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- Practical Cataloguing: AACR, RDA and MARC21 (1)
- By Sue Batley, Anne Welsh
- Finished on Jun 20, 2012
  
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Practical Cataloguing: AACR, RDA and MARC21

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 wh ... (continue)

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.

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— Jun 21, 2012 | Add your feedback
- Alien Kind: Foxes and Late Imperial Chinese Narrative (2)
- By Huntington, Rania
- Finished on Jun 1, 2012
  
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Alien Kind: Foxes and Late Imperial Chinese Narrative

This was another book I borrowed from SOAS but I have to get my own copy. It's only £30 and it's just totally amazing. Without a doubt this is the best book focusing on Chinese fox spirits I've ever read. It's so nice to see the subject given a full scholarly view. The book focuses on treatment of t ... (continue)

This was another book I borrowed from SOAS but I have to get my own copy. It's only £30 and it's just totally amazing. Without a doubt this is the best book focusing on Chinese fox spirits I've ever read. It's so nice to see the subject given a full scholarly view. The book focuses on treatment of the foxes in the Qing dynasty but gives an account of them from the earliest recorded statements and how their abilities and reputations change over time. The book is very strong on tradition and literature but a little bit more weak on the religious side. That said it is still brilliant and I definitely recommend it.
It talks about different books and stories about foxes, everything from pornography to classic works, it includes male and female foxes and looks at the different ways the two are represented. It also addresses the fact that foxes can change their gender, sometimes at will, at so they outstep the boundaries of "men and women". Foxes stand on the borderline between the strange and the commonplace (93). It includes translations of shorter stories and interesting social analysis of the stories. It looks at foxes haunting places and how this transforms into worship of the fox as well as how prevelant the cult of the fox was in late Imperial China. It looks at the relationship between foxes and spirit mediums, how mediums would exorcise foxes and how they would posess women. As well as how they disguise themselves as women and seduce men leading to their death, but how not all female foxes are portayed as having this dangerous nature. He even looks at foxes and homosexuality. There was an amazing story (Feng Sanniang" 封三娘) that could have been Victorian about a young fox who befriends a young girl and the two become "very close" friends and eventually the fox leads the young girl to get married but still wants to retain a relationship with her. But the girl feels badly she doesn't have a husband so tries to get the fox drunk so her husband can sleep with her, but the fox manages to escape and not get raped and ends up leaving the girl. It sounded like a lovely sad story. There was also the story Lianxiang which was a story about a fox and a ghost in love with the same scholar.
It was a lovely book addressing both the supernatural and social and cultural gender roles. I think I will try and be very good and not spend any money for the coming week so I can treat myself to a copy at the end of the week.

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— Jul 22, 2012 | Add your feedback
- Interpretation and Literature in Early Medieval China (1)
- By Alan K. L. Chan
- Finished on May 11, 2012
  
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Interpretation and Literature in Early Medieval China

I had this collection of essays on my wish list for ages and finally ordered a copy when I got my bonus check from work (and ended up with two copies as my sister also bought it for me for my birthday). But it is a wonderful collection with many of my favourite scholars covering all my favourite to ... (continue)

