Sunday, 13 October 2019
Tuesday, 8 October 2019
Scribble #104
Why are we so attracted to superheroes? To antiheroes? It may well be because they are so brave and selfless, and so willing to risk their own lives to help other people, while asking for nothing in return. We want to believe that there are people out there, like us, under the masks, who are purely altruistic and wishing to make the world a better place; no strings attached, and no ulterior motives. We want to believe in the good in humanity so badly; to believe desperately in the brilliant, the self-sacrificing, the saviours who are outside of the unfair and unjust laws of our society. Superheroes, antiheroes: the good (or at least willing) people who work outside of the law, for no pay, nothing. They are the outcasts; the underdogs; the black sheep; we see - we project - our better selves in these mysterious, almost transcendent do-gooders. Politics and other restrictions don't apply to them. They are the rebels, the destroyers and unforgiving mirrors of the system. Most of them do good simply because they want to. They are in a position where they are not so easily corruptible. Any power that superheroes possess boils down to (or it should) might for right, not might makes right. And that is why these heroes - and true, real life, everyday heroes, who don't wear masks and capes but are nonetheless heroic - are so popular.
Films that make white people uncomfortable don't make it to the Oscars. Films that make white men uncomfortable don't make it to the Oscars. The Oscars are old and dying out, and we know it. It's all pretentious, white male naval gazing and fart sniffing. At least, it needs an upgrade, fast.
Films that make white people uncomfortable don't make it to the Oscars. Films that make white men uncomfortable don't make it to the Oscars. The Oscars are old and dying out, and we know it. It's all pretentious, white male naval gazing and fart sniffing. At least, it needs an upgrade, fast.
Sunday, 6 October 2019
Book Review - 'The House at the End of Hope Street' by Menna van Praag
2021 EDIT: I realised as I was rereading 'The House at the End of Hope Street' that a lot of the problems that the author's other work, 'The Sisters Grimm', has - pointless and unneeded alternate character POV scenes, messy story structure, meandering scenes of drama without the drama, silly and frustrating romantic melodrama (predominantly hetero), stupid female characters who are slaves to their hormones and the whims and "charms" of men, and all around fluff and padding - are in fact present here as well. Though 'The Sisters Grimm' is far more egregious and perpetual in its flaws. On the other hand, the main characters in 'The House at the End of Hope Street' are supposed to be adults, so.. the childish rom com drama wasn't fun to read about.
I adored 'The House at the End of Hope Street' once, only a couple of years ago, and at first I did again. But like with 'The Sisters Grimm', I got bored of the non-progress and non-plot happening after a while. I liked the characters on their own (even if I had nearly nothing in common with any of them, nor the same tastes in books and/or films, among other things), but together, they are often so alien, dark, distant, neglectful and mean to each other. This is with the female characters; but when it comes to them interacting with men, they're hopeless, needy and pathetic. Just like in 'The Sisters Grimm'.
Sisterhood isn't seen to be nearly as important as attention from males, romantic or otherwise.
Why perpetuate the stereotype that all women are needy, overemotional, helpless, fragile and easily broken? That they don't really like casual sex, only monogamy forever? That they all need men, marriage and babies in order to be fulfilled in life? The LBGTQ content in 'The House at the End of Hope Street' is a small feature compared with the bombardment of "WOMEN LOVE MEN, WOMEN NEED MEN, MEN AND BABIES ARE EVERYTHING TO WOMEN!" that's sprawled throughout the novel. The one heterosexual female lead who is nearly forty and is constantly pressured by her mother and society at large to find a man and have kids already? She does want kids, but she can't, biologically. And that is what is presented as her greatest sorrow and shame, more than her failing career. How sexist and insulting.
(Don't worry, she'll find a man and have a stepdaughter and become a surrogate mother to others eventually - it's part of her arc, that simply must contain romance because she's a woman.)
The book is very aphobic, though that should go without saying. EVERYBODY has to be paired up with somebody, or at least she, uh, they, must look to be a romantic and sexual prospective partner sometime in the future. The fear of dying alone and unloved - and heaven forbid a virgin - and finding that special life-long-guaranteed lover, is the major plot point in the entire novel. This was published in 2015, so this drenching in normalised patriarchal behaviour and heteronormality is honestly inexcusable.
