Oh, hey, Open Road Media is epublishing all of Mary Renault's contemporary novels, even the terrible ones. Seriously, do not waste any part of your limited lifespan on North Face. If you're immortal, I guess you can spare the time, but there are still so many more fun things you could be doing instead.
Reading Wednesday, 10/23/13
Oct. 23rd, 2013 01:14 pmCurrently reading
Terry A. Adams, Battleground - Sequel to Sentience and The Master of Chaos (omnibus The D'Neeraan Factor). A telepath navigates a first contact with a species that seems to do nothing that is not directed towards waging war. This is made more difficult by traumatic recollections of a previous first contact (in which she was tortured); the recent death of her lover; separation from her newborn child; and a relationship with an old ex whom she does not want to fall in love with again, but who she cannot escape for professional and political reasons.
I am liking this a lot, despite my skepticism about some human beliefs about aliens. This set of aliens seems to be proving some of the assumptions wrong, but I'm not sure that will hold true by the end of the book. As in the previous books, learning to understand the aliens is a central focus.
This book apparently has zero buzz, by which I mean a cursory Google search did not uncover a single review. I may have to write it up just because of that.
Read since last update
Terry A. Adams, Battleground - Sequel to Sentience and The Master of Chaos (omnibus The D'Neeraan Factor). A telepath navigates a first contact with a species that seems to do nothing that is not directed towards waging war. This is made more difficult by traumatic recollections of a previous first contact (in which she was tortured); the recent death of her lover; separation from her newborn child; and a relationship with an old ex whom she does not want to fall in love with again, but who she cannot escape for professional and political reasons.
I am liking this a lot, despite my skepticism about some human beliefs about aliens. This set of aliens seems to be proving some of the assumptions wrong, but I'm not sure that will hold true by the end of the book. As in the previous books, learning to understand the aliens is a central focus.
This book apparently has zero buzz, by which I mean a cursory Google search did not uncover a single review. I may have to write it up just because of that.
Read since last update
- Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice - A woman who used to be a spaceship seeks revenge for events related to several war crimes, the details of which are become clear over the course of the book. I like this a great deal, but I do not love it the way I expected to. This is probably because the prose is more functional than lovely. The book is making me think, so I may end up revising my opinion. Maybe more details later? But I will prioritize the Adams. A few nagging plot points:
( Spoilers seriously I mean it ) - Annette Lapointe, Stolen - The life of a troubled bi thief and scavenger and how he got that way. In many ways similar to Lapointe's next novel, The Whitetail Shooting Gallery, but not as good and with fewer women. The evocation of the desolation and hidden weirdness of Sasketchewan remains a particular strength.
- Judith Tarr, Tides of Darkness - Epic fantasy, threat to Worldgates, wastrel aristocrat with special powers learns better, another character ends up in ancient Egypt. Starts off promising, but the humor and vigor of the beginning are overwhelmed by High Serious Fantasy Stuff in the second half. And I usually like High Serious Fantasy Stuff! But it was just so much more flat and schematic than the first part.
I would like to see the wastrel aristocrat with special powers who learns better be a woman just one time. Ever. - A lot of X-Men comics. Greg Rucka's run on Wonder Woman. The beginning of Gail Simone's run on Wonder Woman. Grant Morrison and Jae Lee's Fantastic Four: 1234, which has mediocre writing and very good art. Warren Ellis and Mike McKone's Avengers: Endless Wartime, which is a disappointment.
Reading Friday, 5/10
May. 10th, 2013 01:22 pmA little late, partly because I forgot I'd finished anything until Goodreads reminded me.
What did you just finish reading?
Books
B.R. Collins, Mazecheat - YA sf set in a future or alternate England where the only way out of acid-rain-drenched poverty is to win a virtual reality game. Gamerunners frequently hire mazecheats to program them cheatcodes. The first book, Gamerunner, focused on Ric, the pampered son of the chief game developer, Daed. (Ric = Icarus, Daed = Daedalus, the game (the Maze) = the Labyrinth. That no one recognizes their Greek antecedents and that they are apparently polytheists is what inclines me to think this is alternate rather than future.) The first book was the weakest of Collins' books, basically because Ric is a self-centered privileged idiot who takes far too long to realize that his privilege doesn't extend to other people. By the second corpse, I could not stop thinking, "Kid, how many of your friends are you going to get killed before you wise up?" Spoiler: More than two.
Mazecheat shifts the focus to Ario (= Ariadne), the eponymous cheat, whose career got trashed two weeks ago as collateral damage to Ric's shenanigans (she's never met him) and who is desperate to regain her cred before boss/big brother figure Dion (= Dionysus) kicks her out of the Workshop into the streets. A successful gamerunner invites her to make the score of a lifetime in defeating the latest game mods and naturally everything goes wrong. This is infinitely superior to its prequel just on the grounds that Ario is not an idiot, but it's still one of Collins' less interesting novels. Since I figure some of you would like to know: Ario is black and bisexual.
Lily Hoang, Changing - an experimental novella/long prose poem about the recurring conflicts and relationships in the life of a young Vietnamese American woman, with a structure modeled on the I Ching, and recurrent imagery from "Jack and Jill." The unnamed narrator (the little girl, the sister little sister) disagrees frequently with the Translator, and the reader, whom she addresses directly, is sometimes "you lover" and sometimes "you reader" (the reader of her narrative, the reader of the oracles). As far as I can tell, this succeeds in what it sets out to do, but what it sets out to do doesn't appeal to me.
Claire Kent, Nameless and Escorted: erotic romance novels distinguished by heroines with massive boundary issues, heroes who are supposed to be charming and in control and just come across as incredibly repressed, and a style which subsitutes repetitions about the characters' established issues for any demonstration of them. Possibly I am not the ideal reader for erotic romance. I wanted less sex and more character development.
Sequential art
Warren Ellis & Salvador Larocca, newuniversal
A "White Event" creates four superhumans who are meant to lead to the next stage of human evolution yadda yadda yadda. There have been previous White Events, though, and the last one had two of the superhumans pair up and conceive a child -- whereupon the NSA decided to kill them all to prevent humans from becoming obsolete.
This was an attempt to do a new Marvel continuity with many fewer ties to the traditional comicsverse -- occasionally names you know are mentioned, but they're never major and their lives don't hew closely to the lives of their counterparts. (In 1954, Tony Stark escapes from capitivity in Korea in a flying robot suit. Then an NSA assassin verifies that his superengineering powers are the result of a White Event and shoots him in the head.)
This is intriguing and got cancelled after six issues in the middle of a storyline. There's a single-issue story that depicts a White Event in pre-history (boring) and a single-issue story that depicts the White Event in the 50s that created the current NSA protocol (neat). Probably too frustrating to be worth it, unless you're interested in how it instersects with Jonathan Hickman's Avengers (I am).
Kaori Yuki, Grand Guignol Orchestra Volumes 4-5
Last week's Manga Moveable Feast reminded me I had not read my favorite cracktastic idilicious mangaka in quite some time. Fortunately, I had two unread volumes hanging around. This series involves a Guignol virus that turns people into zombies and/or marionettes, a girl disguised as a boy, a man everyone mistakes for a woman, weapons strikes that appear to destroy cities from near-Earth orbit, a mad adolescent queen, her tormented pining advisor, her guilty older brother, a sculptor who makes portraits of people dying in agony after being infected by the Guignol virus, a cackling murderer in a cat mask, a castrated nun, an oligarchy apparently run by very elderly children, a metric ton of Alice in Wonderland imagery, and evil dolls.
Pretty much your standard Kaori Yuki.
The last half of Volume 5 is devoted to a completely unrelated story that makes even less sense than Kaori Yuki's stories usually do. I do not even know how to begin summarizing it. I may have to do a full recap.
What are you currently reading?
Kerry Greenwood's Medea, a competent but not particularly compelling historical novel, and Heiress of Russ: 2012 ed. Connie Wilkins & Steve Berman, which doesn't suit my taste nearly as much as last year's edition. There's only one outstanding story ("To Follow the Waves" by Amal el-Mohtar), and the rest are a blur of pleasant mediocrity except for the one that is downright awful. It's just as likely this is editorial taste as changes in the available selection (last year the main editor was Joselle Vanderhooft), since the second story Wilkins picked from Steam Powered is not the one I would have chosen. (El-Mohtar's was the first, and I would have gone for it, too.)
What did you acquire this week?
I went to a Dessa concert (which was ♥ ♥ ♥ AWESOME ♥ ♥ ♥) and picked up her poetry/incidental prose collection, Spiral Bound.
Oh, and I got my rewards from the Off*Beat kickstarter, epub versions of Off*Beat 1-2 by Jen Lee Quick. I'm very glad Book 3 is finally being published.
What did you just finish reading?
Books
B.R. Collins, Mazecheat - YA sf set in a future or alternate England where the only way out of acid-rain-drenched poverty is to win a virtual reality game. Gamerunners frequently hire mazecheats to program them cheatcodes. The first book, Gamerunner, focused on Ric, the pampered son of the chief game developer, Daed. (Ric = Icarus, Daed = Daedalus, the game (the Maze) = the Labyrinth. That no one recognizes their Greek antecedents and that they are apparently polytheists is what inclines me to think this is alternate rather than future.) The first book was the weakest of Collins' books, basically because Ric is a self-centered privileged idiot who takes far too long to realize that his privilege doesn't extend to other people. By the second corpse, I could not stop thinking, "Kid, how many of your friends are you going to get killed before you wise up?" Spoiler: More than two.
Mazecheat shifts the focus to Ario (= Ariadne), the eponymous cheat, whose career got trashed two weeks ago as collateral damage to Ric's shenanigans (she's never met him) and who is desperate to regain her cred before boss/big brother figure Dion (= Dionysus) kicks her out of the Workshop into the streets. A successful gamerunner invites her to make the score of a lifetime in defeating the latest game mods and naturally everything goes wrong. This is infinitely superior to its prequel just on the grounds that Ario is not an idiot, but it's still one of Collins' less interesting novels. Since I figure some of you would like to know: Ario is black and bisexual.
Lily Hoang, Changing - an experimental novella/long prose poem about the recurring conflicts and relationships in the life of a young Vietnamese American woman, with a structure modeled on the I Ching, and recurrent imagery from "Jack and Jill." The unnamed narrator (the little girl, the sister little sister) disagrees frequently with the Translator, and the reader, whom she addresses directly, is sometimes "you lover" and sometimes "you reader" (the reader of her narrative, the reader of the oracles). As far as I can tell, this succeeds in what it sets out to do, but what it sets out to do doesn't appeal to me.
Claire Kent, Nameless and Escorted: erotic romance novels distinguished by heroines with massive boundary issues, heroes who are supposed to be charming and in control and just come across as incredibly repressed, and a style which subsitutes repetitions about the characters' established issues for any demonstration of them. Possibly I am not the ideal reader for erotic romance. I wanted less sex and more character development.
Sequential art
Warren Ellis & Salvador Larocca, newuniversal
A "White Event" creates four superhumans who are meant to lead to the next stage of human evolution yadda yadda yadda. There have been previous White Events, though, and the last one had two of the superhumans pair up and conceive a child -- whereupon the NSA decided to kill them all to prevent humans from becoming obsolete.
