Jinjer 31: Books, Books, and More Books

[Snowless]

50 minutes ago, FleeJanaFree said:

Here's the list http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/. I'm ashamed to say even with my quest to read more classics, I've only read three off this particular list, and, honestly, didn't recognize about half the titles. I guess I have some work to do!

I’m not that far off: I’ve only read six on that list from cover to cover and am currently reading a seventh (the seventh being Ulysses, which I just started last night).

[Lurky]

1 hour ago, singsingsing said:

Was Eowyn punished for stepping out of her lane, though? I never saw it that way. Tolkien wrote her as one of the most badass heroes with one of the most badass scenes in the entire series. She [spoiler alert!] defeats the big bad guy that literally no man can defeat. I think she just changes her priorities. She wants to marry Aragorn and/or die in glorious battle because she sees no other point to her life, no other way out of her misery. Deciding she's going to marry Faramir and be a healer instead may have involved taking on a more traditionally feminine role, but it always struck me as simply evolving in her priorities and embracing joy in life rather than glory in death. And she didn't marry an alpha male type who said, "Hey little lady, quit your unwomanly fighting and spend your days swooning over my manliness and making me sandwiches!" Faramir was a pretty sensitive dude himself, and, like Eowyn in the end, more interested in healing than fighting. I think they both made that journey and came together in the middle.

I completely get how people can have that interpretation of Eowyn, but for me, as a teen, it was saying "you want to be a badass heroine, but you have to settle for this.  You want this amazing man to fall in love for you, but you're told you will never be good enough, and what you get is this broken man who you are drawn to because you are both broken."  It's the context one reads something in, right?  And to me, part of the context is this is the result of being the only active woman in the book.   

Galadriel has to accept her small realm of power is over and leave, Eowyn tries to change her future and gets hideously injured.  Arwen is a cipher who exists to inspire Aragorn, not as a person in her own right, and has to give up her powers in order to be his wife.  I would feel less upset about Eowyn if there were other women to identify with.  As I say, I get this is my interpretation, but it really hurt me when I was a teen and realised JRRT not only didn't think a woman's place was on the Ring quest, but also in the Scouring of the Shire.   It felt like while JRRT was explicitly writing a new myth-cycle about/for Britain, there was no place in it for someone like me.

ETA It was also important to me that I was coming to this conclusion while coming to the understanding that as a girl, my choices were more limited than my male friends, learning about pay inequalities, and that some jobs I wanted to do in the future would be hard for me.  I was so angry about this!   Like I said, if I'd come to the book later, I might have felt differently.  But it did make me love Pratchett a lot, when I recognised his swipes at the book! *

I do get that lots of people adore LotR, and I would never try to convince them not to.  But for me, it was one of those books I re-read over and over as a teen, and it felt horrible to lose my un-critical (as in lit crit) lens because it felt like a loss of innocence, that something I really loved could also be really flawed.

Re Sam becoming mayor, we never see that though - we see him go back to being a gardener and a servant, and looking after Frodo.  If he wanted to stay a servant, that's because JRRT wrote him that way (informed, I'm sure, by British officers' batmen after wars, which wasn't so much because they wanted to stay servants, but because they didn't have economic choices)

1 hour ago, singsingsing said:

I wasn't a fan of Narnia when I tried to read it as a kid. I had no idea it was supposed to be a Christian allegory back then. When I tried to read 'His Dark Materials' a few years later, I had the exact same experience. It was only later that I learned that Philip Pullman essentially set out to write the anti-Narnia. Then everything made sense. 

I felt exactly the same about Northern Lights (erm, the Golden Compass across the Atlantic maybe?).  I read it, and enjoyed it, but it had the same thing I hate about a lot of children's books, where it's ok to be a pre-pubescent heroine, but all the adult human women are either sexual and evil, or non-sexual nurturers who exist to support others.  So I was kind of sad about that - and then books 2 and 3 showed me that this was absolutely deliberate, so he could overturn the narrative. 

I also really enjoyed Neil Gaiman's The Problem of Susan for a similar criticism of Lewis

https://ashsilverlock.com/2015/04/12/the-problem-of-susan/

* ETA one of the reasons I love Pratchett so much is how he grew to recognise the weaknesses of his early books, eg how so often they're following the Smurfette principle, so in later books he addresses that explicitly.  There are tons of other examples, but I found the way he does that completely fascinating.

[nausicaa]

2 hours ago, FleeJanaFree said:

edit: shocked that I didn't see any Austen on there!

It's only the top 100 novels of the 20th century.

1 hour ago, Snowless said:

I’m not that far off: I’ve only read six on that list from cover to cover and am currently reading a seventh (the seventh being Ulysses, which I just started last night).