So 'The House at the End of Hope Street' turned out to be not as feminist as I remember it, sadly, in my opinion. Oh well. Keep learning and keep moving forward. The take-action-now and you-only-live-once message is still good. So is the wonderful, fantastic premise. Less good is the contrivances for the sake of drama and padding out the "story", and the ghost-seeing-and-interacting plot point, which undermines, or should I say kills (pun unintended), any sense of loss and grief a character might be experiencing. The dead - as ghosts, photos or by other means - are still present and regularly chat with the living, no problem, no meaningful conversation about loss. Even for fantasy, it is a bit much.
Final Score: 3/5
Original Review:
If you are a woman of any creative disposition - writing, drawing, painting, sewing, dressmaking, acting, singing, liberating and fighting for women's rights, you name it - it is the way of the patriarchal world to turn against you; to make you feel small, trivial, insignificant, inconsequential, and fit only for marriage and babies. To make you doubt yourself constantly. To make you feel lost.
Because whoever heard of creativity in women, they with the little, feeble, fragile, docile, feminine brains, right? If anything, women only know how to destroy - be it men's creativity, but most of all themselves, and each other.
If you are a woman seeking out her own dreams, ambitions and passions, all of which the patriarchy will do anything to stamp out and snuff out, sometimes violently, then you may well get lost at some point in your life. Women are only human, after all. It is, sadly, far easier - and safer - to just give up on the artist within you and indoctrinate yourself to society's limited, frigid and conservative expectations; which is exactly what the patriarchy wants. It's a prison sentence.
But what if lost, destroyed women were to end up at the house at the end of Hope Street? It's a big, pretty, floral lodging house in Cambridge, England, that's invisible to almost everyone else. It's where life lessons and advice from creative women of the past are passed down to the next generation of lodgers. Where there are sweets, biscuits, hot chocolate, and female friendship. And it's where the deepest desires of the hearts of its female inhabitants are, once realised with a bit of nudging in the right direction.
And magic.
And ghosts.
(And a secret garden.)
Women, like Alba Ashby, once they stay at the house - no. 11 Hope Street - will be given ninety-nine nights to buckle up the courage to be true to themselves, follow their dreams, face their fears, and turn their lives around for the better. Then they have to leave. The house itself is alive and will help them out along the way. As will the eighty-two-year-old landlady, Peggy Abbot.
Ah, 'The House at the End of Hope Street' - what a nice surprise you turned out to be. You are a treasure novel to be found in a pale pink clam - a cloudy, moonlike pearl - under the blue sea. Or a rare azalea at the end of a gorgeous, bright yet understated garden; with ivy, vines and weeds growing in the right places. An enchanting, pleasant chick lit, if it can be called that. What it definitely can be called is every bibliophile's - and creative and disenfranchised lady's - dream, revelation, and wake up call.
Alba is a nineteen-year-old PHD-and-MPhil history dropout with her whole life ahead of her, but she feels it is already over. Her family life is a mess, and half of her living relatives are awful, elitist people. She also possesses a power to see colours where others cannot, particularly the colours of people's emotions. She knows that a lot of people are keeping secrets from her, but has not the resolve and self-confidence to demand honest answers. She also occasionally talks to ghosts.
At the house in Hope Street, Alba will find that there are people out there who love her, and who want to see her succeed in life. She absolutely loves books, and could it be she wants to write one herself - fiction, not just facts - as well as song lyrics? She's lonely and self-conscious. She needs to be assertive and take charge, and do what she really wants to without worrying about what others think of her. Then there's her sexuality...
Alba Ashby is living proof that a privileged life/upbringing is neither the perfect, nor healthy, nor freeing life it is made out to be.
But 'The House at the End of Hope Street' is not only about Alba, oh no. Also at the house are the inner and outer turmoils of the living woman characters (the dead have had their chance at life, and have moved on, but will help out the breathing) of Peggy, Carmen Viera the voluptuous singer from Bragança, and Greer the nearly-forty-year-old struggling and grieving actress with a love of clothes. There are also the non-residents, like Zoe the librarian, and even some men. Everyone is well developed, and I rooted for most of them to work through their issues and have a happily ever after, as their true, fascinating selves.
'The House at the End of Hope Street' is a wonderful book with a great premise that's executed much better than I could have anticipated. It contains one of the sweetest, most darling swan songs I've ever read. I genuinely didn't expect some of the twists, though I really should have, and I could read it over and over again and discover further insights, foreshadowings, and meaningful passages each time.
