Robot-mel London, United Kingdom

Tereska is definitely turning into my favourite newly discovered author for this year. I just want to read everything she's written. This book was about a young girl who was going to a Catholic school in Paris at the start of World War 2. It's about the lives and loves of her and her friends and all the mistakes people make while they are growing up. The main character is interesting and insightful (and quite bisexual). She comes from a non-conventional family where her father is an atheist intellectual happily having a mistress and a wife and they are all ok with that. (Though some of her friends find it shocking). I'm not really that fond of books about teenagers, despite seeming to have read so many of them lately. But this one was really good. From one prespective it was interesting to see the approach of war and how that made everyone feel a bit more reclese and confused. The book had a wonderful part where the young girl and her friend went through a series of bars in Paris looking for the friend's lover who had stolen the families gold. They went to strip clubs and gay bars and bars where everyone was cross dressing, and they picked up a drunk Polish girls and the woman who was having an affair with her father. It was all very lovely and strange. This is the fourth book by Tereska that I've read and I think I have four or five left to read. At the rate I'm going I will probably manage them all this year!

Volume 2 is set in China with the resistance fighting the Japanese with the Chinese communists. The Chinese communists are very surprised to find that the Korean resistance movement is led by a girl. Like the first book the artwork is amazing. Here there is more politics about what is right in a resistance movement and political ideaology. While I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the first book I still really loved it.

The edition of this book that I read had a very 70s looking threesome on the cover. The books starts with a young Jewish girl on a train fleeing for her life with her family in 1940. They are all heading to Portugal to escape the war. The story is the tale of this group of refugees. Most of the characters are Jewish but others are fleeing France for other reasons. Some want to flee the war completly traveling to the US or Brasil. Others want to go and join the fight in the UK. In the meantime they are waiting in this beautiful beach resort where it is sunny and they are untouched by the war. The characters are all very interesting and the book gives a nice insight into their lives before the war and the different ways they are dealing with their trauma.

There is a bit of sex in the book as the characters have affairs and try out different diversions to keep their mind off what is happening. One of the things that I love most of Tereska Torres is that her books always (or at least all the ones I've read so far) have queer characters. It's just very normal and a part of life. It's so nice to see, particularly in a world war II setting where the reality of queer people is often missing. Here there is a married woman who had a brief flirtation with lesbianism in her youth but fled it and got married. There is a beautiful young girl who falls desperately in love with her even though she has no idea what she's doing, until she reads Radclyff Hall and suddenly the wool is lifted from her eyes, so to speak.

I really enjoyed this. Torres is rapidly becoming one of my favourite authors and I am trying to track down and read everything she's written.

I found this book accidently while browsing the shelves at SOAS. Apparently it's part of a series and I've now added all the other stories to my wish list. Idema is great at presenting how these iconic Chinese stories have actually changed quite a bit over time and how there are different regional variations. He translates several different versions from different time periods from the early 17th to the late 19th century.

I read this a month ago but really enjoyed it and will definitely read it again. It's interesting and insightful and the story of White Snake remains one of my favourites.

This book was also recommended by the queer pulp book, but it didn't actually have any queer characters or plot. Despite that I found I really enjoyed it. It's a translation of a 19th century French novel. It was a story about a young man who fell in love with a lovely ageing woman who'd been notoriously known as Sappho (and not because she was a lesbian) but because she modelled for a statue. She was totally an amazing character and I really loved her. In my mind I saw her being played by Alex Kingston as she was that time of stronger older woman. Even though the story focused mostly on the man and how she really wasn't a suitable companion for him, she really was by far the best and most sypathetic of the two. She also had a huge ammount of agency. Even though the man tried and failed to leave her in the end it was she who decided her fate and what was going to be happy and I really admired her for that. In many ways she was everything Nana wanted to be and failed to be. I loved the little old hardcover I found and will definitely pick up more Daudet if I find him.

This one I did not enjoy quite as much as some of the other Bain books that I've read. It was the story of a man who heard about a beautiful woman who had requirements for marriage. A storyteller told her stories each night in an effort to win her hand for his lord and each story developed their relationship a little. It was done quite well and I really liked the queen. Though some of the repetition in the style got a little tedious at times.

This is the second book I've read by Thereska, the first Women's barracks I really loved. It took me awhile to find other books by her, this title was recommended in the Queer pulp book I read recently. It was a lovely story about the intertwined lives of a group of friends in Paris. The story was short focusing on the events of one single night in Paris shortly after world war II. Only one character in the group was "queer" the youngest sister of one of the characters who in the space of the night fell in love with a female prostiute she was trying to "rescue". Their story was very sad and sweet and my favourite part of the book. There was also an "older" woman in her mid thirties who was living alone and having a succession of affairs to try and find meaning who was my second favourite character. The stories were a lovely little glimpse into life. While one of the couples did end up at an orgy they didn't really seem that sordid or beyond belief. I'm really looking forward to reading more books by this author.

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.

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.

This was a comic that I really liked when I was a teenager. I barely remembered anything about it. But this version I think is much better than the one I read when I was younger. It's set up as a direct translation of the Japanese, (to the point where the panel layout is "backwards" and while I've read quite a few Chinese comics in this layout doing so in English felt odd). I have to say it was much better than I remembered and much better than black magic. It was divided into four storylines. It was a strange brand of gritty distopian future with random humour mixed in. (The only thing that bothered me was the homophobic joke). It was kinda light on characterisation, more fighting and explosions. But Leona was much more interesting than I remembered, Uni Puma and Ana Puma a bit more disturbing. It was fun though I don't know if I'll bother ever reading it again so I'm glad I borrowed it from the library rather than buying a copy.

