1. List your top seven ships
2. Put all of them in order of your love for them; 7 to 1, 1 being your favorite.
3. Name their fandom.
4. Supply photos for said people.

( These are really in no particular order: I ship them all about equally. AKA, like burning )
And, of course, the traditional ( Super Secret Really Really Really Embarrassing Slash Ship below the cut. )

So I just finished reading Mary Called Magdalene, by Margaret George. I chose to read it because I enjoyed George's other books (The Autobiography of Henry VIII and The Memoirs of Cleopatra) despite their length, and because I've always been interested in and curious about the Magdalene. However, I find myself curiously irritated by Mary Called Magdalene.

I think part of the reason is because it feels so much like "women's history." I use the term carefully here, not to suggest a derogatory attitude towards people who research the lives of ordinary and extraordinary women in the past (I come from an all-girl's school, people, that'd be stupid and hypocritical of me), but to express my irritation with the people who insist on shoehorning women into places they simply would not have occupied. In this novel, Mary Magdalene manages to be an ordinary Jewish woman who then becomes the center of the group of disciples, and, according to George, the only one who remained with Jesus throughout his trials and suffering. The apostle John gets a mention as does the Virgin Mary, but all the glory belongs to Mary Magdalene. She also falls in love with Jesus, though thankfully George does not go the Dan Brown route and claim it was returned. Beyond this specific objection, I have no reason to account for my annoyance with Mary's character.

Another issue I had with the novel is that it goes on too long. I ended up skimming the last hundred or so pages, since they did nothing for me and merely served as a chance for George to talk about the early Christian church. Had she written them in the same engaging style as she did the rest of the story, I might have read them; however, she chose to write them in a summary, formulaic voice, styling them "The Memoirs of Mary Magdalene." The lovely turns of language and knack for dialogue are all gone, and it was simply uninteresting.

I did enjoy the language prior to that little interlude. Margaret George has a way with words that make her seven- and eight-hundred-page books worth reading. For example (off a randomly-opened page in Mary Called Magdalene):

"Something seemed to slow her, and she turned and looked carefully at each face. She looked directly into each woman's eyes, although usually she felt it was impolite to do so. Dark-brown eyes, so deep they looked black; eyes fringed with such heavy lashes they threw shadows on the woman's cheeks; eyes the tawny yellow of the shells of tortosies; even one pair of startlingly blue eyes, as blue as any Macedonian's."

Gorgeous description. George specializes in these and usually delivers five or six a chapter.

I'm not sorry I read this book, but I am confused by my irritation with it. I quite liked the story up until Mary fell in love with Jesus, at which point I started skimming and skipping. Perhaps I'm too Christian at heart to quite like the idea of Jesus being in love, or maybe it's simply part of my own beliefs about what makes divinity. It could even have been my feeling of "I know this story, get on with it," though I don't think so, as I was enjoying the book up until then. Either way, I just stopped caring about Mary and her troubles.

If you like me are interested in Mary Magdalene but don't feel like investing the time in this brick of a book, I much preferred Donna Jo Napoli's Song of the Magdalene. It's elegant, concise, and much more emotionally affecting.

Dear author of the book I'm reading:

Stop implying that John Adams did not love his wife. Fifty-nine years of love letters say you fail. Kthxbai.

Seriously, how is this hard? John and Abigail Adams are one of the great American love stories, to hear everyone but you tell it. Yes, they fought, yes, they disagreed on shit, but you know what? So does every single loving couple ever. People argue. It happens. It doesn't mean they loved each other any less.

Oh, and "remember the ladies" and his dismissal of it that you're going on about? Please note that if you actually read the letter in question and don't just take the quotes out of context, it becomes obvious that they were teasing each other. Abigail certainly meant "remember the ladies," no lie, but his response? Was a joke. Remember that you yourself said she was his greatest political advisor and the one he depended on the most. Clearly one should not take that response all that seriously.

Jeebus, woman. Get your stories straight.

Annoyed,
A John Adams Fangirl

(PS: Jefferson can suck it.)

1) Which Witch, Eva Ibbotson
2) Twilight, Stephanie Meyer
3) The Gammage Cup, Carol Kane
4) The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman
5) The Observation Deck, Naomi Epel
6) The Secret of Platform 13, Eva Ibbotson
7) What You Wear Can Change Your Life, Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine
8) The Lioness and Her Knight, Gerald Morris
8) Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony, Eoin Colfer
9) The Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
10) My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding, Jim Butcher et al.
11) My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon, Jim Butcher et al.
12) Rose of No Man's Land, Michelle Tea
13) Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
14) The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
15) The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston
16) Over Sea, Under Stone, Susan Cooper
17) A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin
18) Promiscuities, Naomi Wolf

A note about this last book before we go on to what I'm currently reading. Promiscuities talks about the sexual coming of age of young women in the sixties and seventies, and much of what she talks about makes sense. Our society places a negative value on female sexual desire. Men are supposed to be the aggressors, women the defenders. Therefore, if a woman is raped, it must be because she did not defend herself well enough. It's not the man's fault, because he can't help himself. Maybe she in some way showed some kind of desire, which in our society makes her a slut and therefore to be punished.

Seriously. Look at the words used to describe female sexuality and sexual organs: cunt, pussy, whore, slut. Even the word "vagina", while not ugly, sounds suspiciously clinical. You know there's a problem when Rayne from Least I Could Do shows a greater respect for women in the language he uses about them than the average, everyday man in the street.

Women deserve to be sexually active without social punishment, just as men are. Women deserve the right to desire men or women and the right to have that desire validated and approved by society. Having female desire suppressed and denied does no one any good; it leads to higher incidents of rape (because all good girls say no, even if they mean yes) and date rape (you have to get a woman drunk before she responds) and damage to everyone, men and women alike. For women, the damage is obvious. For men, it's a little more insidious. How, if you are a genuinely nice guy, like my boyfriend, do you approach a woman and try to please her when she doesn't even place a decent value on her own body and sexuality, and when society demands that you have sex with her to prove your own masculinity?

I'm not saying that anyone should be ashamed of having sex. Quite the opposite. I just wish that there was equal value on desire.

Currently Reading: Storm Front, Jim Butcher; Inkhart, Cornelia Funke; Legacy of Love, Joanna Trollope; Poetry, Language, Thought, Martin Heidegger (expect some strong language from me on this one)

1) Which Witch, Eva Ibbotson
2) Twilight, Stephanie Meyer
3) The Gammage Cup, Carol Kane
4) The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman
5) The Observation Deck, Naomi Epel
6) The Secret of Platform 13, Eva Ibbotson
7) What You Wear Can Change Your Life, Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine
8) The Lioness and Her Knight, Gerald Morris
8) Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony, Eoin Colfer
9) The Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
10) My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding, Jim Butcher et al.
11) My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon, Jim Butcher et al.
12) Rose of No Man's Land, Michelle Tea
13) Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
14) The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri

Currently Reading: Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin; The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston