Robot-mel London, United Kingdom

This was a very good selection of translations of Tang tales. However, it's another one I'm glad I got from the library instead of buying my own copy. The annotated notes for each tale are very good but have more to do with the technical process of translation than they do literature or cultural or social history. The tales are all very good though. Hongxian is the story of a very competent woman who "was originally a man in a previous incarnation" who was punished for killing people and therefore born a woman(19) and after performing her meritous service was able to return to her original male body (21). Likewise in the next tale Du Zichun was reborn as a woman as punishment and was not able to speak (57). He lived happily as a woman but when his husband killed their child he cried out and so lost his chance of immortality. Record within a pillow has the character start his career in the palace library (only later to discover his successful life was just a dream that brought no happiness). The Governor of the Southern Branch is about a man who has a reputation for drunkness gets very drunk passes out and becomes an honored guest at a palace. He has lots of success but then awakens to learn that the palace he was with was a colony of ants. He ends up giving up his drinking and following the Dao. The Tale of the curly beared guest has the guest disguise the competent serving girl as a man to help her escape with him. The last tale is the tale of Huo XiaoYu was about a scholar who swore his love to a girl but once he had became successful forgot his vows to her and betrayed her and she ended up killing herself and haunting him for awhile. I hope that one day I will get this collection and be able to use it for studying the original tales. The tales that were chosen were all familiar to me yet it was interesting to read this translations and see them in more depth. Once more I'm struck by the gender transformations and the cross dressing element of these stories.

Having read a few Greek plays now I must say I prefer Euripedes to Sophocles. I read this story as we were going to see a modern adaptation and I wanted to know the story before we went. Reading it I wasn't sure how they'd be able to adopt it to the modern day as the entire point of the story seemed to be you shouldn't piss off the gods but give them their due or you will be horribly punished. There were however some really great lines mostly by Creon. But I must admit that sadly the story didn't inspire me enough to go and read the rest of the plays in this edition.

I must admit I was a little disappointed with this book. Mostly because it focused entirely on external alchemy and totally ignored internal alchemy. This is of course just my personal preference and not a reflection on the book itself. The book was a collection of different essays published over the authors life. There were detailed examples on how to go about dating texts and different methodologies you could use that was most interesting. Then there were large translations of various alchemical texts. However, as these were all external alchemy it was a list of different ingredients and the different properties of each. Useful for a reference but not really something you want to sit and read cover to cover. I'm glad I borrowed this one from the library rather than buying a copy to find out it wasn't really what I was interested in (Despite Daoism and alchemy being in the title).

I have to say the thing that really struck me about this book was the sheer ammount of books written and published by women writers, especially when you consider the equivalent in English history. There were huge volumes of collections of women's poetry that had been printed since the 14th century and women decided to edit and publish their own collections of poetry from the 16th. There were thousands of published women poets before the 20th century which I found most remarkable. Also not all of these women were elite women but some were self taught and had started their lives on the equivalent of the working class end of the social scale.

The structure of the book is very nice. She looks in depth at the writings of one woman whose work was published after her death Gan Lirou (1743-1819). This woman's poems were autobiographical that she'd written throughout her life celebrating and commisorating the different things she'd experienced, a lot of which were quite tragic. Fong translated only key moments rather than the whole collection (as there were far too many poems) but with the background she supplied even these gave a good insight into the woman's life and feelings. Fong also included the original Chinese as well as the translations which was very helpful. The poems show her playing an active role in "official matters" as well as religious matters. Praying for rain in 1807, which was mentioned two years later in the local gazette (46). She also regretted not being able to participate in the examinations and reap the same success as her brothers (48)This is something she writes about both in her 20s and in her 70s. Despite her orthodox approach to her gender roles she still seems them as limiting.

