{"id":8,"date":"2001-08-27T17:22:18","date_gmt":"2001-08-27T22:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2001\/08\/27\/\/"},"modified":"2005-10-27T20:19:55","modified_gmt":"2005-10-28T00:19:55","slug":"out-of-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2001\/08\/27\/out-of-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Out of Books"},"content":{"rendered":"
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So I’m out of books again. This is bad, since I bought 3 on Friday and got another in the mail on Saturday. Of course, 2 were Nancy Drew, so they don’t really count.<\/p>\n

The story behind the Nancy Drews:
The Nancy Drew books (and the Hardy Boys, and the Bobbsey Twins, etc) were first written in the 1930s or earlier. They were longer, and reflected the era in which they were written. When they were reissued for the Boomer girls, starting in about 1959, times had changed. The books were all ‘updated’, and anything objectionable was removed. I’ve read parts of the older versions before (they were published by the Stratmeyer Syndicate, and the chick who ran it was an alum) at college, but never an entire book. But it turns out they’ve been republishing the old versions, objectionable parts intact, so I decided to get a copy of #1 in both forms.<\/p>\n

After reading both of them, I can’t say which was really better. My instinct tells me that the revision was, on some level, an attempt at censorship — Nancy was aged 2 years, the violence was watered down, references to alcohol and black people were purged. But without the revision, the books might have disappeared altogether, since I have to admit, they are rather more ‘timeless’ in their hacked up state. (Not entirely, but aside from a few anachronisms, the adventures could be taking place as easily today as in the 30s) I DO like the Nancy of the earlier books better. No longer is she the discreet, polite, non-gossipy Nancy; instead, she’s a snobby bitch. One can’t ‘admire’ her as much as one can the updated Nancy, but at least she has some faults! (Not that she’s the least bit aware of them as faults. ^^)<\/p>\n

The other main book I read was Lois McMaster Bujold’s latest, _The Curse of Chalion_. It was good. I’m not sure if I liked it as much as the Miles books, and I thought the world was a little.. uneven. At first it seemed like women were really oppressed, but in the last third of the book something happened which puzzled me, because it didn’t quite fit with that picture. But other than that it was good, and I liked the main heroine, Iselle, because her name was very similar to an old character of mine, Iscelle, and she behaved a little like Iscelle’s granddaughter. ^_^ I would definitely buy another book set in the same universe. There were plenty of random little slashy bits in it (which actually makes me wish she’d write a prequel rather than a sequel…) which are typical of her Vorkosigan books too. I have heard she’s going to write at least one other book in this world, so I look forward to it. But she better write another Miles first! Or even better, another Ethan!<\/p>\n

In any case, being out of books should be rectified by the end of the week, because my book from amazon is finally going to ship! My status page says it will! Honest! It’s only taken them a month to get it in. -_-<\/p>\n

Happy: certain people I stalk have put their pages up again, my IRS “rebate” came, someone bid on my ebay auction
Eh: still have to do a ton of work on SAS stuff, because I blew it off this weekend<\/p>\n

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So I’m out of books again. This is bad, since I bought 3 on Friday and got another in the mail on Saturday. Of course, 2 were Nancy Drew, so they don’t really count. The story behind the Nancy Drews:The Nancy Drew books (and the Hardy Boys, and the Bobbsey Twins, etc) were first written […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}