Guest Lesbrarian Ami reviews Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

We have another guest lesbrarian! Her name is Ami, and here’s her review:

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

Pages:474

My rating: C

Summary: At 18, Nancy Astley is a fishmonger in coastal Whitstable, working with her sister and parents in the family oyster parlour. Smitten by male impersonator Kitty Butler, Nancy attends every show at the Canterbury Palace until the star notices her. A stunned Nancy finds herself Kitty’s companion and dresser, and sexual tension keeps the pages turning as she becomes first Kitty’s sweetheart, then her partner (“two lovely girls in trousers, instead of one!”) in a wildly successful stage act. (Summary thanks to amazon.)

Spoiler: If your looking for a book about two women whom first become friends, and later lovers, and those the two women face hardship and doubt, but at the end of the day love conquers all… This is not the book for you!

I pick up Tipping the Velvet for one reason: I wanted to read a Sarah Walter book, but I knew very well that they screw with the main characters lives.( I was a bit unsure about that since I am a normally love conquers all reader, but it’s oddly hard to find a love conquers all book that involves two women.) I did a google search of all her books and narrowed it down to two. Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith, because I had seen both on T.V. I ended up choosing Tipping the Velvet because I had more unanswered questions (Mind you I can’t remember what the questions were since I had seen the miniseries years before, but I remember having questions.) Of course now I want to read Fingersmith, go figure…

I want to point out that most would have given this book a higher rating than me. The plot itself draws you in. I believe I finished this book in two days; it is a really good book. I, personally–and I tried–couldn’t like Nancy. To me, her character wasn’t particular interesting. Almost all of Nancy choices in the book are selfish, if her choice somehow hurt someone else, oh well, it is all about the good of Nancy. And then when Nancy does find herself on hard times, she goes looking for those people whom she hurt to get her a hand out. I couldn’t like the main character, but I did like the book and other characters in it.

Ami’s Livejournal account is here. Please send in your own review! Just click “Guest Lesbrarians” at the top.

Have you read Tipping the Velvet, or Sarah Waters’s other works? What did you think of them?

Personally, Tipping the Velvet is my favourite book. I found the writing exquisite, and I loved the ending. But not all books are for everyone!

Danika reviews Queer View Mirror

Queer View Mirror is an anthology of 99 gay and lesbian short stories (short short stories, no more than a couple pages each) collected by James C. Johnstone and Karen X. Tulchinsky, and published by my very favourite publishing company (I am desperately wishing to one day work there), Arsenal Pulp Press.

Queer View Mirror attempts to include as much variety in its portrayal of gay/lesbian lives as possible. There are love stories, rape scenes (so, possibly triggering), and stories with no romance or sex at all. They mainly take place in North America, but there are a few that don’t. As with all anthologies, some I liked better than others, but overall I thought this was a great collection, mostly because of all the variety.

I was using a small sheet of paper to keep track of the authors of the lesbian/queer women stories that I enjoyed out of this collection, and I ended up with the paper crammed full of names. Unfortunately, few of them have books of their own, but that gives more credit to the editors for finding these awesome little-known authors.

Have you read Queer View Mirror or another queer anthology? What did you think of it?

The only lesbian anthology I’ve read and own is Daughters of Darkness: Lesbian Vampire Tales by Pam Keesey, which I quite liked, especially since I’m not usually very into vampire stories (other than Buffy, of course). Other anthologies I own are: Girls Next Door: Lesbian Feminist Stories edited by Jan Bradshaw & Mary Hemming, The Things That Divide Us edited by Faith Conlon, Lesbian Fiction: An Anthology edited by Elly Bulkin, Dykewords edited by The Lesbian Writing and Publishing Collective, Dykeversions: Lesbian Short Fiction edited by The Lesbian Writing and Publishing Collective, The Original Coming Out Stories edited by Julia Penelope & Susan J. Wolfe, Lesbian Bedtime Stories edited by Terry Woodrow, and Love Shook My Heart: New Lesbian Love Stories edited by Irene Zahava.

The anthologies I can get from the library: Queer View Mirror 2, Women of Mystery edited by Katherine V. Forrest, Two Friends: and Other Nineteenth-Century Lesbian Stories by American Women Writers edited by Susan Koppelman, Women On Women and Women on Women 2 edited by Nestle, and Baby Remember My Name edited by Michelle Tea.

