Driveby Reviews

I don't have time to write up a long, incoherent review for these. So you're getting short ones.

Title: Strange Attractions
Author: Emma Holly
Date Begun: December 28, 2006
Date Completed: December 29

Hot, hot, hot. Okay, so it's not exactly mentally challenging and I'm definitely not going to recommend it to my mother (because...ew), but this was a hot, fun read. It's also my first Holly - I know she generally comes pretty highly recommended, but personally I find contemporary romance dull. If I'm going to read about two heterosexuals getting it on, I want them to have pretty pretty clothes and historical context and I want to be able to fantasize about their messy, early deaths if I dislike them. But this book, has the traditional M/F pairing, as well as M/M and M/M/F and...oh, yes, I liked it. (Which really shouldn't be any surprise.) Grade: B

Title: The Name and Nature of Poetry (and other selected prose)
Author: A. E. Housman
In progress

I love Housman. I love him mostly for his poetry and the way the table of contents reads in my Collected Works of A. E. Housman. It goes like this: A Shropshire Lad, Last Poems, More Poems because, of course, he always thought he would stop writing poetry. And he didn't and thank god. Because his poetry is AWESOME. But so is his prose. This book, a Christmas present, has only very little on poetry. I'm great with that, poetry is always interesting and not difficult to relate to. But even his prefaces to translations of books I have never read (I've heard of Juvenal, but I have no clue who this Manilius guy was), which frequently contain lengthy quotes in languages I don't speak or even read, is so much fun. He's snobby and nasty in a way someone like Nancy Mitford (whom I also love!) could never be. Because Housman is being nasty about people who are long dead and generally regarded as terribly clever and it's always hilarious. At least, it is if you are a geek like me. (Although, clearly, I am not geeky enough. It's like the indie music geek who is confronted with a true classical music geek and...well, we know who wins that one.) Grade A

Title: Zelda
Author: Nancy Milford
Date Begun: December 20, 2006
Date Completed: January 1, 2007

Apparently, a lot of Amazon reviewers felt that Milford lacked compassion for her subject. I don't know what they're on, but I would really like some of it. Zelda is a good biography. Not only does the central focus (Zelda) remains sympathetic and interesting throughout - so do the other people in her life. It would be incredibly easy to make Fitzgerald into a villain (as happened to T. S. Eliot in this one biography of Vivian Eliot I read, but Eliot had real problems) and blame him for everything. It's clear, however, that Zelda and Scott are both responsible. Neither of them are blamed. I did find Milford's heavy use of primary sources a little jarring, but enjoyable all the same. She seems to have conducted many interviews with people who knew the Fitzgeralds personally (I suppose in 1970 many of them were still alive) and she draws from many letters and diaries. I admit, I'll probably enjoy any biography of someone who a) hated Hemingway and b) accused her husband of being gay for him. Points off, though, for ommitting the meeting with Edith Wharton. ("Yes, and then what?" You'd think the person who could get along with Henry James would get along with anyone!) Grade: A-