There are really few things quite so entertaining as watching people as ignorant as a box of pig shit offering their opinions on literature. Especially when the people in question are W.F. Price and his gang of misfit boys at The Spearhead, who are back for yet another take on the whole Women’s Lit question.
At this point I’ve run out of jokes on this particular subject, so I’m just going to let Mr. Price dig his own hole here. Here he is, trying to argue that feminism has made terrible lady writers even terribler.*
[I]t appears that since feminism’s triumph, female achievement in the higher arts has deteriorated substantially. When women no longer have to excel to be read and recognized, but simply have to advertise the fact that they are women to be celebrated for dubious achievements, they won’t put as much effort into producing anything of quality. So the sorry state of women today is a direct result of feminist privilege, which absolves them of all responsibility and deflects any criticism. …
Yes, feminism has wrecked Western womanhood, reducing the young women of today to spoiled brats who can’t take a hint of criticism, and immediately turn to authorities to bolster their self-esteem. No woman can be too fat to be beautiful, too dense to be intelligent, or too dull to be creative. They are all equally super-duper goddesses, before whom men must genuflect and heap up mounds of praise.
Price of course gives no examples to back up any of his, er, “arguments,” and somehow I suspect he hasn’t actually read any fiction written by women beyond an odd title or two he might have been assigned in high school. I wonder if Price could even name a half-dozen living woman novelists without having to resort to Google — excluding JK Rowling, Stephanie Meyer and Jackie Collins (who hasn’t heard of them?) and Harper Lee (who wasn’t assigned To Kill a Mockingbird in high school?).
*I am aware that “terribler” is not a real world.
I think he’s too busy desperately googling to retort to LVvS xD
I’ll stick to Warhammer 40k when it comes to my easy franchise quick trip books.
I’ve heard good things about the Dan Abnett books. I don’t know much about the 40k universe, but I like hard sf – are the books worth it?
Is nebody interested in sports btw? xD That’s about the only thing I can make reccs on lately… I eat sports books like they’re candy 😀 That and how amazingly awesome the Nancy Drew mangas are xD I decided last winter to read my YA in Manga form (Twilight, Max Ride, etc) b/c it’s more fun that way (esp with bad YA xD )… it’s like eating everything in milkshake form! xD
The art for the Twilight manga is awesome btw o_o (it reminds me of the FF8 character designs (the actual drawn ones) 😮 ) tho the story still isn’t better >_>;;
“Newton is remembered for his physics, not his alchemy. Dunno what Price’s point is though”
As fascinating as this whole argument is, I did just have to pop in as the insufferable chemist and correct this, Kirbywarp. Newton actually contributed quite a lot to the field of chemistry, as “Alchemy” is pretty much just early chemistry. However, I will say that many of his discoveries did get passed to Boyle who, (while actually being an alchemist as fully as Newton), is easier to pass of as an “early chemist”.
I will, say, however, that is intensely religious ideals were swept under the rug. He was extremely christian, though of a now-extinct sect. So much so he persecuted other Christians. Also, through intense study of the bible, he predicted that the world would end in 2060. Though, i have to say, if I had to choose apocalypse theories his would rate above Camping’s.
The VS Naipaul thread at the Spearhead is pretty good laffs.
Peter Andrew Nolan: “I deliberately failed English and even I know women like Jane Austen and Haper Lee are rubbish writers. You hardly need to be nobel laureate to know that.”
Is like saying: I flunked astrophysics, and even I know that the Sun is a big ball of cheese. Duh!
Six thumbs up and one thumb down.
Ami, there’s nothing weird about looking at other people’s bookshelves. I mean, assuming you’ve actually been invited into their homes and aren’t using binoculars through a window or something. That would be weird. You can learn a lot about a person from their bookshelves. It’s wonderful to discover where you and another person’s taste intersect and diverge.
I also think that people who love reading as children quite naturally have books that influenced them and that they remember fondly for the rest of their lives. A Wrinkle in Time blew my mind when I was nine. Of course I was also always referencing it to try and explain to my father why I couldn’t really be late for school.
Didn’t fly.
He *deliberately* failed English? o_O
The Star Wars Extended Universe is fun (I stopped following it a while ago) but it’s hardly classic sci fi. Try some Philip K. Dick, for god’s sake. Or Kurt Vonnegut. If you’re looking for good, recent sci fi by a woman, try Karin Lowachee’s Warchild series.
Oh wait. I forgot it’s weird to remember the names of my favorite authors. And I’m a lady! And I like sci fi! And preferred Star Wars novels to Twilight as a teenager! Commence pearl clutching in 3, 2, 1.
As for names of female authors, I am, unfortunately, one of those people that doesn’t remember names well. Can’t say for sure my ratio of male writers:female writers.
However, I had a good manga phase several years back, I know for sure many of those authors were women. I was particularly fond of series by CLAMP.
