Mabel Stark and the joy of discovering a Tiger

 So last time I was talking about the overwhelming pressure of what should be read. The list keeps growing, and its the same with music or films or TV or anything else. Seriously, I've pre-ordered Encanto on DVD because I'm sick of not getting all the memes butIi refuse to subscribe to disney plus. 

I have many lists. Music artists to listen to on spotify (I add the songs I like to an ever growing collection of huge playlists, so if spotify turns out to be another service I have to righteously cancel, that's going to be a real pain). TV shows and films to watch, both ones I own on DVD and ones I'm just waiting for the change to catch on a streaming service. 

And of course, books. I don't want to get into the whole thing again but there's 'classics' like Dickens, Bronte, Tolstoy, etc and 'modern classics' which were written in the 1920's/1930's and then... I don't know what we're supposed to call anything after that? One flew over the cuckoo's nest, american psycho, fight club, and all these others that have been turned into films where people totally miss the point. (I don't even know about that, I've not got round to reading them yet). But then, it's not like anything written after 1970 isn't worth reading. Or even 2000. There's just so much out there and its so much easier to be published than back in the 1900's, so contrasting the fear that you're missing out of the great things everyone else is talking about, is the fear that ALL OF YOU are missing out on some undiscovered masterpiece because it hasn't been reviewed on a talk show or popular blog or whatever.

It is for this reason (and not because it's so much cheaper) that I have a weakness for random books found in charity shops. Neve rmind judging by the cover, I scan the spines looking for a title or design that catches my eye, look at the blurb, maybe give it a sniff, and think 'yes, THIS may be worth adding to the hoard'.

And until a couple of years ago, the hoard grew and I barely read any of them.

Since I've motivated myself, I've read a lot of stuff. It would take a lot of time and reminiscence to talk about what surprised me in a good way, and maybe I'll get back to those gems one day, but for now I'd like to talk about my new friend Mabel.

I had never heard of Mabel Stark before. When I found this book I had no idea she was a real person, but my little gay, burlesque-loving eyes saw a book about a woman with short hair joining the circus and jumping into a male-dominated field and thought 'yeah, this will do.'

This is not 'tipping the velvet' with tigers, although I do think Keeley Hawes could have played this role perfectly. It's easy to look at stories from this period and assume the sexuality of women who didn't conform to the stereotypes of the time, but that's just another stereotype isn't it? It's perfectly possible to wear leather pants and wrestle tigers, and still want a husband and children. Of course, the problem here is that this is a fictionalised account, written by a man who read through a load of newspapers and letters some 30 years after her death. From what I can gather the author did thorough research and certainly based a lot of his guesses on solid clues from her correspondence. But I still wonder how Miss Stark would feel about some of the embellishments. 

Some of the most touching moments in this book were likely totally fictional, with only the names of persons and tigers involved being based on evidence. But either way, its an amazing story and one I think will stick with me for a while. I'm certainly going to have a bit of trouble letting go of these characters and starting on another book.

Hello again

 Hi. So, I nearly didn't come back here. I had other ideas. Ideas of using a blog for such gut-spilling, closet-opening reality that this one wouldn't do. Oh no, I wanted one where I could be completely anonymous. But do you know how hard it is to find a FREE blog like this, and not have it connected to your g account? Or make a NEW one? Er, nope. No way. Too much effort.

So I figured I'd come back here and babble away and just hopefully not say anything that would get Me ostracised from society or fired. Notice I say 'ostracised' and not 'cancelled'.  As much as this blog will be somewhere to exercise my freedom of speech, if anything I say comes across as homophobic, racist, transphobic, etc I FULLY expect to be called out on it. That's how we learn. I'm Bi and female but also cis and white and not exactly living in poverty, so I don't see from all those sides and would rather hear that something I'm saying is insensitive than continue saying it in ignorance.

Anyway, now that I've got the introduction out of the way, I'm talking about books today. More so the books I choose than the books I'm reading right now. 

I started to realise a couple of years ago that I was buying more books than I read. Way more in fact. And at least with novels, with a story, I'd read them all the way through. Non-fiction or 'coffee table' books I'd buy to look at interesting pictures and not much more. So I thought, 'no more!'.

I started doing LISTS. I made a note of every single book I owned and hadn't read properly. and started keeping track of which books I had read that year. I generally had one novel and one non-fiction on the go at the same time. It's been working pretty well.

But in rediscovering my love of reading, I also noticed how much there was out there that I hadn't read, and hadn't even thought of reading! Sure, I've read Les Miserables and Bronte, but I haven't read Dickens or Tolstoy or Melville! (Gilmore Girls fans, I am NOT choosing Moby Dick as my first Melville). My amazon wishlist grew amazingly. 

At the same time, I asked around in online book groups for suggestions to add to my ever expanding to-do list. I usually just pick up whatever takes my fancy from the selection at charity shops, but I was now making an effort to keep an eye out for non-fiction that appealed to me; ancient history, social subjects, natural history. But then I realised, as interesting as these were, if I was really going to expand my horizons I would need to ask around a bit more. Because when I was reading history, I really wanted to hear the things we DIDN'T get taught in school. And do you know what we did get taught in school? History as written by a load of old, white men. Sure it was interesting to read about ancient Egyptians and Greeks, but really what I was reading was the standard western take on such things. I wanted to hear from other perspectives. I've added a bunch of history books to my list, from not such a white/western perspective but I'm still on the look out for more (I've got about 3 years of books to be read, so if you suggest something and I buy it soon, I might even read it before the 20's are out).

On the other side of this huge idea of what I SHOULD read, all the sorts of perspectives and subjects I should let into my head, there is the fact that most of my book shopping happens spontaeneously in charity shops. Ok, recently more of my charity shop buys have been things on my list (wuthering heights, mill on the floss, far from the maddening crowd), but then that's mostly because my wish list has grown.

But what DO I end up buying and reading?

Well right now I'm reading my way through the fantastically packaged boxed set of Danielle Corsetto's comic 'Girls With Slingshots' (seriously, probably one of the fanciest hardbacks I own now).

The other book is 'The Final Confession of Mabel Stark' by Robert Hough,

This I believe I saw in a charity shop, looked at briefly and took home. I had never heard of it or her before, but she has now come into my life and I will talk about her next time.