LADIES LADIES LADIES EVERYWHERE
Apr. 24th, 2017 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quigonejinnI've been saving Goldenhand by Garth Nix for a week when work was hectic. That week has finally come (and boy has it ever), but at least I have Goldenhand to buttress me. I have quibbles with the writing, but I have quibbles with pretty much all writing*, and this is just so, so, so wonderful.
Like, one of my absolute favorite things about Garth Nix is that he's actually a dude who can write and does write really interesting, really absorbing women characters. A woman is the main character of each of the first two novels in the Old Kingdom series**, and while the third one was more of an ensemble piece that still had a lot of really awesome ladies, a couple of the (absolutely delightful) short stories that have come out were dude-centered. So in Goldenhand it feels like Nix has decided to personally make it up to me with the first scenes being:
1. Two lady necromancers hangin' out and dispatchin' some fucking zombies
2. While discussing their nemesis, who is also a lady necromancer
3. Cut to two guards on duty, the experienced, sensible, older one of whom turns out to be a lady
4. And while they're on duty, somebody rocks up and is like YO I HAVE A MESSAGE FOR THAT ALL-LADY, NON-WHITE PROPHETESS GROUP OF RENOWN AND FAME
5. And it turns out this messenger is also a lady
6. And she's gonna be a main character of the book.
7. Cut to lady hawkmaster who dispatches a little girl messenger
8. To summon one of the aforementioned lady necromancers and the woman who basically rules the kingdom while her parents are away
I LOVE IT.
* An actual conversation in our household last week involved me, explaining to Mr. Rhod at great length, why I refused to read Giraffe's Can't Dance to our pre-verbal, just-shy-of-a year kid because not only do I dislike how it references various savannah animals as being jungle ones, and how sloppy it generally is with language in order to get a rhyme, but I also object to how it treats Africa as a single country, how Africa has a jungle, etc. Simultaneously, I get annoyed by A is for Activist because I disapprove of its unorthodox capitalization style, which Mr. Rhod points out is just them being an alphabet book and capitalizing on each page all words that start with the designated letter for that page. The only books, by the way, that meet my exacting requirements: King Baby by Kate Beaton, and The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Everything else we have can go get FUCKED.
** The first half of Lirael was some of the most INTENSE ASS wish-fulfillment reading I have ever done in my life. Like, I can't remember reading anything ever as a kid that made me feel so INTENSELY and so DEEPLY and so PROFOUNDLY that here was a book that had a version of me in it who was having ADVENTURES IN A LIBRARY and LITTLE CLOCKWORK MICE and a DISREPUTABLE DOG WHO LOVED ME and and and.
Like, one of my absolute favorite things about Garth Nix is that he's actually a dude who can write and does write really interesting, really absorbing women characters. A woman is the main character of each of the first two novels in the Old Kingdom series**, and while the third one was more of an ensemble piece that still had a lot of really awesome ladies, a couple of the (absolutely delightful) short stories that have come out were dude-centered. So in Goldenhand it feels like Nix has decided to personally make it up to me with the first scenes being:
1. Two lady necromancers hangin' out and dispatchin' some fucking zombies
2. While discussing their nemesis, who is also a lady necromancer
3. Cut to two guards on duty, the experienced, sensible, older one of whom turns out to be a lady
4. And while they're on duty, somebody rocks up and is like YO I HAVE A MESSAGE FOR THAT ALL-LADY, NON-WHITE PROPHETESS GROUP OF RENOWN AND FAME
5. And it turns out this messenger is also a lady
6. And she's gonna be a main character of the book.
7. Cut to lady hawkmaster who dispatches a little girl messenger
8. To summon one of the aforementioned lady necromancers and the woman who basically rules the kingdom while her parents are away
I LOVE IT.
* An actual conversation in our household last week involved me, explaining to Mr. Rhod at great length, why I refused to read Giraffe's Can't Dance to our pre-verbal, just-shy-of-a year kid because not only do I dislike how it references various savannah animals as being jungle ones, and how sloppy it generally is with language in order to get a rhyme, but I also object to how it treats Africa as a single country, how Africa has a jungle, etc. Simultaneously, I get annoyed by A is for Activist because I disapprove of its unorthodox capitalization style, which Mr. Rhod points out is just them being an alphabet book and capitalizing on each page all words that start with the designated letter for that page. The only books, by the way, that meet my exacting requirements: King Baby by Kate Beaton, and The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Everything else we have can go get FUCKED.
** The first half of Lirael was some of the most INTENSE ASS wish-fulfillment reading I have ever done in my life. Like, I can't remember reading anything ever as a kid that made me feel so INTENSELY and so DEEPLY and so PROFOUNDLY that here was a book that had a version of me in it who was having ADVENTURES IN A LIBRARY and LITTLE CLOCKWORK MICE and a DISREPUTABLE DOG WHO LOVED ME and and and.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-04-24 05:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-04-24 05:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-04-24 05:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-04-24 05:54 pm (UTC)(Lirael is shy misfit comes into her own through courage and library adventures. Sabriel is boarding school prefect comes into her own through courage and adventures to rescue her dad, and incidentally save two kingdoms from the forces of the evil undead.)