I randomly found this book while I was in the SOAS library. It's a lovely translation of a 6th century book of ghost stories. It has a brief introduction to the stories, talking about their provenance and the author. The stories are literary rather than literal translations to be read and understood by non-specialists though the author includes some translation notes at the end of the stories.

The only problem with this book is it uses the Gwoyeu Romatzyh system of romanization of Chinese characters. Now I'm pretty good at Wade Giles and Pinyin but this was totally mad. I just couldn't figure out what most of the words were supposed to be. This took away a lot of enjoyment for me as it felt like I was back reading another culture's work and not something that I was familiar with. Which was quite disappointing.

The stories themselves were quite good. Some I liked better than others. There were 64 stories in all. What was surprisng was the vast number of stories about court. Most of the ghost stories I've read from later periods in Chinese history tend not to focus on the very high elite but are more about the lives of ordinary people, or at the very best litarati or local government officals. It was interesting to see the stories told on a national level. There could be some interseting analysis of this. The stories being told to show how justice was eventually reached even if it wasn't meted out correctly in the first place. The stories were very much of the no bad deed goes un-punished variety. Another thing that was interesting was how sometimes it would take years after the person saw the ghost for them to die. It was like the ghost had been inserted into a historical story. My favourite stories were the ones that were about ordinary people. A girl who was executed for being a bandit when she wasn't, a woman haunting an inn, a ghost who threw his clothes in the air so people could find his body. The lower stories were more interseting as they seemed to divert the most from the official histories.

I'm very glad I found this book in the library as it's £100 on abebooks. I think I will scan my favourite stories before giving it back.

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.

I randomly found a lovely old edition of this book at the Oxfam by our house. I'd not come across any books by Georg Ebers before but really liked the idea of 19th century fiction about Egypt written by an Egyptologist. The book was quite lovely. It was a lot like Greek drama with much of the action taking place of stage and people sitting around in rooms talking. There was a lot of discussion about the rights of women and how they were treated in various cultures. The book was partly set in Egypt, partly Greece and partly Persia. There was a good intermingly of people from different civilisations and while there while there was quite a bit of romance and war. Though with so much based on historical accounts there were far too many unpleasant things that happened for it to be really viewed as a historical romance. There was almost too much going on in the book and at times I felt like I'd lost track of who some of the characters were and all their motivations. I think this is definitely one that is worth reading a second time to pick up on all the things that were missed the first time. I also definitley want to try and find more books of his.

I have absoultely adored every other book by Kundera that I've read but I just didn't care for this one at all. It started quite well with an interesting look at the way we are being photographed constantly and the way people long after immortality of some sort. The main character Agnes was quite intersting in her hatred of being constantly surronded by people. The first few pages were very beautifully done. But then I found I was starting to loose interest. For the book was almost a collection of mini essays disguised as a novel. The novelist at one point said that it was his intention to write a novel that could not be turned into a film. But it didn't make for much of an enjoying read. It was divided up into sections, some sections about the characters being created for the novel and the novelist and some about Goethe. As much as I like history and German Romantacism I found the parts about Goethe quite dull as they were all about this girl who wanted to have an affair with him and Kundera was very harsh on the girl. The plot then returned to Agnes' family. But I just couldn't bring myself to care about her sister or her husband. There was a lot of enforced gender roles that annoyed me. I kept reading because I liked his other books so much. I skimmed the last half towards the end hoping I'd start liking it again but alas it wasn't meant to be.

This was written in 1991, much later than his other books that I read and liked. So I think I won't try reading any more later ones. I was quite disappointed.

I've had the Chinese lian huan hua for this story for a couple years. Last week I found an English translation that contained much bigger woodcuts and decided to read them together. The English version was missing about 15-20 pages from the Chinese. The translation also missed out on a lot of things that were covered in the Chinese version, like how Monkey was always able to tell it was the "demon" in disguise and not in fact a helpless human. But having the English version definitely helped me with some of the more obscure words, names, etc. I definitely wouldn't really recommend the English version on its own as a story, it is too simplified and not as interesting, though the larger woodcuts are very nice. I'm really glad I finally got around to reading this. I have some other Monkey stories in the same format that now I think I will also attempt to read. After reading the last comic in traditional characters it was nice to be able to go back to simplified again. It encouraged me to read more of my Monkey books.

I read Hecuba because it was this year's Greek Play at Kings and I always like to have read the play before I go and see it. It was very good. Once again another lovely Greek play where there are lots of women characters. Hecuba is quite woe begotten loosing her children and having her daughter sacrificed but she does at least get a bit of revenge. Children of Hercules was my least favourite. Too many men and not enough interesting things happening and of course everytime Iolaus was on stage I was picturing the tv show! Andromache I really liked. There were interesting dynamics between the women characters, even if they were mostly just fighting over men. Hippolytus was also very good. The gods causing havoc in the lives of mortals and women committing suicide as a form of protest and blame. It also had some of the nicest lines of the four.

I did enjoy these plays a lot though I finished them quite a few days ago and am having a hard time remembering all the details already!

