Wednesday Reading Meme on Thursday
May. 12th, 2022 10:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kitewithfishI confess I am slightly discouraged - I have not made a lot of progress on my reading in the last few weeks (life got busy). But we prevail! We overcome!
What I've Read
I finished the Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers - which I kind of noted in my last post. But still.
The Four Profound Weaves by RB Lemberg - lovely and refreshing, but it kind of felt like a short story that went on too long, or a novel that needed more space. I loved it, and it landed in a wonderfully unsettling place for me. Highly recommend.
What I'm Reading
Long term reads - Dracula Daily - it's stupidly fun to get a little email update on Jonathan Harker's journal!
And, also Monsters in the Closet by Harry Benshoff - this book is proving surprisingly timely, particularly as an example of the ways heteronormative society, in particular the Hays Code era of Hollywood, enacts violence on kind of sex or sexuality that they deemed "perverse" - which included monsters that played hard on themes of race, queerness, nonprocreative sex, sexual violence, and other "perversions." By virtue of not fitting a very narrow white supremacist patriarchal model of "normal," benign difference among people was lumped in with actual crimes and all painted with the same condemnation. It's a good thing to keep in mind as the discussion of why people who want to fight the upcoming overturning of Roe v. Wade have to actually wrap their minds around the communities impacted by ableism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-fat bias, and Christian supremacy when they advocate for abortion access - these things all play into each other.
The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente - A Hugo Best Novella Nominee that somehow feels like its Les Miserables. So much HAPPENS, and I have been stymied in reading it because I get into one chapter and have to rearrange everything I knew from the last chapters. Time jumps! Social upheaval! Outcasts and outsiders! The Great Pacific Garbage Patch! It's all a lot.
What I'll Read Next
Truly no clue. None at all. Hugo Nominees! Elder Race , the Bedlam Stacks, For the Wolf, Nightmare Alley, a book of short stories by Naomi Novik/Astolat - it's all on my desk. Not to mention the other things I have out from the library as books. We'll see how I go.
What I've Read
I finished the Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers - which I kind of noted in my last post. But still.
The Four Profound Weaves by RB Lemberg - lovely and refreshing, but it kind of felt like a short story that went on too long, or a novel that needed more space. I loved it, and it landed in a wonderfully unsettling place for me. Highly recommend.
What I'm Reading
Long term reads - Dracula Daily - it's stupidly fun to get a little email update on Jonathan Harker's journal!
And, also Monsters in the Closet by Harry Benshoff - this book is proving surprisingly timely, particularly as an example of the ways heteronormative society, in particular the Hays Code era of Hollywood, enacts violence on kind of sex or sexuality that they deemed "perverse" - which included monsters that played hard on themes of race, queerness, nonprocreative sex, sexual violence, and other "perversions." By virtue of not fitting a very narrow white supremacist patriarchal model of "normal," benign difference among people was lumped in with actual crimes and all painted with the same condemnation. It's a good thing to keep in mind as the discussion of why people who want to fight the upcoming overturning of Roe v. Wade have to actually wrap their minds around the communities impacted by ableism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-fat bias, and Christian supremacy when they advocate for abortion access - these things all play into each other.
The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente - A Hugo Best Novella Nominee that somehow feels like its Les Miserables. So much HAPPENS, and I have been stymied in reading it because I get into one chapter and have to rearrange everything I knew from the last chapters. Time jumps! Social upheaval! Outcasts and outsiders! The Great Pacific Garbage Patch! It's all a lot.
What I'll Read Next
Truly no clue. None at all. Hugo Nominees! Elder Race , the Bedlam Stacks, For the Wolf, Nightmare Alley, a book of short stories by Naomi Novik/Astolat - it's all on my desk. Not to mention the other things I have out from the library as books. We'll see how I go.
