My free time continues to be consumed by things other than reading, so despite my earlier promises, this will be a short-ish post once again. On my recent family vacation, I did manage to rip through an Anne Perry mystery (Death on Blackheath, so-so) as well as The Merry Spinster by Mallory (now Daniel Mallory) Ortberg. The latter is a re-envisioning of classic fairytales with a modern, feminist spin. I had some familiarity with Ortberg’s writing prior to reading the book, but all of the material was new to me; I’m not sure if it was previously published in any form online. I enjoyed the writing and found the narratives really compelling. In some cases, I realized that I wasn’t sufficiently familiar with the original story to appreciate the nuances and subtext of the retelling; with that said, some of the chapters were utterly captivating quite aside from all that. In particular, I am still haunted by “The Daughter Cells” (a take on the Little Mermaid) and “The Thankless Child” (Cinderella?), which were my favourite chapters/stories. By comparison, the titular “Merry Spinster” (Beauty and the Beast) was something of a letdown – but only by comparison. I am tempted to track down Ortberg’s Texts from Jane Eyre because I love his voice, and I’m intrigued by his perspective on old classic texts.

I ran out of reading material part-way through my vacation, so I ended up rummaging through our friends’ library for stuff to keep me going, which is how I ended up reading The Big Short and Salmon Fishing In the Yemen. I really enjoyed the former, even though I’m still not sure I understand what a CDO is, and how shorting works. I feel like I might need the Dummies’ Notes version for that, and while I was hopeful that the movie adaptation might help in that regard, it’s sadly not available on Netflix (Canada). The Big Short read like a really long-form Vanity Fair article – lots of human interest asides mixed in with the nitty-gritty financial stuff – which is my non-fiction sweet spot. I finished the book in a couple of days and enjoyed the ride, though, as I said, I’m not sure I am any wiser for it.

Salmon Fishing was just OK. I watched the movie version some time last year on a business trip to Calgary; as hokey as the ending of the movie might have been, I think I prefer it to the book ending. Part of my disappointment with the book came, in fact, from its divergence from the movie. I was expecting a simpler, more emotionally satisfying ending, and when it didn’t come, I was kinda mad at the book. That probably makes this an unfair review, so don’t listen to me. Moving on!

Towards the end of my trip, I belatedly realized that – lo! I had access to Netflix all along! So instead of looking for something else to read, I decided to find some stuff to watch. I ended up binging through the Iris Apfel documentary (LOVED IT), The Crown docu-series (interesting if one deploys judicious fast-forwarding through the boring bits), and Queer Eye. I finished the latter after I came back home, and it was a lot of fun. I never watched the original, so I have no point of comparison, but I liked all the new guys. It’s the kind of show that I enjoy as background noise when I’m working on my embroidery – it loses much of its charm on too close of a scrutiny, IMO. Like, the “conflict resolution” moments are kinda hokey, the home reno timelines are questionable (3 days? yeah, right!), and I’m not really sure what Antoni and Karamo do (except look adorable) … but then you’ve got Jonathan dropping bon mots all over the place, so you just go with the flow. I hope they bring it back for another season.

Lately, most of my leisure time has been divided between my new hobby (embroidery, holla!) and rediscovered old ones (blogging, holla!), so reading has taken a backseat. For comfort, I’ve been reading some of the usual suspects (Anne Perry, the Maisie Dobbs mysteries, some previously read historical non-fiction), which probably do not warrant a post. I’ve got a few promising books coming my way – and a couple of vacations coming up as well – so I will have more to report later, but for now I only have one to talk about: 12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson.

If you’re Canadian, the name may be familiar to you; in addition to being a well-respected clinical psychologist and tenured professor at the University of Toronto, Peterson is something of a media sensation at the moment, following his public critique of the federal government’s Bill C-16 (which proposed to add “gender identity or expression” as a prohibited ground of discrimination under Canadian human rights legislation). He has been characterized by many in the media as an alt-right supporter, which would have probably been sufficient to deter me from picking up his book, had that been my first introduction to him. However, I heard about the book from my BFF – who is about as far from alt-right as you can get, and is also not a self-help book type of person – and she told me that she was looking forward to reading 12 Rules. Out of curiosity, I picked up the book on Amazon.

Whoo, boy.

I have a lot of thoughts about it. Probably too many to fit into a post like this. My TL;DR take? 12 Rules is definitely worth a read because, even if you vehemently disagree with Peterson on some or all of his theses, there are a lot of interesting ideas in there that are worth debating.