I had this collection of essays on my wish list for ages and finally ordered a copy when I got my bonus check from work (and ended up with two copies as my sister also bought it for me for my birthday). But it is a wonderful collection with many of my favourite scholars covering all my favourite topics, ghosts, foxes, immortals...
Court culture in the Late Eastern Han the case of the Hongdu Gate School by David R. Knechtges was a wonderful essay. It was just beautifully structured in it's presentation and argument. It focuses on an area I knew nothing about but presented information about it in a very interesting way each layer building on the last, showing what the sources had said about it, what interpretations had been made about it in the past, and how these were wrong. The school was non-traditional in that it didn't focus on Confucian teachings but prized calligraphy and poetry instead.
The patterns and changes of literary patronage in the Han and Wei by Jui-Lung Su looked further at the Fu type of poetry that had been mentioned in the first essay. (Not being a very knowledgeable about Chinese poetry styles all this was very new to me). It looked at the influence of the Emperors, and the Caos on the style of poetry.
Wandering in the ruins the shuijing zhu reconsidered by Michael Nylan. I've greatly enjoyed other things I've read by Nylan and this was no exception. It was a look at how you can misperceive things if you look only at one source as being "typical" of a genre or culture and contrasts three different texts and looks at the different interpretations and world views that the texts provide. It looked at cultural identity and memory and was very interesting. Even though I hadn't known the three texts previously Nylan did a good job of presenting them and getting to the heart of them and showing where they fit in a larger cultural context.
Evolving practices of Guan and Liu Xie's theory of literary interpretation by Zong-Qi Cai I'm afraid I've now almost totally forgotten.
Narrative in the self presentation of transcendence-seekers by Robert Ford Campany. Campany is quite possibly my favourite Chinese historian. He writes about Taoist immortals or transcendence seekers and using zhiguai tales to interpret beliefs. This essay is very familiar ground to his books. He talks about how the people viewed transcendence-seekers (xian) and the things that were in common in their tales and the ways that they presented themselves. I really enjoyed the essay even though I made very little notes about it.
Jade flower and the motif of mystic excursion in early religious Daoist poetry by Timothy Wai-Keung Chan. This essay presented how "secular" poetry and Daoist poetry differed in their ideas of similar topics, jade flowers, jade maidens. But without really explaining why there was a difference when the same cultural background was had by both writers. Besides tradition how did you differentiate between secular and religious poetry? Why were they necessarily talking about different things when using the same imagery? In places I found it a little strange but there were some nice descriptions of shangqing texts and discussions about the arguments in particular the idea of flights of fantasy (or internal alchemy) that took place within the adepts own body and mind, how the magic that they were creating was purely within the mind reminded me a lot of Alan Moore's interpretation of European magic.
Representing the uncommon temple-visit lyrics from the Liang to the Sui dynasties by Cynthia L. Chennault. This was really the only essay that focused on Buddhism. It looked at the different ways that presenting Buddhist temples changed. I'm afraid I didn't find it nearly as engaging as some of the other essays just because I wasn't as interested in the topic.
Fox as trickster in Medieval China by Daniel Hsieh. I must admit I had several questions about the way the arguments were presented here. To me the foxes aren't really that good of matches with the "Trickster" character in other mythologies and folktales. Monkey from Journey to the West seemed like a much more obvious match to me. But nonetheless I found this article very interesting and engaging and while I didn't agree with everything he said I found I took loads of notes and there were lots of things that I learned.
Justice, morality, and scepticism in Six Dynasty ghost stories by Mu-Chou Poo. I really wish Mu-Chou Poo would sit down and write a huge book about early Chinese ghost stories. He writes the most interesting essays on the topic and has such a good breadth of knowledge about the history and development of Chinese ghost stories. This essay, while one of his shortest, looks at the retribution aspect of many six dynasty ghost stories and how this sense of justice that ghosts demand is a new development.
Overall this was a truly excellent collection of essays. Any that I weren't as interested in were mostly because I just wasn't as interested in the topics but overall it's rare to find a collection of topics that so closely match my own interests. One of the other things I need to say about this collection is that they always include the Chinese texts with any translations. Which I thought was very useful and I wish more academic books would do.
Very highly recommended.

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— May 20, 2012 | Add your feedback
- Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar (6)
- (Modern Grammars)
- By Claudia Ross
- Finished on Sep 9, 2012
  
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Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar

For the past four months I've been working my way through this grammar book on the weekends. I've found it to be a really good review. It's divided into two sections, one where the grammer and it's rules are laid out in the traditional manner for a grammar book, sentence structure, verbs, etc. and t ... (continue)

For the past four months I've been working my way through this grammar book on the weekends. I've found it to be a really good review. It's divided into two sections, one where the grammer and it's rules are laid out in the traditional manner for a grammar book, sentence structure, verbs, etc. and the second half is all based on situational structures, how to express things based on situation and context. I found the explanations quite easy. Though I think this was because there wasn't a great deal of technical explanations. For each instance there was a brief explanation of how it works in Chinese (normally what order things should be) and a sample sentence. I don't think it'd be that helpful as an initial grammar book because there's not much explanation and only one example but as review it's great. It is also good because the sentences are mostly very easy to understand. There is not a huge ammount of new vocabulary in the sample sentences and they are realy easy to adapt to your own situation.
I think it was really good to go back and review this. Though I wish I'd done it quicker as I feel I've already forgotten some of the things I learned. But it will make an excellent reference, particularly because of the way the second half is structured when writing it will be very easy to check which is the right way to say something. I'm really glad I got this. It's definitely helped improve my Chinese.