This was an attempt to do a new Marvel continuity with many fewer ties to the traditional comicsverse -- occasionally names you know are mentioned, but they're never major and their lives don't hew closely to the lives of their counterparts. (In 1954, Tony Stark escapes from capitivity in Korea in a flying robot suit. Then an NSA assassin verifies that his superengineering powers are the result of a White Event and shoots him in the head.)
This is intriguing and got cancelled after six issues in the middle of a storyline. There's a single-issue story that depicts a White Event in pre-history (boring) and a single-issue story that depicts the White Event in the 50s that created the current NSA protocol (neat). Probably too frustrating to be worth it, unless you're interested in how it instersects with Jonathan Hickman's Avengers (I am).
Kaori Yuki, Grand Guignol Orchestra Volumes 4-5
Last week's Manga Moveable Feast reminded me I had not read my favorite cracktastic idilicious mangaka in quite some time. Fortunately, I had two unread volumes hanging around. This series involves a Guignol virus that turns people into zombies and/or marionettes, a girl disguised as a boy, a man everyone mistakes for a woman, weapons strikes that appear to destroy cities from near-Earth orbit, a mad adolescent queen, her tormented pining advisor, her guilty older brother, a sculptor who makes portraits of people dying in agony after being infected by the Guignol virus, a cackling murderer in a cat mask, a castrated nun, an oligarchy apparently run by very elderly children, a metric ton of Alice in Wonderland imagery, and evil dolls.
Pretty much your standard Kaori Yuki.
The last half of Volume 5 is devoted to a completely unrelated story that makes even less sense than Kaori Yuki's stories usually do. I do not even know how to begin summarizing it. I may have to do a full recap.
What are you currently reading?
Kerry Greenwood's Medea, a competent but not particularly compelling historical novel, and Heiress of Russ: 2012 ed. Connie Wilkins & Steve Berman, which doesn't suit my taste nearly as much as last year's edition. There's only one outstanding story ("To Follow the Waves" by Amal el-Mohtar), and the rest are a blur of pleasant mediocrity except for the one that is downright awful. It's just as likely this is editorial taste as changes in the available selection (last year the main editor was Joselle Vanderhooft), since the second story Wilkins picked from Steam Powered is not the one I would have chosen. (El-Mohtar's was the first, and I would have gone for it, too.)
What did you acquire this week?
I went to a Dessa concert (which was ♥ ♥ ♥ AWESOME ♥ ♥ ♥) and picked up her poetry/incidental prose collection, Spiral Bound.
Oh, and I got my rewards from the Off*Beat kickstarter, epub versions of Off*Beat 1-2 by Jen Lee Quick. I'm very glad Book 3 is finally being published.
Reading Wednesday, 4/24/13
Apr. 24th, 2013 02:05 pmBrief note on ebook sales
Kate Elliott's Cold Magic is $3.49 and Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle is $1.99 at multiple retailers and Megan Abbott's Queenpin is $3.99 at Amazon.
What did you just finish?
Books:
Madwoman After 30 Years - The Jane Eyre section is three essays:
Sofia Samatar, A Stranger in Olondria
This is lovely, dense, and intricate, but reading it for the first time required a lot of effort. I think it will be more pleasurable on rereads, or perhaps when I am in a more congenial mood.
Sarah Lockhart, The Echo
Self-published romance novel with some pacing issues, but great use of language and a kind of negative narrative space -- I am fascinated by how the presence of the unsaid, the unspeakable, and the unsayable affect the story. I'm trying to write a review, but in the meantime, I recommend this very highly if you are at all interested in Regency romances. (Trigger warning for sexual violence, inexplicitly referenced.)
Janet Mullany, Dedication (rev. 2012), Improper Relations, and Mr Bishop and the Actress
The Echo put me in the mood for more Regencies, so I read the revised version of Dedication. My feelings remain largely the same, although tinged with the disappointment of of Mullany's later work. I do think the narrative balance between hero and heroine at the end works much better in this version. Am troubled that in both this and (the horrible) Forbidden Shores, the villain is a gay/bisexual man who uses or abuses women to manipulate the men they're interested in. Homosexual desire isn't vilified, the characters treat it very matter-of-factly, but the metatext is ugly.
Improper Relations and Mr Bishop and the Actress are much more lighthearted; Mullany calls them Regency chick-lit. They are charming confections. I am not sure how much of them I will remember in a week. I am very glad that in the second the courtesan heroine is very comfortable with her own sexual pleasure and the virgin hero is not automatically great at sex. (I'm looking at you, Courtney Milan.)
Sequential art:
Hope Larson & Tintin Pantoja, Who Is A.C.?
Charming manga/anime-influenced origin story for Lin, who makes fantasy comics about a girl's daring adventures and becomes a superheroine. Starts off slow. Love the Utena and Sailor Moon references and ultimately the incorporation of the Internet into magic/mythology. I hope it sells well enough for a sequel to be commissioned.
Hope Larson, Mercury
Teenage girls attempting to navigate family, home, sexuality, friends in rural Canada in the 19th and 20th centuries. Magic realist elements. Very delicate sense of injuries and tentative reparations, longings filled and unfulfilled.
What are you currently reading?
Christina Stead, The Little Hotel
Have reached the weird POV switch around a third of the way through: First-person hotel proprietress switches to third-person hotel guest after the first paragraph of one chapter, with occasional intrusions of the first-person for a paragraph. Have no idea why she is doing this and, judging by other people's comments, will never get one.
Kate Elliott's Cold Magic is $3.49 and Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle is $1.99 at multiple retailers and Megan Abbott's Queenpin is $3.99 at Amazon.
What did you just finish?
Books:
Madwoman After 30 Years - The Jane Eyre section is three essays:
- One competent and uninspired reading of images of enclosure introduced by the red room of the first chapter.