The next chapter looked at the poetry written by concubines (as opposed to nice respectable wives). I thought it was a bit of an interesting descision to seperate out the writing of the women dependent on their relationship with men. But in doing so there were some interesting things revealed. Like the concubines were often helped write poetry by the "wives". It seemed that these women, freed from the responsibility of running the household would have more time for their studies. Several of the concubines themselves expressed preference in the 18th century saying that they "would rather be concubines to men of literary talent, rather than as a principal wife to a man of wealth" (67). One of the poems "Songs of selling a daughter" ends with a great deal of anger or anguish,
... For a hundred years it will be difficult to wash away the disgrace of being a maid
Rtaher than sell the daughters body,
Why not eat her flesh?
Eating the daughter's flesh will fill the parents' stomachs.
Selling the daughter - the daughter's heart will never feel fulfilled, even in death (68)

However, another poem written by an old woman to a neighbour girl expresses satisfaction with her gender ending with the lines "I just wish that it will always be like this, even in my next life I still want to be an old woman". I've recently become fascinated with the transgender idea of rebirth, and how you could be reborn as a man, and all the different implications that this brings about. But I like that this woman was so satisfied that she didn't want to change.

The third chapters, authoring journeys, looked at women's travel writing (both wives and concubines). The problem with this chapter was most of the examples used were poetry, and the prose describing the journals was put in an appendix at the back. I would like to have seen this brought into the main text. Though it seemed like an interesting enough topic to have at least a whole book on the subject. The women writing were not sheltered either from the horrors they encountered, some were injured in battle, one was injured in a battle many times trying to save her husband and wrote about wanting to be a woman warrior like Mulan.

The last chapter examines women's anthologies and women as editors, and as I have already mentioned earlier was very enlightening.

I borrowed a copy of this book from SOAS as it's only availble in hardcover for almost £50. It's a shame a paperback version hasn't been released for half that as it would be a fantastic book to reach a wider audience and deserves to be read by more people.

I found a copy of this book in Foyles and was shocked to see that amazon didn't stock it! So I ended up ordering from Foyles so I could get a copy which I'd never done before. I am glad I did though as I throughly enjoyed this book. I was surprised to see that it had started as a webcomic as the art was just gorgeous and there was a real sense of continuity. This was a really great story of two guys meeting and starting to go on a road trip together. It's a lovely queer comic that goes against stereotypes and I hate to use the word but was just really sweet.

If you can't find a copy the URL for the web comic is http://tjandamal.com/ I really enjoyed it and am pleased to see that volume 2 will soon be released as I'm really looking forward to their continuing adventures. Another one I very highly recommend.

This is my favourite book I've read this year and definitely the best book about London I've ever read. I just totally loved it. It's the kind of psychogeography book about London I wanted Iain Sinclair to write, but instead found him too posh. This is London from below. The history and stories of squats and punks and a desperate housing shortage and prices going up and a future wasteland. Sometimes seeming autobiographical sometimes more like short stories but it always feels very real. Mixed with photos and artworks as a cut and paste zine rather than a traditional comic the art just multiplies the feelings on the page. There's a real feeling of depression, hopelessness and tragedy here but there's also an overwhelming sense of life. Each chapter looks at a different part of London but overall you get a sense of how interconnected it all is. This book is absoultely fascinating. I don't think it's for everyone but I think I know many people that would really love this too.

This was a lovely comic by a woman writer/artist. It was nice to read something by a woman that wasn't either autobiographical or about teenagers. This was a lovely story that probably is classed as magical realism. The story looks at the inter-mingling lives (and a couple deaths) of the residents of a tower block. Their lives are very real but the story is told from the perspective of a large white rabbit who works for the monster/heart of the building. It's a wonderful story and it's beautifully drawn. I borrowed this from the library but I think I will definitely be buying my own copy as it was such a lovely story.

Compared to comic books of superheros running around saving the world this was very good. Compared with comics that are totally honest and rip your heart out it wasn't quite there. It was interesting, a young girl coming of age and trying to make her way in the bizarre world in which she'd been born. The problem was how normal the girl was, trying to win a beauty contest to join the ideal beauty of her clan. She was just a bit normal and dull and hard to identify with, her mismatched brothers and sisters are much more interesting characters. But I would still recommend it. It's nice to read something that is so original and different.

This was the last level two reader I found. It was very hard to track down. For several months it was on amazon for over £20 then eventually it showed up for less than five. I don't know why this one was so difficult to find compared with the others.

