Uninterested reading
September 23rd, 2009 • chatter, education
So I’m over halfway done with Disorderly Women by Susan Juster and I’m still struggling to become interested in the book. The actual content is fascinating enough, sure, but Juster has failed at every attempt to grab my interest by simply being a boring writer. Maybe it’s that I find her style of writing-via-quotes-and-citations boring/annoying. Unfortunately, I’m still trying to figure out the actual point/hypothesis of this book and I’m over halfway through it already. Separating her own information from the flurry of quotes (other writers and church documents) is both difficult and time-consuming given that I’ve found most of the content of the book itself is quotations. I don’t find this occurring as often in anthropology books or in most history books I’ve read, so perhaps this is some kind of women’s history schtick? I have no idea how I’m going to write a three page paper on a book whose point I still haven’t understood (or found). This is why I don’t take subjective history classes. I hate wasting my time wading through ego or fluff information to have to discern a minuscule point.
On another note of annoyance, I don’t like Leaves’ Eyes new CD Njord. I can’t say this CD is boring however, it’s definitely not that good to me. The content of the CD has swayed far from Vinland Saga‘s stories and elegies to the Scandinavians of old and was put together very well musically. However, Njord seems to have kept the musicality of the first CD while stripping out any interesting stories from the songs. This CD is another album about Nordic conquests however, I really fail to see what Vikings and Scarborough Fair have in common since they would not have been frequenting Scarborough in the Middle Ages. I understand this is a cover song but really, it belongs as a bonus track or the end of the CD as it interrupts the flow of the CD. Most CD arrangements are either a V or a descending plateau arrangement. This means that in a V arrangement, the CD starts off strong, has an average/weak middle, and a (hopefully) strong end. A descending plateau is just as it sounds: starts off strong and flutters out as the album goes on. Having Scarborough Fair at track 5 of 12 smacks this straight into V territory as it’s simply in the wrong spot on the CD. The rest of the CD has strong, upbeat tracks and this is just a very odd arrangement especially for Leaves’ Eyes whose last few EPs and last CD had excellent arrangements.