If it makes you feel better, I still haven't completed the list. I'm at 82 but that's after first deciding to try and conquer that list fifteen years ago at the age of 17. A statement which goes to show 1) how long it takes to read all of those books (especially if you're reading other stuff as well) and 2) what an obsessive nerd I am.

[JillyO]

Um... so I don't know ALL of the authors, but juding by the ones I do know and the names of the rest, I'm just going to say that that is one VERY white, Anglo-American list right there.

[justoneoftwo]

Sam's evolution is subtle, but there is a chapter called the choices of Master Samwise.  That title is super important.  I would also add that he is the only one who got what the ring promised him.  (Perhaps this is because what he wanted was so small, but there is something to the idea that he is also the only one who truly gives up the ring voluntarily).  

[singsingsing]

2 hours ago, Lurky said:

I completely get how people can have that interpretation of Eowyn, but for me, as a teen, it was saying "you want to be a badass heroine, but you have to settle for this.  You want this amazing man to fall in love for you, but you're told you will never be good enough, and what you get is this broken man who you are drawn to because you are both broken."  It's the context one reads something in, right?  And to me, part of the context is this is the result of being the only active woman in the book.   

Galadriel has to accept her small realm of power is over and leave, Eowyn tries to change her future and gets hideously injured.  Arwen is a cipher who exists to inspire Aragorn, not as a person in her own right, and has to give up her powers in order to be his wife.  I would feel less upset about Eowyn if there were other women to identify with.  As I say, I get this is my interpretation, but it really hurt me when I was a teen and realised JRRT not only didn't think a woman's place was on the Ring quest, but also in the Scouring of the Shire.   It felt like while JRRT was explicitly writing a new myth-cycle about/for Britain, there was no place in it for someone like me.

Hmm, that's not how I interpreted Eowyn or her choice at all. Definitely interesting! Faramir always seemed like by far the best catch in the book... so maybe I have some personal bias there?  Haha. But I think Tolkien was very conscious of the horrors of war, and that glory on the battlefield or heroism via violence wasn't all it cracked up to be. I always thought Eowyn and Faramir had the luckiest ending of pretty much any of the characters. Aragorn gets to be King, but he also has to be King - he was fairly ambivalent about it. He also has to live with knowing that his wife gave up immortality and her own people to be with him. Aragorn always struck me as a melancholy figure.

Galadriel was an exile in Middle-earth. By choosing not to take the ring and become a power to rival Sauron, she was finally able to return to the land of her birth. Given the history of her people, that was actually a huge victory. She did something that the males of her family could never manage. Resisting the temptation of power was not something Tolkien demanded only of his female characters - it was basically the thread running through the entire story, so when Galadriel and Eowyn relinquish a certain form of power, my interpretation of that is that it's not because they're women and need to be more feminine, it's because they're heroes (like Faramir, Sam, and others who could resist the allure of the ring), strong, resilient, and courageous.

I agree that Arwen is a cipher who exists only to inspire Aragorn, and I never cared for her character. I also wish that there were more female characters in LotR (and in a lot of other stories, frankly).

Again, not aiming to invalidate your feelings about the saga at all. I really want to stress that. I want to give my alternative interpretation of certain aspects of the story itself, but I'm not discrediting your experience in the least. Yours is a pretty common criticism, and very well-justified. Just because something doesn't bother me, doesn't mean there aren't perfectly legitimate reasons it bothers other people, and everything you're saying makes total sense to me.

[Lurky]

1 hour ago, singsingsing said:

Again, not aiming to invalidate your feelings about the saga at all. I really want to stress that. I want to give my alternative interpretation of certain aspects of the story itself, but I'm not discrediting your experience in the least. Yours is a pretty common criticism, and very well-justified. Just because something doesn't bother me, doesn't mean there aren't perfectly legitimate reasons it bothers other people, and everything you're saying makes total sense to me.

I really like you!   I am enjoying this

Faramir is a broody hero type for sure, and definitely IRL the best option, but I used to crush on Aragorn and Legolas because as a teenager I never wanted the best option, if that makes sense   But also it felt like Faramir and Eowyn were dealing with PTSD [ETA not that I knew the concept, but the aftermath of trauma] and clinging to each other to stop themselves drowning, and accepting each other, broken as they were.  Which, as a grown up I can respect, but as a teen was NOT what I wanted!

Obvs these days I would ship Gimli and Legolas - they and Frodo & Sam and Merry & Pippin seem the best-suited, happiest couples, in retrospect!

[EmainMacha]

2 hours ago, JillyO said:

Um... so I don't know ALL of the authors, but juding by the ones I do know and the names of the rest, I'm just going to say that that is one VERY white, Anglo-American list right there.

There's a couple of VS Naipaul books but yeah seems very slanted towards an Anglo-American viewpoint. Kind of sad 'A Suitable Boy' by Vikram Seth didn't make the list. Loved that book.