- One comparison of Jane Eyre to Krupabai Satthianadhan's Saguna, a semiautobiographical novel by an Indian woman. Saguna focuses on a trajectory similar to Jane's, from a book-heavy childhood to adolescent rebellion against social strictures to training for professional independence to companionate marriage, but with additional complications courtesy of colonialism. I would like to get a copy of this; I am particularly interested in how Satthianadhan situates her childhood reading of English classics and also in her medical training (she was going to be a doctor before ill health stopped her).
- One attempt to parallel Jane Eyre with Beloved and Madwoman in the Attic with Playing in the Dark, both of which I find tenuously argued, not to mention somewhat problematic due to the differences among the text which are elided. (Also, Sandra M. Gilbert, did you just call the feminists who criticized your work shrill? I am so disappointed in you.) Even though this is the least successful of the essays, its close reading of images on home in Beloved intrigues me. I may reread Beloved so I can see how Home plays on its ideas. I have been too preoccupied with how much Home riffs off Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony (it so totally riffs off Ceremony) to consider how it fits into Morrison's body of work.
Sofia Samatar, A Stranger in Olondria
This is lovely, dense, and intricate, but reading it for the first time required a lot of effort. I think it will be more pleasurable on rereads, or perhaps when I am in a more congenial mood.
Sarah Lockhart, The Echo
Self-published romance novel with some pacing issues, but great use of language and a kind of negative narrative space -- I am fascinated by how the presence of the unsaid, the unspeakable, and the unsayable affect the story. I'm trying to write a review, but in the meantime, I recommend this very highly if you are at all interested in Regency romances. (Trigger warning for sexual violence, inexplicitly referenced.)
Janet Mullany, Dedication (rev. 2012), Improper Relations, and Mr Bishop and the Actress
The Echo put me in the mood for more Regencies, so I read the revised version of Dedication. My feelings remain largely the same, although tinged with the disappointment of of Mullany's later work. I do think the narrative balance between hero and heroine at the end works much better in this version. Am troubled that in both this and (the horrible) Forbidden Shores, the villain is a gay/bisexual man who uses or abuses women to manipulate the men they're interested in. Homosexual desire isn't vilified, the characters treat it very matter-of-factly, but the metatext is ugly.
Improper Relations and Mr Bishop and the Actress are much more lighthearted; Mullany calls them Regency chick-lit. They are charming confections. I am not sure how much of them I will remember in a week. I am very glad that in the second the courtesan heroine is very comfortable with her own sexual pleasure and the virgin hero is not automatically great at sex. (I'm looking at you, Courtney Milan.)
Sequential art:
Hope Larson & Tintin Pantoja, Who Is A.C.?
Charming manga/anime-influenced origin story for Lin, who makes fantasy comics about a girl's daring adventures and becomes a superheroine. Starts off slow. Love the Utena and Sailor Moon references and ultimately the incorporation of the Internet into magic/mythology. I hope it sells well enough for a sequel to be commissioned.
Hope Larson, Mercury
Teenage girls attempting to navigate family, home, sexuality, friends in rural Canada in the 19th and 20th centuries. Magic realist elements. Very delicate sense of injuries and tentative reparations, longings filled and unfulfilled.
What are you currently reading?
Christina Stead, The Little Hotel
Have reached the weird POV switch around a third of the way through: First-person hotel proprietress switches to third-person hotel guest after the first paragraph of one chapter, with occasional intrusions of the first-person for a paragraph. Have no idea why she is doing this and, judging by other people's comments, will never get one.
Reading Wednesday
Apr. 3rd, 2013 02:25 pmFYI, Susan Palwick's Flying in Place is $2.99 for the month. Emotionally compelling short novel about a girl who is being molested by her father and who is visited by the ghost of the sister who died before she was born.
What did you just finish?
( Books )
( Manga )
I also read a bunch of Western comics, but I am going to post about them separately.
What are you currently reading?
I am a little farther in The Madwoman in the Attic Thirty Years Later and A Stranger in Olondria, but they both require too much effort for me just now. I think I will probably just read one Madwoman essay per week anyway.
While those are on hold, I am zipping through The Shattered City, the second of Rayner Robert's Creature Court trilogy.
What will you read next?
For once, I know! It will be the final book in the Creature Court trilogy, of course. If there were an ebook version of Rayner Robert's new book as Livia Day, I would probably get that, but I am not up for paper, especially at Australian prices.
After that, I am less sure. It is probably about time to start doing my Wiscon reading, if I have the brain for it: Joan Slonczewski; maybe the couple of books by Jo Walton I haven't read or else a reread of the others I like best; Naomi Mitchison and Donna Haraway, both new and rereads, in case I end up on panels about them.
What books did you acquire this week?
It has been an indulgent week. In addition to the latest volumes of Kimi ni Todoke and Saiunkoku noted above, I got:
What did you just finish?
( Books )
( Manga )
I also read a bunch of Western comics, but I am going to post about them separately.
What are you currently reading?
I am a little farther in The Madwoman in the Attic Thirty Years Later and A Stranger in Olondria, but they both require too much effort for me just now. I think I will probably just read one Madwoman essay per week anyway.
While those are on hold, I am zipping through The Shattered City, the second of Rayner Robert's Creature Court trilogy.
What will you read next?
For once, I know! It will be the final book in the Creature Court trilogy, of course. If there were an ebook version of Rayner Robert's new book as Livia Day, I would probably get that, but I am not up for paper, especially at Australian prices.
After that, I am less sure. It is probably about time to start doing my Wiscon reading, if I have the brain for it: Joan Slonczewski; maybe the couple of books by Jo Walton I haven't read or else a reread of the others I like best; Naomi Mitchison and Donna Haraway, both new and rereads, in case I end up on panels about them.
What books did you acquire this week?