The story was ok but quite silly. A boy had an old painting that he found that had belonged to a woman who was kind to him. Many people offered him lots of money for it and he refused to sell it, and had to go on the run and eventually found the old lady it belonged to in hospital and told his story on television. Definitely not one of the more realistic stories! But it was quite readable and a good mix of vocabularly words.

I read this through very quickly the first time as I had spent the past year quite worried about what had happened to Mina. I loved that Harry Potter was the anti-christ. I can't believe that I didn't see that coming. Given the literary basis for this series it really was so obvious I feel almost ashamed for not figuring that out! Orlando was a much better character in this. She kinda had to pull everyone together and was much less frivilous. Mina did seem quite broken which was such a shame after the way she was in 69.

After having read it I decided to go back and read all three together. I definitely recommend reading them more than once and reading them all together. There were even more hints about Mr. Potter that I missed the first time and going back and reading things again I found I picked up on many more of the little details in the art work. Which I have to say was particularly amazing in 2009.

Having read the whole series again I think 1969 is definitely my favourite. Though this one is a close second. The first time I went to Kings Cross after reading this I found myself shuddering. The only thing I found disappointing in this was that I spend so much less time involved in popular culture than I do in Victorian literature I felt like I missed out on most of the references! Though I did love that there were a few Doctor Who ones! (and can't believe I missed the dalek the first time I read 1969).

The text at the end also makes a nice story when all three parts are read together. The knowledge of the patient and her circumstances make it all make much more sense and flow together really well.

Definitely one of Alan's best series.

I saw this book in Paris in a used bookshop and it was quite expensive but I found a nice cheap copy on Amazon when I got back. I throughly enjoyed it. It's very well written by an author who knows her subject very well. She discusses the history of queer pulp paperbacks in general and then discusses ones that are bi-sexual, lesbian, transgender and gay. I was pleased that I managed to find 39 of them availble on amazon (with only 4 or so I wanted totally out of print). She also mentioned the books that I'd already found and loved so that was very encouraging. Definitely one I'd recommend for people who are interested in early queer writing.

This is a fictionalised autobiographical account of a young Jewish girl in World War II. Based on the author's own experiences and told as a children's novel the book tells of Kitty's experiences as an evacuee and back in London during the Blitz. The young Kitty is a strong willed child, running away from two houses that she was evacuated to and eventually convincing her mother to let her stay in London. There is quite a lot of interesting social history here, from daily life of Jewish families in the East End to experiences during the war.

Ok I admit that everything I know about Livia I learned from I Claudius. The entire point of this book seemed to be that everything in I Claudius was WRONG. As a historian I can understand how frustrating it must be to be a professor and have to explain to your students again and again that you shouldn't get your history from television (even BBC dramas from back in the day). But unfortunatley the author seemed to be so intenet on dis-proving popular conceptions of Livia he lacked any other thesis or further information.

It's always interesting to go and read books, particularly academic press books, on other subjects other than my speciality to see how historians in other fields are writing, what techniques they use etc. Unfortuantely the author of this book didn't seem to have done any of that. He seemed not to have read any books on women's history and different interpretations of history but seemed soley intent on writing "what really happened" looking for an absoulte truth where none was obtainable. He was very critical of the Roman historical sources, he would refer to them as "literary" sources not historical as they didn't fit his idea of what "proper history" was. He would dismiss huge sections of the sources saying how he couldn't believe something like that could be true while taking their word on other topics. Later in the appendix he goes through the different writer and gives his impressions of them and what they wrote and his opinion on what was fact and what wasn't. But for me he totally missed the bigger picture of WHY they were writing what they wrote. The most critical historian of Livia was also the one who said how the senate heaped rewards and offerings on her and made her a goddess. A very interesting dichotomy. Whose opinions were the writer's reflecting? If it didn't happen why did people say it did? What were the similarities? Did they write based on different representations of her or were they purely the writers own invention? It would have told us so much more to learn why these different discussions were taking place rather than simply dismissing them out of hand as "not actually true".