As a “self help book” – which, in all fairness, 12 Rules probably isn’t, not really – it has a strong flavour of “pull yourself up by the bootstraps”; Rule 6 is “Set Your House in Order Before You Criticize the World”. Peterson’s approach to this will irk a lot of people, and not without reason. On one hand, I think it has a lot of merit; I strongly believe in taking personal responsibility for one’s actions and their consequences, and I agree with Peterson that we cannot change people – the way to change the world is by living/acting the values that we believe are right. On the other hand, I also think that some of Peterson’s thoughts on this (and mine as well, no doubt) are products of the perspective of someone who probably never experienced significant systemic disadvantages. This might be a dealbreaker for some, and I wanted to acknowledge that.

However, if you are willing to give Peterson a chance, he does make some points which are worth thinking about. Parenthetically, I want to add that there are points I agree with, points I disagree with, and points that I need to ponder further before making up my mind. What I liked about the book was that it challenged me to think critically with every chapter – something I haven’t done in my personal reading, on a consistent basis, since my 20s. (I call my books “comfort reading” for a reason.) Some of the things I found particularly interesting? Peterson’s discussion of dominance hierarchies (Rule 1); his views on chaos & order being the duality that underlies nature and, in turn, shapes human existence (recurring theme throughout the book); and his discussion of Rule 7, “Pursue What Is Meaningful (Not What Is Expedient) and Rule 8, “Tell The Truth – Or, At Least, Don’t Lie”. It’s apparent that Peterson was influenced by philosophies that I also, at one time or another, have studied – including Christian existentialism, Taoism, and Jungian psychology; no doubt, this made me more receptive to his arguments. It was interesting to me to see where our analysis or conclusions (based on those influences) converged and where they diverged.

In the interest of keeping this post at a manageable length, I will end here, but if you have read 12 Rules, I would love to hear your thoughts.

I know I promised you something else last time – and I will updated my blog roll one of these days, I swear – but today I’m going to tell you about what I’ve been reading recently.

First, thanks to all of you who recommended the Maisie Dobbs series to me. I’ve read 3 of the books now, and I’m enjoying the series a lot. It reminds me of the Miss Fisher mysteries, except without all the money angst on my part. Sidenote: I cannot be the only person who found Phryne’s spending to be anxiety-inducing. I rarely get so invested in the financial lives of imaginary characters, but I was constantly on edge about that when I first started reading the series. By comparison, Maisie is a model of fiscal responsibility, which I appreciate because it allows me to focus on the plot. The slight “woo” aspect of the character – Maisie meditates at murder scenes to get a “feel” for the victim/killer? Something to that effect, anyway – threw me off at first, but I otherwise enjoy the psychological angle that she brings to her cases. And I like the whole “independent modern woman” angle, obviously. Overall, the writing is good, and the whodunnits are interesting enough, so the series makes for a pleasant escape. My only quibble is that the paperbacks in this series are expensive to buy, and rarely turn up at the thrift store; my only other option is the public library, which is not close to my house so … bah humbug.

My second book recc is A House Full of Women by Juliet Nicolson, which was a random thrift find. [Note to self: I need to spend more time looking at the non-fiction section in thrift stores.] This is a family memoir of 7 generations of women in the author’s family, starting with her great-great-grandmother. Her grandmother was Vita Sackville-West, whose name was familiar to me but about whom I didn’t know much except that she ran in the same circles as Virginia Woolf and that Bloomsbury crowd. Anyway, the family had plenty of scandals and interesting chapters in its history, which are detailed with a great deal of candour by Nicolson. [Spoiler warning: Victorians were, apparently, quite the randy bunch.]

As an only child of an only child, I have always been fascinated by large families with rich histories. I know a lot about my grandparents on both sides, and a little bit about my great-grandparents, but I’d be hard-pressed to say anything about any earlier branches of my family tree. I don’t even know names, much less have any contemporary records. So the idea of being able to trace your family history – supporting by voluminous written materials, including correspondence, diaries, etc. – back even two hundred years is amazing to me. So I liked the idea of A House Full of Women in principle, and also found it an enjoyable read. It did make me want to read a full-length biography of Sackville-West and some of her contemporaries.

Since I am trying to temper my Amazon addiction, I didn’t rush to immediately look up new biographies. Instead, I went to my library and pulled out Savage Beauty, a biography of one of my favourite poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay. She was American, not British, but reached the height of her fame in the 1930s. This is one of two Millay biographies I own, and after re-reading it, I realized that it’s probably my second favourite. The other is called What Lips My Lips Have Kissed. With that said, I would recommend either book. Millay was, in many ways, ahead of her time and skirted society’s expectations for women of her era. She was very protective of, and ultimately devoted to, her creative calling as a poet, placing it near the top or at the top of her priority list throughout her life – which made many of her lovers feel resentful. What’s interesting to me is that, whatever her faults as a friend or lover, she wasn’t really doing anything different from what other celebrated male writers have done for centuries. The only difference, of course: she was a woman.

What I would like to read next is a history of France during the Middle Ages; if anyone has recc’s, please send them my way. And, as always, I would love to hear what’s on your reading list.