Wednesday Reading Meme for Jan 18 2023

Wed, 18 Jan 2023 17:11:27 GMT

What I've Read

Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film - by Lee Clark Mitchell - This book was read for the Great Queer Supernatural Re-Watch section on Westerns and while I think it provided useful background on the pre-cinematic roots of the genre in novels and painting, I found that the analysis of filmed works was just fine.

There are times where Mitchell misinterprets a work to suit a contrasting reading of masculinity in two films - Hondo and Shane, for example. Hondo absolutely has a plot about a strange interloping male lead coming to a homestead and getting emotionally involved with an abandoned but still married woman and her son, before getting serious with her after her no-good husband dies - because the male lead kills him! Shane has an strange male interloper, but the move bends over backwards to make sure that the ranch wife and the interloper are never in the same shot alone, and the husband is a clearly heroic figure in his own right - plus the ending where Shane bids his farewell to their son rather than to the wife. Modern viewers would be justified in seeing a triad relationship than seeing infidelity. Mitchell also really ignores the racial dynamics of the genre and the fact that he's analyzing White American masculinity, not something more broad, plus he also doesn't really do audience reception of films at all. For all that I found Monsters in the Closet a bit prosaic in the analysis, it's miles better than this for providing context. But Westerns is from 1996, maybe the author has had a chance to get deeper into these topics since.

I read a BUNCH of fanfic that is just too short of the novel line to count as a novel for my reading purposes:
A Man of Honor by astolat https://archiveofourown.org/works/44251276 36k - Regency AU, queer accepting AU of Jaime/Robb. It's actually massively fealty fic with some fun politicking, I adored this Tyrion. Cersei is Sir Not Appearing In This Fic, the monarchy and the battles are displaced to English Parliament, it's quite fun.

trust is a mobius strip by sinspiration https://archiveofourown.org/works/22394041 35k - Voltron: Legendary Defender, Shiro/Keith -this is just deeply charming example of non-sexual submission and kink in space. When aliens think you are dating, you might be dating. I don't even go here! I have not engaged in this fandom at all! All I know is that they have goofy space lions.

The Desert Storm by Blue_Sunshine 30K https://archiveofourown.org/works/18206480 - this is a truly massive series that is only technically finished because the author moved the second and ongoing portion of the series into a different series altogether. It's absolutely not shippy, it's very focused on Ben Nasaade, aka, Obi-Wan Kenobi from Luke's toddler years, getting magicked back to work with the Jedi in the years leading up to the Clone Wars. It's wonderful in terms of taking Jedi philosophy seriously and involves a lot of the Tatooine slave culture worldbuilding that fanon has put together from other sources (which I need to read). I inhaled the first five pieces of this and was so glad I had it downloaded to read when AO3 had it's maintenance shutdown last week.
ruin 1/12/23 - holy fucking shit 16k
fallout 1/12/23 oh my god 12k
true colors 11223 10K
in crisis 1/13/23 10k

What I'm Reading
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir - SFF Book Club - Chugging right along! I feel like I am getting the fun vibe of this book in a way that I really wasn't the first time because, since I first tried to read this, I have actually read some recent YA fiction, so I am slightly more in tune with the tropes that they are pointedly subverting.

When A Scot Ties the Knot by Tessa Dare - Audiobook, absurd and fun

The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System (Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong) Vol. 4 by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù with Faelicy (Translator) - moved out of hold so that I can read one section that is the basis for shipping two background characters. I might abandon this one after this section.

On Hold but not abandoned
The World We Make by NK Jemisin (Great Cities 2)
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson - Slowly

What I'll Read Next
The Uncle's Story, Witi Ihimaera
The Good Lord Bird

Library books
Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi
A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys

Owned and need to read: Frey Marske's A Restless Truth, and Susanna Clarke's Pirenesi California Bones, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, Kraken's Sacrifice by Katee Robert, Even Though I Know the End by CL Polk, True Colors by Karen Traviss, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Like Real People Do by EL Massey, Tom Stoppard, invention of love. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty, "You Just Need to Lose Weight" and Other Myths about Fatness by Aubrey Gordon, Alisha Rai Partners in Crime, the Right Swipe, Aphorisms of Kerishdar

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Kitewithfish

Wednesday Reading Meme for Jan 18 2023