Angela Youngman

The Weird and Wonderful Story of Gin by Angela Youngman is a wonderful history of gin, its highs (so to speak) and its lows.

Many of us know a couple of the chapters in the story of gin, usually based on our location and our areas of interest. This book fills in all of the gaps and connects the dots so that the various perceptions of the drink make sense. This is well researched and written in a very engaging manner.

I was particularly interested in the various literary and pop culture references. I think other readers may well be drawn to other aspects. All in all this is a nice contribution to any social history library.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (més)

The Dark Side of Alice in Wonderland by Angela Youngman is a well-researched and clearly presented account of, mostly, the making and responses to the stories as well as how the imagery has been (mis)appropriated over the years.

I would suggest that any reader bracket their 21st century sensibilities while reading and assessing the person of Carroll/Dodgson. The easy and lazy way to understand him is to pretend he didn't exist in the time in which he did. It is also the most unfair. That said, there are still a lot of questions even when assessed within his own time, particularly because the time was very much a transitory time with respect to how society understood children/adult relations and childhood itself. What seemed appropriate was, within a decade or so, deemed questionable and, now, will make people believe they know enough to condemn a human being. So read within the historical context of the time.

As for the many ways the images and scenes of the books have been appropriated over time, I think the format of the book helped to keep these separate. yes, it leads to a small bit of repetition, largely because each chapter, presenting a different Alice, reads like a self contained essay. If each chapter is taken as such, the repetition does not hinder the flow and instead helps to make the presentation of each chapter/essay more compelling.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (més)