10 Novels about Novelists

I'm in the mood for making lists. :) So, here comes a list of 10+ novels about novelists -and poets. These are all written by others than the novelist/poet the novel is about. Some of these books I have read already, some I own, but have not read yet, and the rest I want to read at some point.

1. The Brontë sisters
   Jude Morgan: The Taste of Sorrow
   
   
2. Pearl S. Buck
   Anchee Min: Pearl of China
   
   
3. Lewis Carroll
   Katie Roiphe: She Still Haunts Me
   
   
4. Emily Dickinson
   Paola Kaufmann: The Sister
   
   
5. Fyodor Dosteyevsky
   Leonid Tsypkin: Summer in Baden-Baden
   
   
6. Henry James
   David Lodge: Author, Author
   Colm Tóibín: The Master
   
   
7. Murasaki Shikibu
   Liza Dalby: The Tale of Murasaki
   
   
8. Sylvia Plath
   Kate Moses: Wintering
   
   
9. Sappho
   Erica Jong: Sappho's Leap
   
   
10. Virginia Woolf
    Michael Cunningham: The Hours
    Susan Sellers: Vanessa & Virginia

Which other non-autobiographical novels about novelists or poets would you recommend me?

To Say Nothing of the Dog

By the mid 21st-century time-travel has been made possible and historians travel to the past as part of their research. In 2057 Lady Schrapnell, of whom we do not learn much else than that she's a tyrannical employer and believes that 'God is in the details', is rebuilding the Coventry Cathedral. She sends a group of historians to Coventry in 1940 to try and find an object called the bishop's bird stump in order to document it and thus help Lady Schrapnell to remake even that little detail of the decoration for her replica cathedral. However, too many trips to the past cause time-lag and one of the historians, Ned Henry, is sent back to present time to recuperate. In the present time Ned learns that something unheard of has happened. It should not be possible to bring anything back from the past, but one of his colleagues has managed to do just that. In order to escape Lady Schrapnell's wrath, as he did not find the bishop's bird stump, and also to save the world from serious trouble and prevent history from altering, and also to get well again, Ned is sent to Victorian era, where he first must find out what it was he was supposed to do there (one of the symptoms of time-lag is difficulty in distinguishing sounds and Ned is not at all sure what was said to him before he jumped into the time-travelling net) and then, together with another historian (who, of course, is a beautiful woman ;)), to prevent history from altering.

Connie Willis has won numerous Hugo and Nebula Awards. Her time-traveller novel To Say Nothing of the Dog is a fast and easy read. The story in all its simplicity is nicely humorous and engaging. It was extra fun that Willis uses a lot of literary details in the story: names of novels, allusions to literary works, and Ned Henry actually passes the Three Men in a Boat while travelling on the river Thames. Of course, also the name of the novel comes from Three Men in a Boat. :)

This was my second Connie Willis book. I read Doomsday Book many years ago. I liked it a lot and have always meant to read more of her work. I'm glad I finally did. Someone of you my fellow bloggers (sorry, don't remember who!) mentioned To Say Nothing of the Dog a while ago and I thought it might be a book I would like. I was right. There is no doubt I will read more Willis in the future.

The Sealed Letter

Novels about divorce or court cases have never been high on my list of favorite books, court dramas about divorce cases even less so. Thus it was with some hesitation that I picked up The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue. I had enjoyed the two other books by Donoghue I had read and I wanted to try some of her historical fiction, but I was not at all sure The Sealed Letter was a book for me. How wrong I was! :)

The Sealed Letter is a story of a marriage and a story of a friendship. It is based on a real-life scandalous divorce case of Vice-Admiral Henry John Codrington and his wife Helen nee Smith. Vice-Admiral Codrington accused his wife of having had an affair with a young army officer. Tangled into the case was also Helen Codrington's long time close friend Emily "Fido" Faithfull, a pioneer in the British women's movement. If you are interested in knowing more about the real-life Codrington divorce case Martha Vicinus has written an essay about the trial. The essay is included in her book Intimate Friends -Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928. In the essay there is also a photograph of the real Emily Faithfull.

