Recent reading
May. 19th, 2019 07:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaThe Corinthian by Georgette Heyer (1940, audiobook)
My yearly Heyer. Definitely good entertainment and a good audiobook reader, but I think I would have enjoyed it as much without the romance. I mean, they had fun together, which is a plus as far as compatibility, but...when I was 29 the thought of being with a 17-year-old would not have been palatable to me.
Det stora elefantupploppet och andra berättelser från Sveriges bråkiga 1800-tal, edited by Andrés Brink Pinto and Magnus Olofsson (2011)
Collection of essays about various Swedish riots in the 19th century. My favorite was the one about a conflict over the right to use the forest on northern Öland, which was a bit dramatized and could well have been read as a short story. I really liked how it humanized all the actors: the overseer of the state forest, with his German-educated forestry views where he wanted to conserve the forest and was frustrated by the illegal cutting, the under-foresters who were badly paid and had the nearly impossible task of stopping the illegal cutting, and also they were sometimes beaten up by the farmers. And then we come to the farmers and realize that this forest used to be a commons that was recently enclosed by the state, and the farmers needed to supplement their incomes from the meager farming with resources from the forest. There's a conflict that comes to a violent head, after which, with some delay, the military is sent in to subdue the farmers and they get sentenced to prison labor. And then the tragic suicide of one of the under-foresters when his collaboration with the farmers was discovered.
My yearly Heyer. Definitely good entertainment and a good audiobook reader, but I think I would have enjoyed it as much without the romance. I mean, they had fun together, which is a plus as far as compatibility, but...when I was 29 the thought of being with a 17-year-old would not have been palatable to me.
Det stora elefantupploppet och andra berättelser från Sveriges bråkiga 1800-tal, edited by Andrés Brink Pinto and Magnus Olofsson (2011)
Collection of essays about various Swedish riots in the 19th century. My favorite was the one about a conflict over the right to use the forest on northern Öland, which was a bit dramatized and could well have been read as a short story. I really liked how it humanized all the actors: the overseer of the state forest, with his German-educated forestry views where he wanted to conserve the forest and was frustrated by the illegal cutting, the under-foresters who were badly paid and had the nearly impossible task of stopping the illegal cutting, and also they were sometimes beaten up by the farmers. And then we come to the farmers and realize that this forest used to be a commons that was recently enclosed by the state, and the farmers needed to supplement their incomes from the meager farming with resources from the forest. There's a conflict that comes to a violent head, after which, with some delay, the military is sent in to subdue the farmers and they get sentenced to prison labor. And then the tragic suicide of one of the under-foresters when his collaboration with the farmers was discovered.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-24 01:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-25 06:50 am (UTC)Also I was not amused at the older woman who was all "You should have kissed her, because I can read her mind and she obviously loves you!". Without much regard for consent, it seems.