It has been an indulgent week. In addition to the latest volumes of Kimi ni Todoke and Saiunkoku noted above, I got:
- Matt Fraction, David Aja, & Javier Pulido, Hawkeye Volume 1: My Life as a Weapon
- Scott Snyder & Greg Capullo, Batman Volume 2: The City of Owls
- Ai Yazawa, Paradise Kiss, Part 3
- Kevin Young, The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness - I love Young's poetry. This is his first prose book, cultural criticism on the centrality of African American literary, artistic, and musical traditions to American culture.
Counting women and other human beings
Mar. 11th, 2013 08:52 am- VIDA count 2012: Gender ratios of reviewers and authors of reviewed books in major literary publications
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
renay's Coverage of women on SF/F blogs in 2012 in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ladybusiness- James Nicoll's breakdown by gender of SF award nominee lists, anthologies, poll results, and "Best of" lists
- KJ's examination of gender bias in NPR "Best of" lists
Also:
Roxanne Gay's analysis of the race of authors reviewed by the New York Times in 2011.
If you know of more counts/analysis of book coverage by sex, race, or other categories of oppression, please feel welcome to link them in the comments.
Reading Wednesday
Jan. 9th, 2013 11:37 amWhat are you reading now?
Julia Serano, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. My friends who are trans or experienced trans allies think this is very 101, but I am at 101 and found this very useful. Especially helpful is the way it distinguishes sex, subconscious sex, sexual orientation, and gender expression. The investigation of ways feminism can still devalue feminity -- and particularly the ways in which women police gender -- is also very good, although I am still inclined to think that a lot of feminist exclusion of trans women is based more in cissexism and oppositional sexism than in transmisogyny -- that is, that trans men are accepted not because cissexual women value masculinity more than femininity but because they still don't really believe in transsexuality; despite all the theory, they believe that trans gender identity is a masquerade and cis gender identity is "natural."
You can tell that Serano comes from a science background. The discussions of biology and sociology are heavily annotated with reference sources, whereas the discussions of general social attitudes are much less attested unless they focus on specific texts. I wish there were more citations of specific discussions for back-up in some of the cultural studies discussions, but that is mainly because experience in these kinds of social justice discussions makes me want the arguments to be bulletproof, not because I disagree with the assessments. Of course, there is no such thing as bulletproof; some people will always resist and justify their privilege. But I want the arguments to have more body armor. Body armor. Wow, this metaphor is getting revealing.
The book is very US-based, though I think the arguments and attitudes analyzed are probably pretty common throughout the West. Not so sure about the rest of the world. It's very good on intersections of gender identity, gender expression, sex, and sexuality, but it doesn't deal with class or race at all so far. (I'm a little more than half-way through.) This is particularly noticeable for class, because she keeps using the word, but it's generally in the sense of "category" or "oppressed group in a hierarchy" than in the socioeconomic sense.
I started Amruta Patil's graphic novel Adi Parva: The Churning of the Ocean. I am taking it very slowly so I can absorb the images. The paint (marker?) is very thick, impasto; I have been trying to think what the art reminds me of. The roughness and roundness of the figures, the solidity of them, reminds me a little of Henry Moore. The sensuality and intense focus of O'Keefe, although the colors and use of space and cartoonishness (as opposed to more mimetic realism) is nothing like. I keep thinking of Chagall. Maybe it's the postures. It doesn't remind me much of US/UK comics or manga at all, maybe because it seems so different from pencil and pen drawings. The textures and figure arrangements remind me more of collages.
I've also started rereading Code Name Verity.
What did you just finish reading?
The last stories I finished reading were "The Advocate" by Genevieve Valentine, which I liked, and "Selkie Stories Are for Losers" by Sofia Samatar, which I loved. I am tempted to read the sample of her novel from Small Beer, even though I hate reading samples when I cannot get the whole book.
The last book I finished was Tansy Rayner Roberts' Love and Romanpunk, also short fiction, a linked set of stories set in an alternate history where the Caesars were descendants of various monsters: lamias, werewolves, vampires. The first one, the secret history of Julia Agrippina, might well have been made for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vaznetti. My favorite is the second, because Fanny Wollstonecraft has always broken my heart. If you're interested in trying it out, Apex just put the third one online.
And my copy of the trade collection of the first volume of Kelly Sue DeConnick, Dexter Soy, and Emma Rios' Captain Marvel arrived, so I reread that. I love the characterization, the banter, and the emphasis on relationships between women, especially the construction of a heroic matrilineage for Carol Danvers. Dexter Soy's art works much better with the shift to brighter colors in the second or third issue; Emma Rios' is blessedly free of objectification of women; that said, it is hugely jarring to go from Soy's more mimetic style to the deliberate cartoonishness of Rios' in the middle of the arc, and neither of them seems to fit the tone of the book as well as Terry Dodson's did for Carol's guest appearance in Avenging Spider-Man. (Sadly not collected here.)
What do you expect to read next?
I could finish Code Name Verity. I could start The Touchstone, a novella by Edith Wharton, which I just borrowed from the library. (Have I mentioned lately how much I love my library's ebook collection? I love it THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSS much.) Or I could read Night and Day, which has long been on my TBR shelves, because I am feeling like reading something rainy and quiet and inward.
Julia Serano, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. My friends who are trans or experienced trans allies think this is very 101, but I am at 101 and found this very useful. Especially helpful is the way it distinguishes sex, subconscious sex, sexual orientation, and gender expression. The investigation of ways feminism can still devalue feminity -- and particularly the ways in which women police gender -- is also very good, although I am still inclined to think that a lot of feminist exclusion of trans women is based more in cissexism and oppositional sexism than in transmisogyny -- that is, that trans men are accepted not because cissexual women value masculinity more than femininity but because they still don't really believe in transsexuality; despite all the theory, they believe that trans gender identity is a masquerade and cis gender identity is "natural."
