I am so bad.

[tenlittlebullets]

I've unpacked the books I brought home from Smith, but giant stacks of them haven't made it to the bookshelves yet, because there is no room on the bookshelves. Nevertheless, I am a shameless book whore and just spent upwards of $70 on:

The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson
- Quicksilver
- The Confusion
- The System of the World
Temeraire vol. 1-3 box set by Naomi Novik
- His Majesty's Dragon
- Throne of Jade
- Black Powder War
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Faust by Goethe (in a nice bilingual edition no less)
Mademoiselle de Maupin by Théophile Gautier

Which, for that price (including shipping) is a pretty good haul, but--BAD. Do not need more books. Except I've been wanting all of these like burning for months, so I guess that partially excuses it.

My summer reading list includes all of these, a book and a play by George Sand (La Comtesse de Rudolstadt and Les sept cordes de la lyre), the rest of the Temeraire series if I like the first three, and possibly some Stoppard if I have time. Due to the general impossibility of finding anything by Sand at a reasonable price online, I'm going to be relying on the Smith library, which has her complete works.

It's going to be really weird reading all these things that weren't written in the 19th century.

Edit: Have been doing some page counts. Stephenson averages 900 pages per book, Novik averages 400, American Gods is 600 and change, Faust is 500, Mlle de Maupin is 300 and change--5500 pages total, plus about a thousand pages of Sand all told, and some miscellaneous light reading. I'm looking at about seven thousand pages to read this summer. :D

Comments

[mmebahorel.livejournal.com]

Stoppard is brilliantly quick, though. Unless you get utterly sucked in to, say, The Coast of Utopia, and then feel a need to find the source material, which will eat your life. (I can imagine Invention of Love doing the same thing, though at least Travesties has no actual connection to reality and thus is less likely to compel research.)

(not that I'm suggesting you join my four person fandom, just that Stoppard is awesome and Stoppard + Herzen will eat your life. And I still want someone to write me Bakunin/Belinsky that incorporates the relevant philosophy because I don't really want to have to do it myself.)

I can loan you Coast of Utopia, Jumpers, Dirty Linen, Invention of Love, Travesties. Kristin has my Arcadia and Marie has my Rock 'n' Roll at the moment.

I need to try Temeraire. I don't usually go for fantasy and dragons, but Napoleonic Wars - and Novik getting generally good comments during RaceFail09 - make these more compelling than they would have been otherwise.

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

I, uh. Still haven't read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. So if I have time for Stoppard this summer, that's what I'll start with; I might go for Coast of Utopia, too, but only after doing some background reading. And by "background reading" I mean "NYT has gone to all the trouble of compiling a reading list for me and I will have to take advantage of that."

I do like fantasy a lot--dragons not so much, but the Enchanted Forest Chronicles were a definite part of my childhood and adolescence. (By Patricia C. Wrede, incidentally--o hai racefail! I am v. disappointed, given how much time EFC spent whacking genre conventions over the head with a baseball bat.) And Susanna Clarke pulled off Napoleonic Wars + magic! so well that now Napoleonic Wars + dragons! doesn't seem too strange to me.

[mmebahorel.livejournal.com]

I've got Russian Thinkers, The Romantic Exiles, and a decent selection of Turgenev in translation - still need my own copy of Carr's Michael Bakunin and would like Randall's Vissarion Belinskii and wouldn't mind another crack at Stankevich and His Moscow Circle. So I've got the source books for Shipwreck and Salvage but not really for Voyage available for lending. There's some biographical bits in Russian Thinkers, but Carr's bio of Bakunin is the only thing that will really talk about the Bakunin sisters (who get way more credit for awesomeness in Stoppard than Carr gives them).

Except I don't think background reading is actually necessary. If you know German Romantic philosophy existed, Stoppard explains the relevant bits for you in Voyage. If you know George Sand wrote feminist novels where women have agency, then you understand why Sand keeps being invoked by the female characters. If you know the revolutions of 1848 didn't really go anywhere, then you're all set for Salvage. If you know that Russia has always been pulled between East and West, then you will understand when Stoppard brings it up and jokes about it, but even if you didn't, it's kind of obvious in the first scene on Shipwreck. Everything you need is in the plays (especially for someone with our background in the period) - the source books are for if you want to go further.

