![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glaurungJoanna Russ was one of my favourite authors in college. I discovered her via the Adventures of Alyx, then was blown away by the Female Man, and then tracked down every book by her I could find. I read the Female Man a couple times on my own before eagerly signing up for two courses that included it on their reading lists.
I hugely enjoyed Farah Mendlesohn's book of Heinlein criticism, and Farah is also a friend, so I super eagerly pre-ordered this and was all but bouncing up and down when it arrived in the mail last month.
And then I read it, and... I don't know why, but it just didn't click for me.
Not that there's anything wrong with the book, it's a perfectly good study of the novel, delving deep into the structure of the narrative and exploring its roots as a modernist novel in the tradition of Virginia Woolf, looking at how previous critics seem unable to grapple with the plot properly, briefly discussing the influence Russ's Jewish heritage may have had, among other things.
But somehow, instead of being full of ideas and thoughts after reading it, I just put it on the shelf and moved on to the next book.
I think this is a me problem rather than a problem with the book, and I don't have any idea why.
I hugely enjoyed Farah Mendlesohn's book of Heinlein criticism, and Farah is also a friend, so I super eagerly pre-ordered this and was all but bouncing up and down when it arrived in the mail last month.
And then I read it, and... I don't know why, but it just didn't click for me.
Not that there's anything wrong with the book, it's a perfectly good study of the novel, delving deep into the structure of the narrative and exploring its roots as a modernist novel in the tradition of Virginia Woolf, looking at how previous critics seem unable to grapple with the plot properly, briefly discussing the influence Russ's Jewish heritage may have had, among other things.
But somehow, instead of being full of ideas and thoughts after reading it, I just put it on the shelf and moved on to the next book.
I think this is a me problem rather than a problem with the book, and I don't have any idea why.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-04-25 02:13 pm (UTC)After not being sure from the pre-publicity, I looked at this book at Eastercon and left it on the bookstall, as tbh by that stage I had expected to. The book does not do what I want to know more about Russ and her work.
But in my case it has to do with the ways I engage with books and essays written as critical work from within the academe, and, having read my share despite being a non-academic, I nowadays bounce off these.