The book was split into two parts, the first a dry account of Livia's life, but mostly that of her relatives and what they did while Livia was alive. The secound half tries and put in more of a social context but I felt like I only got glimpses into what she as like and what people thought of her. I know she likes a specific type of wine and drank it every day, she liked herbal medicines, she was a reputed to be a match for Augustus, she had a reputation for being chaste (despite being married twice). The Senate loved her (despite all the rumours that spread about her). She was worshipped as a goddess for at least two centuries after her death.

The best thing about this book was in the appendix it gave a list of all the sources that mention her, and a brief overview of what they said about her.

I was quite disappointed in this book. I know that two biographies of Livia came out close to each other. I thought the academic press would be much better than the popular history but I was quite disappointed. I did learn things, and particularly in the appendix I learned the most but I feel like this work needs to be re-done in the hands of a good expert in woman's history. That way you'd be able to see where Livia fit into the bigger scheme of things. How represenatitve she was and all the ways that she wasn't and all the things that made her special and interesting. The author actually didn't seem to like her much. He mentioned how she'd stayed married to August for over 40 years without a child, when he was busy passing reforms saying women should give birth or divorce, saying how they stayed together and how people wrote very highly of her. But he seemed totally baffled as to why this was. In many ways it was a worse treatment than the Roman historians who accused her of many crimes. At least they saw her as capable and powerful and interesting. I'm glad I got this book from the library though I think I will copy out some of the references before I hand it back.

This book was the first (and so far only) level three book in the Chinese Breeze series. It's aimed at people who know 750 characters. There were about 4 or 5 vocabulary words in here that I didn't already know and found myself having to look up. The story was quite a bit more complicated than the first two series. There was a thief on an airplane and two suspects and the policeman had to investigate the thefts.

The was one giant problem with this book though, it was set up as a mystery but the description of the characters on the first page gave away who the thief was! I actually read through this twice as the first time through I thought the policeman was suspecting both suspects, possibly thinking the two of them were working together. Then at one point I checked the names at the front and as it said who the theif was I thought I was confussed. I read it through a second time and realised that I had been right in my first reading. Still it was very good practice and nice to read something with a bit more complicated plot and lots more actions going on in all the scenes. It felt so much more like a real story than the first level books. I am really hoping that the other level three books get released fast. The next one is one of my favourite old Chinese stories (Painted skin - recently turned into a film)

So this is one of the last Kerouac novels I haven't read. I got a lovely old paperback version but was putting off reading it for awhile. I was a bit worried that it would be too normal a novel written before he developed his style. But I totally still loved it. It was such a great book, started so normal American life of the 30s and 40s a family in a small town with their kids, but then before the end people were shooting up and their were books about gay people and murders and it was just brilliant. It was interesting to see some of the familiar cast of characters, but also to see people who don't normally get mentioned, like the father of the family, who was dead in most of the later novels. It was interesting to hear him speak and learn what he was like.

In many ways though this novel seemed less autobiographical. All the kids seemed to have a different aspect of Jack in them. With the exception of the novel about his little brother and Maggie Cassidy so many of Kerouac's books just seem to be him on his own and it was nice to see more of the family. His sister Liz was totally amazing and I really wanted him to write more about her. She went from being a girl in a small town who got married to singing in Jazz clubs in New York and hanging out with all the beatniks in their traditional garb. She sounded fantastic.

I really loved this book. So many passages were just written beautifully. On an emotional level it didn't hit as hard as some of his other books. But still one I will definitely read many times and would highly recommend.

This book did make me laugh a little as in the begining the author said how excited he was to write for the Inquisition series as it'd be a chance to delve into the culture and worlds of 40k and see what life was like on all the different planets and not just focus on the battles of the space marines. The book was nearly all battles and adventures with one chase leading into another and another conflict. There was very little time for characterisation or world building, which is a shame as I do enjoy the setting of 40k. The series seemed to have been toned down a bit since the other novels I read. Here the chaos wasn't nearly as overwhelming or soul destroying. But what it did do was look at how the inquisition worked and what it's place was. How inquisitors went about their jobs and what they did on them which I found very interesting. These books aren't meant to be great novels but rather to give flavour for tabletop battles and RPGs. Which they do well. But just once I'd like to see strong women in this world kicking ass.