(no subject)
Date: 2017-04-25 02:49 pm (UTC)The worst was when she was four and became obsessed with the book Winter's Tail. It is one of the most poorly written pieces of work I have ever had the displeasure of reading. And I beta read first time fanfic for YEARS.
The kid and I both enjoyed Sandra Boynton quite a bit. I don't know if you've tried her.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-04-26 01:16 pm (UTC)Sandra Boynton: oh boy, I do have some feelings about her. Because like, I appreciate that her rhymes are relatively precise, but the one that we have is about a ship full of animals that are getting ready for bed, and there is a part where they put on pajamas or whatever and THEN GO UP ON DECK TO EXERCISE???????? BEFORE BED?????????????????
I think in a normal universe, I wouldn't care nearly as much, but there was a stretch when I was reading the book at least twice a day. And I think that's the source of a lot of my >:0 about it, because BOY IT GRATES.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-04-26 01:26 pm (UTC)The kid and I both enjoyed the story Russell the Sheep by Rob Scotton, but there are several times (and it gets hazy, thank god) where Russel either declares something, but the graphic ends with a question mark, or he asks a question and the graphic has a period. I can't remember, but that always drove me nuts.
Reading children's books over and over is definitely a special ring of hell.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-04-26 01:56 pm (UTC)oh no
oh no
oh no
We've been reading a lot of Dream Train, Steam Train, and I may have gone on a rant this weekend about how the inconsistent italicization ENRAGES ME. And we then spent, like, three precious minutes of our lives paging through the book with Mr. Rhod being like LOOK THEY'RE JUST ITALICIZING ECHOMIMETIC WORDS and me being like THAT WORD IS NOT ECHOMIMETIC
Meanwhile, our kid is sitting on the floor and playing with some blocks and being like I DON'T KNOW YOU WEIRDOS
(no subject)
Date: 2017-04-26 06:44 pm (UTC)LOL! Just wait until she starts sighing at you. That's the worst.
Also, I want to put in a plug for Piggins by Jane Yolen. I had to find a second hand copy, but it is a delightful little read.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-04-25 03:10 pm (UTC)Tolerable-to-delightful by my standards:
The Book With No Pictures by B.J. Novak
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault
Iggy Peck, Architect / Rosie Revere, Engineer / Ada Twist, Scientist by Andrea Beaty
The Llama Llama books by Anna Dewdney
NEARLY EVERYTHING by Sandra Boynton (ARE YOU A COW? was one of E's favorites when she was pre-verbal) (although I cannot listen to most of the songs that she has for these because I have already made up my own tunes and we are COMMITTED to them)
(no subject)
Date: 2017-04-25 03:18 pm (UTC)I have watched entirely too many episodes of Wild Kratts (which has its problems but scientific inaccuracy is not one of them) to be able to deal with anything that has all the animals in Africa living in the same habitat. I blame Edgar Rice Burroughs.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-04-26 01:13 pm (UTC)Like, I've seen a couple episodes through PBS Kids, and it's actually really nice. I like how gentle the tone is, and I like that the animation isn't 10,000,000 flashing lights all the time, and the voices aren't super high-pitched and fast.
ALSO YES I MADE A SIMILAR POINT TO ANDREW ABOUT MONKEYS AND TAILS AND HE EYEROLLED ME. (Then I made it to an actual wildlife biologist and got an earful of changes in species nomenclature through time.)
(Also it fills me with delight whenever I see your icon on my DW. :D HELLO DEAR FRIEND :D)
(no subject)
Date: 2017-04-26 01:50 pm (UTC)To which Mr. Rhod points out that the Hungry Caterpillar is acceptable to me, but (i) caterpillars don't eat the kind of food that the caterpillar eats during the week, particularly on Saturday, and (ii) butterfly caterpillars come out of a chrysalis, not a coccoon.
>:|
( I really do like Anna Dewdney, tho. We have her book on pangolins, and it's a reliable go-to that I forgot in my list of hateration. There's a part where the little pangolin gets scared and trips and rolls down a hill, and the book says something about the baby pangolin lying very still. And Mr. Rhod STILL LAUGHS AT ME about how, the first time I read the book in the haze of post-birth hormones, my heart jumped up into my throat ready to ragequit out of the book because I thought the baby pangolin might be DEAD and WHAT KIND OF STORYBOOK DOES THAT and HOW COULD YOU HAVE A PICTURE OF TEH TINY DEAD BABY PANGOLIN.
Reader, the baby pangolin was not dead. Reader, the baby pangolin didn't even had a bruise. Reader, the baby pangolin is curled up in a protective ball, and he opens his eyes a teensy crack, and finds another ball is peeping back, and subsequently made friends not only with another baby pangolin, but a little baby monkey, and learned a valuable lesson about not being scared of new things.)
In short, Llama Llama Red Pajama Woop Woop.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-04-25 08:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-04-26 01:09 pm (UTC)And yeah, the Nix books are good. I read two chapters on my commute in, and I think I may have frightened the (very packed) train car I was on with my intense :D :D :D :D :O :O :O :D D:D :D :O :O :O!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 faces while reading.
Gender breakdown on the chapters I read continued to be A+++. I love that if a character gets introduced in these books and they're good at their job, odds are better than 75% that they're a lady.