adrian_turtle (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
adrian_turtle) wrote2005-10-31 11:53 am
adrian_turtle) wrote2005-10-31 11:53 am
mysterious as the dark side of the moon
Last night, I was reading _In Conquest Born_. I started it last winter, then went off traveling and got distracted by booooks and didn't pick it up again until last week. I'm really enjoying it now, and putting it aside for so long set up a wonderful coincidence. Music was coming in from outside for about 2 minutes, presumably while someone playing a car stereo way too loud waited behind a bus and stopped for a red light. The song was "Make a Man Out Of You," from _Mulan_. The juxtaposition of the song with the book (towards the end of the book, when the primary characters had made contact but had not started their conclusive interaction) was really impressive.
I recognized that I was reading one genre and listening to another, with different presumptions, intentions, and target audiences. For all that, it felt like noticing a difference between mid-'80s feminism and late-'90s feminism...differences in ironic tone and anger that I had chalked up to my own changes in going from 18-year-old student (when _In Conquest Born_ was published) to rather isolated 30-year-old engineer. As ever, it's more complicated.
I recognized that I was reading one genre and listening to another, with different presumptions, intentions, and target audiences. For all that, it felt like noticing a difference between mid-'80s feminism and late-'90s feminism...differences in ironic tone and anger that I had chalked up to my own changes in going from 18-year-old student (when _In Conquest Born_ was published) to rather isolated 30-year-old engineer. As ever, it's more complicated.