A drizzle of updates
Feb. 25th, 2018 03:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironic
1.
I bought a pot yesterday. Well, technically I bought two: I replaced my workhorse 5-qt. pot -- do we call them Dutch ovens now? -- from grad school because the nonstick gave out and started to smell like wet steel wool, and I finally acquired a proper stock pot, stainless steel, in which a leftover chicken carcass and vegetable scraps are now simmering away for broth. Perfect for this rainy Sunday.
2.
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter (2017) by Theodora Goss came in at the library. At a 2016 Readercon panel on the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein, Goss had teased this book about lady versions of Victorian monsters and it sounded like fun. Turns out it stars the daughters of Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Moreau and Dr. Rappaccini, along with the actual Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.
I'm only a few chapters in; so far, so sassy; will report back later. For now, wanted to note that since I had never actually read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I took care of that first, along with "Rappaccini's Daughter," a Nathaniel Hawthorne short story I hadn't heard of. (Full texts at Project Gutenberg, if you want: Jekyll and Rappaccini.) Both were quick reads after reaccustoming myself to the sentence structures of that period.
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde wasn't what I was expecting. The straightforward story of the scientist who brewed his potion and turned into his darker self by night didn't begin until page 78 of 103. Instead, most of the book was told from the point of view of Jekyll's lawyer as he tried to figure out what the hell was going on with his client's mysterious new will. A mystery plot with more characters and with more depth to Hyde than the cultural osmosis version had let on. Not that Jekyll was simply "good" and Hyde "evil," but that Jekyll in a way created Hyde by trying to bury his baser and/or less culturally acceptable desires (heavy implications of homosexuality, for example); failed again and again to resist the temptation to transform because he lived such a suppressed and "perfect" life by day; and ultimately lost control to the point that he needed the elixir to maintain his Jekyll façade rather than the other way around. ~We are all Jekyll-and-Hydes.~
3.
Before that, I read The Invention of Solitude by Paul Auster (1982), another slim volume on the list of Books That Have Sat Unread On My Shelves For Ages. This is the book that got him in trouble with his family for airing the secret that his grandmother murdered his grandfather when their kids were young. He wrote it while mourning his father's passing.
Short review: The first of the two halves, told in first person in short sections as he tried to wrangle a coherent portrait of his complicated and absent father, embodied everything I love about Auster's nonfiction writing, clear and honest and weaving between the personal/familial and the act of writing and storytelling. The second half, told in awkward third person and stuffed with literary allusions and inflated language as he examined his role as father and son and grandson, was terribly distancing. I almost didn't get through it. But then he would come back with something powerful about mortality or the cyclic nature of time.
Verdict: Worth keeping for the first half.
4.
I may have something interesting to say again one day in this space? Until then, there is work, and reading, and cooking,and thinking too much about everything, and seeing friends.
I bought a pot yesterday. Well, technically I bought two: I replaced my workhorse 5-qt. pot -- do we call them Dutch ovens now? -- from grad school because the nonstick gave out and started to smell like wet steel wool, and I finally acquired a proper stock pot, stainless steel, in which a leftover chicken carcass and vegetable scraps are now simmering away for broth. Perfect for this rainy Sunday.
2.
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter (2017) by Theodora Goss came in at the library. At a 2016 Readercon panel on the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein, Goss had teased this book about lady versions of Victorian monsters and it sounded like fun. Turns out it stars the daughters of Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Moreau and Dr. Rappaccini, along with the actual Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.
I'm only a few chapters in; so far, so sassy; will report back later. For now, wanted to note that since I had never actually read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I took care of that first, along with "Rappaccini's Daughter," a Nathaniel Hawthorne short story I hadn't heard of. (Full texts at Project Gutenberg, if you want: Jekyll and Rappaccini.) Both were quick reads after reaccustoming myself to the sentence structures of that period.