You can tell that Serano comes from a science background. The discussions of biology and sociology are heavily annotated with reference sources, whereas the discussions of general social attitudes are much less attested unless they focus on specific texts. I wish there were more citations of specific discussions for back-up in some of the cultural studies discussions, but that is mainly because experience in these kinds of social justice discussions makes me want the arguments to be bulletproof, not because I disagree with the assessments. Of course, there is no such thing as bulletproof; some people will always resist and justify their privilege. But I want the arguments to have more body armor. Body armor. Wow, this metaphor is getting revealing.
The book is very US-based, though I think the arguments and attitudes analyzed are probably pretty common throughout the West. Not so sure about the rest of the world. It's very good on intersections of gender identity, gender expression, sex, and sexuality, but it doesn't deal with class or race at all so far. (I'm a little more than half-way through.) This is particularly noticeable for class, because she keeps using the word, but it's generally in the sense of "category" or "oppressed group in a hierarchy" than in the socioeconomic sense.
I started Amruta Patil's graphic novel Adi Parva: The Churning of the Ocean. I am taking it very slowly so I can absorb the images. The paint (marker?) is very thick, impasto; I have been trying to think what the art reminds me of. The roughness and roundness of the figures, the solidity of them, reminds me a little of Henry Moore. The sensuality and intense focus of O'Keefe, although the colors and use of space and cartoonishness (as opposed to more mimetic realism) is nothing like. I keep thinking of Chagall. Maybe it's the postures. It doesn't remind me much of US/UK comics or manga at all, maybe because it seems so different from pencil and pen drawings. The textures and figure arrangements remind me more of collages.
I've also started rereading Code Name Verity.
What did you just finish reading?
The last stories I finished reading were "The Advocate" by Genevieve Valentine, which I liked, and "Selkie Stories Are for Losers" by Sofia Samatar, which I loved. I am tempted to read the sample of her novel from Small Beer, even though I hate reading samples when I cannot get the whole book.
The last book I finished was Tansy Rayner Roberts' Love and Romanpunk, also short fiction, a linked set of stories set in an alternate history where the Caesars were descendants of various monsters: lamias, werewolves, vampires. The first one, the secret history of Julia Agrippina, might well have been made for
vaznetti. My favorite is the second, because Fanny Wollstonecraft has always broken my heart. If you're interested in trying it out, Apex just put the third one online.And my copy of the trade collection of the first volume of Kelly Sue DeConnick, Dexter Soy, and Emma Rios' Captain Marvel arrived, so I reread that. I love the characterization, the banter, and the emphasis on relationships between women, especially the construction of a heroic matrilineage for Carol Danvers. Dexter Soy's art works much better with the shift to brighter colors in the second or third issue; Emma Rios' is blessedly free of objectification of women; that said, it is hugely jarring to go from Soy's more mimetic style to the deliberate cartoonishness of Rios' in the middle of the arc, and neither of them seems to fit the tone of the book as well as Terry Dodson's did for Carol's guest appearance in Avenging Spider-Man. (Sadly not collected here.)
What do you expect to read next?
I could finish Code Name Verity. I could start The Touchstone, a novella by Edith Wharton, which I just borrowed from the library. (Have I mentioned lately how much I love my library's ebook collection? I love it THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSS much.) Or I could read Night and Day, which has long been on my TBR shelves, because I am feeling like reading something rainy and quiet and inward.
One more Margaret Mahy link
Jul. 25th, 2012 08:35 amKristin Cashore has a wonderful post with extensive quotation from many of Mahy's YA novels, discussing what she loves about them.
eta: I totally lied, here's a second: Karen Healey on the three times she met Margaret Mahy.
eta: I totally lied, here's a second: Karen Healey on the three times she met Margaret Mahy.
I'm behind in blogging, so many of you have probably seen a lot of these already.
Books, publishing, reading
VIDA counts book reviewers and book reviews in major literary publications for 2010: Men outnumber women by about three to one. (This is my rough estimate skimming graphs; VIDA's got exact numbers.) At Alas, A Blog, Richard Jeffrey Newman explains why Vida's count matters to him; notable for including links to a lot of insider responses, where many people attempt to reconcile their personal liberal politics with the invidious nature of systemic discrimination.
At Strange Horizons, new editor-in-chief (former reviews editor) Niall Harrison carries out the count for major sf venues--and the numbers look very similar to the mainstream's. New Strange Horizons reviews editor Abigail Nussbaum asks for new reviewers to submit samples, especially women, but also other underrepresented groups: she mentions specifically people of color, queer reviewers, and international reviewers (given SH's base, I think "international" probably means outside the US and UK). Pre-dating the VIDA and SH counts, but coming out of similar discussions, is Torque Control's series on future sf classics by women, which has been going on since the beginning of the year.
I've also seen a number of individual reviewers resolving to increase reviews of books by women. None of them mention![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
50books_poc, which seems to me a clear precursor and perhaps inspiration for group projects to shift the reading default within fandom. (See also: 12films_poc, queerlit50, and 25book_pwd.)
Rereading and rewatching
natsumeyuujinchou is hosting a group reread of the manga Natsume's Book of Friends before the third season of the anime airs.
scchronicles_tv is hosting a group rewatch of Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles.
Books, publishing, reading
VIDA counts book reviewers and book reviews in major literary publications for 2010: Men outnumber women by about three to one. (This is my rough estimate skimming graphs; VIDA's got exact numbers.) At Alas, A Blog, Richard Jeffrey Newman explains why Vida's count matters to him; notable for including links to a lot of insider responses, where many people attempt to reconcile their personal liberal politics with the invidious nature of systemic discrimination.
