And more reading

I have shifted back to "Sense and Sensibility" as the "main" fiction-read right now. (I didn't take it on break with me; the edition I have of it is a complete set of Austen (well, her six well-known novels; I guess there are some "false starts" and juvenilia out there that have since been published). So it's huge and heavy, and it's an older edition (No copyright date, but it could be 1950s era - it's a Modern Library version, I think), and the binding is a little weak.

I like Austen; I read "Pride and Prejudice" some years back but want to re-read it some time. I had forgotten how *funny* she is - she uses snark before it went by that name.

(A digression:  I thought of "snark" as probably coming from Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark," which is an allegorical poem which is allegedly pretty impenetrable; I've never tried reading it. But some Internet sources say it's a contraction/portmanteuing of "SNide remARK." Or that maybe it stems from some old German word having to do with snarling. So I don't know).

I generally dislike snark, or at least I dislike it in much of its modern incarnation, where I get the feeling that it's more a way of complaining about a bad situation without actually making any effort to improve it ("'Homer, it's easy to criticize.' 'Fun, too!'). Or sometimes I get the feeling that it's used as a defense mechanism by people who are afraid to show enthusiasm for anything, or who are unwilling to show that they've been emotionally moved by anything: it seems the stance of the perpetual sixteen-year-old who is Too Cool for the room and doesn't want to seem like one of those nerds over there who is geeking out over something.

But then again, when it's done subtly and well, that kind of ironic description CAN be very funny, and in some cases it gives me the sense of Making the Best of A Bad Situation - for example, Austen's description of the insipid Steele (Heh, I originally wrote this as "Stone." Not so good at remembering names...) sisters being beseiged by Lady Middleton's ill-behaved (and over-indulged) children - Austen never comes right out and says, "These children are utter brats and their mother's coddling of them is going to cause them to grow into tiresome adults" but it is clearly implied by her description of what goes on. And in Austen's day, there were few options for women - becoming a wife and mother was probably the best possible option, but if you didn't want to raise children or have your main responsibility to be in charge of a household, you hadn't much of a choice. (I suppose a few women remained "old maids," but unless they had independent means - and came from a family wealthy enough to be willing to settle part of the estate on an unmarried woman - most of them had to find some kind of "career" - either heavy labor as a servant, or make a pittance as a spinster or seamstress, or being a governess (an insecure position at best, and one the children would grow out of), or something scandalous like going on the stage). So I'm willing to forgive Austen her snarkiness, because I get the feeling that rather than the perpetual adolescent lashing out, there's more the intelligent person in a milieu that isn't ideal, and she's satirizing those non-ideal aspects of it.

(Also, all the social stuff. Being expected to go out in the evenings to play cards, and to pay your calls every day....I suppose it's different when one is not working for a living, but it just seems so exhausting....all the rules about what you're supposed to do to keep up the social connections and to appear to be "proper.")

I'm slightly more than halfway through, where we have hit the point where it looks like Utter Despair ("of all the worst things that could happen, this is the Worst Possible Thing!") for Marianne, and possibly a lower grade of despair for Elinor (in re: marriage prospects). I'm sure it will work out well in the end, though I will say this is the  point where things have got really interesting.

I did start "Children of the New Forest" over break; I've had this on the shelf for years - I think I bought it when one of the bookstores at my grad school was closing out some of their "trade" books; my copy of "Five Children and It" is from the same publisher and was bought at about the same time, I think. "Children of the New Forest" is a historical novel for children (in the introduction, it claims to be the first historical novel for children). The New Forest in question is the one in Southern England, which was set aside (I guess) as parkland and hunting grounds for the king. The novel takes place during the English Civil War in the time of Cromwell; the children in the book are the four Beverley children, orphaned because their father went to fight on behalf of King Charles. They have to flee to the New Forest when one of the woodsmen who liked their father (and is still loyal to Charles) overhears a Roundhead plot to burn the family house with the children in it. (Children's books were bloodier and scarier 150 years ago than they are now.) He manages to rescue the children (their guardian, a very proper lady who has been sitting in the house waiting for one of their French relatives to show up to take the children, winds up being killed). The children, who now live with Armitage (the woodsman) learn to live off the land.

