And then I'm off to read some more

[cleolinda]

Since people asked--here's my obscenely long list of books I got for Christmas:

The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker, which I am reading first because it was on top.

Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England, Judith Flanders, which was actually a birthday present and I've already finished reading, but it is SO DEEPLY AWESOME that I will discuss it at length some other time.

A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889, Frederic Morton, which I am INSANELY excited about because Black Ribbon actually takes place in 1889, and there's some character back story that happened in Vienna in 1888. This book may have actually been written by the fates for me, I'm not sure.

London Labour and the London Poor, Henry Mayhew: I forget who recommended this to me, but it must have been someone fairly reliable, or I'm not sure I would have known to choose this from all the millions of Victorian studies books out there.

The London Underworld in the Victorian Period: Authentic First-Person Accounts by Beggars, Thieves and Prostitutes, Henry Mayhew: You know you're a nerd when your reaction to this is, "And they're FIRST-PERSON accounts, too! YAY!"

The Victorian Underworld, Donald Thomas: You may be noticing a theme here--turns out that the underworld is a key but somewhat under-researched element in the story. Oops. I mean, I understand it in general, but I'm looking for some specific local color--personalities, names of individual gangs, specific scams, and so on.

A Dictionary of Victorian London: An A-Z of the Great Metropolis, Lee Jackson: A lot smaller than I expected, given that last year I got The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana and practically had to hire a sherpa to carry it around for me. Of course, it could be five pages long and I wouldn't care, because Lee Jackson is the mastermind behind victorianlondon.org, the alpha and omega of Victorian research on the intarwebs, and anything that supports him and/or his site is okay by me.

The Glorious Deception: The Double Life of William Robinson, aka Chung Ling Soo, the "Marvelous Chinese Conjurer," Jim Steinmeyer: I loved his Hiding the Elephant that I got last Christmas (which was, as you may remember, a Very Magician Christmas), and this is actually about the character (or the man who inspired the character, I can't remember if they use his exact name) that so fascinates Borden and Angier in The Prestige.

The Knife Thrower: and Other Stories and The Barnum Museum, Steven Millhauser: One of these collections has "Eisenheim the Illusionist" in there somewhere. Again, me with the magicians and the music halls and the sideshows.

The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain, Alice Weaver Flaherty: Came highly recommended. I believe the disease in question is manic depression/bipolar... whatever.

The Difference Engine (Spectra Special Editions), William Gibson: I'm kind of afraid to read this one, as it's one of the great steampunk novels, and it might remind me how much I suck.

The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories (2 Vol. Set): I asked for this after I realized my big collection of Sherlock stories wasn't even half complete, AND this one is annotated. Also: the sherpa's got some more work to do, because it weighs about seventy-five pounds.

Grandes Horizontales: The Lives and Legends of Four Nineteenth-Century Courtesans, Virginia Rounding: In case you didn't notice, I did pick out all these books myself. Or rather, I put a long list on my Amazon wish list and let my family choose--but there's no way they would have been able to figure out what I specifically wanted, especially for research, since even I had to do a bit of looking into which books were most highly recommended on whichever topic, or which books were most specifically oriented (see: the Vienna 1888-1889 book). Furthermore, my grandmother can't really go out on her own anymore, so she chooses what she wants to give to my sister and me from what our mother's already gotten. Which I still think is sweet, because what she chooses still says something, I think. But my mother always likes to run things by me first. I really am surprised on Christmas a lot of the time, either because I really do get things I didn't ask for or because I'm so prematurely senile that I honestly forgot I'd asked in the first place, but regarding my grandmother, Mom checks first. She's mostly afraid she's going to give something to my grandmother that would be hugely offensive if she looked at it for, you know, more than three seconds. One year she gave me Laura on DVD for my birthday, which we were both really excited about--we love watching old movies together--and that was really awesome. On the other hand, she would definitely not want to give me a horror movie or anything by That Man. So every year, my mother says, "Okay, what should she not give you?" This year: "Just try not to give her anything about French whores," says I (I also got Courtesans: Money, Sex and Fame in the Nineteenth Century for my birthday). So, Christmas Day, what do I get from my grandmother? Guess. Awesome.

Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death, Deborah Blum: I wanted a book about spiritualism, and I love biographies--I love the concrete details you can get from them, the specific mise-en-scène of someone's life.

Scary Stories Boxed Set, Alvin Schwartz: Yeah, the ones with the creeptastic illustrations that haunted your childhood. Frequently banned children's books FTW!

P.S. CHECK YOUR GMAIL FILTERS AND FORWARDING NOW.

Comments

[mialoubug.livejournal.com]

The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain, Alice Weaver Flaherty: Came highly recommended. I believe the disease in question is manic depression/bipolar... whatever.


Fabulous, fabulous book!! I actually know Alice fairly well professionally. The book and she are awesome and her personal story is just incredible. I would be interested in hearing what you thought. It can be a little dense at times but is truly a wonderful read.

[etherealshores.livejournal.com]

*Stares at that P.S.*

Oh, shite.

[stillxmyxheart.livejournal.com]

Dude, I may have to check some of those books out, they sound nifty!

And checked my Gmail stuff, only ones set are the ones that I set, thank god. Stupid f-ing hackers.

[skylark97.livejournal.com]

The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain, Alice Weaver Flaherty

I loved that book! (And I think the disease in question is hypergraphia...but she does touch on a lot of different diseases and disorders in the book.) It's just like the perfect blend of science and literature. <33

[quenbolyn.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you for the list!

*runs off to Amazon.com*

[ter369.livejournal.com]

A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889, Frederic Morton, which I am INSANELY excited about because Black Ribbon actually takes place in 1889, and there's some character back story that happened in Vienna in 1888. This book may have actually been written by the fates for me, I'm not sure.

It's an outstanding book, as popular history and as a way in to seeing a major turning point in culture in Vienna and its influences on the western world.

I read it right before I first went to Vienna in 1997. The series I'm writing is set in Vienna and I've spent several months there researching over the past decade, beyond the usual visitor highlights. (Like touring the museum of funerary rituals, which has fascinating details in relation to Vienna's death cult, including fears of being buried alive or infected with vampirism.) I have other references and info, if you're interested; just e-mail me.

[emoui.livejournal.com]

Hi Cleo!

I think you would enjoy this - http://www.gildedage.org/events-2.php - It's an exhibit of dolls dressed in Victorian era costumes.
My parents went there while visiting relatives in the area and my mom said the dolls were awesome.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Oh, those are fantastic.

[edoraslass.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the heads-up on the Gmail issue. I'm passing it on to my flist as well.

[anne-jumps.livejournal.com]

(That icon is by pinkocracy) :)

[edoraslass.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I have two or three of them saved on my harddrive, and could NOT remember where I'd found them. :)

[anne-jumps.livejournal.com]

You're welcome :)

[atalantapendrag.livejournal.com]

Have you ever read Low Life by Luc Sante? Judging by your Victorian-underworld books, it might appeal to you.

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

Yay, I was hoping you'd do a book entry! I'm thinking of getting the William James book.

[chocotaku.livejournal.com]

Yet somehow, not creepy enough for me. XD

[theonlykow.livejournal.com]

Used to looooooove those books as a kid. Such brilliant trash.

[chocotaku.livejournal.com]

Yeah that stuff didn't even phase me then. The only thing that ever scared me as a kid? The damn tree outside the window in Poltergeist. XO Everything else is just interesting to see the reactions it gets from others.


Oh yeah, and lotus seed pods. those creep me out. And rejected hair plugs. *barf*

[caerbannog.livejournal.com]

What a fabulous list of books, I think I want to put all of them on my to-read list. Thanks for posting them.

eta: Am curious, did your grandmother get you the edition of Grandes Horizontales with the nekkid or clothed French whores on the cover? Because if it was the paperback version, wow.

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

Now you made me go look at mine - I have the nekkid paperback one.

"It has been claimed that I am more interested in S-bends than sex..."

[sea-of-tethys.livejournal.com]

Eee! Oh, I love that Judith Flanders book, it's possibly my favourite history book ever. My mother bought it for herself and I pretty much stole it and devoured it in one sitting.

[jjrogueangel.livejournal.com]

My mother has been trying to get me to read The Gift of Fear. She said it's excellent, and every woman should read it.