At Strange Horizons, new editor-in-chief (former reviews editor) Niall Harrison carries out the count for major sf venues--and the numbers look very similar to the mainstream's. New Strange Horizons reviews editor Abigail Nussbaum asks for new reviewers to submit samples, especially women, but also other underrepresented groups: she mentions specifically people of color, queer reviewers, and international reviewers (given SH's base, I think "international" probably means outside the US and UK). Pre-dating the VIDA and SH counts, but coming out of similar discussions, is Torque Control's series on future sf classics by women, which has been going on since the beginning of the year.
I've also seen a number of individual reviewers resolving to increase reviews of books by women. None of them mention
50books_poc, which seems to me a clear precursor and perhaps inspiration for group projects to shift the reading default within fandom. (See also: 12films_poc, queerlit50, and 25book_pwd.)Rereading and rewatching
natsumeyuujinchou is hosting a group reread of the manga Natsume's Book of Friends before the third season of the anime airs.scchronicles_tv is hosting a group rewatch of Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles.Fitzgerald, Penelope: Various novels
Nov. 12th, 2010 01:23 pmPenelope Fitzgerald wrote slender, wry, witty novels, unsparing in judgment and precise in effect. You get the feeling that she knew exactly what she wanted to cover, and covered just that and no more; sometimes her endings are abrupt, narrative neatness balanced against the messiness of life, but I am never sure whether it's a flaw in the book or I'm just reading the wrong expectations into books that stubbornly resist them. (In her short stories, to be honest, I am generally more convinced it's a flaw in the writing; but the novels are different.)
Human Voices (1980)
I wasn't sure, at first, whether or not I'd read this before, or had just read some key quotations; within a few pages I realized that yes, I knew it. The Blue Flower, a historical fiction based on a youthful love affair of Novalis, is probably her best novel, but Human Voices is my favorite, because of Fitzgerald's clear affection and respect for the dedicated, obsessive, self-absorbed, intelligent and occasionally clever workers at the wartime BBC. I am a little in love with the dry, disconcerting Director of Programme Planning; what a terrible husband he must have been.
Innocence (1986)
In post-war Italy, Chiara Ridolfi, a young aristocrat, falls in love with Salvatore Rossi, a penniless and resolutely rational doctor; Chiara makes her decisions simply and whole-heartedly, but Rossi in love maddened, disrupted by irrationality he cannot confine to case notes (it is no coincidence that he studies neuralgia). Love wrecks, too, Chiara's reliable English friend Barney; the failures, fools, and misfits like Chiara's father and aunt seem to handle it better, even when they're left empty-handed. Innocence, in Fitzgerald's terms, is a shield for its possessor and a danger to everyone around them. (Maybe a period thing? Elizabeth Bowen takes much the same view in The Death of the Heart.) There's a cameo by Gramsci and quite a bit about class and regional tensions in post-war Italy as well as the conversion of aristocratic property into centers of tourism.
Offshore (1979)
Houseboats on the Thames, home of the dilapidated, the desperate, the strangely obsessed: Nenna, abandoned because her husband could not stand the boat, oversees her two daughters who have abandoned in disgust the Catholic school where they are pitied; Maurice, a male prostitute; Willis, whose make-do repairs are about to stop making do; and odd man or two out, because they seem so sensible and yet there they are on Battersea Reach: Woodie, who lives a comfortable retirement with his wife half the year, and Richard, former navy and salt of the earth and uncomfortably aware that he can have his wife or his houseboat but not both. As in many of Fitzgerald's novels, love is a comic and disruptive force, more like the potions in A Midsummer Night's Dream than anything else; ironies abound in the end, escapes are lost and found, the terminal neatness of a riverboat breaking free is balanced out by the messy undiscovered fates of many of the characters.
The Golden Child (1977)
Fitzgerald's first novel, written to amuse her husband while he was in the hospital; a mystery set in a thinly disguised British Museum, conducted in and around an exhibit clearly inspired by the Egyptian displays. This is not the book for people who are looking for any kind of postcolonial deconstruction of museums and imperialism, although Fitzgerald's canny eye for self-deception and folly doesn't treat the governments of the Soviet Union or her faux-Egypt as any less bureaucratic or inane as England's. The first half of the book, before the murder, is the strongest: the curators scheme for power, the crowds queue up to see the exhibits. The book weakens when it's forced to develop a plot and the final scenes, although done with comic flair, feel altogether too choreographed: you can tell Fitzgerald is just walking through the genre motions, her heart not in the dance. This is, really, the only place you can see the seams in her work: mostly she seems to have emerged polished and fully made from nowhere, maybe one of the benefits of a late-in-life start.
At Freddie's (1982)
Freddie's is a 60s stage school for children, supplying child actors to London's West End theaters; Freddie herself is a canny old monster, effortlessly overbearing and guilting ministers, tradesmen, businessmen, producers, theater directors into supplying her with whatever her delapidated institution requires. Nearly everyone in the book acts a part, enthralled by the glamour of the theater; honesty is disastrous for those who can't avoid it.
I can't tell if something terrible happens just after the end of the novel or if I'm overreading; this annoys me.
Human Voices (1980)
I wasn't sure, at first, whether or not I'd read this before, or had just read some key quotations; within a few pages I realized that yes, I knew it. The Blue Flower, a historical fiction based on a youthful love affair of Novalis, is probably her best novel, but Human Voices is my favorite, because of Fitzgerald's clear affection and respect for the dedicated, obsessive, self-absorbed, intelligent and occasionally clever workers at the wartime BBC. I am a little in love with the dry, disconcerting Director of Programme Planning; what a terrible husband he must have been.