A friend of mine gave me a copy of this book. I'm not sure it's something I would have bought for myself as I'm not a big fan or art criticism. But I found I really enjoyed this book. It's a collection of translations of mainly Song and Tang texts on painting and the nature of art and artists. While there was a lot of technical details about paintings and what makes paintings good there was also a nice ammount of social history. Rather than do a big review I will give some quotes as examples of the types of things being talked about.

The first thing that I loved was from a preface written by Wei Hung in 25ce to the shijing. He said, "The music of the epoch of good government is quiescent and therefore joyful, for the governing is harmonious. The music of the period of confusion is discontented and therefore wrathful, for the government is deteriorated. The music of the country running to ruin is complaining and mediating, for the people reached misery" (60 I just loved this so much. There in an early 1st century CE Chinese text you have a Confucian explaing why Punk happens!!!!!!

Even in the early texts from the 4th century there were a lot of people writing about the greatness of the past and how modern art is rubbish.

Chen Yen Yuan had a long passage on the importance of conservation and preservation of paintings and how you should handle them not to damage them. "One should never look at calligraphy and painting near a fire or candle. Also, one should never look at calligraphy in wind or sunlight, or when one has just been eating drinking spitting or blowing the nose without washing one's hands. .. All calligraphy and painting if unrolled from time to time may be kept free of insects and dampness.

This theme was returned to later when Chao Hsi-Ku talked about care and display of paintings. Of only having a few in a room and then rotating these. "the silk of antique paintings is so brittle that when touched even lightly, it will invariably be damaged and once ruined it can never be restored. The greatest precautions must be taken against stains left by wine or oil from food. One should, by all means, write thse instructions on a piece of paper and paste it between the windows as a notice to visitors. Only then should guest be brought into the room for viewing". (239) Tang Hou added to this saying "one should not look at paintings under the lamplight nor with wine by one's side after drinking to excess. Furthermore, do not show paintings to people without taste. To unroll a painting in an inappropriate manner is extremly harmful to it. As for the ignorant and decietful, they insist upon looking at paintings and thoughtlessly criticize their quality and style. They basically lack understanding of these works and carelessly judge their geniueness or spuriousness. This causes one to be short tempered" (259)

One part that was interesting mentioned how somebody became a great painted by listening to the criticism of ordinary people who saw his paintings. This was totally differnet to the idea of artist as genius and art not being something that ordinary people can understand. Though this was during the Tang and later in the Song and Yuan there were many who wrote that there were things that normal people or supposed scholars could not understand. A later painter was critical that when people found out that he was a painter they wanted him to paint very specific things but when he couldn't they became annoyed with him.

There was also a lot of talk about how it was important not just to capture the likeness of something but also the spirit. Thus painting became not just a physical activity but was another judge of how much of a sage the painter was in his ability to look beyond the surface of things. Portraits were supposed to not just show the appearance but describe the mind of the individual. "otherwise nobles and commoners would be alike in visage though their minds differ. The valued and the worthless, the honoured and the detested, how then would they be differentiated? Even though they would have formal likeness of what benefit would this be?" (230)

I did enjoy this book, particularly the Song part, as there were many names that had become familiar to me while I was writing my dissertation and it was nice to revist them and see what they had to say on other topics. I greatly enjoyed this book and will have to read lots more books on Chinese history again this year.

Bill bought this book at the British Museum and when he finished it he suggested I read it as he thought I'd like it as it had lots of intresting things to say about writing and social history. I read it and really liked it. The texts were all aranged by different subjects, intellectual setting of cosmos and state, the king, the life of the land, religious life and the other life. It was mostly translations of papri with some inscriptions. The book was mostly primary sources with some explanations of the texts giving them context and when they were written.

I found it interesting that a book seprated out the religious writing from the writing about death and the afterlife as this is what most people tend to think of when they think of Egyptian religion. But the book focused much more on the lives of more ordinary people. There were letters from husbands to their dead wifes and vice versa. The letter from the wife to her dead husband asked him to heal the servant girl who was ill and being haunted by ghosts and evil spirits. It was all very fascinating.

The section on the life of the land was also really interesting. My favourite text was why it was good to be a scribe and the problems of all the other professions. But there was also insight into lives of people. There was a very fussy man who was giving lots of instructions on how his household should be run while he was away on business and what they were doing right and much more on what they were doing wrong. There was some great graffti from soliders on campaings, and it was amusing to see insults that followed standard formulas but in reverse. It really gave a good glimpse of society during the period.

I would recommend this book to people who've already read a bit about Egyptian history but are interested in finding out more details.

I've been a bit obsessed with Chinese gardens since I first read Dream of Red Chamber (红楼梦) and the setting was a giant garden and I was trying to picture what it was like. Suzhou has some of the best gardens in all of China. I remember an old LJ friend years ago who was from Suzhou being very surprised a foreigner knew about the gardens there as it was something that only Chinese people were interested in (which is probably why this book was discounted).

The book is lovely. It's an English translation of a Chinese book and as such has all the nice Chinese design elements to it with lovely borders and photos and great use of colours. The book is really great as it gives a map of Suzhou, history of the gardens in general and then information on specific gardens. It includes photos, map, names of all the pavillions (in English, Chinese and pinyin). The only thing it's missing is the name of the gardens in Chinese! But not too difficult to figure those out. It even includes what the entrance fees are (or were in 2004). The pictures are lovely and the author really manages to give a different feel for each garden and to bring out what the best features and differences about each one are. I really do hope to get to Suzhou some day and visit the gardens but in the meantime this book is a lovely way to see them.