Also, Alvin Scwartz FTW :)

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

I also have Inside the Victorian Home and Grandes Horizontales, and they are both wonderful. I especially like the chapter on all the toxic things found in food, fabrics, wallpaper, etc. Mmmm - arsenic green! I also recall reading a story about a friend of Sarah Berndhart who wore a bright green (arsenic-dyed) stage costume and danced herself so sweaty that she nearly poisoned herself when the dye soaked through her skin!

[foresthouse.livejournal.com]

I only got a couple of books this year. Step Right Up, a book about carnivals that I'll be using as research for something I'm writing, and an Agatha Christie book from my sister. Usually my parents get me all the book/DVD goodies, but this year I got A NEW IPOD to replace my 4-year-old dead one, so I'm not complaining. (It has COLOR. I'm in shock.)

I did already read all of Wolverine: Origin which my parents got for my boyfriend, though. :)

[lyrainverse.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I can't wait to hear what you think of The Difference Engine. I LOVE William Gibson.

[mercat.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the gmail heads-up. I don't use it for anything important but I was considering it. =)

The Chung Ling Soo book is on my wishlist... I really want to get my hands on it. =) A lot of those books sound really awesome.

[maetang.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the Gmail heads up. I'm checking my accounts now!

[mustang-bex1126.livejournal.com]

1) You are awesome and a very Merry Christmas to you!

2) Thanks for the Gmail head's up, which I got from you and another Cleolinda/M15M fan on my flist which I have now passed on to *my* friends.

3) Yay books! With your recommendation and the glowing comments about some of the books on your list I'm going to promptly begin investing in some of them, because I'm dying for something to read and I forsee getting through the remaining Phillipa Gregory books rather quickly.

4) The Scary Stories collection is the most awsome thing in the universe and STILL scares the piss out of me. We loves them my precious! I think that was how grew to have a taste for Steven King and Dean Koontz.

5) What's Grandma's prob. with Mr. Pullman?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

He's an atheist, the Dark Materials books are "blasphemy," and she's the Pope of the Baptist Church, God bless her.

[mustang-bex1126.livejournal.com]

Aw! Can't help but love your Grandma, she's definitely a character.

[thansunshine.livejournal.com]

Thanks tons for that Gmail heads-up! One of my Gmail addresses is one I use for colleges, so I can just see where that would have gone.

Also, I'm right there with you about the whole "First Person Accounts" geekery. I love reading first-person accounts from eras past; it makes a history buff happy.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

I am currently reading Brigitte Hamann's Hitler's Vienna which is a totally brilliant political and sociological history of Vienna & the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the turn of the last century, and the flip side (Pan-Germans, anti-semites, Christian Socials, immigration, parliamentary lockdown, etc.) of what Carl Schorske gloriously describes in Fin-de-siècle Vienna, so your Vienna book interests me strangely.

Also, which Grandes Horizontales? La Païva, Cléo de Mérode among them?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Grandes Horizontales is about--let's see--just four, Marie Duplessis, Apollonie Sabatier, La Païva, and Cora Pearl; Courtesans is about Sophia Baddeley (I thought she was 18th century...?), Elizabeth Armistead, Harriette Wilson, Catherine Walters and, again, Cora Pearl. I'm surprised that Cléo de Mérode isn't one of them--or Liane de Pougy, for that matter.

[soleta-nf.livejournal.com]

The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker: I read this book years ago when it first came out, and it is excellent.

[ankhet.livejournal.com]

Oooooh I think I may be adding another page to my amazon wish list...

Now if people would just take the hint and stop giving me gift cards and go look at my amazon wish lists... *sigh*

Looks like you have many happy hours of reading ahead of you!

[karintheswede]

Flanders' book is made of win.

books

[verbminx.livejournal.com]

I just. accidentally deleted. the comment I was writing. *weep*

OK. I think I said, I have or have read a number of these books.

Don't feel too "essential" about The Difference Engine. I know a lot of people who have read it and disliked it (along with Paul DiFilippo's books, actually) and would prefer that the ur-text of steampunk as they know it was pretty much anything else, esp The Diamond Age. (Incidentally, when you posted recently about the Vienna book being dull, and about Carter Beats the Devil, I was going to mention that I have started The Diamond Age at least five times, most recently this week, and I always stumble on the first chapter. I am determined to one day finish it. Really.)

