Wednesday reading
Aug. 21st, 2013 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitIt's Wednesday again. How does that happen?
Currently Reading:
I've been re-reading some Sherlock Holmes stories. The good thing about re-reading is that you can skip over the case details and just focus on Holmes and Watson. I've been thinking about how Holmes behaves in The Sign of Four; of course the last line, where Holmes basically says, "So, you're getting married, huh? Well in that case I'll just shoot up ALL THE COCAINE, so there!" has stuck in my head in all its passive-aggressive glory. What hadn't entirely registered before is how hard Holmes tries to show that he can be the perfect companion (so what does Watson need with a wife???). He notices when Watson is tired and makes him lie down and plays soft music to help him sleep. He arranges nice meals and makes damn sure Watson notices: "I have oysters and a brace of grouse, with something a little choice in white wines.--Watson, you have never yet recognized my merits as a housekeeper." (Athelney Jones joins them for this meal, but Holmes didn't know he was going to be there--the effort certainly wasn't for his benefit.) He talks charmingly "on miracle plays, on mediaeval pottery, on Stradivarius violins, on the Buddhism of Ceylon" and seems quite another man from the Holmes of A Study in Scarlet who insists that it's a waste of his brain space to know about anything unconnected to crime. (Just as SoF Watson, with his wounded leg, occasionally seems quite another Watson from the one in Scarlet with the bullet in his shoulder! Oh, Conan Doyle, you needed a story bible like no other writer.) Holmes also calls Watson "my dear boy" and worries that a long hike across London will be too much for Watson's leg.
I just want to hug him, poor man, to make up for Watson's obliviousness.
Not that Watson's marriage seems to come between them all that much, in the end. Watson starts out "A Scandal in Bohemia" claiming that he hardly sees Holmes anymore what with being so happily married, oh no, nothing interests Watson anymore but domesticity. Which would be why he's popping in to visit Holmes all the time, ignoring his medical practice if Holmes wants his help or just his company, accompanying Holmes to restaurants and concerts, and sleeping at Baker Street when he has a perfectly good home of his own. All typical of a happily married, domestically minded man.
(Incidentally, and going back to SoF, I wonder if anyone's ever written a fic where Mary Morstan refuses Watson's proposal because she and Mrs. Forrester are lovers. Doyle's description of Mrs. F. waiting up for Mary and holding her and comforting her makes that interpretation perfectly possible. And if Mary had the courage to be frank with Watson, which I think she might, it would do Watson some good to think about the possibilities for love outside of a conventional marriage.)
Recently Read:
I gave up on Charles Glass's The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II because it was much too focused on three individual stories and not very informative in a general sense.
I did finish Stephen Jay Gould's Full House, but my first impression of it as a rehash of themes Gould explored pretty thoroughly elsewhere turned out to be true. Also, I got the sense that Gould really just wanted to write a book about baseball, and I don't give a damn about baseball.
What I'm reading next:
Interlibrary loan finally sent me Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War by Alan Allport. It looks interesting and actually remembers to talk about POWs, yay!
And I should read Ben Aaronovitch's Broken Homes, but I'm kind of afraid to. Even though we're just in the middle of the big plot arc, I feel about the new book almost like I do/did about the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics and about new Discworld novels: no, I don't want more canon, thank you. More canon could ruin things for me. It's not a matter of declining quality, as it is with Discworld and was with Buffy, just that the story universe and certain characters in particular (*coughThomasNightingalecough*) have a definite shape in my mind and I don't want it changed, no. (This is one reason, I think, why my fannishness gravitates towards closed canons. In a closed canon, you can read or watch the whole thing and then develop theories and headcanon, instead of having big lags where you wait for new canon and start having Ideas which are then jossed. How do you people who prefer open canons stand the tension?)
Currently Reading:
I've been re-reading some Sherlock Holmes stories. The good thing about re-reading is that you can skip over the case details and just focus on Holmes and Watson. I've been thinking about how Holmes behaves in The Sign of Four; of course the last line, where Holmes basically says, "So, you're getting married, huh? Well in that case I'll just shoot up ALL THE COCAINE, so there!" has stuck in my head in all its passive-aggressive glory. What hadn't entirely registered before is how hard Holmes tries to show that he can be the perfect companion (so what does Watson need with a wife???). He notices when Watson is tired and makes him lie down and plays soft music to help him sleep. He arranges nice meals and makes damn sure Watson notices: "I have oysters and a brace of grouse, with something a little choice in white wines.--Watson, you have never yet recognized my merits as a housekeeper." (Athelney Jones joins them for this meal, but Holmes didn't know he was going to be there--the effort certainly wasn't for his benefit.) He talks charmingly "on miracle plays, on mediaeval pottery, on Stradivarius violins, on the Buddhism of Ceylon" and seems quite another man from the Holmes of A Study in Scarlet who insists that it's a waste of his brain space to know about anything unconnected to crime. (Just as SoF Watson, with his wounded leg, occasionally seems quite another Watson from the one in Scarlet with the bullet in his shoulder! Oh, Conan Doyle, you needed a story bible like no other writer.) Holmes also calls Watson "my dear boy" and worries that a long hike across London will be too much for Watson's leg.
I just want to hug him, poor man, to make up for Watson's obliviousness.
Not that Watson's marriage seems to come between them all that much, in the end. Watson starts out "A Scandal in Bohemia" claiming that he hardly sees Holmes anymore what with being so happily married, oh no, nothing interests Watson anymore but domesticity. Which would be why he's popping in to visit Holmes all the time, ignoring his medical practice if Holmes wants his help or just his company, accompanying Holmes to restaurants and concerts, and sleeping at Baker Street when he has a perfectly good home of his own. All typical of a happily married, domestically minded man.
(Incidentally, and going back to SoF, I wonder if anyone's ever written a fic where Mary Morstan refuses Watson's proposal because she and Mrs. Forrester are lovers. Doyle's description of Mrs. F. waiting up for Mary and holding her and comforting her makes that interpretation perfectly possible. And if Mary had the courage to be frank with Watson, which I think she might, it would do Watson some good to think about the possibilities for love outside of a conventional marriage.)
Recently Read:
I gave up on Charles Glass's The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II because it was much too focused on three individual stories and not very informative in a general sense.
I did finish Stephen Jay Gould's Full House, but my first impression of it as a rehash of themes Gould explored pretty thoroughly elsewhere turned out to be true. Also, I got the sense that Gould really just wanted to write a book about baseball, and I don't give a damn about baseball.
What I'm reading next:
Interlibrary loan finally sent me Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War by Alan Allport. It looks interesting and actually remembers to talk about POWs, yay!
And I should read Ben Aaronovitch's Broken Homes, but I'm kind of afraid to. Even though we're just in the middle of the big plot arc, I feel about the new book almost like I do/did about the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics and about new Discworld novels: no, I don't want more canon, thank you. More canon could ruin things for me. It's not a matter of declining quality, as it is with Discworld and was with Buffy, just that the story universe and certain characters in particular (*coughThomasNightingalecough*) have a definite shape in my mind and I don't want it changed, no. (This is one reason, I think, why my fannishness gravitates towards closed canons. In a closed canon, you can read or watch the whole thing and then develop theories and headcanon, instead of having big lags where you wait for new canon and start having Ideas which are then jossed. How do you people who prefer open canons stand the tension?)