It's not perfect; it's a bit messy (example: the friendship between Alba, Carmen and Greer, the trio of women residents, could have been developed a lot better, and not so slowly; they are very much involved in their own individual lives to struggle through and deal with), but then, women are messy. Human beings are messy. We are all complicated creatures.
(The potency of Alba's powers is pretty inconsistent and disappears at convenient moments, too.)
All those literary references! They have meaning behind them; they are in the story for a reason. They add subtext and hope to the narrative. It's a subtle and quaint element, plus a nerd mine for a book lover like me in this mystical dreamland!
Menna van Praag's masterpiece can help anyone, not only creative persons, dealing with depression and an existential crisis. She is an author to look out for.
'The House at the End of Hope Street' - Quietly charming, yet loud and proud in its content. Unpretentious, but nonetheless important. And hugely enjoyable. Its characters are complex, lovable, colourful and distinct.
It's to be read by all women of every generation. It's to be visited by every woman of her generation, for unfortunately in this world she'll never be short of issues, confusion, frustrations, and sorrow.
Final Score: 4.5/5
I adored 'The House at the End of Hope Street' once, only a couple of years ago, and at first I did again. But like with 'The Sisters Grimm', I got bored of the non-progress and non-plot happening after a while. I liked the characters on their own (even if I had nearly nothing in common with any of them, nor the same tastes in books and/or films, among other things), but together, they are often so alien, dark, distant, neglectful and mean to each other. This is with the female characters; but when it comes to them interacting with men, they're hopeless, needy and pathetic. Just like in 'The Sisters Grimm'.
Sisterhood isn't seen to be nearly as important as attention from males, romantic or otherwise.
Why perpetuate the stereotype that all women are needy, overemotional, helpless, fragile and easily broken? That they don't really like casual sex, only monogamy forever? That they all need men, marriage and babies in order to be fulfilled in life? The LBGTQ content in 'The House at the End of Hope Street' is a small feature compared with the bombardment of "WOMEN LOVE MEN, WOMEN NEED MEN, MEN AND BABIES ARE EVERYTHING TO WOMEN!" that's sprawled throughout the novel. The one heterosexual female lead who is nearly forty and is constantly pressured by her mother and society at large to find a man and have kids already? She does want kids, but she can't, biologically. And that is what is presented as her greatest sorrow and shame, more than her failing career. How sexist and insulting.
(Don't worry, she'll find a man and have a stepdaughter and become a surrogate mother to others eventually - it's part of her arc, that simply must contain romance because she's a woman.)
The book is very aphobic, though that should go without saying. EVERYBODY has to be paired up with somebody, or at least she, uh, they, must look to be a romantic and sexual prospective partner sometime in the future. The fear of dying alone and unloved - and heaven forbid a virgin - and finding that special life-long-guaranteed lover, is the major plot point in the entire novel. This was published in 2015, so this drenching in normalised patriarchal behaviour and heteronormality is honestly inexcusable.
So 'The House at the End of Hope Street' turned out to be not as feminist as I remember it, sadly, in my opinion. Oh well. Keep learning and keep moving forward. The take-action-now and you-only-live-once message is still good. So is the wonderful, fantastic premise. Less good is the contrivances for the sake of drama and padding out the "story", and the ghost-seeing-and-interacting plot point, which undermines, or should I say kills (pun unintended), any sense of loss and grief a character might be experiencing. The dead - as ghosts, photos or by other means - are still present and regularly chat with the living, no problem, no meaningful conversation about loss. Even for fantasy, it is a bit much.
Final Score: 3/5
Original Review:
If you are a woman of any creative disposition - writing, drawing, painting, sewing, dressmaking, acting, singing, liberating and fighting for women's rights, you name it - it is the way of the patriarchal world to turn against you; to make you feel small, trivial, insignificant, inconsequential, and fit only for marriage and babies. To make you doubt yourself constantly. To make you feel lost.
Because whoever heard of creativity in women, they with the little, feeble, fragile, docile, feminine brains, right? If anything, women only know how to destroy - be it men's creativity, but most of all themselves, and each other.
If you are a woman seeking out her own dreams, ambitions and passions, all of which the patriarchy will do anything to stamp out and snuff out, sometimes violently, then you may well get lost at some point in your life. Women are only human, after all. It is, sadly, far easier - and safer - to just give up on the artist within you and indoctrinate yourself to society's limited, frigid and conservative expectations; which is exactly what the patriarchy wants. It's a prison sentence.