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— Sep 10, 2012 | Add your feedback
- Itinéraire d'un lettré chinois (1)
- l'arc et le pinceau
- By Ivan P. Kamenarović
- Finished on May 3, 2012
  
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Itinéraire d'un lettré chinois

I bought this book at the Musee Guimet. I was very excited to see a book about Tang history that I'd not read before. This book is definitely a popular history rather than scholarly but I still really liked it. The book focuses on the life of the literati during the Tang, what they studied, their ph ... (continue)

I bought this book at the Musee Guimet. I was very excited to see a book about Tang history that I'd not read before. This book is definitely a popular history rather than scholarly but I still really liked it. The book focuses on the life of the literati during the Tang, what they studied, their philosophy and a little bit about daily living. The book "recreates" an example family and tells the story of three young boys growing up and being educated in the Classics and ends after they have taken the examinations and been awarded places in the imperial government. The book is a nice introduction to the ways of thinking and being in the upper classes in Tang China. It does however fall a little short in that it is almost entirely focused on the Confucian side of things and the Buddhists and the Taoists hardly get a mention (which didn't strike me as that appropriate for the Tang dynasty as this was pre-neo-confucian and the religions were highly popular). The other short coming of the book was that it focused almost entirely on the men within the family. But as a general introduction to Chinese thought and history it was very good. I'd definitely recommend it as a starting place for people who are interested in Chinese history and philosophy (and can read French).

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— May 5, 2012 | Add your feedback

- Heroines of Jiangyong (1)
- Chinese Narrative Ballads in Women's Script
- By Wilt Idema
- Finished on Apr 21, 2012
  
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Heroines of Jiangyong

Jiangyong county is located in the South West province of Hunan in China. It is a quite remarkable place as the women their formed their own women's societies and developed their own written phonetic script based on Chinese characters. The script developed over the years and now looks very different ... (continue)

Jiangyong county is located in the South West province of Hunan in China. It is a quite remarkable place as the women their formed their own women's societies and developed their own written phonetic script based on Chinese characters. The script developed over the years and now looks very different to Chinese characters. It was used in printed books, in embroidery and was learned by only a very few men. It was largely used by peasant women for other peasant women to tell them stories and proverbs. It has been studied in quite large depth by anthropoligists, many collections of the writing have been made, including many oral tales written down from memory of the women who lived in that county. There have been large collections published in China of the writing translated into Chinese. Idema used these to base his translations on. While translating a translation is far from ideal the stories are still interesting and worth reading.
I greatly enjoyed the tales within these books. All but one were Chinese folk tales I had previously been familiar with, but they were told from a different perspective. Here the women were given centre stage while the men went off to do their activities the stories focused on the women who were left behind. There were themes in the stories about life being hard, childbirth being painful, how husbands would leave and the woman had to remain faithful. There were a few twists that I particularly liked. One was in the story of Mengjian, after she'd brought down the great wall with her tears and found her husband's bones. She took them back home and slept beside them till she died. The other was in the story of the Butterfly lovers (though in this story they turned into Mandarin ducks not butterflies) and in this version when the girl's father told her that girls weren't allowed to study she gave two examples of women who'd done great things. One was Guan Yin the other was Wu Zetian. How she'd ruled China effecitevly and brought peace and prosperity to the land. I thought this was most interesting as in "normal" Chinese history Wu Zetian is villified as an Evil Empress/Emperor. But I liked the idea that women still held her up as an example of things that they could achieve, and of a strong and good woman. Considering how many years after her reign was this was particularly telling as it showed that despite the "male" "Confucian" approach to history she still lived on as a heroine in women's tales.
My favourite story though was Fifth daughter Wang. I'd not come across this story before but it was amazing. It was so inspiring and empowering. It started with a woman who wanted to be a very devout Buddhist but was married to a butcher. She reprimanded him for killing animals and he reprimanded her for her "extravegant" ways. She gave up worldly life and just took to reciting the Diamond Sutra. Her husband agreed to live apart from her as she was able to answer all her questions about the sutra. Eventually her fame spread to the king of hell who wanted to question her on it so sent his demons to "arrest" (ie kill) her and bring her to the underworld. There was a wonderful section on her going through hell being helped by the demons to avoid the tortures and traps there. Everything was, this is awful and this happens to these types of people, but she was good so she was safe. It was like Mu Lian, except with an evil woman and a noble man it was the noble woman who everyone admired. Eventually she makes it through the ten courts of hell and ends up before the final judge who says she can be reborn as a man. She asks to be reborn as a sedan driver so she won't harm anything. But he puts her as a scholar. She is reborn and wins the highest places in the examinations, she remebers her past life (as the demons helped her avoid the tea of forgetting) and tells her story to the Emperor and asks to return to her former husband. The Emperor appoints her as magistrate of that region and she summons her husband to her. They are happy to be reunited. He doesn't comment on the fact that she's now a man but accepts her as his wife as she has the same writing on her leg as his wife did before she died (which if you found a good calligrapher would be a good tattoo!). To reward them for her her and the rest of her family get sent off to live in the Taoist paradise where they have a castle under the sea. (It doesn't mention if she stays a man or goes back to being a woman). I just loved this story so much as it had her doing all the things that men do. The highest honors that men normally strive for she managed with ease. It was really a wonderful story.
I very highly recommend this book to people who are interested in women's history and women's stories. It's totally wonderful.