So much of "steampunk" has been retconned anyway: like, now that the term is uberpopular and people think it's a separate subculture and not just '90s goth with added brass things' (which I would argue, because I frequently described myself as "Victorian Punk" as a goth chick in the 90s), lots of things from a while back are labelled "steampunk" when they were meant more along the lines of general "alternate history SF."

(That last paragraph was more succinct and sensible in the original version of this reply.)

The Gift of Fear - I read this in the summer of 2000, and I thought it was good, but now I think it might be a tad paranoid, in that it engenders paranoia in the reader. I noticed this when what I thought was being "security minded" seemed to cause loved ones to regard me as something more along the lines of "inclined to nervousness" and "safety-obsessed." And I was like, I'M JUST LISTENING TO GAVIN, but they weren't having it. The book is probably most useful to people who think they may actually have a stalker or to people who already live with a really scary person.

I also read the Flanders book and The Victorian Underworld for a project I was doing a while back; I was interested in the education of and attitude towards teenage girls circa 1885 in one case, and criminal elements in another. There were a few other useful books that I read at the time, but I don't have most of the titles. One was A Blessed Girl by Emily Lutyens; I can't remember whether it was diary or memoir, and she was upper-class, but it was worth reading (esp for the part where she is best friends with the daughter of Wilfred Scawen-Blunt, and when she is staying for a visit, he tries to seduce her).

The other two addressed a gamut of social classes. One was about the education of girls, and I didn't read it very closely, because it didn't have a ton of information that was useful to me at the time. The other was a slender, heavily-illustrated book of diary entries with information about stuff like what a carpenter and maid might do on her day off if they were engaged (go shopping, have pics taken, etc... the guy might not have been a carpenter, but was some kind of similar respectable-working-class type). & there was a book that was actually enormously helpful, probably about "the Victorian home", that was written for older children. Had illustrations of a typical floor plan, the sorts of things you'd find in different rooms of the house, etc.

You can probably figure out which books these are, if you're interested in any of them, by spending a bit of time looking at the keyword "victorian" on webpac.columbuslibrary.org. I was interested in domestic life and education, as well as criminal life, so those are the subheaders to look under for titles.

Oh, there's also a weird book, a Dover-type paperback, of "real Victorian inventions," some of which look like fantasy steampunk inventions, if you haven't seen the one I'm talking about. Lots of black and white engravings, line drawings, and so on.

[viorica8957.livejournal.com]

I actually have The Victorian Underworld sitting on my desk- I checked it out of the school library right before break, but haven't gotten around to reading it yet. Is it any good?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

I haven't started reading that one either--I'm going for the juicy stuff first. Heh.

[viorica8957.livejournal.com]

I actually haven't read anything I got for Christmas (besides Coffee With Oscar Wilde, because it was about a hundred pages long) becuase I was so intent on finishing Les Miserables before New Year's. Now it's done via copious amounts of skimming and I'm deciding between TVU and Six Wives. And leaning towards Six Wives, because I have fond memories of David Starkey hosting The Royal Hour.

The Difference Dictionary

[delirium9.livejournal.com]

Hi, Cleo!

This: The Difference Engine (Spectra Special Editions), William Gibson: I'm kind of afraid to read this one, as it's one of the great steampunk novels, and it might remind me how much I suck. reminded me of the fact that I also have that book! I had forgotten about it (I know, how could I, right?). I got a used copy a while ago because I was reading Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and wanted to get into all things steampunk, AND I had never read Gibson before (*spanks herself again*). I have to say, the book is definitely intimidating, that's maybe the reason I haven't attempted to read it yet. I might soon...

Anyway, what I wanted to say (after having said all of the above) is that I thought this link might interest you:
http://www.sff.net/people/gunn/dd/
The Difference Dictionary: Dr. Gunn's Organic History Supplement for The Difference Engine, a novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

I'm a sucker for all things dictionaresque, so I flipped over this! And I hope you enjoy it too :)

Happy reading (and writing!) in 2008!!!

Tess