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kitewithfishWhat I’ve Read:
Sabriel by Garth Nix – Audiobook by Tim Curry -Oh, man, this is great. I wrote my review of When Women Were Dragons first and I think the main element that I really loved about revisiting this books is – Garth Nix will kill people to show you that things are in fact, very dangerous, and I respect him for that. This is a book that builds danger into a world and builds ways to fight it, and trusts that you will be able to stand it. I really adored this re-read and I’m honestly considering reading the rest of the books that I never read.
When Women Were Dragons – Kelly Barnhill – Xing book club.
SPOILERS for the ending.
Sigh. I wanted to see where this went, and I don’t think it was bad! It just was pulling its punches. I can’t figure out if that b/c this is Barnhill’s first adult novel, but I do think that plays into it. Her writing style is very engaging and direct, but this story is fundamentally about the fact that US culture sidelined the reality that, sometimes, women turn into dragons, and the end of the book speeds thru a vision of the world where women-who-are-dragons return from exile and incorporate themselves into US society with peaceful means and little violence. It’s a hopeful vision of a world without misogyny because, well, dragons, but it’s fundamentally a storybook ending – I am not convinced that the real world (where Barnhill has definitively set her book, since this is only sort of a fantasy) would adapt to these kind of social changes without violence or significantly more struggle.
The flaw of this book was that it sometimes works on fairy tale logic rather than fantasy novel logic, and it’s not set in a fairy tale world. The distinction is important – fairy tales ask the listener to exist in the real world with some deviations (like magic or talking animals or Jesus wandering around the Black Forest in the middle ages) but I think fairy tales often don’t ask for the characters to behave like real people in the face of these changes would. (Narnia works on fairy tale logic a lot of the time.) Fantasy novels do a lot of heavy lifting with worldbuilding – when you encounter a difference between the real world and the fantasy, it is meaningful and often leads to a key point of how the world of the novel is different from ours. But fundamentally, people act like people – they react to things in ways that make sense.
The problem is, I fundamentally don’t believe that if women could turn into dragons, that there would be a patriarchy left in the US the way Barnhill paints it, unless there was a significant amount of murdering women going on that pre-empted anyone dragoning. Barnhill has taken a premise that seethes with potential real world violence and simple de-fanged it, and I’m just not here for that.
I love and appreciate fairy talks, folklore, and lots of traditions where you encounter impossible things and it’s just part of the story. You can do some really interesting things with fairy tales. Modern American publishing tends to reserve fairy tale logic for children’s literature. Kelly Barnhill has written a number of other books for older children, and I think that this book, fundamentally, was a children’s book that happened to be unmarketable for children because it’s talking about misogyny and gay people, so it got pushed into the world as an adult novel. I’m glad it’s published! I wish it could have been given to a 13 year old version of myself.
I have also been reading a lot of Astolat fic for Fast and Furious and Georgette Heyer, which are delightful.
What I’m Reading:
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York– Robert Caro – like 14% Good lord, I loved this section. It’s a great piece of nonfiction writing – Caro just set up every piece of context you need to really understand Moses’s actions well in advance with full details. In short: Moses has just spent several years in politics getting really good at working the system and understanding all the ways a political appointee COULD be corrupt, and after years of pushing reforms that make all those ways impossible – he’s just created for himself a position that will have all the power, all the protection, and all the public goodwill that it could possibly have. And then the section ends! I can hardly wait for the next section. I don’t really believe in ‘villains’ in real life but there is a really excellent momentum to this book.
Reading schedule -
Episode 2 — February 16 — Chapters 6 through 10
Episode 3 — March 15 — Chapters 11 through 15
Episode 4 — April 19 — Chapters 16 through 20
Episode 5 — May 17 — Chapters 21 through 24
Episode 6 — June 21 — Chapters 25 through 26
Episode 7 — July 19 — Chapters 27 through 32
Episode 8 — August 16 — Chapters 33 through 34
Episode 9 — September 20 — Chapters 35 through 38
Episode 10 — October 18 — Chapters 39 through 41
Episode 11 — November 15 — Chapters 42 through 46
Episode 12 — December 20 — Chapters 47 through 50
The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation – Vol 4 (Mo Dao Zu Shi) – On the Wei Wuxian conga line of suffering!
Thursday Night Murder Club – Richard Osman – Picked this up from no idea where as an audiobook, but Lesley Manville’s narration is so lovely and calm and I was so wiped from a bad night’s sleep that it became the backdrop to an unanticipated 2 hour nap and I need to go back and check on it again.
On Hold:
It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections in Horror - Joe Vallese (Editor) – SPN Seminar – 38%
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson – 41%
What I’ll Read Next:
Consider the Fork (Robo book club)
Owned and need to read: Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, California Bones, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Tom Stoppard, Invention of love, "You Just Need to Lose Weight" and Other Myths about Fatness by Aubrey Gordon
Sabriel by Garth Nix – Audiobook by Tim Curry -Oh, man, this is great. I wrote my review of When Women Were Dragons first and I think the main element that I really loved about revisiting this books is – Garth Nix will kill people to show you that things are in fact, very dangerous, and I respect him for that. This is a book that builds danger into a world and builds ways to fight it, and trusts that you will be able to stand it. I really adored this re-read and I’m honestly considering reading the rest of the books that I never read.
When Women Were Dragons – Kelly Barnhill – Xing book club.
SPOILERS for the ending.
