We're Home!
I know I missed some posts while I was gone, so let me know if you posted anything I need to know about over the last week.
I got another Etsy gift card, so I was able to get some silver and gold hair clips, a silver and turquoise bracelet to replace the one I lost about a year ago (yes, there is a theme to my Etsy gift card use), and writing gloves by Storiarts with text and graphics from A Christmas Carol. I also got a gift card to the Laurel Mercantile from![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spikedluv and got Ouida's Garden hand soap (how could I resist with that name!) and some Garden Mint wax melts; thank you! Mom and Dad gave me various and sundries, including some moolah. Altogether a wonderful birthday haul!
The Magic Grandfather by Jay Williams
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I loved this book as a kid. I was fascinated by so many elements of this book. I had a great deal of autonomy (as most kids in the 80s did), but we lived so rurally that it was the freedom to roam around the woods and ride my bike to the nearby state park. The idea of having the same freedom in town to knock around at the ice cream parlor or whatever intrigued me. I also was intrigued by the grandfather smoking and letting the grandson drink beer, two things people in my life as a kid Did Not Do. And, of course, I was (and still am) a sucker for a Chosen One narrative.
Bonus points for the female protagonist's characterization.
View all my reviews
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I'd forgotten that this begins with such a lengthy discussion of the writing process, including writer's block.
Dimmesdale is such a masterfully drawn portrait of cowardice and religious hypocrisy. In addition to all the other ways he exemplifies these characteristics, I hate the way he makes Hester responsible for his salvation as if she's denying him redemption by refusing to name him instead of him being too weak to confess. Also his argument that he doesn't confess so he can continue to do God's work--just such a jerk.
"Even the old Inspector was desirable, as a change of diet, to a man who had known Alcott" (17). *dies laughing* I love this dig at Bronson Alcott.
And here's a quote that Hawthorne writes in the context of discussing the effects of place and occupation on writing ability but which describe what autoimmune brain fog feels like very closely to me: "But, nevertheless, it is anything but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away; or exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of a phial; so that, at every glance, you find a smaller and less volatile residuum."
View all my reviews
Carnacki, the Ghost Finder by William Hope Hodgson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is interesting; the protagonist is a psychic detective who investigates supernatural phenomena (or what he calls ab-normal or ab-human). His methods are very scientific and use the latest technology of the early 20th century along with information about repelling the supernatural that he learned from old manuscripts. He's careful to say that most supernatural instances are actually perfectly normal and that most of his cases turn to be perfectly explicable. But he's also a believer, and a small number of his cases are true hauntings. This book contains 6 stories: in one of them, the haunting is created by a group of thieves; in another, the haunting is caused by a hidden mechanism; in two of the stories, there's a mixture of natural and supernatural causes, and two stories are completely supernatural.
Some of these stories are genuinely disturbing and disconcerting in their creation of dread and in the way the supernatural manifestation is described.
View all my reviews
Creating American Civilization: A Genealogy of American Literature as an Academic Discipline (Volume 11) by David R. Shumway
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book charts the emergence of American literature as a subdiscipline of study in English Departments in the American university. It represents a great deal of meticulous scholarship--curricula and programming over time, the emergence of professional organizations and their leadership, the kinds of articles published in PMLA and then in the journals of professional organizations devoted to American literature, the number and kinds of dissertations produced over time, the creation of the canon, contributions outside of academia to the formation of American studies, and the most important figures.
View all my reviews
Quotes and Ideas of Interest from Shumway:
"By 'ideological,' I mean more or less what Althusser meant when he used the term to name that part of experience which we take so completely for granted that it becomes 'nature.' Ideology so defined is a '"lived" relation to the real' that has a powerful hold on the subject because it is largely unconscious. Thus, to quote James Kavanaugh, 'at stake in [ideological conflicts] are not different opinions, but different realities" (32).
"But both groups accepted the traditional Christian view of human evil and thus rejected the assumption common to both liberals and Marxists that human nature could be improved given the right social conditions" (230). This argument explains a lot about my personal experience of conservatism vs liberalism, that the evangelical Christian worldview denies the ability for improvement and progress in favor of focusing on universal and unremitting human evil.
