Recent reading

[luzula]

In the Vanishers' Palace by Aliette de Bodard (2018)
For book club. This is an f/f Beauty and the Beast with a post-apocalyptic Vietnamese setting. I wanted to like it, but it didn't really grab me? I don't feel like the beast character really went through much character development, which feels like an important part of this fairy tale. Otherwise I don't really know why it didn't grab me, but it was the same for several other book club members.

Resistance and Transformation: On Fairy Tales by Mari Ness (2021)
About the French writers of fairy tales in the 17th and 18th centuries, who were mostly female aristocrats writing social criticism. The criticism is from the gender point of view—they didn’t really care about poor people. Some of them were interesting people though, for example Madame de Murat. This book apparently started as a set of blog posts, and it shows. I would have preferred something slightly more academic and less breezy.

Oh, and I think I have not mentioned that a while ago I tried reading (or rather, listening to) The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson, but did not finish it. It just doesn't have the warmth that I enjoyed in Kidnapped?

Comments

[regshoe]

So far nothing else I've read by RLS (almost three books now) really has the warmth of Kidnapped. He has a wide range as an author, and there's a lot of other good stuff in there, but it is a bit disappointing. I suppose Davie and Alan are just that special :) I will try The Master of Ballantrae at some point and see what I think of it.

Those French fairy tale writers sound interesting! It's funny how those sorts of fairy tales are often lumped together with folk tales now, but they seem to have a very particular historical-literary context that doesn't have much to do with folklore as such.

[luzula]

Aww, that's disappointing! Yes, maybe they are just that special. : )

I didn't actually know about that group of fairy tale writers before, and yes, quite different from folktales...