2011). I decided to try out listening to an audiobook while walking to and from the office and other suitable walks; this was a cunning way to get more reading time, and generally enjoyable! I found it a good way to re-read an old favourite book, though it certainly wouldn't have worked for a new book—between thoughts wandering off, my auditory processing being what it is and the general loudness of the outside world, I definitely missed quite a lot of detail. (While reading I often pause briefly to think over a line or go back and re-read a passage to take in the meaning better or just enjoy it again; not being able to do this is a major drawback of audiobooks for me).
However, what about the book itself? Mansfield Park is my favourite Jane Austen, and I loved revisiting it. I love, admire and support Fanny Price more than ever, and am confirmed in my shipping decisions (Fanny/Mary in an 'aww, Fanny totally has a crush, but it probably wouldn't have worked as an actual relationship' way, Fanny/Edmund as 'hmm, I don't love it, but it's what she wants and I support her' way, Fanny/Henry as ultimate NOTP of all time). I appreciated how much the whole thing is pro-quiet, steady, rural life, and the complexities of the relationship between Fanny and Mansfield (the book's actual OTP). Austen's language, especially the humour in her narration, works especially well read out loud, and I enjoyed how Savage gives personality to the characters. She's recorded several other Austen books, and I think I'll try another next—Persuasion, maybe, or Pride and Prejudice?
Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life by Stephen Jay Gould (1999). Having enjoyed Gould's book about science and the humanities, I thought I'd see what he had to say about another (apparent) major conflict of science. In this book Gould propounds and develops his concept of 'non-overlapping magisteria', the idea that science and religion are compatible because they deal with totally separate areas of inquiry—science with empirical facts about the world, religion with questions of meaning and morality. I'd heard of this idea before, but enjoyed seeing it laid out here; Gould's writing is as erudite and eloquent as ever, a pleasure to read. I thought his actual arguments were pretty weak in places; he acknowledges that religion has historically laid claim to ground which he places under the magisterium of science, but seems not to appreciate or to acknowledge how important empirical claims about the world are to (much) religion and how much religion would have to change in order to fit a strict interpretation of his scheme. Gould is writing in an American context inevitably influenced most by (particular types of) Christianity; he says at the start of the book that his own perspective is that of a non-practising Jewish agnostic, but that he doesn't want to be too personal-essay-ish and won't say much about it—but I think I would have liked to see a bit more of that background brought in. I know that Judaism has much more of a tradition than Christianity of people who are atheist or agnostic and also religious, and I wonder if that context of compatibility influenced his ideas? I did enjoy the historical discussions—of the history of the myth of medieval belief in a flat earth (of surprisingly recent origin; Gould pinpoints it to the 1870s-80s and a specific, post-Darwin-influenced conception of the conflict between science and religion), and of the attempts by American fundamentalist Christians to ban the teaching of evolution in schools (obviously a bad and totally unjustifiable cause; but Gould explores how at least one major creationist was inspired in his views by a parallel and equally condemnable overreach on the part of scientists into the moral sphere of religion, using their interpretation of Darwinian evolution to support eugenic ideas).
