Rec begging - no, no! Don't run away!
I swear I have an actual point this time!
Val & I had a bizarre moment of synchronicity in independently deciding yesterday to check out Sarah Waters' writing since the name is around a LOT and it looks as though it should be Relevant To Our Interests (although I'm not sure I have any terribly solid personal recs for her, it's mostly random people whose taste I don't know terribly well and all that). Then we had a long conversation about lesbians women in fiction, and came to the conclusion that if there was a heap of good stuff out there it was clearly hiding from us. Therefore! Please rec us some fiction in which women play a substantial role. Or nonfiction! You know, we're easy. In the words of Val, "The goal of their lives/the story mustn't be to find a dude."
Pretty please?
(Off the top of my head the best things I've read on that front are The Summer Book and Fair Play, both by Tove Jansson. Girl Meets Boy is also good, and The First Person and Other Stories had some gems in too. Both of those are by Ali Smith. And I'm working my way through some other bits by her at the moment. Death: The Time Of Your Life, also, on the comics front, as far as I can remember; it's a spinoff from the main Sandman series by Neil Gaiman & it focuses on Hazel and Foxglove. That's probably all I've got without going away and thinking very very hard about this one though. Which I probably will. All day.)
On a completely unrelated note, I spoke to my mother on the phone last night, and she said, "I'm finally reading Marley and Me. [Member of staff] lent it to me years ago. It's much better than the film, but I do keep thinking that [Tezmobile]* is really the Marley of the cat world..."
Doom.
* She didn't say Tezmobile, of course. She said the Tezmobile's real name. But since you poor sods all think the Tezmobile is really called Tezmobile I am loath to shatter your illusions. :D
Val & I had a bizarre moment of synchronicity in independently deciding yesterday to check out Sarah Waters' writing since the name is around a LOT and it looks as though it should be Relevant To Our Interests (although I'm not sure I have any terribly solid personal recs for her, it's mostly random people whose taste I don't know terribly well and all that). Then we had a long conversation about lesbians women in fiction, and came to the conclusion that if there was a heap of good stuff out there it was clearly hiding from us. Therefore! Please rec us some fiction in which women play a substantial role. Or nonfiction! You know, we're easy. In the words of Val, "The goal of their lives/the story mustn't be to find a dude."
Pretty please?
(Off the top of my head the best things I've read on that front are The Summer Book and Fair Play, both by Tove Jansson. Girl Meets Boy is also good, and The First Person and Other Stories had some gems in too. Both of those are by Ali Smith. And I'm working my way through some other bits by her at the moment. Death: The Time Of Your Life, also, on the comics front, as far as I can remember; it's a spinoff from the main Sandman series by Neil Gaiman & it focuses on Hazel and Foxglove. That's probably all I've got without going away and thinking very very hard about this one though. Which I probably will. All day.)
On a completely unrelated note, I spoke to my mother on the phone last night, and she said, "I'm finally reading Marley and Me. [Member of staff] lent it to me years ago. It's much better than the film, but I do keep thinking that [Tezmobile]* is really the Marley of the cat world..."
Doom.
* She didn't say Tezmobile, of course. She said the Tezmobile's real name. But since you poor sods all think the Tezmobile is really called Tezmobile I am loath to shatter your illusions. :D