Also, I just finished a great book that’s only slightly related to this blog: Nobody’s Mother. It’s a collection of essays about women who don’t have children and don’t plan to. Only one (I think) was written by a lesbian, but they’re definitely a great read if you don’t think motherhood is for you, or if you can’t have kids.

T.S. Eliot, Lesbian Fiction Fan?

Sorry about not posting in a while, I’ll be putting up a review later today, but first I wanted to share an article I just stumbled upon.

In  my high school Lit class, I used to amuse myself by finding or inventing gay and lesbian subtext in everything we read. My best friend and I interpreted T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” as a gay love story. I still can’t read it any other way. Now, years later, I just read an article about Eliot’s connection to lesbian literature.

Apparently, Eliot fought hard to get the lesbian classic Nightwood published, even when no other publisher would touch it for the “obscene” content. Here’s the article.

What do you think of Eliot, usually depicted as quite grim and conservative, being shown to have been this radical promoter of lesbian fiction?

Lambda Literary Finalists

I’m just a few pages away from finishing an awesome gay and lesbian anthology that I’ll be sharing with you, but until then I wanted to share some important Lesbrary news: the finalists for the Lambda Literary Awards have been released!

Here are some of the queer women highlights:

Lesbian Debut Fiction

  • The Creamsickle, by Rhiannon Argo (Spinsters Ink)
  • The Bigness of the World, by Lori Ostlund (University of Georgia Press)
  • Land Beyond Maps, by Maida Tilchen (Savvy Press)
  • More of This World or Maybe Another, by Barb Johnson (Harper Perennial)
  • Verge, by Z Egloff (Bywater Books)

Lesbian Fiction

  • Dismantled, by Jennifer McMahon (HarperCollins)
  • A Field Guide to Deception, by Jill Malone (Bywater Books)
  • Forgetting the Alamo, Or, Blood Memory, by Emma Pérez (University of Texas Press)
  • Risk, by Elana Dykewomon (Bywater Books)
  • This One’s Going to Last Forever, by Nairne Holtz (Insomniac Press)

But check out the full list here; there’s lots more, including Lesbian Mystery, Poetry, Erotica, and Memoirs, and lots of general LGBT categories with lesbian and bisexual women content.

Have you read any of the finalists? Are there any you’re rooting for?

Hmmm, I don’t think I’ve read any (well, maybe one, but I won’t mention it because I wasn’t a big fan). Oddly enough, though, I got Dismantled, one of the finalists, in for free at my store and took it home even though it didn’t really look like something I’d usually read, and what do you know, it’s a lesbian book!

The Lambda Literary Awards are a great source of finding queer fiction, I highly recommend going through the old lists of finalists and winners.

Read or Die, Vol. 1

This is a classic case of “does it count?” I read R.O.D. expecting it to be explicitly lesbian, which wasn’t quite true. But first things first:

Read or Die was first a series of Japanese light novels (not currently published in English, but a fan translation is in the works) which then spawned R.O.D. the manga (a series of four) and an accompanying series of manga set in the same universe: Dream Or Die. The manga inspired an OVA, Original Video Animation, which then inspired a TV series.

I just picked up the four manga, available at my library (because I have an awesome library), not realizing how far-reaching R.O.D. is. I was easily sold on it: lesbrarian manga? Sign me up!

Well, this is the thing. I liked Read Or Die; it features a book-obsessed main character by the name of Yomiko Readman. Yomiko, in fact, is the Paper for The Library of England: she has powers that can control any piece of paper to do anything she wants. She embarks on various heroic actions, collecting pallets of books along the way.

By the end of the first manga, things were going along pretty much as expected, since the romantic interest had been introduced and hinted around. But here’s the thing… it never goes past that. Their relationship never quite becomes text, but it comes very, very close in the first manga. Think Xena and Gabrielle. Which brings me to my main question:

Does lesbian subtext count as a queer women book? Do lesbian subtext books belong on the Lesbrary?

This isn’t anything against Read Or Die; I enjoyed it and I’m looking forward to watching the anime, plus the yuri that is hinted towards is adorable.

I was really excited to read queer women manga and I found some links for yuri published in English and free fan translations of yuri. Have you read any yuri/queer women manga? What did you think of it?

Lesbrary Sneak Peek (or: Stuff I Got In the Mail This Week)

I’ve got one hundred unread lesbian/queer women books I own (one hundred and four, to be exact) and probably about three hundred more at the library I can access at any point, so even the queer women books I have I’m probably not going to read for a while yet. That’s why I have Sneak Peeks: a look at books that I’ll eventually be reviewing, but I haven’t read yet. I got three queer women books in the mail this week (thanks Bookmooch!), so I thought I’d do my first sneak peek post on them.