This is quite an interesting tale. It set up is quite short, a man is kicked out of his kingdom and travels to a far off land. He meets up with a princess and they decide to elope together. She sends him off with a bracelet to buy them provisions to travel and then the majority of the book is the princess having a conversation with Indra about the role of the wife, how her and her husband are destined to be together. Some of it is quite hard reading as it is largely along the vein of the husband must be lord and master and a woman is not happy or complete unless a man is ruling over her! Not quite the ideal one would like in a fairy tale, but once again all is not as it seems as it turns out the woman is a goddess in disguise and has been set up to make fun of all the other gods (which she manages perfectly). While some of it made for some uncomfortable reading it was still an interesting story. I have no idea how closely these stories are to the Indian originals, there's a lot of footnotes about difficult words to translate, but I also have the feeling that some of them may have been changed for the intended audience. Still I'm finding this series fascinating.

This is the first non-Claudine book of Collette's that I've read. I have to say I did not care for it at all. I don't really like her male characters and this was all from the male's point of view. It was a teen romance about a 16 year old, wanting to marry a 15 year old and having an affair with an older woman that didn't do anything for him. It just felt so pointless. The only thing it did was make me want to eat seafood. Not really one I can recommend.

Friday while Bill and I were book shopping I noticed three bindings that looked familiar and sure enough found three more of F.W. Bain's translations of Indian stories. This one is undoubtably my favourite so far. I sat and read it in one go and it was very lovely. Even the preface was beautiful, talking about the romance of the moon. The story was told in a very lovely style. A swan relating how he'd been cursed to a goddess, the tragedy of his former life. It was done very much in the style of a spoken story, with repeated phrases at the end of each chapter. The story was sad and romantic and it had a lovely ending. I really loved it.

It took me quite a few months to read through the poems in here despite it being such a short collection. It is wonderful to have a book of all the poems that survive of a 9th century woman poet. The poems are lovely. They deal with the issues of lonlieness, depression, lost love, and the great frustration of being a woman poet and scholar in a male dominated society where it is not possible to get the recognition you deserve. There are some absolutely beautiful turns of phrase.

I bought this edition because it is bilingual, my Chinese isn't to the point where I can read poetry without the help of an English version. But I was quite disapointed with the layout of this book. The Chinese text was in traditional characters in very small font at the bottom of the page, and for longer poems, on the following page. This meant a lot of flipping back and forth. It was also hard to see. I really think they should have made the characters bigger.

The poetry was beautiful and a fascinating glimpse into women's lives at the time. The biography of her life was brilliant so I will share it here,

"A woman of the Tang dynasty (618-907) from Chang'an by name Youwei second byname Huilan, She was fond of study and had some talent. She became a lesser wife of the official Li Yi. The love between them became decayed, and Xuanji became a Daoist nun in the Xian Yi temple. Because a novice died from a beating administered by Xuanji for disciplinary reasons, Xuanji was condemned and executed. She left one book of poems.

So much information and tragedy is such a few lines. I will savour this book and re-read it many times.

I ordered this from ABE after finishing the other translation by Bain. It's the same sort of Methuan edition with lovely paper, frontispiece and just generally gorgeous book. However, I was a little disappointed in the story this time. This may have been partly because of a very gendered introduction talking about the "nature" of men and women which annoyed me greatly. The story was written nicely, but the main character was a bit of an idiot. He had a dream about a beautiful woman who he met and turned out to be the Queen of the land, (she'd been gifted by the King to one of his men and so was married and kept by someone else). The narrator fell "madly in love" which really was just lust with her and sacrificed his kingdom to spend the night with her, then when he returned she didn't want anything to do with him. The first two thirds of the book were a little annoying because the narrator was so stupid, but then when it was the Queen's turn to talk about herself and her independence and choices it was suddenly brilliant. She slept with the guy cause she'd felt sorry for him, she said it was nothing to do with her that he'd misinterpreted her actions as love, and she was not to blame or be held responsible for the things he did out of lust for her. The ending was sad and brutal but the commentary afterwards was quite nice.

I found this in the SOAS library, I thought it would be quite expensive to buy, but there are cheap copies on Amazon and I think I will have to get my own copy. There were three Ming stories here. I would question the use of "femme fatale" to describe them however. There was little that reminded me of the villans (heroines) from film noir and pulp. They were women who wanted sex, but that's not that uncommon in Chinese stories, and they lacked the scheming abilities and long term planning for personal wealth and power which I think of when I think of the Femme fatale. That said I did really enjoy the translations and the stories.

What made these stories interesting were they were about common people not the elite as most literature from this period is. There were no noble scholars taking exams, instead there were people going about their daily lives and living in fear of being put to death or tortured by the state. The stories were all written or edited by Feng Menglong from his book, san yan (three worlds), while McLaren talks about the idea of the femme fatale I tihnk her introduction would have done better to talk a little bit more about Feng and the time he was writing (she does in the individual introductions to the stories mention changes he makes etc). It would have been interesting to know more about the other stories in the collection, and why she chose to translate these three. For other stories of his have already been translated into English and it would have been interesting to compare these with those.