I didn't get very far in. I'm to the point where the author writes a great deal about Armitage's declining health and I can foresee that he is going to die shortly, once again leaving the children alone.

And it's funny, how there are certain things I just have a hard time reading. Kids being "orphaned" multiple times....in a work of fiction. Sometimes there are things in fiction that feel "unnecessary" to me. (A famous example: one month the book club I used to belong to read "Where the Heart Is" - well, there's a pretty graphic scene in there of something bad that happens to a young boy, and we all pretty much agreed we didn't want that much detail given....). Also the idea that the Roundheads would think little of burning children in their beds (though the author does note that that may have been Armitrage's over-interpretation of it), simply because their parents supported the King.

I don't know; I guess it seems to me sometimes that the "real world" is sufficiently ugly that I don't want that kind of ugliness in my fiction. (And yet, I read detective novels, were the whole raison d'etre of the story is someone getting knocked off. Well, usually, in the Golden Era ones I read, it's a thoroughly dislikable person, so that makes it a bit less of a shock....and the person who did it IS caught and punished).

What I do enjoy about the book are the descriptions of how the children learn to be self-sufficient: they have a small garden (right in the middle of the forest); they raise chickens, they have a cow. One of the boys is a very good shot and brings home deer. What little material goods they need that require purchase are got by venison or eggs being sold...for some reason, I've always enjoyed reading about that practical kind of "Here is how you might live in this situation" - one of my favorite books as a child was "My Side of the Mountain," with its extensive descriptions of how Sam got his food and made his home out in the "wilds" (FSVO "wilds" of upstate New York). And "Island of the Blue Dolphins," where the author wrote about how the girl (I forget her name now) made a secure shelter and provided for herself. (And many years later, having to read "Robinson Crusoe" for Senior Seminar (I think it was?) in high school, the one part I actually enjoyed of the book were the descriptions of how Crusoe managed to find food and shelter).

I'm not sure why. I suppose it's because I do harbor in the back of my mind a tiny fantasy of running away and living "off the grid" - even though I know I would HATE it (no internet? not enough electricity from solar panels to run air conditioning in the summer? running out of t.p. and not being able to get more?) and would not be good at it. (For a botanist, I am stunningly bad at having a productive vegetable garden.) But I think the idea of (first) running away and not having anyone who "needed" me for anything and (second) not having to depend on anyone else for anything are sort of seductive ideas, especially for someone who is as intense of an introvert as I am.

I also started Paul Ewald's "The Coming Plague," in which he argues (among other things) that a lot of the diseases we currently "blame" on lifestyle (type II diabetes, atherosclerosis, possibly even some forms of obesity) may actually have a viral or bacterial contributing factor. (A simple example: there's evidence that if you floss your teeth daily, you face less risk of heart disease. It's currently unclear if that's because it keeps bad bacteria that cause inflammation and concomitant damage out of your bloodstream, or merely that people who bother to floss bother to take better care of their bodies in other ways, but there IS some evidence suggesting the first of these cases. Which is also why I push myself to floss even when I'm tired).

I don't know about it. While on the one hand it's a bit of a relief to hear, "If you ate the wrong thing a few times, or if you didn't eat the right thing, you're not doomed and whatever happens to your health is not entirely your fault," I don't know that we can totally lay the blame at the feet (pseudopodia?) of viruses and bacteria. (And then again: if obesity is caused by a virus, I can see some people making calls to first quarantine all the fat people). But it's an interesting idea and might perhaps show why some people who eat right and exercise still wind up pretty sick.

He also suggests, interestingly, that there's a biological/evolutionary reason why monogamy is beneficial to the human population: fewer really horrifically virulent strains of sexually transmitted diseases - the really bad strains can't persist in a population where couples are mostly faithful to each other in the way that they could in a more "anything goes" situation.  (He cites the example of the former Yugoslavia, and the sharp increase in virulent strains of certain diseases during the civil war of the 90s, where, as he chillingly notes, "Rape was used as a weapon." (Ugh. Many times ugh. The inhumanities people can get up to.)

Some of this sounds a little far-fetched, but from the other work of Ewald's that I've read he seems fairly knowledgeable and reputable.