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde wasn't what I was expecting. The straightforward story of the scientist who brewed his potion and turned into his darker self by night didn't begin until page 78 of 103. Instead, most of the book was told from the point of view of Jekyll's lawyer as he tried to figure out what the hell was going on with his client's mysterious new will. A mystery plot with more characters and with more depth to Hyde than the cultural osmosis version had let on. Not that Jekyll was simply "good" and Hyde "evil," but that Jekyll in a way created Hyde by trying to bury his baser and/or less culturally acceptable desires (heavy implications of homosexuality, for example); failed again and again to resist the temptation to transform because he lived such a suppressed and "perfect" life by day; and ultimately lost control to the point that he needed the elixir to maintain his Jekyll façade rather than the other way around. ~We are all Jekyll-and-Hydes.~
3.
Before that, I read The Invention of Solitude by Paul Auster (1982), another slim volume on the list of Books That Have Sat Unread On My Shelves For Ages. This is the book that got him in trouble with his family for airing the secret that his grandmother murdered his grandfather when their kids were young. He wrote it while mourning his father's passing.
Short review: The first of the two halves, told in first person in short sections as he tried to wrangle a coherent portrait of his complicated and absent father, embodied everything I love about Auster's nonfiction writing, clear and honest and weaving between the personal/familial and the act of writing and storytelling. The second half, told in awkward third person and stuffed with literary allusions and inflated language as he examined his role as father and son and grandson, was terribly distancing. I almost didn't get through it. But then he would come back with something powerful about mortality or the cyclic nature of time.
Verdict: Worth keeping for the first half.
4.
I may have something interesting to say again one day in this space? Until then, there is work, and reading, and cooking,
no subject
Date: Feb. 25th, 2018 09:06 pm (UTC)I haven't read that particular Auster, but your review sounds like my feelings about every time I read Auster- a mixture of really terrific writing craft and bunch of literary games that keep the characters at a frustrating remove.
no subject
Date: Mar. 1st, 2018 12:54 am (UTC)>>Daniel Catan's opera adaptation of "Rappaccini's Daughter"
Cool! How perfect that they held it outdoors in a garden setting. The characterizations also sound wonderfully enriched. Your description makes me suspect you'd find the original story a bit flat in comparison.
no subject
Date: Mar. 1st, 2018 02:53 am (UTC)I think that's the reason I haven't actually gone back and read the Hawthorne story. I'm not a big fan of Hawthorne in general, too.
no subject
Date: Mar. 4th, 2018 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Feb. 25th, 2018 09:09 pm (UTC)Yay for soup pots, though.
no subject
Date: Mar. 1st, 2018 12:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Mar. 1st, 2018 02:02 am (UTC)And oh, gosh, yes, do I derive a lot of joy from cooking at this time of year. :-)
no subject
Date: Feb. 25th, 2018 10:39 pm (UTC)And your experience of reading Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde resonates with mine.
no subject
Date: Mar. 1st, 2018 12:59 am (UTC)The new book pokes fun at, and critiques from a feminist perspective, a lot of the original material, including through its depiction of the relationship between Jekyll and Hyde's daughters, a.k.a. half sisters, such as Diana Hyde's 'wildness' (being hungry, shucking her boots and outerwear) presenting as being 'unladylike.'
no subject
Date: Feb. 26th, 2018 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Mar. 1st, 2018 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Feb. 26th, 2018 03:53 am (UTC)Rappaccini's Daughter is my FAVORITE THING to have come to me out of American Lit classes. I love the idea of Beatrice and I'd been waiting yeeeeears for a YA Retelling featuring her, so I was perhaps a bit predisposed to like the book.
I hope we get a book of the ladies' continuing adventures.
no subject
Date: Mar. 1st, 2018 01:02 am (UTC)Aw, yay. I'm glad you got it! The author's note about it being "Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club #1" is promising for your desire for a series, yeah?
>>since it has such a love-it-or-leave-it narrative conceit with all the margin notes
Hm, yeah. I think it's fun, although sometimes it also feels like she's using it to apologize for the narrative taking so long - stay with me, readers, there's stuff coming up soon. Mostly I'm enjoying things, although it's more an intellectual appreciation than an emotional one.
no subject
Date: Mar. 1st, 2018 01:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Feb. 26th, 2018 04:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Mar. 1st, 2018 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Feb. 28th, 2018 08:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Mar. 1st, 2018 01:04 am (UTC)