The Sealed Letter is an absolutely wonderful read! I would give it 5/5 stars were I to rate it. It is a well crafted historical novel. Donoghue has clearly done her research and the story is full of interesting details about life and customs of 1860s Britain. The story is told alternatingly from the point of view of Henry "Harry" Codrington, Helen and Fido. The characters felt very real with their imperfections. I mostly symphatised with Fido, felt exasparated and often angry with Helen, and sometimes sorry for Harry. 

Those who, like me, are interesting in the early women's movements get an interesting insight into what it was like to be a business woman in the 1860s London and about some of the trials and tribulations of the early women's rights activists at Langham Place. The rights of women, or rather the lack of them, are perfectly portrayed in the narrative from many points of view (single woman, mother, wife, daughter). And the chapters about the actual trial were not boring at all, but very interesting! :) I must say The Sealed Letter exceeded all my expectations. It kept me in its grip from the first page to the last, and the ending then! It was simply perfect! Of all the books I've read this year the ending of Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski is my favorite, but the ending of The Sealed Letter comes a close second. All in all I really loved this book! And it truly put Emma Donoghue up there among my favorite authors.

I'll count The Sealed Letter towards the GLBT Challenge. 10 down, 2 to go! :)

What Do You Get When You Take 3300 Librarians...

What do you get when you put 3300+ librarians from more than 120 countries in one place for almost a week? A truly amazing conference! I spent last week in Gothenburg, Sweden in IFLA's (=International  Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) 76th World Library and Information Congress. As you may guess from the figures above, the annual congress, which is also the IFLA General Conference and Assembly, is a huge operation! It was also professionally very rewarding! I spent six days listening to numerous presentations, subjects of which ranged from human rights and censorship to copyright, smartphone applications, multicultural services, and digitalizing 18th century book collections, to name just a few. I also heard some really excellent plenary speakers.

On the IFLA website you can find many of the papers presented during the conference & also some videos. Here's just a few, well, let's make it 6 :) links that you might find interesting:

1. IFLA helps the libraries that were hit by the terrible earthquake in Haiti earlier this year. I attended an update session on what the situation in Haiti is at the moment and what ILFA is doing there to help the Haitian colleagues. Here is a video compiled of the National Library of Haiti's security camera footage filmed during the earthquake.
2. The IFLA World Report has loads of information about terms of freedom of access to information, freedom of expression and related issues around the world.
3. World famous Swedish writer Henning Mankell gave a plenary speech about To Be Able to Read and Write -a Question of Dignity. Watch the video here.
4. Emeritus Professor and a member of the Swedish Academy Sture Allén talked about the Nobel Prize in literature. Watch the video here.
5. No doubt the most fascinating presentation of all was, however, Professor Hans Rosling's talk about A Fact Based World View. You simply have to watch this video! You'll never think that statistics are boring after that!! He was given a standing ovation after his speech.
6. An interesting paper about minority ethnic gender fiction in the UK public libraries by Lecturer in Librarianship Briony Birdy from the University of Sheffield, UK.

Being true to my profession I am a fervent book lover (and now also a proud owner of a bright purple "Jag är en bokkramare" (that's "I am a bookhugger" in English :)) wristband!) and I love to visit bookstores when ever and where ever I'm travelling. (I actually don't very often visit libraries, if I'm on holiday, but if, like on the IFLA Congress I'm on a work related trip then library visits are, of course, on the agenda.) I managed to add no less than 5 books to my collection during my six days in Gothenburg! And four out of five are in Swedish. I am rather fluent in everyday situations in Swedish, which is the other national language here in Finland, but I guess I have read maybe one or two books in Swedish before. Well, the books I bought are by Swedish authors and are not (at least not yet) available in either Finnish or English. They all also seemed really interesting, so, I will get good language practise trying to read them in original language! :)

I actually started this post intending to say just a few words about the conference and then finally post my review of The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue, but this ended up being a whole post about the IFLA Congress. Nevermind, I hope you find the info interesting. I'll post the review either tomorrow or on Sunday.

