![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Argonauts Telling More
Apr. 24th, 2015 12:44 amThomas More, by Richard Marius
This is a very rich, very slow book that focuses mostly (but far from exclusively) on More's intellectual life. I spread reading it out over the course of a year or so because it was more interesting that way. It fully satisfied my urge to know more about Thomas More, and is neither a hagiography nor an indictment.
(100, O37)
The Telling Room, by Michael Paterniti
This story of a cheese and a cheesemaker and a village in Spain took me forever to read. But it was a lot of fun, and sometimes incredibly compelling. On the other hand, it was a hot mess. The hotmessness was part of the compellingness though? Hard to explain. Also I felt like while I *liked* the author's version of this story, there are at least half-a-dozen people IN the story whose version I would've *loved* instead... And yet, there were moments where I so delighted in this book that if the author had been in front of me, I might've hugged him.
(101)
The Argonauts, by Maggie Nelson (complimentary copy)
Sometimes when I am all excited about a book because I love the look of it and I love the description of it and I love the press that published it and I squealed when I opened up the envelope the publisher sent it to me in and the last time I read a book by this author I read it all in one day and then bought copies for several friends... I worry that the book itself cannot possibly live up to the level of my hopes for the book.
In this case I needn't have worried.
It's a deeply odd book, intellectual and earthy, crisp and messy, abstract and personal, and lots of other binary pairs and in-betweens. It sometimes made me uncomfortable, and it's not as accessible as Bluets (the book I bought lots of copies of). It's not for everyone. But it was oh so very much for me. What it reminds me of is how when I was 18 and 19 and 20, I would often spend ALL DAY reading nearly-randomly in the stacks of 3 different McGill libraries, and then I would go find one of my friends who, while they'd not usually spent all day reading, were mostly better-educated than I was, and we would bounce ideas and personal stories off of each other until we got all muddied together and tired, at which point we would do something else - fall asleep, cook dinner, get in a laundry fight, cuddle on the couch while looking at Mapplethorpe photos... the options were multiple, and splendid. Anyway, this book makes me feel like I felt on those days, and that is a most welcome thing. It's also one of only a few books I've read that talk about womanhood and motherhood in ways that make me feel more affinity for my mostly-gender, rather than less.
My only regret is that, even though I tried REALLY hard to wait to read it until I could read it all in one day, I instead gave in to temptation and read it in bits and spurts when I didn't really have much time to read. I could occasionally tell that I wasn't as gloriously immersed in the interconnections and callbacks as I would've been if I hadn't had to interrupt myself. Next time I read it, it will be on a day when I don't have to put it down.
(102, O38, A3)
This is a very rich, very slow book that focuses mostly (but far from exclusively) on More's intellectual life. I spread reading it out over the course of a year or so because it was more interesting that way. It fully satisfied my urge to know more about Thomas More, and is neither a hagiography nor an indictment.
(100, O37)
The Telling Room, by Michael Paterniti
This story of a cheese and a cheesemaker and a village in Spain took me forever to read. But it was a lot of fun, and sometimes incredibly compelling. On the other hand, it was a hot mess. The hotmessness was part of the compellingness though? Hard to explain. Also I felt like while I *liked* the author's version of this story, there are at least half-a-dozen people IN the story whose version I would've *loved* instead... And yet, there were moments where I so delighted in this book that if the author had been in front of me, I might've hugged him.
(101)
The Argonauts, by Maggie Nelson (complimentary copy)
Sometimes when I am all excited about a book because I love the look of it and I love the description of it and I love the press that published it and I squealed when I opened up the envelope the publisher sent it to me in and the last time I read a book by this author I read it all in one day and then bought copies for several friends... I worry that the book itself cannot possibly live up to the level of my hopes for the book.
In this case I needn't have worried.
It's a deeply odd book, intellectual and earthy, crisp and messy, abstract and personal, and lots of other binary pairs and in-betweens. It sometimes made me uncomfortable, and it's not as accessible as Bluets (the book I bought lots of copies of). It's not for everyone. But it was oh so very much for me. What it reminds me of is how when I was 18 and 19 and 20, I would often spend ALL DAY reading nearly-randomly in the stacks of 3 different McGill libraries, and then I would go find one of my friends who, while they'd not usually spent all day reading, were mostly better-educated than I was, and we would bounce ideas and personal stories off of each other until we got all muddied together and tired, at which point we would do something else - fall asleep, cook dinner, get in a laundry fight, cuddle on the couch while looking at Mapplethorpe photos... the options were multiple, and splendid. Anyway, this book makes me feel like I felt on those days, and that is a most welcome thing. It's also one of only a few books I've read that talk about womanhood and motherhood in ways that make me feel more affinity for my mostly-gender, rather than less.
My only regret is that, even though I tried REALLY hard to wait to read it until I could read it all in one day, I instead gave in to temptation and read it in bits and spurts when I didn't really have much time to read. I could occasionally tell that I wasn't as gloriously immersed in the interconnections and callbacks as I would've been if I hadn't had to interrupt myself. Next time I read it, it will be on a day when I don't have to put it down.
(102, O38, A3)