I got another Etsy gift card, so I was able to get some silver and gold hair clips, a silver and turquoise bracelet to replace the one I lost about a year ago (yes, there is a theme to my Etsy gift card use), and writing gloves by Storiarts with text and graphics from A Christmas Carol. I also got a gift card to the Laurel Mercantile from
spikedluv and got Ouida's Garden hand soap (how could I resist with that name!) and some Garden Mint wax melts; thank you! Mom and Dad gave me various and sundries, including some moolah. Altogether a wonderful birthday haul!The Magic Grandfather by Jay WilliamsMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I loved this book as a kid. I was fascinated by so many elements of this book. I had a great deal of autonomy (as most kids in the 80s did), but we lived so rurally that it was the freedom to roam around the woods and ride my bike to the nearby state park. The idea of having the same freedom in town to knock around at the ice cream parlor or whatever intrigued me. I also was intrigued by the grandfather smoking and letting the grandson drink beer, two things people in my life as a kid Did Not Do. And, of course, I was (and still am) a sucker for a Chosen One narrative.
Bonus points for the female protagonist's characterization.
View all my reviews
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel HawthorneMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I'd forgotten that this begins with such a lengthy discussion of the writing process, including writer's block.
Dimmesdale is such a masterfully drawn portrait of cowardice and religious hypocrisy. In addition to all the other ways he exemplifies these characteristics, I hate the way he makes Hester responsible for his salvation as if she's denying him redemption by refusing to name him instead of him being too weak to confess. Also his argument that he doesn't confess so he can continue to do God's work--just such a jerk.
"Even the old Inspector was desirable, as a change of diet, to a man who had known Alcott" (17). *dies laughing* I love this dig at Bronson Alcott.
And here's a quote that Hawthorne writes in the context of discussing the effects of place and occupation on writing ability but which describe what autoimmune brain fog feels like very closely to me: "But, nevertheless, it is anything but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away; or exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of a phial; so that, at every glance, you find a smaller and less volatile residuum."
View all my reviews
Carnacki, the Ghost Finder by William Hope HodgsonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is interesting; the protagonist is a psychic detective who investigates supernatural phenomena (or what he calls ab-normal or ab-human). His methods are very scientific and use the latest technology of the early 20th century along with information about repelling the supernatural that he learned from old manuscripts. He's careful to say that most supernatural instances are actually perfectly normal and that most of his cases turn to be perfectly explicable. But he's also a believer, and a small number of his cases are true hauntings. This book contains 6 stories: in one of them, the haunting is created by a group of thieves; in another, the haunting is caused by a hidden mechanism; in two of the stories, there's a mixture of natural and supernatural causes, and two stories are completely supernatural.
Some of these stories are genuinely disturbing and disconcerting in their creation of dread and in the way the supernatural manifestation is described.
View all my reviews
Creating American Civilization: A Genealogy of American Literature as an Academic Discipline (Volume 11) by David R. ShumwayMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book charts the emergence of American literature as a subdiscipline of study in English Departments in the American university. It represents a great deal of meticulous scholarship--curricula and programming over time, the emergence of professional organizations and their leadership, the kinds of articles published in PMLA and then in the journals of professional organizations devoted to American literature, the number and kinds of dissertations produced over time, the creation of the canon, contributions outside of academia to the formation of American studies, and the most important figures.
View all my reviews
Quotes and Ideas of Interest from Shumway:
"By 'ideological,' I mean more or less what Althusser meant when he used the term to name that part of experience which we take so completely for granted that it becomes 'nature.' Ideology so defined is a '"lived" relation to the real' that has a powerful hold on the subject because it is largely unconscious. Thus, to quote James Kavanaugh, 'at stake in [ideological conflicts] are not different opinions, but different realities" (32).
"But both groups accepted the traditional Christian view of human evil and thus rejected the assumption common to both liberals and Marxists that human nature could be improved given the right social conditions" (230). This argument explains a lot about my personal experience of conservatism vs liberalism, that the evangelical Christian worldview denies the ability for improvement and progress in favor of focusing on universal and unremitting human evil.