What are you reading right now?

[shovetheholly]

Me: some old feminist stuff. Bubeck's 'Care Gender and Justice' Sara Ruddick's 'Maternal Thinking'. I wouldn't necessarily recommend either of them - but Ruddick in particular was important in opening up the idea that women didn't just mother on autopilot, but thought about their practice.

I'm also reading Dickens's Bleak House for the third or fourth time. I am a bit at how vicious and misogynistic his portrait of Mrs Jellyby is - she's the 'telescopic reformer' whose house and family are a mess while she focuses her attention on the fortunes of Africa.

ITIL sounds gripping, scallops, though maybe a bit weak on plot & characterisation

Ebearhug - I've recently read Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner. It actually annoyed me so much I contemplated throwing it in the Rayburn, rather than giving it to a charity shop, and I don't generally get annoyed at books
I was hoping to read a book exploring why a particular strand of economic thought had become dominant, particularly in America/the UK over the last 30-40 years. Instead it was a classic of 'economists say X', 'economists think Y' (note to author: you're not the first feminist economist on the planet) along with the compulsary selective quoting of Keynes out of context.

Interesting Sadik - I need to read that book in the near future, and will approach it with caution now!

I'm having a look at Iris Murdoch's Sovereignty of Good today. Interestingly, her sample ethical case in the first essay is a mother-in-law who thinks her daughter-in-law is 'common'. While I disagree with her argument, it made me think how seldom the examples of conduct in ethical/moral philosophy are female.

Dorothy L Sayers is an enjoyable read, Lord Peter has just visited the Communist Club for a bad dinner with a female friend. It is very funny and clever about social mores. A murder will be solved by the end of it.

I've been discovering the joy of Barbara Pym too, it's the minutiae that means I can enjoy a chapter at a time before bed. It's wry navel gazing and very much about a set of seemingly overlooked women who are actually the backbone of their rather constrained world.

I do love a golden age detective story.

I'm sitting in an extremely cold library reading Joan Tronto's book 'Moral Boundaries'. I should be finishing Iris Murdoch. But I have been here since 9 and it's so bloody freezing that I think my mind is seizing up, and Tronto is much, much more simpleistic than Murdoch. I am not at a point where all I can think is: when are they going to put the bloody heating on!!

Oops, that should be I AM at a point...

too cold to type!!

What an enjoyable thread. I've just read it all in one go.

Recently, I have been reading The Last Winter of Dani Lancing by P D Viner. But I haven't been enjoying it at all, so I have decided to give it up and go on to something else. The next book in line is a completely different sort of book - The Cunning Woman's Cup by Sue Hewitt.

Finished Ancillary Mercy this week. To answer the question Cote asked way back up there somewhere, the reason they're not all called "it" is actually quite relevant to the story - ancillaries are "it" (in this universe, ancillaries are humans, usually former prisoners, controlled by AIs in spaceships, stations etc. The process of putting in the implants that allows the AI to control the human body irreversibly destroys the original personality, and ancillaries are not considered people, but equipment). So, people are "she", ancillaries are "it". Obviously the Radch do have biological sexes, but they don't distinguish between them grammatically, they just use one pronoun (like Finnish I think, but unlike Finnish they also don't have a. Other cultures in that universe do distinguish, so will refer to some characters as "he", so occasionally you discover a character is male.

TBH, though there seems to be a lot of focus on the ubiquitous "she", that isn't really the interesting part of the series for me. It quite quickly fades into the background and becomes just another part of the world building.

oops, posted too soon - was going to add that although the default "she" is just world building background, I do find it quite a pleasant background effect. I realise that I am often disappointed with SF that does fantastic world building and then has lazy, unexamined gender defaults that appear to have no reasoning behind them, which then tends to throw me out of the story.

Just picked up Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence - haven't read it before so thought I'd give it a whirl - going well so far.
And also have Janet Evanovitch's number series (Stephanie Plum) on the go as well.

I'm not very highbrow!

For the second time reading ' the reader' so terribly sad, now got to the trial and she is so disempowered through the court process not being able to understand documents, incriminating herself and so on..

Next time might have to read a book of this thread so many ideas..

I'm reading The Diary Of Martha Ballard. Martha was an 18th century midwife in New England. It is a fascinating look at the period of time before men really took over the business of the birth. Martha worked as a midwife until her 70th birthday. She also tended to her family, house and farm work as expected during that period of time.