Oh, and next year the IFLA Congress will be held in Puerto Rico and (drumroll, please!;)) in 2012 it will be here in Helsinki!! It will actually be held in the Helsinki Fair Centre just across the street from our library! I can hardly wait! It will be very, very exiting!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Sapphistries: A Global History of Love between Women

I first became familiar with Leila J. Rupp's work when I was gathering source material for my MA thesis. Her book Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women's Movement was one of the most important secondary sources I used, and one of the most interesting, too! I had always intended to read more of her books, but after finishing my thesis somehow I just didn't. Then I found out about her latest book Sapphistries: A Global History of Love between Women. As I'm participating into this year's GLBT Challenge and had not read any nonfiction that would qualify for the challenge, I thought Sapphistries would be the perfect candidate for my nonfiction GLBT read. I did start the book with the intention of reading it for the nonfiction minichallenge, but did not quite manage that. 

I must say I had very high hopes for Sapphistries. I had read Worlds of Women with great interest and hoped that Sapphistries would be a great nonfiction read. I must say that partly, even for the most part, it was. My problem was with the first few chapters of the book. Rupp's book tries to cover a huge time period from 40 000 BC to the present. The chapters covering the earlier historical periods really frustrated me. There really is hardly any sources about love between women from those earlier times and that lead into lots of speculation and little hard facts. I felt that Rupp should just have acknowledged the lack of sources and moved on instead of trying to overexplain the little info there is. 

When Rupp got into later time periods (1600->) the book became truly interesting. Also, throughout the book Rupp tries to be really global and uses source materials from different cultures f. ex. from China, Japan, India, and various African cultures in addition to Europe and the Americas. The book includes some amazing stories of amazing individuals: persons who passed as men all their lives and were found out to be anatomically female only after they died, biological women disguised as men, who fled from Europe to the New World and got married to women who sometimes seemed to have no idea that their husbands were in fact biological women, love between Chinese co-wives, sworn virgins of Albania etc. 

There is an interesting chapter about finding a name for love between women, and also a fair amout of information about romantic friendships between women. The notion of a romantic friendship has always interested me and Rupp's book provided new information about romantic friendships between women in different cultures.

Despite the, I think, rather inevitable problems with the earlier chapters of the book Sapphistries: A Global History of Love between Women was an interesting and informative read. It is also written in an engaging way and for me it was one of those nonfiction books that read almost like a novel. I do recommend it to anyone interested in women's history or GLBT history.

I conclude this post with a song quoted in Sapphistries on pp. 161-162. It is a song sung in certain Berlin clubs in the 1920s. Knowing what came later makes this heartbreaking. What if the steps towards openness and freedom found then would have continued without the terrible interruption of the Nazi regime and the war?

"We're not afraid to be queer and diff'rent
if that means hell - well hell we'll take the chance
they march in lockstep, we prefer to dance
We see a world of romance and of pleasure
all they can see is sheer banality
Lavender nights are our greatest treasure
where we can be just who we want to be

Round us all up, send us away
that's what you'd really like to do
But we're too strong proud unafraid
in fact we almost pity you
You act from fear, why sould that be
what is it that you are frightened of

the way that we dress
the way that we meet
the fact that you cannot destroy our love
We're going to win our rights
to lavender days and nights."

There will be a little pause here at A Book Blog of One's Own, as I will not be able to post anything next week. I'll be back posting after the 15th. Have a great week everyone!

Teaser Tuesday 3.8.2010

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by LizB of Should Be Reading.

The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Open to a random page.
• Share 2 teaser sentences from somewhere on that page.
• Be careful not to include spoilers.
• Share the title and author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers!

I'm impatiently trying to finish The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue, impatiently, because I love the book, but I also have so many other books I'd like to read waiting for their turn. :) My teaser is from page 53 of The Sealed Letter. The year is 1864. Emily "Fido" Faithfull, a pioneer women's rights activist and an owner of a printing press has agreed to let her friend Helen Codrington to meet a man who is not her husband in Fido's apartment. Helen has promised Fido to tell her admirer to "abandon all hope", instead this happens:

"Suddenly, across the back of Fido's eyes, the image of a kiss: Helen's coral mouth, the officer's straw moustache. She feels something like rage. She's about to fling the door open when she registers that the little sound's getting louder and faster. It's not a sound she's ever heard before, which is perhaps why it takes her several more seconds to admit what she's hearing. It's not a gasp of grief or muffled protest, no, it's mechanical: the frantic squeak of the sofa springs as they're forced up and down, up and down.
     Fido can't go into the drawing-room, not now, but she finds she can't drag herself away either. She sinks to her knees on the landing, and her brown skirt spreads around her like a puddle."

What are you reading this week?