I wouldn't start by reading the Bakunin bio or The Romantic Exiles, though - the plays are entirely based on those two books, so it's rather like reading Les Mis in order to understand the musical. And I really recommend having Stoppard's version of the Bakunin girls in your head before you open Carr. It was the 1930s, which is a reason, but not an excuse, for a lot of the weirdness you'll find in there (there's some really obvious flailing where Michael doesn't like being boxed in by Carr's quaint little categories).

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

I'm mostly sitting here going "Augh *flail* I know nothing about Russia, how am I going to appreciate Coast of Utopia!" Because I'm used to reading things from/about 19th century France and getting all the references, and it would be unpleasant to be utterly lost in the same time period just from moving east. But if you say background reading is not necessary then I will take your word for it.

[mmebahorel.livejournal.com]

One play and one scene from another play take place in Russia, and it's all about the Russians looking West. The whole trilogy is about the Russians looking West, using French and German models and trying to apply them to Russia, which can't really be done because of all the things that are explained in the plays. We the audience are told how things are, what ought to be done, and how it can't be done because all the models from the west are too advanced. Much of Voyage is actually explaining to the audience all the ways Russia is screwed up, but it doesn't feel like that because that was the major debate of the 1830s, all the ways in which Russia is screwed up. The existence of that debate requires that a play about the intelligentsia engage with that debate, so you get some wonderful infodump that doesn't at all feel like infodump. Stoppard has more confidence in his audience than the NYT apparently had.

I didn't know who anyone except Turgenev was when I saw Voyage - I had completely forgotten that I'd ever heard the names of Bakunin and Herzen - and I fell completely in love with the characters and had no trouble following. And Voyage is the only play that takes place entire in Russia. Shipwreck starts in Russia but in the first scene, Herzen gets his passport (and never returns), so the rest of Shipwreck and all of Salvage take place in the West. Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc are supporting characters! How much more 19th c. French dorky can you get? :)

Hell, it's infecting my writing about France in the period. These latest chapters of Blood of the Martyrs - the failure of Romanticism and the difficulty of looking West for answers when the West is so much further along the historical path - are lifted directly from Coast of Utopia. The only difference being that West to Combeferre is England, while West to Herzen is England AND France.

[lovemoony4ever.livejournal.com]

I've just read some 100 pages of His Majesty's Dragon, and so far it's very good:) I've also tried to read American Gods, but I found it very boring and gave up quickly.

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

Hey, if I can get through Balzac's digression at the beginning of La fille aux yeux d'or without chucking the book across the room (and boy was I tempted!), American Gods shouldn't be a problem.

[lovemoony4ever.livejournal.com]

Perhaps "boring" was the wrong word to use. More like...unengaging. I simply could not care about the main character or the plot.

[srevans.livejournal.com]

I just started Temeraire! And by "started" I mean I'm somewhere in the second. It's fun!

[in-a-greenhouse.livejournal.com]

Abebooks totally has George Sand. Also Google Books.

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

:( The Abebooks listings for Les sept cordes de la lyre are all $100+, and La Comtesse de Rudolstadt is a) in multiple volumes, b) mostly from sellers in France who charge $10-20 shipping per volume. I think I'll rely on the library for now.

And ebooks = totally not the same.

[reconditarmonia.livejournal.com]

BAROQUE CYCLE!! You will love it. :D

(I still need to read Temeraire. As for Stoppard, I haven't read anything like his entire oeuvre, but I like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Arcadia, Doggs Hamlet/Cahoots Macbeth and The Invention of Love.

[smartamy15.livejournal.com]

Faust is pretty amazing. I don't we read all of it in lit. class last year, but what we read of it was brilliant. So ingeniously crafted and although Faust is an idiot (powerhungry and whatnot), the play is well laid-out and very powerful.

[crystaisilence.livejournal.com]

O. M. G.

The Temeraire book series is my favorite book series ever created EVER.

P.S. I need your address so I can send you your book.