The first story, The calamitous Golden Eel, started like a lot of stories about a spirit being caught and being asked to set free and offering rewards. But in this story the man didn't set it free but brought it home and before he could decide what to do his wife has killed it and cooked it for his dinner. Needless to say things go rather poorly for the family from then on. They have a daughter who has a series of marriages and causes the death of her husbands, one of her lovers kills her parents and then comes and lives with her until they both die. It seems a tale for amusement rather than moral lesson.

Lovers murdered at a rendevous was the least memorable of the three. The main character is described as sexually insasiable, she has a string of unsuccessful marriages until she is finally happily married off to a traveling salesman. However, as soon as he leaves on business she starts up an affair. Her husband figures out she's having an affair and catches them in the act. It's a fairly straight forward story but the man begging for his life at the end of the story was quite harrowing.

The last story, A squabble over a single copper cash leads to strange calamities, was my favourite. It is much longer than the others. The introduction says that is portrays "realism equivalent to Zola" but I have to disagree. While there is a great cast of ordinary characters they are mostly portrayed as totally reprehensible people. (Rather like Morrison's portrayal of the poor in Child of the Jago). To me the closest thing I could make an analogy to would be a slasher film! One by one the circumstances twist and turn and lead to another person dying. Often in quite brutal and gruesome ways. This is the story where people are terrified of the magistrate, and indeed it is the government that tortures and kills the majority of the people in the story. However, there are still bits that feel quite real, the long scene at the begining when one of the children swindles the other out of his coin (and starts the whole cycle of murder going). There is a scene where the husband orders his wife to commit suicide to prove her innocence, and the woman becomes very distraut and looks for a place to kill herself. The husband then turns around and blames his neighbours wife for her death. It was quite an interesting portrayal and twist on the virtous woman. Even though his wife wasn't innocent I think the author still showed pity for her.

So it was an interesting collection of stories and one I shall definitely have to get my own copy of.

I randomly found this at Any ammount of Books on Charring Cross road. It was a beautiful Methuen edition, lovely paper with rough cut edges and beautiful typeface. It was a totally gorgeous little book. I'd not heard of the translator or the story before but I thought I would try it. I completely loved it! It was a wonderful story that was a legend about two lovers who were doomed to be re-born and not know each other on Earth. To be reunited but only when one slayed the other. Both partners had to go on quests to find each other, and it briefly ended in tragedy until the next rebirth. It was a lovely story and the way it was told was beautiful. There were also copious footnotes at the bottom to explain the puns in the original language or words that just didn't translate quite right. It reminded me a lot of Dunsany and Morris, as soon as I was finished I went to ABEBOOKS and discovered that the author has at least 4 other translations availble also published by Methuan. I ordered one right away and am definitely planning on getting all the rest. This really was a most excellent find.

I borrowed this from SOAS initially as I thought it was a modern Chinese women writer writing about other women. Turns out it was a man but that really didn't make much difference. The stories here were all mostly character sketches of the people who lived in North Eastern China. (In particular Heilongjiang province). A lot of the stories while quite short spanned decades so you didn't get much of a sense of personality for the characters more an overall theme. That said it did create quite a vivid picture of what life was like. The stories were mostly tragic, death and seperated lovers were common themes. There was a nice blending of traditional and modern culture. It was sometimes hard to tell exactly when the stories were set as the mixture of old ways (like foot binding) got mixed in with the modern (like tower blocks). I must admit I prefer older Chinese stories but I did end up enjoying these more than I thought I would.

I thought this book was ok. Diary entries between a married couple giving different perspectives on their rather unsuccessful marriage. That was kinda interesting, though the husband was a complete idiot! I did kinda like the wife, though I can't really put into words why. For me I thought the ending ruined the book, it was too much explanation of what "really" happened which was answering questions that shouldn't have been answered and raising more. I think it would have been much better without that. My favourite parts were talking about the calligraphy and the brushes and paper used for the diaries. That probably means I didn't enjoy it that much but it was such a quick read it didn't really bother me. I must admit I've not got much interest in modern Japanese lit, though I do still want to read Tale of Genji.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍)the movie is the reason I started to get interested in Chinese history and language. I hope to someday be able to read the original novels by Wang Dulu, but my Chinese isn't quite up to martial arts novels yet. I can however manage comics. I found an English translation of a Hong Kong comic adaptation of the novel and bought it in the hopes that it would help me track down the original Chinese version. (Which sadly seems out of print). The comic itself is very pretty, it has a good use of colour, Su Lien is very pretty (though Li Mu bai is kinda funny looking). I'm not sure how well martial arts work in comics, you loose all the beautiful fluidity of the moves. Plotwise it seems like the story has been really simplified too. However, it was nice to see the earlier lives of the two main characters. I will definitely have to see if I can find the original versions of these.

After enjoying the masterpiece so much I thought I'd read all the Zola novels in order. This is the first in the series and it's quite awkward. The book starts with two young characters who are in love and wanting to join the republican militia which is well done, but then he spends the next third of the book going back into their family history. It goes quickly without any depth and while the people he describe go on to have their own novels in more depth, here everyone just feels like terrible chiches, horrible poor people being nothing but horrible, but there's just no depth to it. There were some interesting women characters but I just didn't feel like they were properly explored. Eventually he gets back to the main story of Silvere and Miette. Their story is great, but I just didn't care about the extended family at all. Though apparently the English translation that I read is supposed to be terrible and has a lot of the more controversial French material removed. I really need to spend more time studying French so I can read Zola in the original!

