mothwing | Book challenge

Er... after A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian, there was...

12.

Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby.
I love Nick Hornby. Whenever I buy one of his book I get uneasy and hesitate, worried that it might not be as good as the preceding ones. It was the same with this one, but of course, again, I have not been disappointed. This one was no exception, of course.

11.

New Moon, by Stephanie Meyer.
I am not sure what to say. I enjoyed reading it a lot and was unable to put it down, while I was not thinking about it and merely concentrating on the characters, who have really grown on me. I love Jakob, in particular, which is most probably because I love werewolves. Lupin is probably the only werwolf in fiction I did not get exited about in the slightest. Oh, well, and the ones in Holbein's Wolfsherz or what it was called were not too great, either, but that's mostly down to the awfulness of the author.
As soon as I put it down, the months of discussing the role of women in Harry Potter and the resulting voices became difficult to close out and I am not so sure about it now.
The 0-1 binary view of gender portrayed in the book is just so bloody exhausting to read. It is different to read book about gender roles as rigid as the ones Meyer uses in books written two hundred years ago, but this one, set in the present-day USA - it makes me uncomfortable, and it makes me want to shake the characters who all seem to be stuck in this odd world which is so out of touch with the way I see reality that I wonder at the way they are thinking.
I still like stories about werewolves and vampires enough to close my eyes and ears to pretty much everything while reading, but it is difficult not to notice the way that all women in the book are either wacky, downright insane, monsters -or supportive, practical home-makers - while the men are active protectors and fighters, with the nurturing Jakob as the only exception - it's so annoying.
Especially the attitude of Emily drove me up the wall, or the way that Bella has to cook for her father because he's too, what, too inept? Too lazy? - to manage.
While there are female characters who take charge of the plot, the actions are always centred around male characters nontheless - and the heroine is blamed when the male character goes on his suicidal spree because he believes his beloved heroine to be dead (he decided he was too dangerous for her, left her, she spent half a year in a near-catatonic state moping, engaged in auto-aggressive behaviour because she could not get over him, then a misunderstanding lead him to beleive her dead) for believing him when he told her that he did not want her anymore - I wanted to SHOOT HIM.

10.

Art & Lies. A Tale for Three Voices and a Bawd, Jeanette Winterson.
Not sure what to make of this yet.

Penguin's Poems for Life, Laura Barber (ed.)
Oh this made me so angry. It sucks. The poems don't, but the selection isn't very good to fit the (megalomaniac) title. It should be called, "Poems for Life for Men over fifty" or something, because the way she presents "life" and it's relevant issues through her selection clearly is not intended, by and large, for anyone who is not a British heterosexual upper middle class white male over fifty - although there are a few poems that are not exclusively directed at that target group. Well, maybe she has a point, maybe only that part of the population would buy and read a Penguin anthology called "poems for life". The "love" section especially is aggravating. It's almost exclusively men's experiences of first love.
It is difficult, of course, as the vast majority of canonical poets out there are heterosexual males who wrote for heterosexual males, I am aware of that. Still.