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Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Mists of Avalon

I must say I was very apprehensive when I picked up the book. I knew I was about  10 years too old to be in the targetted audience and that I was very *very* attached to the story of Arthur from the movie Excalibur, so it was a very pleasant surprise to enjoy the first half of the book so much. The story was interesting and historically less silly than the movie (re Romans and Saxons and no full plate armour) and the character of Morgane was a lot more interesting that the one-dimensional Morgane of the movie. (ok so now you’re wondering why I even liked the movie in the first place? The Music, The Costumes, Merlin & Uther)

Unfortunatly it was predestined to change when Gueneviere got some page-presence and proceeded to suck away whatever hope I had that the book would show decent women. Nope. We have stron women that are so independant nobody wants to be like them… and whiners that put t shame shy 7 years old girls who stick to their mother’s skirts. Nothing in the middle. How realistic. I hate to be the one who criticizes and complains all the time but to have a main character afraid to go riding on a horse in medieval England just tops it. To have her Queen on top? forget it! I’m glad I read it, now I’ll go back to Althea, Cersei,  Paks and Eowyn? I know most of those women are not always intelligent, brave or strong, but even if they’re faillible they always try. 

In the end, if I ever find the sequel I’ll keep it for easy beach reading

Brave New World

A couple of months ago Christopher mentioned his long-lasting interest with a Brave  New World. After I followed the Great Books I class at Concordia, I’ve always been interested in reading my way through books that have shaped society around them. Thanks to Judith I got a copy and started reading on the bus every morning. 

At first I was a little bored by the “shocking” futuristic utopian society that the text describes. Tubes baby and behavioural conditioning taken to the extreme and a serious cult of youth. It felt like everything was so widely different that it couldn’t scary because I couldn’t tell how society could even get to that point. I read it like an anthropological study of a world far away. Where people are weird and believe weird things. That feeling stayed with me pretty much throughout the book until 2-3 chapters before the end, when the Savage meets with the world leader and discuss philosophy.

That conversation is, I believe, the main point that the author wanted to make. He invented a world and characters inhabiting it and staged it all so that those two people could talk for an evening. It seemed like a set-up, a sort of devil’s advocate conversation of “what ifs” and the only way he could make his point was to give us background (the rest of the book.)

I have to say, that conversation is pretty intense and brings ideas together that I’d never envisioned before and for that the book is very interesting. On the other hand, I pity teenagers who were forced to read this for school because I don’t think I would have gotten so much out of it without philosophy classes in both college and university to give me some background.

I’ll probably read it again in 5 years and find it completly different. I think this book will stick with me for a while. A slicky-oily-akward of feeling in the back of my head when I’ll read some technological articles. 

***   for appreciation of the story

***** for “iconic book” status