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— Apr 25, 2012 | Add your feedback
- Cernuschi Museum Guide (1)
- By Gilles Béguin
- Finished on Mar 29, 2012
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Le petit peuple des tombes
- Le petit peuple des tombes (1)
- By Gilles Béguin
- Finished on Mar 29, 2012
  
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Le petit peuple des tombes

This book is about the Chinese tomb sculptures at the Musee Germuci. I was hoping that it would be a little more scholarly and talk more in depth specifically about the collection at the museum but despite that it was a lovely little book. It's a good introduction to Chinese tomb0 sculptures, how th ... (continue)

This book is about the Chinese tomb sculptures at the Musee Germuci. I was hoping that it would be a little more scholarly and talk more in depth specifically about the collection at the museum but despite that it was a lovely little book. It's a good introduction to Chinese tomb0 sculptures, how they came about and how they reflected the changing ideas towards the after life. It has lots of really wonderful pictures of the museums collection which is very strong, particularly in Han sculpture.

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— Apr 25, 2012 | Add your feedback
- From Byfleet to the Bush (1)
- The Autobiography of Jacqueline Pearce
- By Jacqueline Pearce
- Finished on Mar 14, 2012
  
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From Byfleet to the Bush

Jacqueline Pearce played Servalan, quite possibly one of the best female characters ever, in the tv show Blake's 7. When I bought a copy of the biography I knew nothing else about her. Then while I was waiting for it to be published I started reading her blog and discovered her to be quite an amazi ... (continue)

Jacqueline Pearce played Servalan, quite possibly one of the best female characters ever, in the tv show Blake's 7. When I bought a copy of the biography I knew nothing else about her. Then while I was waiting for it to be published I started reading her blog and discovered her to be quite an amazing woman. She has survived chronic depression, poverty and breast cancer and is now living in Africa where she was volunteering in a monkey shelter and is now looking after dogs.
This book is in many ways the opposite of a "celebrity autobiography". There is very little here about stories with the famous. The people she meets are portrayed with her impressions regardless of their wealth and fame. Rather it's the story of a woman trying to stay afloat in life who just happens to be an actress. Jacqueline remains struggling with her own mental illness and keeps fighting. Her life was strongly shaped by the fact that her mother left her and her father when Jacqueline was just a toddler and this rejection and insecurity plays a large part of the uncertainity that shapes the book.
But despite having a lot of sadness and poor choices there is also a great deal of humour in this book. I have so much respect for her and the way she keeps going. It is a very personal and honest story. If you are wanting inside stories on the making of Blake's 7 this really isn't the book for you (though I promise you will never see the transformation between 2nd and 3rd season Servalan the same again). But it was a fascinating read and I really hope that she writes more.

