Blog Slut

I got some decent reading done in the past week and a half. First off, Demon Night, by Meljean Brook. Loved it. Ms. Brook writes great characters and dialogue, and always a hot romance. Read my review here.

I also read two great non-fiction books: Sex With the Queen and Sex with Kings by Eleanor Herman. Very readable, totally absurd history. As you may have guessed, these books focus on royal adultery. Crazy shit. Those poor kings and queens, not only were they forced to marry complete strangers, they were also pretty sad cases themselves. All the inbreeding led to unattractive, weak-minded and stupid monarchs. I enjoyed Sex With the Queen a bit more. Queens definitely got the rawest deal. Very ruled in their own right. Most of them had to leave behind family, friends and country for a place with an unfamiliar culture and language, to be treated poorly by husband and in-laws. It was interesting to read how some of them grabbed happiness (and sometimes a bit of power for themselves) by taking a lover. Don't expect dry academic writing. Herman is very dramatic, almost purple-y. Take a passage like this, about Henry VII's ill-fated fifth wife, Katherine Howard:

Let us imagine the queen's duties in the royal four-poster. The king would likely have suffocated his petite bride if he had perched on top of her. He must have required her to ride astride him, careful not to disturb the stinking wound on his thigh....We can picture the happy king,perfectly sated, snoring, as his young wife lay silently beside him, her heart sinking (Sex With the Queen 79).

Hee. Fun. Read more about the books in Dirty Sexy History.

Now I just have to get something reviewed for this blog.

Slanted and Enchanted...

Over the past two evenings I devoured Love is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield. This is a memoir by a music journalist (if you watch any of those countdowns or pop culture shows on VH1, you've probably seen him dissing people on it), in which he details his relationship with his two great loves, music and his late wife Renee Crist. Rob and Renee were a classic case of opposites attracting. They were brought together by their shared love of music. They met at 23, the only two people in a bar to perk up when a Big Star song comes on the jukebox. By 25, they were married, and at 31, Rob was made a widower when Renee suddenly and inexplicably dies of a pulmonary embolism in their apartment.

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I completely adored this book. The majority of the book covers the years 1991-1998 or so, which were my high school and college years. Like Rob, I have a lot of fond music and pop culture memories of the time. It was a time when Seattle was king, you could turn on pop radio and hear bands like Weezer, Elastica, and Belly, hip-hop was awesome and dangerous (Public Enemy! Ice-T!), and a 16 girl could go to sleep, clutching her pillow and dreaming of Trent Reznor, Henry Rollins and Anthony Keidis. Ahem. This book has a lot of musical references, which might be less interesting to those not really interested in music. But it brought back a lot of memories for me, and I think that many of us have our own musical memories; songs and bands that make us think of a particular time, place or person.

I loved the story of his relationship with Renee as well. She sounds like a fantastic person, and you can see how he fell so in love. His tales of being a young music geek in love, a young, scared husband, and finally a young, lost widower were alternately funny and sad. I was truly weepy when reading about his experiences after Renee's death: how he felt like he couldn't listen to music again without her to share it with, how much he hated being single again, his obsession with Jackie O. I'm a married person who is the same age that Rob was when he lost his wife, and man, I can't even imagine.

His writing style is very funny. Here's a passage in which he describes his 13 year old self (p. 28):

The words "douche" and "bag" have never coupled as passionately as they did in the person of my thirteen year old self. My body, my brain, my elbows that stuck out like switchblades, my feet that got tangled in my bike spokes, but most of all my soul--these formed the waterbed where douchitude and bagness made love sweet love with all the feral intensity of Burt Reynolds and Rachel Ward in Sharky's Machine.

Not even sure what that means, but it makes me laugh. This is a fast read, alternately hilarious and touching. I loved Rob, I loved Renee, and I'm happy that he was able to live and find love again. If you miss the nineties, if you love rock, pop and alternative music, or if you like true stories of true love, give it a try. An A for this one.

Be careful of fairies!

The Burning of Bridget Cleary by Angela Bourke, is the story of a violent crime that took place in rural Ireland (Co. Tipperary) in 1895. Even more, this is the fascinating story of an isolated culture losing ground in a time of political and social change. The tensions between the poor, largely illiterate rural Irish culture and more "modern", "educated" ways, are clearly at work during the crime itself, and the aftermath. I came across this title in the bibliography of a children's book, and was immediately intrigued.

You can read further details about the actual murder here. In short, Bridget Cleary, a 26 year-old married dressmaker from tiny Ballyvadlea, came down with something resembling bronchitis and "nervous excitement" in March of 1895.

During the course of nursing her, her husband Michael, became increasingly suspicious that his wife had been taken away by fairies, and replaced by a changeling. He abandoned the course of medicine prescribed by the local doctor, instead choosing to force feed her (with the help of, like, 7 other men holding her down) a mixture of herbs in new milk and holding her in front of the fire, all the while commanding her to admit that she was Bridget Cleary, "in the name of God." The final night of Bridget Cleary's life, her husband, enraged by the fact that she refused a third bit of bread, held a burning stick from the fire to her. Her clothing caught fire and she began to burn. Michael Cleary then doused her with paraffin, setting her further aflame. This story is made even more chilling by the fact that the house was pretty much filled to the brim with eyewitnesses, most of whom were members of Bridget's own family. Afterwards, Michael Cleary buried the body, all the while insisting that it was a changeling, and that his true wife would re-appear three nights later at the "fairy fort" at nearby Kylenagranagh. Not surprisingly, this was not the case, and eventually Michael Cleary and eight others were arrested for Bridget Cleary's murder, including her father, aunt and a number of cousins.

The story of the crime and resulting trial are fascinating reading, but I found Bouke's examination of the cultural, political and religious climate of the day even more interesting. This trial was a media sensation, and was used as an example of the backwardness and "savagery" of the Irish, and an argument against Home Rule. The author discusses Irish fairy folklore at length. Rather than saying that all these uneducated Irish peasants believed unequivocally in the existence of fairies, she argues that fairy legend can be read as a code which governed social mores and explained the unexplainable. Often, physical disabilities and infertility, among other things, were explained as the result of being "touched by the fairies." Those engaging in anti-social or unusual behavior, were actually changelings left by the fairies, and by engaging in certain rituals, a person could get their loved one back. Is it a surprise that some of these rituals were pretty violent? Perhaps it was a way of keeping people in line. That certainly seemed to be the case with Bridget Cleary, who was characterized as an independent young woman with a strong personality, whose trade and education differentiated her from her largely illiterate, farm laborer cousins, none of whom came to her aid during her ordeal. Why would a relatively minor illness have set her husband off so? The author suggests that he was symbolically establishing his dominance over his strong minded wife, using the language of fairies. It's all very weird and totally fascinating.

This book is classified as true crime, but if you are looking for a straightforward crime narrative, you might be disappointed by all of the social history. It can also read very academically in bits (I haven't seen phrases like "symbolic capital" or "culture of stigma and control" since college). But if you are interested in folklore, Irish history, or if like me, you are interested in seeing how belief in the supernatural has impacted different cultures over the years, I would highly recommend this book.