I'm now reading The Moral Judgement of the Child, by Jean Piaget. It's bloody fascinating.

Can't stand Dickens, he is the epitome of mawkish Victorian melodrama. All hand wringing with added anti semitism. Ugh. Austen OTOH has a wicked sense of the absurdities of the world she lives in and brings them to life.

I'd be interested to know what you think of Adam Smith's Dinner, Shovetheholly

I will report back sadik

And thumbwitches - I don't think Age of innocence could be described as lowbrow! It's an exquisite piece of writing.

I've never heard of Martha Ballard or Ancillary Mercy - time to check these out!

Start with Ancillary Justice, then Ancillary Sword before Mercy - it's a trilogy so Mercy may be harder to follow out of sequence.

was going to add that although the default "she" is just world building background, I do find it quite a pleasant background effect

I found it irritating and affected- she can populate her novel with whatever characters of whatever sex, gender or species she wants. For me it didn't add anything. I gave up about 1/4 through.

I'm just reading Ancillary Mercy now. I've really enjoyed them, tbh I actually didn't really register the default 'she' when I read the first book (didn't know anything about it, DH was given it as an xmas present last year), so it evidently didn't affect my enjoyment of it either way . . .

Not books, but just watched The Railway Children Lady, which is a play about EE Nesbit's life - absolutely fascinating. I'd no idea she was a founder member of the Fabian Society.

Yes Nesbit led quite the interesting life!

I'm reading Jo Baker's Longbourn.

I really must put a word in for Dickens. I'll take Dickens' huge, sweeping canvases over all social strata with characters from all social classes in Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend , Great Expectations and Little Dorrit over Austen's genteel drawing rooms any day.

I think Bleak House is one of the greatest novels written in English. The structure is like nothing written before- a huge panoply of characters ranging through all sections of society from Jo the homeless street child to the aristocratic Dedlocks and set in locations from the Dedlock country estate to the horrific slums in the Tom-All-Alone's rookery and everything in between. There are complex separate narrative strands told by 2 narrators , which never fully intersect but run in parallel. It is a brilliant book. Yes the death of Jo is sentimental, it's also very moving.

In Our Mutual Friend Dickens makes amends for Fagin in the sympathetic Jewish character Riah who is as good as Fagin was bad.

As for Fagin, Oliver Twist, as was the norm, was published in parts. A friend of Dickens, Eliza Davis, complained about the numerous references to "the Jew" and Dickens stopped the printing. The text was amended and although Fagin is referred to as "the Jew" 257 times in the first 38 chapters, this is barely mentioned in the next 179 references.

The other famous accusation of sentimentality is the death of Little Nell- which occupies a tiny proportion of the book. There is nothing sentimental in Nell and her grandfather's nightmarish journey through the heavily industrialised Black Country to the peace of the village where she dies.

The description of Dotheboys Hall in Nicholas Nickelby is harrowing, especially knowing it was based on the real- life scandal of the Yorkshire boarding schools where unwanted illegitimate or handicapped children were sent , basically to be forgotten. Dickens may have sentimentalised Smike, a real life Smike would have been horribly brutalised by the treatment he receives , but there was a purpose to that. Smike had to be a sympathetic character.

Not books, but just watched The Railway Children Lady, which is a play about EE Nesbit's life - absolutely fascinating. I'd no idea she was a founder member of the Fabian Society

She wrote wonderful ghost stories too. I saw this play about that aspect of her life at this year's Edinburgh Fringe.

m.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/what-s-on/theatre/fringe-review-edith-in-the-dark-1-3852192

What I'm reading now is not at all feminist (Les Liaisons Dangerouses) but I just finished Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl which was terrific, difficult but a fluid read and eye opening.

I've never been able to take to Dickens although I've very much enjoyed film and TV versions of his work. So maybe it's me and not him! But generally I find him too mawkish, too cartoonish, too......Dickensish.

Wilkie Collins on the other hand I adore. He is criminally underrated in comparison to Dickens AND he produced one of the best female characters in English literature in the shape of Marian Halcombe.

Ah yes, shove - I wasn't meaning to in any way dis Edith Wharton, more referring to the Janet Evanovich side dish.