This book is mainly a translation of two quite different texts on Taoist thunder magic from the 14th century. They are attributed to the Taoist Wang Wen-Ch'ing (1093-1153)a court Taoist. This book is pretty much a straight translation, all the analysis of the text are found in a seperate article (Which i don't have access to via City). But thankfully SOAS does have 3 other books by him (ok SOAS has 10 other books but the rest are in German) so I'm looking forward to reading those.

But this book was really great. It was very interesting as the rituals in the first half of the book were a completely different style, and belonged to a completely different "school" than the rituals in the second half.
The first half focused almost entirely on inner alchemy and it's uses for calling rain and performing Thunder rituals. It was much more esoteric and much more digusting, the physical components including peeing and shoving things up your nostrils. The secound half of the book looked at much more traditional Taoist approaches involving writing registers, amulets and other magical proscriptions. Interestingly enough they also included blood sacrifices (quite rare in Taoism) though it was said to do these rituals sparingly. I am interested to see how what is normally considered to be two quite different parts of Taoism can come from the same practitioner.

For me the secound half was the most interesting. Some of the rituals and the descriptions sounded more like stories, summoning generals, using them to fight dragons or demons, and then sending your spirit helpers home. You could easily picture it in a Hurak film. There were interesting discussions on different hells and positions of different generals that could be summoned.

I have only a few minor complaints about this book. It wasn't clearly defined where the texts ended and Reiter's commentary began and this made it confussing in several places. It was also a little difficult to figure out where the original sources of the translations were taken from in the first part of the text. In the secound half several amulets were discussed, unfortunately pictures of these were not included which was a shame.

Apart from that this was a very interesting book, a nice translation of 12th century magical texts that are not likely to be found easily elsewhere.

I can't believe I'd never read this before. I love Robots, I love robot revolts and the end of man. This is the book where we get the word robot from and I'd still not gotten around to reading it! But I am SOOOO glad I did. It was brilliant. Everything that modern scifi has been trying to say about robots since is all here!!! It's the perfect continuation on from Frankenstein. It's depressing and sees the destruction of the human race, yet it has a happy ending. I would love to see it performed as a play.

I loved the fact that the robots were perfectly humanoid in appearance (and to be ultimately ironic wouldn't be classed as robots in today's scifi terms). That they were originally invented to save labour but ended up being used by nationalist governments to fight war. I liked that there was a woman fighting for robot rights and trying to make them more human. There were a few gender issues but overall I found it throughly enjoyable.

It really should be read by everyone who likes robots. It's everything that Cameron and BSG stole and re-packaged and honestly I think the original does it much better.

This graphic novel is in German but was origianlly written in French. It was a lovely dark medieval fantasty. Set in a Europe with dragons, but not really magic just magical beasts it focuses on a castle that is being besiged by an army led by a fierce woman warrior. For a book that is mostly about a battle, there are an awful lot of scenes that are characters talking and plotting, which is a good thing. There are some great strong women characters (some of which that are related to dragons). There is palace intrigue, and a creepy bishop. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series, though I'll definitely go for the French as it's much easier for me to read.

This is published by the Egypt museum in Berlin. I was lucky to find a copy for 1 euro in a 2nd hand shop so didn't have to pay the 10 it cost for a new one. But it's a LOVELY story. The story of the shipwrecked sailor who ends up on an island that has everything and a nice large snake looks after him. It's very sweet and has nice kind monsters. The illustrations are all based on actual Egyptian ones and quite lovely.

I'd read Hoffna's the Devil's Elixirs before and liked it so was pleased to discover this in a charity shop. It was a wonderful story of murder set against the backdrop of the "affair of the poisons" in Paris. The atmosphere was very dark and claustrophobic. Everyone was paranoid and there was much fear of the police. The main character Mme de Scuderi was a great heroine, 73, sharp and compassionate, she was also a force to be reckoned with and even the King listened to her. The plot was interesting, dramatic with lots of twists and turns. Definitely one I'd recommend. I shall have to attempt to find more Hoffman, once again I wish I knew German better so I could read him in the original! :(

I was so excited to find a copy of this book that I bought it brand new, full price, from an actual bookstore. The Dun Huang documents are my favourite historical finds, an amazing collection of tens of thousands of Buddhist, Taoist and secular documents, written in Chinese and many central Asian languages found sealed in a cave at the beginning of the 20th century. They had been sealed up for almost 900 years and included both printed and hand written works. The find have been an incredible source for the study of Chinese and Central Asian history and religion. However, despite the British Library containing a huge collection of them (including the world’s oldest dated printed book) few people have heard of them. So I was SO excited when I came across this Japanese novel that had been written about them in the 60s. The novel was a fictional account of how the documents came to be deposited in the cave. One of the ideas that historians were debating at that time was that the scrolls had been hidden away because of an invasion (this idea has since been disproved). But this is the central idea of this story. It would be easy to criticise this as a Japanese retelling, in that the only religious documents mentioned are Buddhist and the book focuses nearly entirely on the military aspects of the story. It started very interestingly with a young scholar failing to take his exams and instead having a dream about the situation on the frontier. He ended up going to the frontier and fighting on both sides of the war, discovering Buddhism and hiding the scrolls away from the invading army.