Stone Butch Blues is a queer classic and it’s one I’ve been meaning to read for ages. It’s by trans activist Leslie Feinberg and is about the character Jess Goldberg who deals with being differently-gendered/butch in a blue-collar town in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. This is said to be one of the first novels that explicitly dealt with transgender issues. I’ve heard this is an incredibly powerful book and I’m very much looking forward to reading it and sharing it at the Lesbrary.

On a completely different note, I also got the book Night Mares in. I haven’t read a lot of mystery… as a matter of fact, I think I’ve only read one mystery, one of the Rita Mae Brown Sneaky Pie Brown ones. I didn’t like it very much, and now that I think about it, that might have been all that it took to turn me off the entire genre. I know that’s ridiculous, so I’ve been searching for queer women mysteries to read and challenge that. This one features a lesbian veterinarian. I doubt I’m the only lesbian that grew up wanting to be a vet, so I figured this would be a great place to start. It’s the second in the series, but I doubt that will make much of a difference.

This one I think speaks for itself. Lesbian feminist science fiction? Sign me up! I haven’t read a lot of scifi, but again, I’m trying to start. This collection is from the 70s and 80s, so it’ll be interesting to get that viewpoint.

Lots of fun new books! Have you gotten any queer women books lately? Are there any you’re particularly excited to read?

Also, have you read The Needle on Full, Night Mares, or Stone Butch Blues? What did you think of them?

Guest Lesbrarian Stefanie reviews Marthy Moody by Susan Stinson

Welcome to our first Guest Lesbrarian post! This one is by Stefanie for lesbian writer Susan Stinson’s book Martha Moody, published in 1995. She also recommends some of Stinson’s  other fiction, including Venus of Chalk and Fat Girl Dances with Rocks. Please, send in your own guest lesbrarian review!

Susan Stinson’s Martha Moody is an extraordinary and evocative book. Set in the “Old West,” it tells a complex and uneasy story of two women loving each despite their familial and community commitments. I wanted this book to keep going, never to end, so that I could stay suspended in Stinson’s poetic voice.This book is unconventional in many ways (its characterizations, its lush language, its integration of stories within stories) and seeks to fully explore how two individuals choose and are forced to act within their social and personal circumstances. A gorgeous read.

Have you read any of Susan Stinson’s books? What did you think?

Danika reviews Halfway to Silence by May Sarton

I wanted to update with something new that I’ve read, so I picked something small: Halfway to Silence by May Sarton. It’s a collection of her poetry. This is the first book by her I’ve read, though she’s written many.

I have a funny relationship with poetry. I love it, in some ways: right now I’m in my second college poetry class, and I like going to the spoken word poetry events that happen regularly where I live, but I can get really bored by… I suppose more traditional poetry. I dislike wordiness, flowery language, and above all, describing scenery. Of course, that last one goes for novels, as well.

May Sarton’s poems seemed to lean towards those characteristics. That doesn’t mean that she’s a bad poet, not at all, she’s just not exactly my style. There were a couple I enjoyed, however, like “Love” and “Of Molluscs”. Although Sarton is a lesbian and I’m told she often writes about the lesbian experience, this collection didn’t really reflect that. In fact, I only found one poem that seemed to have any lesbian content, “The Lady of the Lake”, and I thought I’d share the first part of it to show Sarton’s style:

Somewhere at the bottom of the lake she is
Entangled among weeds, her deep self drowned.
I cannot be there with her. I know she is bound
To a dead man. Her wide open eyes are his.
Only a part of her surfaces in my arms
When I can lift her up and float her there

If you are looking for lesbian poetry, my favorite lesbian poet is the spoken word poet Alix Olson. You can read some of her poetry at her website or listen to her on Youtube.

For more lesbian poetry you can look forward to seeing reviewed, I own The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse by Stephen Coote, Poems Between Women by Emma Donoghue (which I am very much looking forward to), The Fact of a Doorframe by Adrienne Rich, and Songs of Sappho by the original Lesbian.

I also have access to some through the library: The Collected Poem of Audre Lorde and The Complete Poems of Sappho (I like to read different translations, though I recommend If Not, Winter).

Who are some of your favorite lesbian poets?