Books, Books, Books (and also, since when did thin=beautiful?)

[kangeiko]

I spent this week (post-exams, obviously) commuting to Kent and back, about 2 - 2 1/2 hours each way. The joys. The work's hard, and technical, and I could have really used a break after exams, and getting up at 6am is no fun, but it could be worse. I could be in the arse-end of north London I could be back at a former posting. Plus, my team is made of awesome.

Except that one of them vaguely frightens me. She's about eighteen, I think, doing a gap year, and she wears more make-up than anyone I have ever met, drag queens included. Not bad make-up, not poorly applied, but just very, very thick. I only just realised that she has freckles - she'd painted them all off. Thick orange make-up, to simulate a tan. Kohl around her eyes, all the way around. Cheekbones precisely sculpted. Hair waist-length, ironed flat and - maybe extensions?

One of my colleagues was mentioning that she was on a diet to put on weight, as she'd lost a few pounds during exam time and her mother had been horrified (with good reason - said colleague is on the thin side) when this 18 yr old said, astonished, "I'm sorry, did you say you're trying to put on weight??" By expression, you'd think she'd discovered a prediliction worse than paedophilia. She explained that her current size 0 state was a result of her mother enforcing it upon her, and her grandmother enforcing it upon her mother - "that's the way it is," she told me, as if sharing a secret. What for all women? "Yes. Unless you look good, your life sucks."

Which is where I had to bite my tongue because - this girl is, yes, very thin, yes, her hair is immaculate, yes, her clothes are pristine, yes, her make-up has given her a flawless airbrushed face - and, no, she doesn't look good. She looks terrifying, like she's wearing a mask. No one looks comfortable sitting next to her. Yet she obviously thinks that she looks good - and, by the standards of beauty magazines, she does. Thin, stylish, heavily made-up: like a silk rose, all surface.

Intellectual pursuits other than working out if my coworker comes in her own box include lots of reading:

One Last Look
by Susanna Moore

page count: 288 pages



I am horribly misquoting several postcolonial theorists when I say that womanhood is the personification of Empire - but I am sure that they will forgive me. Sisters Eleanor and Harriet accompany their brother Henry when he takes up his post as Governor-General in a province in India in 1836. Bemused, fascinated and a little horrified by the strange land they find themselves in, the siblings begin acting oddly by any standards - most certainly by the standards of the burgeoning ex-pat community there. The book is in the form is Eleanor's diary, and through her eyes we see the sisters as the epitome of English womanhood - well, almost. There's something very rotten in the core of the Empire, and as that core wears a corset and embroiders, the rot can only spread.

One Last Look is a feminist book and a postcolonial book, writing over the histories of those voiceless servants Eleanor strives to understand. It also lays open the peculiarities in the family unit one slice at a time, splaying them open in the stifling heat where there is no shade or hope of hiding them. Bit by bit, the lives of these lords and ladies unravel.

A fascinating, rich and convincing read.



*

My Life as Emperor
by Su Tong



The Emperor is dead. Long live the Emperor!

Or - not.

Su Tong wrote Raise the Red Lantern, so I was determined to give this mock-autobiography a try. The problem is, the Emperor is so fundamentally unlikeable that there is no point at which I don't wish him dead in some horrible way. It's not that he's cruel, it's that he appears to be a psychopath. He's kept awake by the crying of a woman whose fingers have been cut off, and who is banished to a far corner of the Forbidden City; to keep her quiet, he has her tongue cut out. When his slave is assaulted by his brother, he decides to kill the brother to protect his slave - but when the slave intervenes, viewing pain as more acceptable than encouraging the death of a prince, the Emperor, furious, has him whipped into unconsciousness. An honoured soldier attempts to protect the nation's borders from invasion, but almost loses his life in a battle; the Emperor shoots him, because seeing this great man wounded makes him think about mortality. Better to have him dead, no?

This is an exquisitely translated book, rich and vibrant. It also made me want to set it on fire, as the emperor is no less a complete bastard in his twenties than he is as a ten year old. Fabulous, and engrossing, but it doesn't half try your patience...



I have to go be asleep now. *fallover* 

*

ETA: I can't believe I forgot one! Just a quickie -

Fragile Things
by Neil gaiman

Funny stories, scary stories, witty stories - good, yes, but I still prefer Smoke & Mirrors... (mainly because I'd read some of these in various anthologies already, I think.)

Comments

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

Thin doesn't equal beautiful; only BEAUTIFUL does.

::grins and drinks half a litre of beer w/ lemonade::

Also, have you read my LJ yet? Lotsa posts you might find interesting!

[kangeiko]

Eeew, beer w/lemonade?!

Also, have you read my LJ yet? Lotsa posts you might find interesting!

My life has been eaten by Kent OMG! Up at 6am, leave the house at just before 7, no internet access at work, home between 8-9pm, bed by 10pm - time to asnwer emails (just!) but not to read lj. I promise, I will catch up after the end of next week. I'll be working in central london then, and will hopefully be able to get my very own internet connection for client work! (um. I may have got promoted. *scuffs shoes*)

[viciouswishes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, people who look like that scare me too.

When you mentioned Kent, I started thinking, "Yeah, I used to commute there too." But then I remembered there's more than on Kent. D'oh.

[kangeiko]

Hee! Yeah, I know what you mean. (I bet your Kent is prettier, and less full of obnoxious teenagers...)

[viciouswishes.livejournal.com]

I don't know. Kent here is pretty much considered the slum. I used to work there and not very pretty.