[VelociRapture]

Can't remember what list or where it was in the threads. I'm guessing Jhumpa Lahiri isn't on it though and that makes me sad. The Namesake and The Lowlands are two of my all time favorite books. They're beautifully written stories about immigrants, growing up, family, love, and loss. I highly recommend them.

[nausicaa]

2 hours ago, VelociRapture said:

Can't remember what list or where it was in the threads. I'm guessing Jhumpa Lahiri isn't on it though and that makes me sad. The Namesake and The Lowlands are two of my all time favorite books. They're beautifully written stories about immigrants, growing up, family, love, and loss. I highly recommend them.

It's only 20th century novels and both those books were written in the 00s. The most recent book that made the cut for the MLA list was Ironweed (1983). I'm guessing the MLA gave a decent buffer before the millenium to make sure a book aged fairly well. 

I'll add those two to my reading list though. I've never heard of that author.

[calimojo]

The Kiterunner was on the list which I think is fairly recnt.

 

So,  looking at that list,  what book would we want Jinger to read to expand her world?  What book would have the biggest impact in opening her world view?  Which book would help her learn to think critically?  Which book would leave her curious for more?

 

[SapphireSlytherin]

10 minutes ago, calimojo said:

The Kiterunner was on the list which I think is fairly recnt  

 

Kiterunner was 2003 but I didn’t see it on the MLA list. 

[calimojo]

6 minutes ago, SapphireSlytherin said:

Kiterunner was 2003 but I didn’t see it on the MLA list. 

Oops, you are right, I was looking at a different list on that website

 

[llg1234]

 Jinger (and presumably Jeremy) are supporting someone at a secular school??? She's also wearing a strapless dress!!!11

 I'm guessing the Vuolos are getting involved in the whole converting young,vulnerable international students to evangelical Christianity thing. Maybe Dewreck and Jeremy will finally have something to bond over 

[JillyO]

The Kite Runner is a fantastic book that I learned so much from. Khaled Hosseini is an incredible storyteller.

[flycat]

2 hours ago, llg1234 said:

Jinger (and presumably Jeremy) are supporting someone at a secular school??? She's also wearing a strapless dress!!!11

Where did you see a strapless dress?

[SapphireSlytherin]

5 hours ago, llg1234 said:

She's also wearing a strapless dress!!!11

That's not Jinger at the piano.

[VelociRapture]

@nausicaaGot it! Thanks!

And yes! Absolutely read those books. They're fantastic. Same with The Kiterunner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Lahiri and Hosseini both wrote so beautifully and the characters are so rich and complex - you sympathize at least a tiny bit with most of their characters at some point.

[HarleyQuinn]

I had major Legolust during my LOTR phase.

I've actually never read a Jane Austen book. I know, that's ridiculous. I've got them on my reading list for next year. I've only seen film adaptations.

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

On 29/9/2017 at 7:43 AM, nausicaa said:

The Modern Language Association's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. 

Actually only those written in English 

[llg1234]

5 hours ago, SapphireSlytherin said:

That's not Jinger at the piano.

Yes, obviously. The pianist is wearing a strapless dress though.

[SapphireSlytherin]

1 hour ago, llg1234 said:

Yes, obviously. The pianist is wearing a strapless dress though.

Yes, but your post left it open to inference that you were referring to Jinger when you said:

Quote

 Jinger (and presumably Jeremy) are supporting someone at a secular school??? She's also wearing a strapless dress!!!11

 

[singsingsing]

It seemed pretty obvious that @llg1234 was referring to the person Jinger and Jeremy were there supporting, as he/she clearly knew it wasn't Jinger playing the piano.  

[nausicaa]

5 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

Actually only those written in English 

Yes! Meant to add that later as well.

 

[cascarones]

Our first year dorm room had a poster of Orlando Bloom as Legolas, Brendan Fehr (Roswell), a Grand Cayman flag, A Jamaican flag and a don't mess with Texas street sign from a white elephant exchange. Those were the permanents, we were big players in the shuffle the posters game and never locked our door.

I agree about GOT books, they're on the kindle, but they linger, I'm not drawn into it or awaiting the next chapter. We've watched most of the series hesitantly, since I personally try to avoid rape scenes. I agree with a ton of the books being mentioned and really enjoyed Memoirs of a Geisha as well if you're looking for flowing writing and complex characters. j

I've read all of Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed) chick-lit, since I sat next to her on a plane and she sweetly sent me all of her books, some are thoughtful and they address morality in tricky situations, some I can't stand. I spend far too much time in airports (after 8 completely pointless hours and 3 trips through security between terminals in SF, they're the reigning winner for worst airport), so having good booklists and FJ is always handy!