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— Mar 22, 2012 | Add your feedback
- Slumming (1)
- Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London
- By Seth Koven
- Finished on Apr 17, 2012
  
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Slumming

This book is a very interesting look at class and gender in the late Victorian period. If focuses on the way that wealthy and middle class people portrayed and interacted with the poor, particularly in the East End of London. The book does this by looking at the portrayal of poor people, their jobs, ... (continue)

This book is a very interesting look at class and gender in the late Victorian period. If focuses on the way that wealthy and middle class people portrayed and interacted with the poor, particularly in the East End of London. The book does this by looking at the portrayal of poor people, their jobs, their homes, their apparance in newspapers, photographs and novels. In many ways the Victorian attitudes towards their portrayal of the poor reminded me of reality tv shows today. The book starts with Greenwood's report on the night he spent in a workhouse and the subsequent publication of that event. The book considers the strong homoerotic themes of the article as well as the different responses to it including the coupling of homlessness with homosexuality in the 1898 vagrancy act. Chapter two looks at Dr Barnados photographs of street children and the claims of sexualisation of them. It considers the way images were manipulated to play on the emotions of those that donations were being solicited from. Chapter three looks at the women journalism, particularly the writing of Elizabeth Banks and American journalist who reportedly said that she did her investiagitive journalism on the conditions of the poor not because she wanted to improve their lives but to earn her own living. The chapter was quite hard on Banks, she had a lot of negative things send, but later when she wrote something different, instead of saying that perhaps this was because her ideas had changed Koven seemed to indicate this just proved her unrealiability as a writer. However, there were some very interesting gender stereotypes between the UK and the US examined and I learned a great deal about women journalists.
Part two looked at "cross class sisterhood and brotherhood in the slums". This was divided into two chapters, one on women one on men. The methodology here was a little strange. When the women and their relationships were discussed it was entirely from the point of view of women philanthropists who wrote novels. When the men were discussed it focused entirely on the reality of two homes/charitable agencies Oxford House and Toynbee Hall. This seemed to present a little bit of a strange dichotomy. That said the chapter on women was fascinating, and reminded me once again that I really do need to read some more Vernon Lee. The chapter discussed her book, Miss Brown and L.T. Meade's Princess of the gutter. What was interesting was the portrayal of same sex attraction within these novels. Vernon Lee's book was dismissed as "dirty" even though it was the more restrained of the two. Meade, a devout evangelical Christian, had her two herioines making out in a prison cell and was considered terribly pure.
The only critisicm I had of this book was that it focused entirely on London. I think it would be interesting to expand the work that was done looking at the different portrayal of gender and class into the whole of the UK, particularly the North of England and to see what if anything was different in these accounts. But I would definitely recommend this book very highly.

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— Apr 18, 2012 | Add your feedback

- Landscapes Rock Art and the Dreaming (1)
- An Archaeology of Preunderstanding (New Approaches to Anthropological Archaeology)
- By Bruno David
- Finished on Mar 5, 2012
  
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Landscapes Rock Art and the Dreaming

I found this book in our local remainders shop for £6, when I checked amazon it was selling new for 100 and used for 60 so I thought I'd buy it cause even if I hated it I could sell it for a huge profit. Thankfully I didn't hate it.
I thought it was a very interesting look at Australian Aboriginal ... (continue)

I found this book in our local remainders shop for £6, when I checked amazon it was selling new for 100 and used for 60 so I thought I'd buy it cause even if I hated it I could sell it for a huge profit. Thankfully I didn't hate it.
I thought it was a very interesting look at Australian Aboriginal culture and religion. While I've read mythology books about the Dreaming before I'd not read any academic texts. Despite that I was able to follow along the different arguments and ideas that David put forth as he gave lots of background and theory to his arguments and points. As a historian and not an archaeologist I wasn't able to judge the methodology used but it seemed quite balanced. The historical arguments at least were all familiar to me and seemed quite sound. While he used a lot of what I call "post modern terminology" (there was actually a subheading called subverting the dominant paradigm). He did it in such a way that you could still understand what he was talking about and I found myself agreeing with many of the points he raised.
His theory behind the book that the idea of the Dreaming as this timeless religious idea and the idea that the religion and the aborigine culture remaining unchanged for thousands of years grew out of the racist assumptions of the past that as they used stone tools they must just be like the stone age people from Europe and must have remained in a static state for the intervening time. He went to look at different archaeological evidence to challenge this preconception, pointing out it's racist origins and find out how much validity to this idea there was.
David examined ritual practices, cave art, beliefs about certain areas, population centres and food sources as different ways of assessing these ideas. He found that there were distinct periods were there was noticable change. That while still very old, in some cases several thousand years, there was not a "timelessness" to the past. But rather there were definite changes, growth periods, and changes in both belief and practice that could be shown. One of the most interesting examples was of an area that was considered unsafe to live in because of religious beliefs from the dreaming figures that occupied it but that had been a source of habitation up until about 600 years ago.
This was not a book that went into detail about the Australian Aboriginal culture, though there was quite a lot that was covered including gender relations, religion, work, rituals, art, food to name a few. But when given these were used to look at how they were now in relation to how they had changed.
I found this book very interesting, not only because I learned much more about Aboriginal culture but also from a theory point of view about the way we view history and in particular the history and religion of other cultures. I'm very glad I found it.

