Harmful To Minors and Archangel reviews
Mar. 27th, 2010 10:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearHarmful To Minors by Judith Levine has been on my reading shelf for about five years, as it was one of the first books Dave gave me to read when we got together. I have no idea what prompted me to put it in my bag for my trip to Rustington last weekend, but it turned out to be well-written and interesting, albeit rather horrifying in places. Since its theme is the dangers of abstinence-only sex education in America, none of what it had to say was particularly surprising, and I was wholly in agreement with the author going in. Since I never plan to live in America or have children, it wasn't exactly relevant to me in any way, but that didn't stop it being a good (if not precisely enjoyable) read. Despite the last parenthesis, it did make me laugh in a couple of places, this one in particular:
"It is impossible to prevent every thing that is capable of sullying the imagination," lamented the anonymous author of Onania, or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution, and All Its Frightful Consequences, in Both Sexes Considered, a best-selling anti-masturbation treatise, published in England around 1700. "Dogs in the streets and Bulls in the Fields may do mischief to Debauch's Fancy's, and it is possible that either Sex may be put in mind of Lascivious Thoughts, by their own Poultry."
Evidently, nobody is safe...
By total contrast, my next book was a re-read of Sharon Shinn's Archangel. This came up in conversation the other day when Simon H was describing a book with almost exactly the same premise as Shinn's Samaria series - colony ship drops people on a planet and sets a race of "angels" to look after their pre-industrial society, the people having no knowledge of their technological, space-faring ancestry. I borrowed said book from Simon and plan to read it next, but I thought I'd remind myself of the Sharon Shinn version beforehand, so as to be able to contrast the differing treatments later.
Archangel is what would generally be classed a guilty pleasure, except that I see no reason to feel guilty about enjoying it. It's mainly a romance story, but with enough politics and theology thrown in to give it some depth and interest beyond the on-again-off-again relationship between the impossibly attractive (and annoyingly uncommunicative) central couple. I was expecting to be less affected by its melodramatic sentiment this time around, but it totally sucked me in again, and I loved almost every page - the exception being the last two, which just tipped over the edge into too much mush.
"It is impossible to prevent every thing that is capable of sullying the imagination," lamented the anonymous author of Onania, or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution, and All Its Frightful Consequences, in Both Sexes Considered, a best-selling anti-masturbation treatise, published in England around 1700. "Dogs in the streets and Bulls in the Fields may do mischief to Debauch's Fancy's, and it is possible that either Sex may be put in mind of Lascivious Thoughts, by their own Poultry."
Evidently, nobody is safe...
By total contrast, my next book was a re-read of Sharon Shinn's Archangel. This came up in conversation the other day when Simon H was describing a book with almost exactly the same premise as Shinn's Samaria series - colony ship drops people on a planet and sets a race of "angels" to look after their pre-industrial society, the people having no knowledge of their technological, space-faring ancestry. I borrowed said book from Simon and plan to read it next, but I thought I'd remind myself of the Sharon Shinn version beforehand, so as to be able to contrast the differing treatments later.
Archangel is what would generally be classed a guilty pleasure, except that I see no reason to feel guilty about enjoying it. It's mainly a romance story, but with enough politics and theology thrown in to give it some depth and interest beyond the on-again-off-again relationship between the impossibly attractive (and annoyingly uncommunicative) central couple. I was expecting to be less affected by its melodramatic sentiment this time around, but it totally sucked me in again, and I loved almost every page - the exception being the last two, which just tipped over the edge into too much mush.