I first heard of Anne Lister a year ago when the BBC did a documentary and a dramatisation about her life. This book is extracts from her diary with commentary by the editor giving additional details of what is happening in Anne's life at that time. The diary itself is a mixture of dry and dull preceedings with heartfelt and heartbreaking discussions about the women in her life and their strengths and failings. It is wonderful as so much of queer women's history is often dismissed as being "emotional friendships" and even though the women use the language of romantic love scholars are always quite trepedatious about saying whether the women involved actually "got up to anything". While part of me can respect the historical position that you don't want to say something happened without the evidence to back it up. To say that these women were having these relationships without the physical side just seems terribly naive. This book is great as it is a first person account of such lives and friendships in the most wonderful detail. Here the women clearly have physical feelings for each other, act on those feelings, suffer jealousies and love, and also recognise the bond of romantic love in other women who also love other women. One of my favourite parts was when Anne went to visit a Lady who lived in Wales with her partner of 40 or 50 years and Anne was thinking how wonderful it would be to live with a woman for that long, and how she discussed the women's relationship with her other friends and wondered if the Lady's relationship was purely Platonic or like theirs, and they all seemed to think it was like theirs. It was also interseting that when Anne did meet other women outside her circle of friends she was quite hesitant to tell them about the nature of her relationship with women, even after these women had admitted to their own relationship with women. While the diary never discusses prejudice against them, just the fear that M's husband will suspect the true nature of their relationship, it shows that the women weren't able to be at all open about their feelings. Though it was interesting on how many occasions Anne discussed M with her aunt and her aunt was always giving her advice on M and the other girlfriends.

One of the things I think is rather sad about this is that many people have dubbed Anne as "not very nice" (rather like they have Radclyff Hall). It seems like these women are looked down on for rejecting a society that doesn't accept them. Not to mention the fact that they are often continuing several affairs at one time. Rather than seeing this as an attempt to find love and companionship in a society where it's denied them they are judged for not being part of a "monogamous feminine ideal". Surely if they were lesbians and in love Anne should have just contented herself with M? But M was married and not availble to be a full time partner to Anne. The relationship came across as very sad and very real and very "modern" to me.

I'm really glad I got this book. I borrowed it from the library but am definitely going to buy my own copy as well.

I bought this book for work as I do all the library's cataloguing as well as training cataloguing volunteers. The books said it would be good for experienced cataloguers and outline the changes to RDA. However, this wasn't really the case. The book would be a good introduction to library students who had no experience cataloguing. It had very basic introductions to cataloguing, going over the requirements of the current systems and introducing the new changes. I can say having read this I have a clearer understanding of what the changes are. At least what they seem to be, not using abbreviations and copying more directly from the text (as is done in rare books cataloguing). The most useful part should have been the examples at the back which list library catalogue records in all the different standards. However, lack of proof-reading shows that there were mistakes in the samples which is confusing and disappointing. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone whose actually been doing cataloguing before but as an introduction for library students it's ok.

H.G. Wells is one of my top five favourite authors. But he really blew it this time. His later work is quite hit or miss. He seems to have so many ideas and feelings and just can't get them across properly as he's far too sure that his way is the only right way. Bryhild is an odd book. It starts kinda like it wants to be an Evelyn Waugh novel. It's got a weak main hero who writes and lets things happen to him. The book seems like it's trying to be amusing and poke fun at things but it just fails. There are some interesting digressions about the nature of celebrity when celebrities were getting their start in film and how this reflected on authors. But the characters were just dull. The wife character has a crisis at one point when she realises she no longer loves her husband and decides she needs something "meangingful" in her life. Then Wells does the unforgivable thing of saying how women can't do science! Not only are women genetically incapable of being good scientists because they don't have the will, but also that they can't come up with any interesting political ideas and just copy men. It's horrible! And considering he's writing in 1937 obviously so un-true from what had been happening in the past 100 years! It just makes no sense. So for the first time ever I gave up on a Wells novel and skimmed the rest and it proved just as unsatisfactory. :( Very dissapointing!