book frustrations
Apr. 22nd, 2014 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraI have a number of printed books out from the library right now and yet the logistics of my life are such that I've only managed to read ebooks. (Plus it turns out Minuteman has a bunch of ebooks I want that I can't get because my local library hasn't bought into the "preferred members" tier and I'm not sure of the repercussions if I try to claim a different local library - I mean, technically my physical library card does still say Waltham on it...)
Anyways. The Duke and I, Julia Quinn, Regency, first book of the Bridgertons series, I now have no recollection of this book but I seem to have liked it enough to queue for the next one. NurtureShock, nonfiction, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, some interesting research about improving child-raising by going against certain bits of conventional wisdom, much of it utterly impossible to implement yourself (like later start times for high schools, or this awesome "Tools of the Mind" program for teaching discipline to young children). Three Regency romance novels by Mary Jo Putney, Loving a Lost Lord, Never Less Than A Lady, and Nowhere Near Respectable, in the packet in reverse chronological order for some reason which doesn't *really* matter with romance novels (spoiler: they end up together) but was a little odd.
Actually I had an interesting moment reading the first (third) one, Nowhere Near Respectable, in which our heroine has an English father and Indian mother, and of course she's of "royal Hindu blood" and "descended from warrior queens" and I was sort of like, oh please, of course she can't just be Indian, she has to be extra-special, and then I was like, waaaaaait, literally everyone else in these books is either a duke or an earl or the child of a duke or an earl, and I'm complaining that the WOC has too fancy a background? Because of course a Regency romance is swimming with dukes, did you know the population of 1812 London was actually 75% dukes, streets were paved with dukes, they had so many dukes sitting around they used to chop them up and burn them as fuel in the early railway engines. Statistically the population of India (large, ancient civilization) must have way more people descended from royalty than there were dukes in this smallish island in the corner of Europe, I'm just so used to the conventions of the Regency genre that I've stopped noticing them. I did not actually hit myself in the head with the book but only because it was an ebook. Once I got over being dumb, I actually really liked the character - she was implausible in a sort of Peter Wimsey way, with her Kalaripayattu and uncanny ability to recognize perfumes, but it gave her a great excuse to be essential to foiling a pretty exciting (for the action plot in a romance novel, at least) French plot, and I thought Putney did a reasonable job of balancing the hero finding her beauty "exotic" (eye-rolling in a contemporary romance, but felt realistic for an Englishman in 1812) and her being suspicious he's being Orientalist and pointing out that from her point of view saris are primarily for being comfortable in hot weather, not being seductive. And these are only, like, the second and third romance novels (Lost Lord is about her brother) I've read where someone is actually acknowledging that non-white people existed in the 19th century (and I'm not counting the one where they go to India but there are no Indian characters that I read a few months ago) so I'm still very interested just to see romance authors doing this.
Anyways. The Duke and I, Julia Quinn, Regency, first book of the Bridgertons series, I now have no recollection of this book but I seem to have liked it enough to queue for the next one. NurtureShock, nonfiction, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, some interesting research about improving child-raising by going against certain bits of conventional wisdom, much of it utterly impossible to implement yourself (like later start times for high schools, or this awesome "Tools of the Mind" program for teaching discipline to young children). Three Regency romance novels by Mary Jo Putney, Loving a Lost Lord, Never Less Than A Lady, and Nowhere Near Respectable, in the packet in reverse chronological order for some reason which doesn't *really* matter with romance novels (spoiler: they end up together) but was a little odd.
Actually I had an interesting moment reading the first (third) one, Nowhere Near Respectable, in which our heroine has an English father and Indian mother, and of course she's of "royal Hindu blood" and "descended from warrior queens" and I was sort of like, oh please, of course she can't just be Indian, she has to be extra-special, and then I was like, waaaaaait, literally everyone else in these books is either a duke or an earl or the child of a duke or an earl, and I'm complaining that the WOC has too fancy a background? Because of course a Regency romance is swimming with dukes, did you know the population of 1812 London was actually 75% dukes, streets were paved with dukes, they had so many dukes sitting around they used to chop them up and burn them as fuel in the early railway engines. Statistically the population of India (large, ancient civilization) must have way more people descended from royalty than there were dukes in this smallish island in the corner of Europe, I'm just so used to the conventions of the Regency genre that I've stopped noticing them. I did not actually hit myself in the head with the book but only because it was an ebook. Once I got over being dumb, I actually really liked the character - she was implausible in a sort of Peter Wimsey way, with her Kalaripayattu and uncanny ability to recognize perfumes, but it gave her a great excuse to be essential to foiling a pretty exciting (for the action plot in a romance novel, at least) French plot, and I thought Putney did a reasonable job of balancing the hero finding her beauty "exotic" (eye-rolling in a contemporary romance, but felt realistic for an Englishman in 1812) and her being suspicious he's being Orientalist and pointing out that from her point of view saris are primarily for being comfortable in hot weather, not being seductive. And these are only, like, the second and third romance novels (Lost Lord is about her brother) I've read where someone is actually acknowledging that non-white people existed in the 19th century (and I'm not counting the one where they go to India but there are no Indian characters that I read a few months ago) so I'm still very interested just to see romance authors doing this.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-23 01:22 pm (UTC)Huh, I hadn't realized this. Are we claiming Fox or Robbins as our local library?
I wonder what the process for that is, and if we should try to encourage them to do it.