Reading this week

Finished:

1. Benson, E.F. Miss Mapp. 1922. The second Mapp & Lucia novel. ( More character analysis of the differences and similarities between Mapp's and Lucia's brands of awful )



2. Chrétien de Troyes. Cligés. I've already mentioned how weirdly like a fixit fanfic this one is, and that actually is quite an interesting fact about it, but it also makes it pretty weird to read, and at times a bit irritating. The end was so incredibly abrupt, though, that was a whole other source of humor.



3. Chrétien de Troyes. The Knight of the Cart (Lancelot). This is the third Arthurian romance in the collection, and it's even more fascinating than the previous one. I know from the introductions in this book that this is the only fictional portrayal of marital infidelity by Chrétien, who is otherwise EXTREMELY disapproving of it (as the entire plot of Cligés was written to express). And we know that this one, as is stated explicitly at the beginning, was written on the express orders of his patroness, Marie de Champagne. Apparently she actually dictated the subject matter - the courtly love between Lancelot and Guinevere - and even to an extent the plot. According to the introduction and footnotes, there's some scholarly debate about whether this is a faithful carrying out of her wishes or actually contains an entire layer of satirical snark to express the author's actual distaste for the morality of his characters. And I think the latter is actually what's happening, which is really interesting to notice as you're reading along. But it is pretty subtle!



4. Wells, Martha. Artificial Condition. Now that I've read the next couple installments about Murderbot after this one, I still like ART especially much. The sequence where Murderbot visits the disused mine to investigate the disaster on Milu was great, too.



5. Wells, Martha. Rogue Protocol. My favorite part of this one was the fantastic fight scenes with the combat bots and just how fun they were to read. That's quite funny, because I often just skip fight scenes entirely, even in print. I'm interested to see what the visual design for Miki is going to look like.



6. Wells, Martha. Exit Strategy. The images of the hotels and the new scenes with Gurathin and Pin-Lee in this book were really great. The hotel hacks and the whole description of using the maintenance system and the transportation pods against the GrayCris representatives were so memorable that I actually sort of remembered that part even though I'd managed to forget most of the intervening context and details in the couple of years since I first read it.



7. Wells, Martha. "Compulsory" and "Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory". I read these too. Nice little bits of context.

In progress:

1. Wells, Martha. Network Effect. I was pretty sure I had read this before, but as I started reading it today... I don't think I have actually? Only two chapters in so far. Time may tell.



2. Benson, EF. Lucia in London. This one has provided some more brilliant character portraits and inspired me to look up Oxford bags, which I had read about plenty before. I knew that "Oxford bags" were trousers worn at Oxford, and that they were baggy/loose/slouchy, and that this was both trendy/youthful and potentially scandalous (depending on the context). But the following passages from this book inspired me to go looking for further visual evidence:
   
   

   There was a new suit which he had not worn yet, rather daring, for the trousers, dark fawn, were distinctly of Oxford cut, and he felt quite boyish as he looked at them. He had ordered them in a moment of reckless sartorial courage[... .]
   [...]
   (Were Oxford trousers meant to turn up at the bottom? He thought not: and how small these voluminous folds made your feet look.)
   [...]
   The odious Piggy, it is true, burst into a squeal of laughter and cried, “Oh, Mr. Georgie, I see you’ve gone into long frocks[.]"

   
   
   And, in short, it turns out that while some Oxford bags were merely baggy trousers, in general they were basically like palazzo pants of the 1920s-30s! There's a lot of variation under this term, with some looking more or less like some standard 1970s trousers (apart from the waist), and others more like divided skirts.



3. Boron, Robert de. Merlin and the Grail: The Trilogy of Arthurian Romances: Joseph of Arimathea - Merlin - Perceval. (Bryant, trans.) 2001. Original date of publication: 1199. I read one page of Joseph of Arimathea and, perceiving that it was going to all take place immediately after the death of Jesus, skipped to Merlin. I'm sure it's very interesting to see the 1st century CE through the eyes of French poets of the 12th century, but I might have to be in a different sort of mood than the mood for reading Arthurian romance. After the Chrétien de Troyes I've read, I was pleasantly surprised by how riveted I was by the beginning of Merlin. Annnnnnd also unpleasantly surprised by just how much more shockingly loathesome the misogyny of the medieval society and morality was, ( Read more... )
   But my favorite surprise-lol moment in this book so far has been this:
   
   

   "[G]o in search of a land called Northumberland, a land covered in great forests, a place strange even to its own inhabitants, for there are parts where no man has ever been."




4. Chrétien de Troyes. The Knight with the Lion (Yvain). The amazing premise is that there exists a magical forest where there's a magical spring (to be reached only after you find the house of a specific guy who is a really good host, and he gives you dinner and you stay the night, and then he gives you directions there the next day), and next to the spring is a stone bowl carved out of emerald with rubies for feet, and a dipper, and if you pour a dipper of the water onto the stone, immediately a huge storm with so much lightning you can't see straight will rise up out of nowhere, destroying a bunch of trees in the forest. And then as soon as you do this a knight on horseback will gallop up and attack you in revenge for having destroyed his forest. So this happens to Calogrenant, and the knight defeats him soundly and then knocks him off his horse and takes it and just leaves. So because Calogrenant is his first cousin, to avenge his shame Yvain decides to go do exactly the same thing. He does, but he defeats the knight, and then pursues him through the gates of a castle and unhesitatingly kills him! Okay!!