Some recent reads
Jun. 7th, 2023 12:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lucymonsterThe Domestic Revolution: How the Introduction of Coal into Our Homes Changed Everything by Ruth Goodman piqued my interest when osprey_archer reviewed it a while ago, so I was thrilled when a copy turned up on the shelves of my local library. It actually took me a while to get into, because the opening chapters are a very thorough review of pre-coal British fuel options that I found only mildly interesting. But once it gets into the actual use of that fuel in day-to-day life, Goodman's experience as a living historian comes shining through: she has practiced most of the relevant techniques, so her descriptions of period domestic labour - lighting and managing fires, cooking on them, cleaning up after them, using them to heat your laundry water - are full of vivid detail and practical insight. As she points out several times throughout the book, the lives she's reconstructing aren't the kind for which much direct testimony is available: this was women's labour, and more specifically the labour of female servants and poorer housewives who couldn't afford hired help. These women didn't have the leisure or literacy to record their own experiences, and scarcely anyone else ever deemed it worth recording on their behalf. So thorough, disciplined reenactments like Goodman's are often the closest we can get to understanding how they lived.
Aside from all the great content Osprey mentions, I was also really interested to learn how much the switch from wood to coal affected the physical layout of the home. The ancient wood-burning central hearth, which encouraged open-plan, ground-floor living, was impossible to maintain with coal. Previously, corner fireplaces with chimneys were a sort of experimental curiosity available only to very wealthy households (who could afford to swallow the 70% heat loss) and large institutions (whose need for multiple storeys made the traditional 'it'll work its way up and out eventually' approach to smoke management untenable). But coal smoke was much more noxious than wood smoke and, instead of drifting upwards, tended to hang low in people's breathing space. Once coal burning became the norm, people urgently needed a way to vent smoke out of their homes, so chimneys became the norm; and once your fire was off in a corner sending most of its heat directly up into the sky, it became more economical to wall off your living space into multiple smaller rooms that could each be individually warmed or not. The resulting trend in home layout has lasted right up until the last few decades, when central heating made open-plan living more comfortable again.
The Combat Doctor by Dan Pronk is the memoir of an Australian special forces doctor who served in Afghanistan. Being a special forces memoir, it's full of comically understated accounts of personal overachievement ('aw yeah, y'know, I had some free time while I was in medical school, so I decided I might as well pursue several extreme sports, gain multiple firearms competencies, and learn Arabic just in case it ever came in handy', MY DUDE WHERE DO GET YOUR ENERGY) as well as the usual pep talks about resiliency and teamwork. Being a medical memoir, it includes lots of interesting stories - thankfully not too gory - about the patients Pronk treated in the line of duty. He qualified as a GP, and the difference between his mandatory civilian clinic hours and the 'down and dirty medicine' (his words) he practiced out in the field was really striking. At one point, caught without his scalpel during a chaotic casualty evacuation, he had to perform a life-saving operation with a Gerber.
One thing I'm always weirdly impressed by in these kinds of books is how similar they are, and I don't mean that in a derogatory sense but just in terms of the one very specific psychological profile that seems to dominate at the elite levels of military service. Clearly special forces selection boards know exactly what they're looking for in their soldiers, and how to weed out candidates who don't fit the mould.
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber is a novel about a Christian missionary who goes into space to preach to a surprisingly receptive community of aliens. I read it once years ago, and remembered it as a flawed book that was worth the effort; in retrospect, I kind of wish I'd left it at that, because it holds up very badly on reread once newness no longer makes up for the bad stuff.
The basic premise is still just as good as I remember: the aliens are satisfyingly uncanny and non-human while still being relatable as people, and the spacefaring stuff is as good as you'd expect from a literary author taking a paddle in the world of scifi. And the twist at the end is still just as heartbreaking: the aliens are so hungry for Christianity because their species lacks the ability to heal, and they've fundamentally misunderstood the Gospel as an instruction manual that will grant them the same miraculous self-regeneration powers as humans (exemplified by Jesus, who survived having his hands and feet being pierced by nails). But if I'd forgotten why I usually avoid male-authored litfic like the plague, this book sure as shit reminded me. I don't know if I've just had a freakishly bad sampling or if every modern male literary figure is like this, but oh my goodness, the obsession with genitals. Faber couldn't go a fucking chapter without reminding us that his protagonist has a penis and testicles, and filling us in on their exact condition. Morning wood. Heat rash. Shrinkage. Itching. Urine output. It was like trying to have an otherwise civilised conversation with a man who every so often would just reach down and brazenly adjust himself while holding eye contact. I'm not even going to start on the casually, obliviously misogynistic treatment of women, except to say that Faber is very careful never to leave you any doubt as to which of his female characters he does or doesn't consider fuckable. It's subtle enough not to generate lots of outrageous pull quotes but persistent enough to start making me physically queasy after a while.
Another problem with the book is one that probably didn't register with me last time, but feels much more obvious post-conversion: Faber is a strident atheist who's making a good faith attempt to write from a Christian perspective, but I don't feel like it ever really lands. The missionary's faith is strangely shallow, and isolated only to areas of his psyche that Faber thinks are Relevant To Religion. I don't know. It's not like I can point my finger at a passage and say 'he got this part wrong!', but there's just something off-kilter about all the lip service to God that makes it hard for me to buy into the intended characterisation.
