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50books_poc(Aka "the post which demonstrates that my recent reading has had no unifying theme".)
16: The Good Women of China by Xinran
My God, this book was depressing. Very readable and sometimes very moving, but the stories Xinran gathers here (stories told to her by women from all over China, which she was able to hear because of her status as a popular radio presenter) are mostly about suffering: a woman waits 45 years to see the man she fell in love with, only to discover that he has married someone else; a group of women look after orphans to heal their sorrow at losing their own children in an earthquake; a woman is married off to a man she doesn't know by the Communist Party; and then there are the women of Shouting Hill, whose lives are endless and thankless drudgery from adolescence onwards, with no prospects for escape and no awareness of anything beyond their small impoverished village. Each story is unique and the context is specific to China -- the accounts of the things the Chinese Communist Party did in the name of "rooting out counterrevolution" are horrific -- and yet there are universals here, too. Young girls are raped and tell nobody because they don't understand what's happened and are ashamed; women fall in love with men who are bad for them and cling on through the heartbreak with as much stubbornness as hope; and everywhere, poverty makes life harder, but riches don't make life easy. Gripping and intense.
17: Like a Love Comedy by Aki Morimoto with illustrations by Yutta Narumi
18: Caged Slave by Yuiko Takamura with illustrations by An Kanae
Two BL novels which I rented from DMP's eManga site for 200 points (=2 dollars) each. If you already know what BL/yaoi is, skip the rest of this paragraph. BL ("boys' love") is a genre of manga and prose fiction that's popular in Japan and is spreading outside Japan too: it's all about male/male sex and romance, and has tended to be marked by certain frequently-used cliches and stereotypes, some of them offensively homophobic and/or misogynist, some of them not actually offensive but really irritating anyway. Since the audience for BL is mostly straight women, the stories often bear no resemblance at all to the lives of actual gay men. I'm a fan of the genre, but I'd be the first to admit that a) it's not for everyone; and b) there's a lot of dross out there that re-treads the old cliches without adding anything new. There's good BL out there, some of which even (miracle of miracles!) shows evidence of the author knowing something about gay men and what life is like for them in contemporary Japan, but even the BL that isn't drowning in offensive stereotyping is often conventional and quite samey.
On the other hand, sometimes I'm in the mood for a bog-standard m/m romance without much acknowledgement of the harshness of reality. Both these BL light novels (=short novel with manga-like illustrations) fit the bill; Like a Love Comedy is about a TV writer who falls in love with an actor, and Caged Slave is about a secretary who falls in love with his boss. Caged Slave is quite a bit steamier than Like a Love Comedy, which takes a long time to get to the sex scenes (and they weren't very good sex scenes, at that), and I rate it more highly for other reasons, too; Like a Love Comedy's resolution involves a communication difficulty that annoyed me, not so much because it wasn't believeable as because it was annoying, the kind of little thing that could have been so easily fixed if the characters had taken a moment's thought. On the other hand, Caged Slave has a few very predictable coincidences that made me roll my eyes. So, yeah: bog-standard BL. Not outstanding, but entertaining enough if you like that kind of thing.
19: Knitty Gritty by Aneeta Patel
I've been learning to knit lately, and this book has been very helpful. Patel teaches knitting professionally (see her website for upcoming classes you can attend if you're in the London area), and she obviously knows the kinds of mistakes beginners make, both in the course of knitting a particular stitch or pattern and in their general approach to knitting. She has simple step-by-step instructions on how to do everything, even making a slipknot, and the patterns she includes are genuinely suitable for beginners -- she even explains that she hasn't included any patterns where gauge and tension are important, because beginning knitters are inconsistent (obviously) and if she required beginners to knit a bunch of tension squares to test the gauge of their yarns, they'd get bored and discouraged and give up. This woman is wise in the psychology of beginning knitters! Highly recommended for anyone who's never knit before and would like to take the plunge.
16: The Good Women of China by Xinran
My God, this book was depressing. Very readable and sometimes very moving, but the stories Xinran gathers here (stories told to her by women from all over China, which she was able to hear because of her status as a popular radio presenter) are mostly about suffering: a woman waits 45 years to see the man she fell in love with, only to discover that he has married someone else; a group of women look after orphans to heal their sorrow at losing their own children in an earthquake; a woman is married off to a man she doesn't know by the Communist Party; and then there are the women of Shouting Hill, whose lives are endless and thankless drudgery from adolescence onwards, with no prospects for escape and no awareness of anything beyond their small impoverished village. Each story is unique and the context is specific to China -- the accounts of the things the Chinese Communist Party did in the name of "rooting out counterrevolution" are horrific -- and yet there are universals here, too. Young girls are raped and tell nobody because they don't understand what's happened and are ashamed; women fall in love with men who are bad for them and cling on through the heartbreak with as much stubbornness as hope; and everywhere, poverty makes life harder, but riches don't make life easy. Gripping and intense.
17: Like a Love Comedy by Aki Morimoto with illustrations by Yutta Narumi
18: Caged Slave by Yuiko Takamura with illustrations by An Kanae
Two BL novels which I rented from DMP's eManga site for 200 points (=2 dollars) each. If you already know what BL/yaoi is, skip the rest of this paragraph. BL ("boys' love") is a genre of manga and prose fiction that's popular in Japan and is spreading outside Japan too: it's all about male/male sex and romance, and has tended to be marked by certain frequently-used cliches and stereotypes, some of them offensively homophobic and/or misogynist, some of them not actually offensive but really irritating anyway. Since the audience for BL is mostly straight women, the stories often bear no resemblance at all to the lives of actual gay men. I'm a fan of the genre, but I'd be the first to admit that a) it's not for everyone; and b) there's a lot of dross out there that re-treads the old cliches without adding anything new. There's good BL out there, some of which even (miracle of miracles!) shows evidence of the author knowing something about gay men and what life is like for them in contemporary Japan, but even the BL that isn't drowning in offensive stereotyping is often conventional and quite samey.
On the other hand, sometimes I'm in the mood for a bog-standard m/m romance without much acknowledgement of the harshness of reality. Both these BL light novels (=short novel with manga-like illustrations) fit the bill; Like a Love Comedy is about a TV writer who falls in love with an actor, and Caged Slave is about a secretary who falls in love with his boss. Caged Slave is quite a bit steamier than Like a Love Comedy, which takes a long time to get to the sex scenes (and they weren't very good sex scenes, at that), and I rate it more highly for other reasons, too; Like a Love Comedy's resolution involves a communication difficulty that annoyed me, not so much because it wasn't believeable as because it was annoying, the kind of little thing that could have been so easily fixed if the characters had taken a moment's thought. On the other hand, Caged Slave has a few very predictable coincidences that made me roll my eyes. So, yeah: bog-standard BL. Not outstanding, but entertaining enough if you like that kind of thing.
19: Knitty Gritty by Aneeta Patel
I've been learning to knit lately, and this book has been very helpful. Patel teaches knitting professionally (see her website for upcoming classes you can attend if you're in the London area), and she obviously knows the kinds of mistakes beginners make, both in the course of knitting a particular stitch or pattern and in their general approach to knitting. She has simple step-by-step instructions on how to do everything, even making a slipknot, and the patterns she includes are genuinely suitable for beginners -- she even explains that she hasn't included any patterns where gauge and tension are important, because beginning knitters are inconsistent (obviously) and if she required beginners to knit a bunch of tension squares to test the gauge of their yarns, they'd get bored and discouraged and give up. This woman is wise in the psychology of beginning knitters! Highly recommended for anyone who's never knit before and would like to take the plunge.
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