But what if lost, destroyed women were to end up at the house at the end of Hope Street? It's a big, pretty, floral lodging house in Cambridge, England, that's invisible to almost everyone else. It's where life lessons and advice from creative women of the past are passed down to the next generation of lodgers. Where there are sweets, biscuits, hot chocolate, and female friendship. And it's where the deepest desires of the hearts of its female inhabitants are, once realised with a bit of nudging in the right direction.
And magic.
And ghosts.
(And a secret garden.)
Women, like Alba Ashby, once they stay at the house - no. 11 Hope Street - will be given ninety-nine nights to buckle up the courage to be true to themselves, follow their dreams, face their fears, and turn their lives around for the better. Then they have to leave. The house itself is alive and will help them out along the way. As will the eighty-two-year-old landlady, Peggy Abbot.
Ah, 'The House at the End of Hope Street' - what a nice surprise you turned out to be. You are a treasure novel to be found in a pale pink clam - a cloudy, moonlike pearl - under the blue sea. Or a rare azalea at the end of a gorgeous, bright yet understated garden; with ivy, vines and weeds growing in the right places. An enchanting, pleasant chick lit, if it can be called that. What it definitely can be called is every bibliophile's - and creative and disenfranchised lady's - dream, revelation, and wake up call.
Alba is a nineteen-year-old PHD-and-MPhil history dropout with her whole life ahead of her, but she feels it is already over. Her family life is a mess, and half of her living relatives are awful, elitist people. She also possesses a power to see colours where others cannot, particularly the colours of people's emotions. She knows that a lot of people are keeping secrets from her, but has not the resolve and self-confidence to demand honest answers. She also occasionally talks to ghosts.
At the house in Hope Street, Alba will find that there are people out there who love her, and who want to see her succeed in life. She absolutely loves books, and could it be she wants to write one herself - fiction, not just facts - as well as song lyrics? She's lonely and self-conscious. She needs to be assertive and take charge, and do what she really wants to without worrying about what others think of her. Then there's her sexuality...
Alba Ashby is living proof that a privileged life/upbringing is neither the perfect, nor healthy, nor freeing life it is made out to be.
But 'The House at the End of Hope Street' is not only about Alba, oh no. Also at the house are the inner and outer turmoils of the living woman characters (the dead have had their chance at life, and have moved on, but will help out the breathing) of Peggy, Carmen Viera the voluptuous singer from Bragança, and Greer the nearly-forty-year-old struggling and grieving actress with a love of clothes. There are also the non-residents, like Zoe the librarian, and even some men. Everyone is well developed, and I rooted for most of them to work through their issues and have a happily ever after, as their true, fascinating selves.
'The House at the End of Hope Street' is a wonderful book with a great premise that's executed much better than I could have anticipated. It contains one of the sweetest, most darling swan songs I've ever read. I genuinely didn't expect some of the twists, though I really should have, and I could read it over and over again and discover further insights, foreshadowings, and meaningful passages each time.
It's not perfect; it's a bit messy (example: the friendship between Alba, Carmen and Greer, the trio of women residents, could have been developed a lot better, and not so slowly; they are very much involved in their own individual lives to struggle through and deal with), but then, women are messy. Human beings are messy. We are all complicated creatures.
(The potency of Alba's powers is pretty inconsistent and disappears at convenient moments, too.)
All those literary references! They have meaning behind them; they are in the story for a reason. They add subtext and hope to the narrative. It's a subtle and quaint element, plus a nerd mine for a book lover like me in this mystical dreamland!
Menna van Praag's masterpiece can help anyone, not only creative persons, dealing with depression and an existential crisis. She is an author to look out for.
'The House at the End of Hope Street' - Quietly charming, yet loud and proud in its content. Unpretentious, but nonetheless important. And hugely enjoyable. Its characters are complex, lovable, colourful and distinct.
It's to be read by all women of every generation. It's to be visited by every woman of her generation, for unfortunately in this world she'll never be short of issues, confusion, frustrations, and sorrow.
Final Score: 4.5/5
Wednesday, 2 October 2019
Book Review - 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass' by Lewis Carroll
Such imagination, creativity, inventiveness, cleverness, sweetness, silliness, and nonsense. And poetry.