Sigh. I wanted to see where this went, and I don’t think it was bad! It just was pulling its punches. I can’t figure out if that b/c this is Barnhill’s first adult novel, but I do think that plays into it. Her writing style is very engaging and direct, but this story is fundamentally about the fact that US culture sidelined the reality that, sometimes, women turn into dragons, and the end of the book speeds thru a vision of the world where women-who-are-dragons return from exile and incorporate themselves into US society with peaceful means and little violence. It’s a hopeful vision of a world without misogyny because, well, dragons, but it’s fundamentally a storybook ending – I am not convinced that the real world (where Barnhill has definitively set her book, since this is only sort of a fantasy) would adapt to these kind of social changes without violence or significantly more struggle.
The flaw of this book was that it sometimes works on fairy tale logic rather than fantasy novel logic, and it’s not set in a fairy tale world. The distinction is important – fairy tales ask the listener to exist in the real world with some deviations (like magic or talking animals or Jesus wandering around the Black Forest in the middle ages) but I think fairy tales often don’t ask for the characters to behave like real people in the face of these changes would. (Narnia works on fairy tale logic a lot of the time.) Fantasy novels do a lot of heavy lifting with worldbuilding – when you encounter a difference between the real world and the fantasy, it is meaningful and often leads to a key point of how the world of the novel is different from ours. But fundamentally, people act like people – they react to things in ways that make sense.
The problem is, I fundamentally don’t believe that if women could turn into dragons, that there would be a patriarchy left in the US the way Barnhill paints it, unless there was a significant amount of murdering women going on that pre-empted anyone dragoning. Barnhill has taken a premise that seethes with potential real world violence and simple de-fanged it, and I’m just not here for that.
I love and appreciate fairy talks, folklore, and lots of traditions where you encounter impossible things and it’s just part of the story. You can do some really interesting things with fairy tales. Modern American publishing tends to reserve fairy tale logic for children’s literature. Kelly Barnhill has written a number of other books for older children, and I think that this book, fundamentally, was a children’s book that happened to be unmarketable for children because it’s talking about misogyny and gay people, so it got pushed into the world as an adult novel. I’m glad it’s published! I wish it could have been given to a 13 year old version of myself.
I have also been reading a lot of Astolat fic for Fast and Furious and Georgette Heyer, which are delightful.
What I’m Reading:
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York– Robert Caro – like 14% Good lord, I loved this section. It’s a great piece of nonfiction writing – Caro just set up every piece of context you need to really understand Moses’s actions well in advance with full details. In short: Moses has just spent several years in politics getting really good at working the system and understanding all the ways a political appointee COULD be corrupt, and after years of pushing reforms that make all those ways impossible – he’s just created for himself a position that will have all the power, all the protection, and all the public goodwill that it could possibly have. And then the section ends! I can hardly wait for the next section. I don’t really believe in ‘villains’ in real life but there is a really excellent momentum to this book.
Reading schedule -
Episode 2 — February 16 — Chapters 6 through 10
Episode 3 — March 15 — Chapters 11 through 15
Episode 4 — April 19 — Chapters 16 through 20
Episode 5 — May 17 — Chapters 21 through 24
Episode 6 — June 21 — Chapters 25 through 26
Episode 7 — July 19 — Chapters 27 through 32
Episode 8 — August 16 — Chapters 33 through 34
Episode 9 — September 20 — Chapters 35 through 38
Episode 10 — October 18 — Chapters 39 through 41
Episode 11 — November 15 — Chapters 42 through 46
Episode 12 — December 20 — Chapters 47 through 50
The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation – Vol 4 (Mo Dao Zu Shi) – On the Wei Wuxian conga line of suffering!
Thursday Night Murder Club – Richard Osman – Picked this up from no idea where as an audiobook, but Lesley Manville’s narration is so lovely and calm and I was so wiped from a bad night’s sleep that it became the backdrop to an unanticipated 2 hour nap and I need to go back and check on it again.
On Hold:
It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections in Horror - Joe Vallese (Editor) – SPN Seminar – 38%
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson – 41%
What I’ll Read Next:
Consider the Fork (Robo book club)
Owned and need to read: Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, California Bones, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Tom Stoppard, Invention of love, "You Just Need to Lose Weight" and Other Myths about Fatness by Aubrey Gordon
no subject
Date: 2024-02-15 06:54 pm (UTC)I think I enjoyed it more than you did, but I did have a few quibbles with it. like you said, it pulls its punches a bit, I would've liked it to be a bit, idk, *more* somehow. but one of my sticking points was that the knots thing was unresolved?? I felt like the narrative was leading up to the knots being significant scientifically/magically as a way to control dragoning, and that just petered out into a big fat nothing of an unresolved plot thread. that annoyed me SO much more than anything else, and i can't even explain why. the book also stood out to me as very white.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-16 01:56 am (UTC)The knot thing was such a dangling thread (pun intended) - I truly thought it was going to be a binding spell, too, something her mom deduced/learned to keep from dragoning, and then it just seemed to be a metaphor for family ties and connection.
The book did seem very white as well - I mean, it is Wisconsin in the 1950s but like, the Lady Astronaut series and A League of Our Own managed to include multiple storylines about women of color. I think some of the criticism I have for the mindset that "Oh, America will adapt to the return of dragon women with gradual acceptance" and I'm like .... I have lived in the US and I do not think we would handle it that well!