I quite enjoyed this book. The sections on the army and the battles got a little too long. The history was ok, but obviously not how the documents were hidden. The characters seemed not to be that detailed and there were hardly any women. But still it was an interesting version of the story. It ignored a lot of the most interesting things about the documents, that they were printed as well as hand written, that they were in various stages of disrepair, and that they were not simply Buddhist, which sheds further light on the intermingling of religion in China during this period. As the Buddhist monastery contained many rare Taoist scriptures. In fact all references to Taoism had been stripped out, down to the fact that it was a Taoist priest who discovered and sold off the documents at the beginning of the 20th century, he was mentioned by name, but not his religious affiliation. It should definitely be read as fiction not as history, but as fiction it was quite good. The pacing seemed a bit strange, if it had been a longer book this would have probably been more annoying but as it was quite short that was fine. I think it would be interesting to read a more recent Chinese novel about the events, but despite its shortcomings I still enjoyed this.

I first heard of Zola with an extract from this book, and it was one of the most incredible things I'd ever read. It took me awhile to find a copy of this in English. I've read other Zola books before this but this was definitely my favourite. I admire what Zola was trying to do, write reality as it happened, but I feel that in a lot of his books he falls short doing that, making the humans more miserable than they need to be, using plot devices to make things go from worse to worse. Here there was none of that. Here it really felt like he was capturing the world as it was.

There were some lovely speeches, and some lovely scenes of Paris in the 60s and 70s. I loved that while the author was non-judgemental in having characters living together and having children without being married, the character in the book that represented him, wasn't able to invite the women in the unmarried couples to his house for dinner because that would be "Improper".

I throughly enjoyed this. I think it is definitely the best Zola I've read so far, and I think I will have to try and read more.

My Hungarian friend bought me this book as Szabo is the most popular Hungarian author and this was supposed to be a very good translation. I think the translation was good as it definitely had a style to it, that I think is hard to do with most translations. The book was very enjoyable and very different. The book was a character study really about the relationship between two women, one a successful author and the other her hardworking cleaner. One of the interesting things was the fact that in the story the author was young and the cleaner was old, and there were a lot of issues brought up about the difference of age, however the actual author of the story was in her 70s I think when she wrote it! I think if this book has been modern and English I would have liked it less, but I found the history and the culture and how it affected the two women to be also very interesting. The relationship was very lively, at first the old woman hardly spoke but then she'd have huge temper tantrums and scream at the younger women for her inconsideration. I think I should probably have liked the older woman better than I did. She was totally nuts and in the end died because she was incapable of asking for help and too ashamed to admit weakness. It seemed rather pointless to me. (Which I think means I missed the point of the novel). But it was interesting to read something different and nice to read something which focused on women's relationships so much (to the point where the author's husband was virtualy a non-character only the old woman, the author and the dog seemed truly definied).

When I started reading this I realised it was a sequel to the Wickerwork woman which I'd recently read, I then discovered that wickerwork woman was itself a sequel to the Elm Tree on the Mall. Of the three this one was definitely my favourite. Unfortunately it was a little difficult to concentrate on, and now I hope to go back and re-read it. The characters in this book, while still introspective, seemed to be living more active lives. The main characters being loosely connected through the man everyone was wanting to become bishop. As such it was an interesting glimpse into their lives and society a many different level. One thing that really struck me about it was it's beautiful and articulate comdemnation of anti-semitism, ending with if you don't like the Jews you should really give them back their god. It was such a refreshing and wonderful piece, particularly for its time, and made me love Anatole France even more. There's one more in this series which I will have to read and then I must go back and re-read the whole thing from the begining and pay better attention this time!

This was the first time I've read a Loeb classic edition and I have to say, even though the dual text was lost on me, I really liked them. The size was perfect for reading. The edition I had also had the Phonecian Women and Orestes but I'd already read both of those so I only read Helen.

I can't help think that there was some huge cultural context missing while reading this book. While I could appreciate the impact of totally making the whole Trojan war pointless, and making Helen good and a devout wife, it just didn't seem as emotional to me as it probably did to the ancient Greeks. The closest analogy I can think of is the books that try to make Satan out as the good guy. What this reminded me of the most was "fix it fic", when someone just can't stand the ending that was given and needs to make it so the characters don't do the awful things they are supposed to do and end up living happily ever after.

What I thought was interesting was the fact that in this play most of the parts were female, and it was the women who had all the brains and important descisions to make, Helen came up with their plan to escape, Theonoe had the gift of prophecy and was the one who decided if Helen and her husband could escape. And yet (according to the introduction) Euripides still got into lots of trouble by the women of Greece for the way he portrayed them.

The play itself was alright, not as interesting as Aschelyus, as not much happened and there were no surprises. But it was still quite good. It's being put on at King's this week as their Greek play and I'm looking forward to watching it.