Cats, rabbits, mice, birds, lizards, fish, a giant puppy, mushrooms (heh), Queens, a Duchess, cards, chess, a Gryphon, hedgehogs, flamingos, knights, a lion and a unicorn, eggs, Humpty Dumpty, tea, jam, bread and butter, bread and butterflies! Every wonderful thing a child can love is here!
'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass' are both to be read as a child, then as a child again, then as an adult reading through the eyes of a child. Children can accept and appreciate, but above all enjoy, nonsense; and so can adults with an open mind and a childlike sense of wonder and whimsy that they still keep locked up in their heart of hearts. Their "muchness" never lost.
That and the newfound, adult knowledge that the real world is rather full of as much nonsense as any dream world. At least in dreams and wonder we are in control and can change the rules as we see fit no trouble, no fuss.
Little Alice herself is a very intelligent, inquisitive, thoughtful, and patient yet nonetheless frustrated child, curious and wondering about the strict, constrained Victorian life around her. She is full of amusing musings, and likes to play by her own rules and logic back home. In Wonderland this is continuously tested, in her role as the only sane, sensible person - she, only a little girl - in a world with no structure, and no rules, but constantly made up and changing ones, each more nonsensical than the last. Dreams and reality collide for this child, who grows curiouser and curiouser the older she gets, hopefully never losing her innocence, and sense of muchness.
Therefore she will always understand everything.
Such as even when winning a game of chess, and becoming queen, it's not all it's cracked up to be; the adult concepts of "power", prosperity and order are ultimately meaningless and fleeting in of themselves.
Just go read 'Alice in Wonderland' in its entirety if you somehow haven't yet. Books with some pictures in it can be as rewarding and insightful as books with no pictures. It is everything except prosaic.
Read it again and again, and appreciate it far more each time.
For Alice, and Wonderland, are childhood - desperate to be carried over into adulthood, and understood.
Final Score: 4/5
Cats, rabbits, mice, birds, lizards, fish, a giant puppy, mushrooms (heh), Queens, a Duchess, cards, chess, a Gryphon, hedgehogs, flamingos, knights, a lion and a unicorn, eggs, Humpty Dumpty, tea, jam, bread and butter, bread and butterflies! Every wonderful thing a child can love is here!
'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass' are both to be read as a child, then as a child again, then as an adult reading through the eyes of a child. Children can accept and appreciate, but above all enjoy, nonsense; and so can adults with an open mind and a childlike sense of wonder and whimsy that they still keep locked up in their heart of hearts. Their "muchness" never lost.
That and the newfound, adult knowledge that the real world is rather full of as much nonsense as any dream world. At least in dreams and wonder we are in control and can change the rules as we see fit no trouble, no fuss.
Little Alice herself is a very intelligent, inquisitive, thoughtful, and patient yet nonetheless frustrated child, curious and wondering about the strict, constrained Victorian life around her. She is full of amusing musings, and likes to play by her own rules and logic back home. In Wonderland this is continuously tested, in her role as the only sane, sensible person - she, only a little girl - in a world with no structure, and no rules, but constantly made up and changing ones, each more nonsensical than the last. Dreams and reality collide for this child, who grows curiouser and curiouser the older she gets, hopefully never losing her innocence, and sense of muchness.
Therefore she will always understand everything.
Such as even when winning a game of chess, and becoming queen, it's not all it's cracked up to be; the adult concepts of "power", prosperity and order are ultimately meaningless and fleeting in of themselves.
Just go read 'Alice in Wonderland' in its entirety if you somehow haven't yet. Books with some pictures in it can be as rewarding and insightful as books with no pictures. It is everything except prosaic.
Read it again and again, and appreciate it far more each time.
For Alice, and Wonderland, are childhood - desperate to be carried over into adulthood, and understood.
Final Score: 4/5
Tuesday, 1 October 2019
Autumn Flower
Ceres stunning. Reminds you of a hair colour of a character from a 'My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic' spinoff series, doesn't it?
Funny story, I came across this on the day my bus driver didn't stop where I wanted him to. This cheered me up on my subsequent long walk home. Every cloud has an orange lining.
It's a shame it's not bountiful where I live.
2019 Calendar Art - October
Dragon Witches, by Nene Thomas:
Autumn Mist
Ah, Halloween. This picture can tell a thousand stories. Love October.
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