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— Mar 10, 2012 | Add your feedback
- Chinese Whispers (6)
- The True Story Behind Britain's Hidden Army of Labour
- By Hsiao-Hung Pai
- Finished on Feb 18, 2012
  
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Chinese Whispers

I came across this book while I was looking for books on Chinatown at work. I started reading the first few pages and got sucked it. It is a journalistic account of the lives of different illegal immigrants in England. Each chapter tells a different story about someone working in a different industr ... (continue)

I came across this book while I was looking for books on Chinatown at work. I started reading the first few pages and got sucked it. It is a journalistic account of the lives of different illegal immigrants in England. Each chapter tells a different story about someone working in a different industry, farms, factories, Chinese restaurants, brothels, selling illegal dvds. It was written in 2007 and it's just appaling to read and know that this is going on. People seem to be aware of the terrible wages and conditions of people working in China but I don't think many people realise that it's going on here too. People paying tens of thousands of pounds to get here, then working 12 hour shifts 6 days a week and making £130 a week, living in tiny accomadation (which they have to pay 24-40 a week) and barely having enough food. I'm afraid I just can't accept the excuse that "well their here illegaly so they shouldn't be treated well" argument. These are humans trying to suport their families. They are working for companies that we use, all the major grocery stores were mentioned. It made me never want to eat in Chinatown again having read how they treat their employees. There was a brothel mentioned in Archway and I wondered if it was that "Thai massage" place down the road from us. It was such an eyeopening book.
I remember a few years ago watching the amazing film about the cocklers at Morecambe Bay. Called Ghosts http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghosts-DVD-Ai-Qin-Lin/dp/B000MR… this book was like that but more so. I want to know what's changed in the past 5 years. I checked amazon and saw that the author has a new book out this summer about Chinese migrant labour, both in China and abroad. Which I will definitely have to read.
Everyone should read this book.

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— Feb 19, 2012 | Add your feedback
- Dickens and the Workhouse (1)
- Oliver Twist and the London Poor
- By Ruth Richardson
- Finished on Feb 28, 2012
  
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Dickens and the Workhouse

I bought this book because I enjoyed the author's book, Death, Disection and the destitute. Having also enjoyed the Dickens exhibiton at the Museum of London I thought this would be an interesting book looking at workhouses and the poor of the Victorian era. Unfortunately it is more biography than h ... (continue)

I bought this book because I enjoyed the author's book, Death, Disection and the destitute. Having also enjoyed the Dickens exhibiton at the Museum of London I thought this would be an interesting book looking at workhouses and the poor of the Victorian era. Unfortunately it is more biography than history and I found myself a bit bored. Rather than taking things directly relevant to Dickens and then widening them out into generalisations about life for that period, Richardson did the reverse. She took generalisations about shops and streets and then tried to apply them to the very specific Dickens related houses, shops and streets that she focused in on. This led to rather a lot of supposition, "perhaps in this instance it was like this" "perhaps Dickens when he was here was aware or did this".
It provides but a scant portrait of life in early 19th century London. It is definitely more of a biography of Dickens' early years than it is a history of the period. Unfortunately, because the information directly about Dickens is so scare the whole book comes across as just a little vague. Unlike the exhibition at the Museum of London this is definitely for fans of Dickens and not just for people interested in the period and things that he wrote about.