Innocence (1986)
In post-war Italy, Chiara Ridolfi, a young aristocrat, falls in love with Salvatore Rossi, a penniless and resolutely rational doctor; Chiara makes her decisions simply and whole-heartedly, but Rossi in love maddened, disrupted by irrationality he cannot confine to case notes (it is no coincidence that he studies neuralgia). Love wrecks, too, Chiara's reliable English friend Barney; the failures, fools, and misfits like Chiara's father and aunt seem to handle it better, even when they're left empty-handed. Innocence, in Fitzgerald's terms, is a shield for its possessor and a danger to everyone around them. (Maybe a period thing? Elizabeth Bowen takes much the same view in The Death of the Heart.) There's a cameo by Gramsci and quite a bit about class and regional tensions in post-war Italy as well as the conversion of aristocratic property into centers of tourism.
Offshore (1979)
Houseboats on the Thames, home of the dilapidated, the desperate, the strangely obsessed: Nenna, abandoned because her husband could not stand the boat, oversees her two daughters who have abandoned in disgust the Catholic school where they are pitied; Maurice, a male prostitute; Willis, whose make-do repairs are about to stop making do; and odd man or two out, because they seem so sensible and yet there they are on Battersea Reach: Woodie, who lives a comfortable retirement with his wife half the year, and Richard, former navy and salt of the earth and uncomfortably aware that he can have his wife or his houseboat but not both. As in many of Fitzgerald's novels, love is a comic and disruptive force, more like the potions in A Midsummer Night's Dream than anything else; ironies abound in the end, escapes are lost and found, the terminal neatness of a riverboat breaking free is balanced out by the messy undiscovered fates of many of the characters.
The Golden Child (1977)
Fitzgerald's first novel, written to amuse her husband while he was in the hospital; a mystery set in a thinly disguised British Museum, conducted in and around an exhibit clearly inspired by the Egyptian displays. This is not the book for people who are looking for any kind of postcolonial deconstruction of museums and imperialism, although Fitzgerald's canny eye for self-deception and folly doesn't treat the governments of the Soviet Union or her faux-Egypt as any less bureaucratic or inane as England's. The first half of the book, before the murder, is the strongest: the curators scheme for power, the crowds queue up to see the exhibits. The book weakens when it's forced to develop a plot and the final scenes, although done with comic flair, feel altogether too choreographed: you can tell Fitzgerald is just walking through the genre motions, her heart not in the dance. This is, really, the only place you can see the seams in her work: mostly she seems to have emerged polished and fully made from nowhere, maybe one of the benefits of a late-in-life start.
At Freddie's (1982)
Freddie's is a 60s stage school for children, supplying child actors to London's West End theaters; Freddie herself is a canny old monster, effortlessly overbearing and guilting ministers, tradesmen, businessmen, producers, theater directors into supplying her with whatever her delapidated institution requires. Nearly everyone in the book acts a part, enthralled by the glamour of the theater; honesty is disastrous for those who can't avoid it.
I can't tell if something terrible happens just after the end of the novel or if I'm overreading; this annoys me.
Ghosh, Amitav: Miscellaneous novels
Mar. 6th, 2010 12:45 pmIt's hard to know how to summarize the work of Amitav Ghosh; he never does the same thing twice. I can't even give you an idea of the scope of his work with the notes below, because it's just the novels I've read so far; I'm missing a novel, a memoir/historical investigation, and a book of essays, and that's just what's been published in the U.S. I could, I guess, say that all of his work that I've read so far deals with one or a dozen of the cultures contributing to modern India, but that's so capacious a subject I might as well just say, "Well, he writes about people," and have done with it. (Except then I'd be leaving out the dolphins, swamps, fruit flies, and sailing ships.) He's remarkable not just in the range of his content but the range of styles: he has written a Modernist literary novel, a science fiction thriller, a magic realist novel without magic, a contemporary literary novel, and an historical adventure.
I'm not putting major spoilers in the main post, but the comments may have spoilers for any of the books mentioned below.
( The Shadow Lines (1988) )
( The Circle of Reason (1986) )
( The Calcutta Chromosome (1995) )
( The Hungry Tide (2005) )
( Sea of Poppies (2008) )
I'm not putting major spoilers in the main post, but the comments may have spoilers for any of the books mentioned below.
( The Shadow Lines (1988) )
( The Circle of Reason (1986) )
( The Calcutta Chromosome (1995) )
( The Hungry Tide (2005) )
( Sea of Poppies (2008) )
- mariness on Readercon and disability
- Readercon 2010 programming suggestions
- Justine Larbelestier on the whitewashing of the cover of her book Liar, as well as whitewashing in YA covers in general. Noted also: Mary Ann Mohanraj in comments on SE Asian Diaspora covers, and Neesha in The Brown Bookshelf comments:
What I donât understand is this: this cover could have been an image of *anything*. Heck, it couldâve been a truncated body the likes of which many, many South Asian novels are presented with. The reason Iâve seen given, over and over, for not showing a face on a South Asian novel cover is because people âcanât relateâ to it if it is a brown face. So, we have many, many sari-clad bellies and henna-ed feet and hands, mangoes, spices, and yes, coconuts gracing South Asian books. But rarely any faces.
I find this a really chilling pocket encapsulation of neocolonialism in general, actually. (Also see Simon Winchester's bizarrely nostalgic review of Richard Bernstein's The East, the West, and Sex ["This idea â of the East as the center of a âharem cultureâ so enticingly different from what is parodied as our own Judeo-Calvinist dreariness â has captivated Westerners since the first imperialists planted their flags in the heat and dust of far away. In recent years, however, it is a notion that has spiraled frighteningly out of control. Nowadays there is precious little that passes for romance about the picture: the charming 19th-century image of Kiplingâs temple girl at the old pagoda in Moulmein, the âneater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land,â has been replaced by todayâs obese American pederast trolling for catamites in the bars of Zamboanga, or of middle-aged sex tourists buying infants in Phnom Penh or on the beaches outside Colombo."] or better yet just skip to Bitch Magazine's brief list of women of color who have been writing about these issues for at least twenty years.)