Oh, and I read the Animorphs series back in elementary school. That was by K.A. Applegate.
LadyV, I don’t really know how you’d personally define hard sf, I see Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghost books as being fairly good guilty pleasure military SciFi that are kind of like Hamburger Hill or The Pacific but in space. His Inquisitor type books are my favorite and have really good world-building and pretty inventive characters. I haven’t read any the Horus Heresy stuff but I guess that would be the best way to get into what Warhammer 40k universe is without trawling background articles from Game Workshop.
“Try some Philip K. Dick, for god’s sake. Or Kurt Vonnegut. If you’re looking for good, recent sci fi by a woman, try Karin Lowachee’s Warchild series.” Also Heinlein or Bradbury or the previously mentioned LeGuin. And they’re all getting to the ‘classics’ stage, too.
@Nobby:
Always happy to be corrected. 🙂 It seems like I’ve spent my childhood learning wonderful things about the world, and the beginning of of adulthood learning that all those things were bunk or misleading. It just a common argument I hear on other topics for some reason, that just because Newton made great contributions to one field, doesn’t mean he was right about everything. (therefore the fact that he was religious doesn’t lend religion more credit)
@Nobinayamu:
Oh man, Wrinkle in Time was amazing! *drools* I read that over and over as a kid, along with My Father’s Dragon, Harry Potter… *sigh* Its a shame I don’t read so much these days… The internet has become my book.
@Kirbywarp “It seems like I’ve spent my childhood learning wonderful things about the world, and the beginning of of adulthood learning that all those things were bunk or misleading.”
Truth. I really hate that in chemistry in particular. Every two or three years, you get the class that says “Oh, yeah. All that stuff from three years ago? Complete crap. Here’s how it actually works”.
@Nobby: Oh Ursula Le Guin is amazing. I discovered her work through the Earthsea series and followed that up with the Eye of Heron, which remained my favorite book for years.I read The Dispossessed last year and loved it. It’s so damned relevant.
The Nancy Drew comics aren’t related to the books btw, but they are pretty darn awesome xD I esp like how Bess is like Batman now xD She can fix ANYTHING 😀 George is great too 😀 And Nancy Drew punches out a bear! 😀
XD
I made a whole bunch of scans about the number of times she’d fought an animal in the series and also the number of times she’s confronted/battled a villain on the cliff xD Plus there’s a woman who lifts cars! :O And a guy who thinks he’s the son of Edgar Allan Poe and puts her death traps! 😀
@Sarahejones I preferred Star TREK novels to Twilight! >:O *puts on Team Star Trek shirt* xD Oh it’s on! *hairpull*
Deliberately failed? Sounds kind of like, “I meant to do that!” when you fall down the stairs.
Sword of the Jedi > Kirk. 😛
Picard, now. That would be tough. And Sisko. I was always a fan of Sisko.
@Sarahejones & @Ami:
Yer both wrong.
The Babylon 5 novels are superior by far to anything Lucas or Rodenberry have to offer!
Oh you b-!
xD
I actually like Babylon 5 too 🙁 And Star Wars! D: It’s hard to keep up the cattiness!
Just because its relevant. 😛
I’ve never watched Babylon 5 so I can’t comment. I’ve got to finish working my way through the X Files before I tackle a new series (and I start grad school in the fall so god knows when I’ll have time to watch anything after that). But I did grow up on Star Trek. That was my introduction to sci fi, actually.
@Nobby I think that’s the thing… I mean we all grow up “knowing” things about the world, esp about things we’ve never experienced or what ppl’s lives must be like.. we have these narratives and beliefs that we absorbed and we grow up knowing it’s true, and I think the difference comes when you get a disconnect between what’s true and what you “know” and it’s how ppl deal w/ that that makes the difference : It’s amazing how angry ppl can get w/ change… like the Pluto thing proved that, it’s just a change in classification and some ppl who never thought about astronomy in their entire lives got RLY bent out of shape about it cuz it was different than what they “knew” and what they grew up with.
NWO, I only keep the ones I want to read again, and I read or reread a book at least every other day. So yeah, I keep the ones I like, as it is I spend too much on books.
I’ve yet to meet anyone “impressed” by lots of books. They’re a pain in the backside; heavy and get dusty and take up space. But so much fun when I open one up and fall into the story.
The ones I don’t like are given to the library book sale, and if you think used books don’t sell, you should go to one of those sometimes.
Lady Vic, you’re right, there are women writers who do series work, and some of them do write books I like.
My guess is that a Kindle or a Nook would probably be a good thing for me, but haven’t yet gone that route.
@Ami:
Too true. The problem is people don’t realize that the first thing you hear is usually the side you trust most. Children kinda have to take what parents and teachers say on faith because they have no one else to give them information, and what they say becomes “fact.” Some people can deal with change, others can’t. NWO seems to be in the latter category.