Back in January I decided that I should read at least one Chinese book a month and I started with this one, which I only just finished. I think it was a bit too ambitious, at least to read it that quickly (It was about 200 pages long)! The book is dual language, English and Chinese. I found I had to read the English first. The Chinese was very literary, it had a lovely style, but because of that was quite difficult. Having the English was nice though as it made it much easier to recognise the new vocabulary words, of which there were quite a few. The story of the Peony Pavilion is one of my favourites and I did quite enjoy this version of the story. Unfortunately my favourite part, Du Liniang in Helll, was only about 2 pages of the 200, in the opera it comprises a large part of the middle third. However, there was a brilliant moment when Liu Mengmei and his friend were sitting around lamenting that it was so depressing that they were so well educated and yet found it so difficult to find any work. I think part of my problem with reading this so slowly meant that the story dragged out quite a bit and I found myself getting bored, particularly as it’s a story I know so well. I think for the moment I need to stick with shorter stories. This weekend I bought 4 new Chinese language books in China town that I think will keep my interest better. I managed to read two thirds of one on Sunday afternoon. So I think those will keep me busy for the next few weeks and hopefully get me more excited about studying Chinese again.

I'd not read any Sand bfore and I must admit I didn't care for this one at all. I think growing up in the countryside has given me an in-built hatred for anything that pictures "idyllic peasants". If I'm going to read novels about the countryside I want them to be about people filled with hate for their society, not paragon's of virtue.

The problem with this book was that everyone was just too happy and perfect. I felt sorry for the main character Marie, even though she was pure good and empty-headed, she was nearly raped and then ended up getting married at 16 to a man who was 28 and already had three children. I just couldn't believe that any 16 year old should be a step mother to three kids! And that was the "happy ending".

After the main story ended there were details about the folk wedding rituals. Which I'm afraid I just found a bit dull. The style, even in translation was fine, but I'm afraid the rest just didn't do anything for me.

I must say this was not Anatole France's best work. It didn't have much of a plot, a husband caught his wife having an affair and she ended up moving out. It was mostly conversations about the state of France, which were quite interesting, but hard to put into context. While I can read Collette and have a reasonable understanding of French culture at the time, this just left me a little confused. The biggest problem was that the characters seemed a bit too much like caricatures than real people. There were some touching scenes and some ammusing scenes. But overall I felt it was lacking something. Of course after the high emotion of the Radclyff Hall I just finished I'm guessing anything would have felt a little disappointing.

This was the first book I bought while we were away in Hay-on-Wye. It's two nice novella's of Collettes. Of the two I prefered Chance Acquaintances, it was a nice funny and quite strange story about Collette (and her fantastic cat) ending up in a hotel for the summer outside of Paris. The story was quite simplistic with little plot but full of odd characters and I enjoyed it a great deal.

Julie I found I didn't enjoy quite so much. It wasn't written in the first person and was less humourous. The main character was quite sad in many ways. She was in her 40s hanging out with people in their 20s, with no money and no goals besides getting more money to get more things. It really was the downside of decadence. Julie and her friends struck me as the people you always wanted to avoid at parties/clubs as they thought they were more interesting or intellectual than they were. In many ways she reminded me of Emma Boveray, failing without direction in her life. While this novella had more of a plot it wasn't really one that I liked as much. Even though there were more hints of bisexuality ;)

Still I did enjoy both of these translations and I will definitely read more Collette. I hope one day my French is good enough to read her in the original!

This is one of her older books but I'd not managed to get around to reading it before. I thought that it was about Neo-Confucians, which I tend not to like, so put it off. But I needed more social history background for my dissertation so picked it up. I'm glad I did. Yuan Tsai was an elite figure in Song China but he was not a neo-Confucian.

This book is divided up into two parts, the first Ebrey's analysis of social history and her interpretations from using the book, the second half is a direct translation of Yuan Tsai's 12th century work. I have to say I enjoyed Yuan's book much more than I thought I would. He came across as a very sensible man. I was also particularly impressed by (some) of his ideas about women, on the down side he did say that widows would sleep around on you, slave girls were prone to gossip etc. But he also said that women could perform the ancestral rites for you and were just as good as men. He also said that if a woman was widowed it was good for her to be able to read and do maths so she'd be capable of running her husband's family and business.

It was interesting to see how very sensible he was about family relations and why people had problems getting on. This was contrasted with his very snobbish opinions about how the lower classes were all out to rob you. There was quite an interesting bit about how to prevent suicide among your servants (because suicide was a common problem for the elite families). As well as the right and wrong way to attempt to revive a servant you found hanging.

From a printing point of view this book was interesting as he said he had many friends copy the work before it was printed and later had it printed because demand for copies was so high. It was printed twice during his lifetime (though none of these copies survive). And was later reprinted in collections in the Ming and Qing dynasty.

I enjoyed this very much. I think this was one of the most readable primary sources I've found and I enjoyed Ebrey's insights.

Where this not German literature I would say this book very much falls into the Gothic category. The stories were full of evil catholics, unwed mothers and unspeakable activities by the church. The style (in translation) seems half way between a William Morris style re-creation of medivael stories and the gothic novels of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Some of the short stories are a little odd in places, the timing seemed strange, stories seemed to end abruptly of go on too long in places. Michael Kohlmas started very strongly, a man's misfortune and his rampage of revenge, but then it dissolves into court cases and politics.

There isn't much in the way of characterisation, but the stories make up for that in atmosphere. While in many ways the stories are morality tales there is an awful lot of gray area, and it is frequently the (Catholic) church itself that hands out the misfortune.

I found this to be an interesting and different collection of stories. As always whenever I read anything translated from German I wish my German were good enough to read it in the original as they do have some wonderfully gloomy stories.