osprey_archer reviewed it a while ago, so I was thrilled when a copy turned up on the shelves of my local library. It actually took me a while to get into, because the opening chapters are a very thorough review of pre-coal British fuel options that I found only mildly interesting. But once it gets into the actual use of that fuel in day-to-day life, Goodman's experience as a living historian comes shining through: she has practiced most of the relevant techniques, so her descriptions of period domestic labour - lighting and managing fires, cooking on them, cleaning up after them, using them to heat your laundry water - are full of vivid detail and practical insight. As she points out several times throughout the book, the lives she's reconstructing aren't the kind for which much direct testimony is available: this was women's labour, and more specifically the labour of female servants and poorer housewives who couldn't afford hired help. These women didn't have the leisure or literacy to record their own experiences, and scarcely anyone else ever deemed it worth recording on their behalf. So thorough, disciplined reenactments like Goodman's are often the closest we can get to understanding how they lived.Aside from all the great content Osprey mentions, I was also really interested to learn how much the switch from wood to coal affected the physical layout of the home. The ancient wood-burning central hearth, which encouraged open-plan, ground-floor living, was impossible to maintain with coal. Previously, corner fireplaces with chimneys were a sort of experimental curiosity available only to very wealthy households (who could afford to swallow the 70% heat loss) and large institutions (whose need for multiple storeys made the traditional 'it'll work its way up and out eventually' approach to smoke management untenable). But coal smoke was much more noxious than wood smoke and, instead of drifting upwards, tended to hang low in people's breathing space. Once coal burning became the norm, people urgently needed a way to vent smoke out of their homes, so chimneys became the norm; and once your fire was off in a corner sending most of its heat directly up into the sky, it became more economical to wall off your living space into multiple smaller rooms that could each be individually warmed or not. The resulting trend in home layout has lasted right up until the last few decades, when central heating made open-plan living more comfortable again.
The Combat Doctor by Dan Pronk is the memoir of an Australian special forces doctor who served in Afghanistan. Being a special forces memoir, it's full of comically understated accounts of personal overachievement ('aw yeah, y'know, I had some free time while I was in medical school, so I decided I might as well pursue several extreme sports, gain multiple firearms competencies, and learn Arabic just in case it ever came in handy', MY DUDE WHERE DO GET YOUR ENERGY) as well as the usual pep talks about resiliency and teamwork. Being a medical memoir, it includes lots of interesting stories - thankfully not too gory - about the patients Pronk treated in the line of duty. He qualified as a GP, and the difference between his mandatory civilian clinic hours and the 'down and dirty medicine' (his words) he practiced out in the field was really striking. At one point, caught without his scalpel during a chaotic casualty evacuation, he had to perform a life-saving operation with a Gerber.
One thing I'm always weirdly impressed by in these kinds of books is how similar they are, and I don't mean that in a derogatory sense but just in terms of the one very specific psychological profile that seems to dominate at the elite levels of military service. Clearly special forces selection boards know exactly what they're looking for in their soldiers, and how to weed out candidates who don't fit the mould.
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber is a novel about a Christian missionary who goes into space to preach to a surprisingly receptive community of aliens. I read it once years ago, and remembered it as a flawed book that was worth the effort; in retrospect, I kind of wish I'd left it at that, because it holds up very badly on reread once newness no longer makes up for the bad stuff.
The basic premise is still just as good as I remember: the aliens are satisfyingly uncanny and non-human while still being relatable as people, and the spacefaring stuff is as good as you'd expect from a literary author taking a paddle in the world of scifi. And the twist at the end is still just as heartbreaking: the aliens are so hungry for Christianity because their species lacks the ability to heal, and they've fundamentally misunderstood the Gospel as an instruction manual that will grant them the same miraculous self-regeneration powers as humans (exemplified by Jesus, who survived having his hands and feet being pierced by nails). But if I'd forgotten why I usually avoid male-authored litfic like the plague, this book sure as shit reminded me. I don't know if I've just had a freakishly bad sampling or if every modern male literary figure is like this, but oh my goodness, the obsession with genitals. Faber couldn't go a fucking chapter without reminding us that his protagonist has a penis and testicles, and filling us in on their exact condition. Morning wood. Heat rash. Shrinkage. Itching. Urine output. It was like trying to have an otherwise civilised conversation with a man who every so often would just reach down and brazenly adjust himself while holding eye contact. I'm not even going to start on the casually, obliviously misogynistic treatment of women, except to say that Faber is very careful never to leave you any doubt as to which of his female characters he does or doesn't consider fuckable. It's subtle enough not to generate lots of outrageous pull quotes but persistent enough to start making me physically queasy after a while.
Another problem with the book is one that probably didn't register with me last time, but feels much more obvious post-conversion: Faber is a strident atheist who's making a good faith attempt to write from a Christian perspective, but I don't feel like it ever really lands. The missionary's faith is strangely shallow, and isolated only to areas of his psyche that Faber thinks are Relevant To Religion. I don't know. It's not like I can point my finger at a passage and say 'he got this part wrong!', but there's just something off-kilter about all the lip service to God that makes it hard for me to buy into the intended characterisation.
no subject
Date: 2023-06-07 05:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-06-07 02:57 pm (UTC)Just reading Dan Pronk's list of medical school achievements makes me tired. Sir you are in MEDICAL SCHOOL, isn't that enough to keep anyone busy? Apparently not!!
I was going to say that I don't think I've ever read a book by a male author that obsessed with genitals, but upon reflection, how much modern fiction by male authors have I actually read? No one before 1960 could have gotten away with it, which may have spared us many alarming interludes with Ernest Hemingway.
no subject
Date: 2023-06-07 10:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-06-07 10:29 pm (UTC)Older literary gents definitely have better manners about that sort of thing (though LOL, you’re not wrong, Hemingway would absolutely have gone for it if he could have). One of my other forays into modern dudelit - much less memorable, since this is one of the only things I’ve retained about it - insisted on using some variant of the phrase “he felt it in his testicles” every. single. time. his main character experienced an adrenaline jolt. It was ghastly.
no subject
Date: 2023-06-08 12:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-06-08 02:12 am (UTC)