stockingsandseams (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stockingsandseams) wrote2013-07-31 03:18 pm
stockingsandseams) wrote2013-07-31 03:18 pm
Entry tags:
WIRW: Dead people and concrit wank
This is the first time I've been home in about two weeks - first, I was camping in the Lake District because my mum had a sponsored open water swim (just two days after all the news broke about everyone dying in open water and all these campaigns to get people to stop doing it, thanks mum, that gave me zero heart attacks while I was photographing the whole event), then we took the Brownies away on holiday, and then my grandad went into hospital so my gran needed some more support at home until he got better. She was worried that it was another stroke at first - he had one a few years ago - but the doctors ruled it out quite quickly; it was just a viral infection, but coupled with the mobility and communication issues he already had from his first stroke, it was hard for them to diagnose him. He should be getting better soon - he's already out of the hospital and back home, and now it's just a matter of persuading my grandparents to let us help clean up their home and sort their mouse problem for good. I just want them to get better.
Anyway, not much time for reading at all, but I managed to get through a couple of interesting things:
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, James W. Loewen
This was recommended to me as an interesting history book, but it isn't. It's not a history book at all; it's just a book about the teaching of American History, the subject, and how it is taught specifically within US high school textbooks. That's an interesting subject too, in its own right, but this is one book which I think only works within a fairly narrow cultural context. Loewen's passionate about his subject and he does include some interesting examples which were all new to me, but he doesn't dwell on them or discuss their ramifications - that just isn't the point of what he's writing, which is a focused reaction against twelve books I've never read. On the whole, a disappointing read, but I'm gonna blame the friend who implied it was a book about history rather than the author himself.
An Essay On Criticism, Alexander Pope
This poem is basically 750 lines worth of concrit wank, and I fucking love the fact this exists. With lines like "A perfect Judge will read each work of wit,/ With the same spirit that its author writ", I'm pretty sure I've found the 18th C version of "you're interrogating the text from the wrong perspective". As a poem itself, I don't much care for it - it's little more than a list of qualities the ideal critic should possess and rules they should live by, lest they trample the precious flower that is Art, and I find it a little boring. But the language is interesting ("A little learning is a dangerous thing", often misquoted as "A little knowledge...", is apparently a quote from this poem!) and some of his ideas about criticism are funny, especially in the context of later theory (the idea that any critic interested mostly in symbols and metaphor being a terrible critic out to ruin Literature for everyone, for example, would have made my course on mythological criticism much more difficult), but it's not a bad read.
The Thieves of Ostia, Caroline Lawrence
I found all the boxes in the garage where my parents packed away my books, and I'm loving these all over again. The Roman Mysteries series was 17 whodunnits, all set in Ancient Rome, and solved by a group of four children - Flavia, Nubia, Jonathan and Lupus. I only own up to "The Twelve Tasks", which is the 6th in the series, and although some of the details I'd accepted when I was a kid seem a little more Unfortunate Implications now (like how Nubia, the African slave girl, has an almost magical ability to understand animals, or all the preaching about Christianity teaching forgiveness and love), they're still quite good adventure stories, and I was so pleased to find out that there was a TV series.
Anyway, not much time for reading at all, but I managed to get through a couple of interesting things:
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, James W. Loewen
This was recommended to me as an interesting history book, but it isn't. It's not a history book at all; it's just a book about the teaching of American History, the subject, and how it is taught specifically within US high school textbooks. That's an interesting subject too, in its own right, but this is one book which I think only works within a fairly narrow cultural context. Loewen's passionate about his subject and he does include some interesting examples which were all new to me, but he doesn't dwell on them or discuss their ramifications - that just isn't the point of what he's writing, which is a focused reaction against twelve books I've never read. On the whole, a disappointing read, but I'm gonna blame the friend who implied it was a book about history rather than the author himself.
An Essay On Criticism, Alexander Pope
This poem is basically 750 lines worth of concrit wank, and I fucking love the fact this exists. With lines like "A perfect Judge will read each work of wit,/ With the same spirit that its author writ", I'm pretty sure I've found the 18th C version of "you're interrogating the text from the wrong perspective". As a poem itself, I don't much care for it - it's little more than a list of qualities the ideal critic should possess and rules they should live by, lest they trample the precious flower that is Art, and I find it a little boring. But the language is interesting ("A little learning is a dangerous thing", often misquoted as "A little knowledge...", is apparently a quote from this poem!) and some of his ideas about criticism are funny, especially in the context of later theory (the idea that any critic interested mostly in symbols and metaphor being a terrible critic out to ruin Literature for everyone, for example, would have made my course on mythological criticism much more difficult), but it's not a bad read.
The Thieves of Ostia, Caroline Lawrence
I found all the boxes in the garage where my parents packed away my books, and I'm loving these all over again. The Roman Mysteries series was 17 whodunnits, all set in Ancient Rome, and solved by a group of four children - Flavia, Nubia, Jonathan and Lupus. I only own up to "The Twelve Tasks", which is the 6th in the series, and although some of the details I'd accepted when I was a kid seem a little more Unfortunate Implications now (like how Nubia, the African slave girl, has an almost magical ability to understand animals, or all the preaching about Christianity teaching forgiveness and love), they're still quite good adventure stories, and I was so pleased to find out that there was a TV series.