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— Feb 23, 2012 | Add your feedback
Beyond the Daode Jing
- Beyond the Daode Jing (1)
- Twofold Mystery in Tang Daoism
- By Friederike Assandri
- Finished on Feb 15, 2012
  
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Beyond the Daode Jing

I found a lovely cheap copy of this Three pines press book on lulu and Bill bound me a physical version. It was a much more philosophical book than I'm used to reading. Most of my interest in Taoism leads me to read about the quest for immortality, thunder magic, exorcism rituals, sex rites, and the ... (continue)

I found a lovely cheap copy of this Three pines press book on lulu and Bill bound me a physical version. It was a much more philosophical book than I'm used to reading. Most of my interest in Taoism leads me to read about the quest for immortality, thunder magic, exorcism rituals, sex rites, and the role of women in the religion. It's much more practical about rituals and practice and how it's shaped rather than theological and philosophical debate. But I found this book very interesting nonetheless. Assandri discussed the way Taoism changed through the period of disunion through to the Song. How different branches of Taoism were not just in competition with Buddhism but also with each other trying to show how their school was the right one. One of the most interesting examples of this was higher clarity scriptures that had Zhen Daoling (the founder of Heavenly master Taoism) talk about how he'd now found the true scriptures that overrode what he said when he was on Earth. It was interesting to see how they were trying to discredit his teachings, but that he was still important enough that they had to use him to do so. Assandri also did a good job of showing how the influence between Taoism and Buddhism wasn't straight forward but an intricate dialogue which was quite interesting.
I have to say while I'm not sure I grasped everything in this book I did still enjou the philosophical discussions. One thing that bothered me was that she kept referring to a particular Taoist technique of reasoning as Tetra Lemma instead of Sij, I'm guessing this is the typical way Western scholars have referred to this line of reasoning. But I found the use of Latin very distracting, annoying and unnecessary as everytime I had to remember what it was in Chinese. It just felt like a little bit of cultural imperialism, that to be a proper philosophical term it had to be translated into Latin. But the concept itself was lovely. (Which I'd write out but have just lost my language bar).
The only other criticism was that there was no mention of women at all, even though there were quite a lot of women Taoists in this period, and several were quite active in the traditions being discussed. It was an interesting book and lovely to go back and read a new book that gave new insight into my specialist area of study.

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— Feb 19, 2012 | Add your feedback
- Jack the Ripper and Black Magic (1)
- Victorian Conspiracy Theories, Secret Societies and the Supernatural Mystique of the Whitechapel Mur…
- By Spiro Dimolianis
- Finished on Feb 6, 2012
  
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Jack the Ripper and Black Magic

I bought this book for the collection at work, as despite the title it seemed like quite an interesting and scholarly book. I must admit that the only book I've read about Jack the Ripper is From Hell (which given the copious pages of footnotes to historical sources and modern ripperoligists means t ... (continue)

I bought this book for the collection at work, as despite the title it seemed like quite an interesting and scholarly book. I must admit that the only book I've read about Jack the Ripper is From Hell (which given the copious pages of footnotes to historical sources and modern ripperoligists means that I probably know more than you'd think having only read a comic book on the subject) and as such I did find it quite easy to follow the book.
The first three chapters were my favourite. The first looked at fortune telling and ghosts. It was wonderful to see all these examples, all of which came from Tower Hamlets. Cases of ordinary people who were arrested or charged over fortune telling. The book went on to look at the way the different types of people accussed of being Jack the Ripper represented different fears and prejudices within the community, Jews, Irish, Gypsies, even Americans. He also addressed the ways that the muders were incoporated into the spiritual and occult beliefs of the time, by the mainstream press, as well as by the different occult groups of the period. Most noticably the theosophists. He spent several chapters addressing the claims that D Onston was Jack the Ripper, the different ways the story the grew, who was responsible for them and how he hurt his own case. It was a very interesting look at the occult societies of the time and to see the way the story grew and gained more intrigue as it went on.
The last chapter was the only one that I didn't find very interesting. It tried looking at the secret service and it's relation to the urban myths that have grown up around the Ripper case. Here there was a lot of talks of spies and the official secrets act and I'm afraid I just found my attention starting to wane. The other criticism of the book was a lack of conclusion. Having presented lots of interesting information about the way the case and it's representation portrayed ideas about prejudice and the occult. Not only for the original period of 1888 but how these theories grew and changed with time and different current historians presenting their theories based on the evidence as it grew and changed. It would have been nice to have some form of conclusion or summing up rather than quite an abrupt end. Still overall I really enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it to people with either an interest in the murders, late Victorian beliefs, and occult organisations.
I would also like to add that if you're reading a book called Jack the Ripper and Black Magic with a picture of a young Crowley on it, people do give you a lot more room on a crowded train. Particularly when going through Whitechapel.

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— Feb 18, 2012 | Add your feedback