It's Only A Paper Rose

Been a while since I did one of these! *goes to check how long* Cripes. The last one I did while closing on my house and prepping for coaching yoga teacher training, two and a half years ago. Obviously I've been reading since then, but the bulk of it has been fanfiction, and further, most of it short stories written for easy gratification. (Not that I'm knocking easy gratification! But a 3500-word story about a captive Dean Winchester watching an evil version of himself and Castiel have sex is...entertaining, certainly, but maybe not in a way that lends itself to a lot of deeper analysis.)

(Well, other than perhaps a judicious use of the "this better not awaken anything in me" meme. Ahem.)

That said! I've read a lot of fanfiction over the past few years, and plan to continue doing so. I think I'm going to add a Fanfiction Spotlight slot to the Wednesday Book Club format. Chances are there'll have been something I've read in any given week that feels like it deserves attention.

What I've recently finished reading

The Starless Sea, by Erin Morgenstern. I'd previously read The Night Circus on a long-ass plane flight, and it turned out to be almost the perfect book for it—pure escapism so heavily drenched in dreamy poetic atmosphere that I could sink into it like a hot bath, and forget for much of the six-hour flight time that I was crammed into a tiny coach seat. Sea is definitely in that same vein, but this time around I found the thinness and uncertainty of the plot to be rather more frustrating, in a way that overpowered the richness of the atmosphere. There was still plenty there to enjoy, including a portal fantasy to any bibliophile's world of pure wish-fulfillment, and some meditations on love and change, and one quote in particular on the nature of love that's stuck with me...but I don't think the whole thing hangs together as well as it promised, at the start. And while (as a fellow author) I completely understand that things change as you write them, when you reach a point in a story where it feels like the author has as little idea as you do what happens next, I find it a little demoralizing.

Morpho Eugenia, by A.S. Byatt. Now that I think about it, this novella makes for an interesting comparison to Sea, because it's similarly atmospheric, albeit less in the dreamy-imaginative-lovers-and-poets vein than the neo-Victorian highly-organized-and-tightly-laced-household-full-of-dark-undercurrents style. It also does absolutely nothing surprising, plot-wise; it's 180 pages long and I think I'd identified most of the major themes and guessed the major arcs/big plot reveal by page fifteen. That's not necessarily a fault in and of itself—there's something comforting about a story that does exactly what you expect, and it does a good job threading the needle of ladling on the foreshadowing without (quite) hitting you over the head with what's going on. But frankly, the narrative stumbles somewhat in its slavish devotion to form.

As an example: our protagonist is an entolomologist and atheist, penniless in the wake of a shipwreck that robbed him of his specimens and research, who finds himself living on the largesse of a wealthy family whose patriarch has an interest in natural philosophy. So there are, of course, extensive passages on the nature and habits of various insects (meant to be excerpts from his work), on the potential space for the existence of God in natural selection (meant to be arguments from the patriarch), and even an extensive semi-allegorical insectoid fairy tale (written by another character entirely), which...certainly is all in keeping with the Victorian style, but none of which really feels particularly necessary to the story, here in this age where encyclopedias are a thing and anyone reading a neo-Victorian novella probably has at least a passing familiarity with the Deist arguments being held in the wake of Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species. Some cynical part of me wonders if Byatt was trying to write a whole novel, only to discover that the main thrust of her story was nowhere near substantial enough to support one, and even with all the padding she only managed to reach novella length.

What I'm currently reading

Technically I haven't started it, but The Conjugial Angel is the other Byatt novella in the collection I picked up, so I'm probably going to power through that just so I won't feel guilty about tossing the book on the "to be donated" pile. If it's anything like Morpho Eugenia, I expect to feel thoroughly "meh" about it, but hey! Maybe I'll be surprised!

What I plan to read next

I have two specific recommended-by-friends books in my queue. The first is Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich, which I'm rather looking forward to despite my somewhat uneven relationship with Russian literature. It was recommended to me by an honest-to-God Russian Literature major, and the bits and pieces of Solzhenitsyn I've encountered in the wild make me suspect I'll find his perspective interesting. And even if I end up hating it, well...it's short.

The second is Margo Lanagan's book Tender Morsels, which I know very little about other than it's a dark fairy tale. But it was recommended by a friend who's become quite dear to me, and the theme of it (the jacket cover promises an Edenic tale of three women turned out of their personal Heaven and having to deal with the harsh realities of the outside world) certainly feels appropriate to 2020.

Fanfiction Spotlight

I was particularly taken with the premise of zoemathemata's Supernatural/Supernatural RPF story "Folie a Deux". Sam and Dean Winchester are held captive in Lofty Pines Mental Institution for unknown reasons, slowly being brainwashed into thinking that they're two run-of-the-mill dudes named Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki...or are Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki two men suffering from the delusion that they're supernatural-creature hunter brothers named Sam and Dean Winchester? And if they're brothers, how do they square that with the fact that they can't seem to keep their hands off each other...?

It's a clever idea, with the sort of meta-analytical flavor that's very in keeping with the show itself, and zoemathemata makes full use of the opportunity to break down the many inconsistencies and flaws that any long-running serialized story accumulates but that we, the audience, overlook for the sake of the Plot of the Week. My one complaint about it is that it ends too soon—the most immediate plot threads are resolved but there's a distinct sense that this is the beginning rather than the ending. The author says in the comments that they didn't continue it in part because they couldn't decide which was the reality—and I totally get not wanting to spend months or years writing a novel-length fic out of what's supposed to be a quick bit of fun—but there's just so much you could do with this idea. Even without picking sides, it could be a Total Recall-style ambiguously-themed case fic, or a "Frame of Mind"-esque dark psychological thriller, or any number of other options...what can I say? I have a weakness for unreliable narrators.

Closing today (aaaaaaaaaa). Still not reading much, but I've been making my way through The Last Days of Judas Iscariot on loan from a friend, and man, I'm sad that I'm completely the wrong ethnicity to ever play Saint Monica. Giant Writing Project of Doom still going on. Also I've been making a new writer-friend who, while it's early yet to say, may well become one of my favorite people. (It's been a long time since I had anyone who enjoyed exchanging long-ass daily emails, probably because we're all in our 30s now and don't have the time, so the fact that we've been doing so a week now despite our hectic lives points to real chemistry, I think. I hope.) Tuesday night the anxiety insomnia finally hit, but while the morning was rough the day actually went pretty well and after twelve hours of sleep last night I'm feeling downright good. Writer friend has been gracious enough to loan me her personal anthem, which got me through yesterday and I think will be playing a similar role today. Even though (as I told her) I'm usually the keep-one-foot-on-the-ground type, there are some points in life that just require that leap of faith. "Stretched to the point of no turning back..."

(aaaaaaaaaa)

See you all on the other side.

Awhile back, a friend had a post up about a story she had been writing (and rewriting) for some time. It was a retelling of Beauty and the Beast where the beast is a dragon, the traveller a village parson who refuses to trade his daughter's freedom for his own; where he stays with the beast himself and they have discussions on the nature of affection and the differences between romantic love and humanitarian love; where they fall in love but the priest went to Oxford so he's cool with that, and also it's set in England during World War II and of course there's a Luftwaffe attack.

As y'all have probably guessed, my response was basically "I must read this immediately".

I am here to tell you that it is every bit as delightful as I'd hoped. The fairytale tone is charming without being twee, Briarley Hall has just the right amount of magic (lent help by Gray's heartrendingly lovely depictions of the landscape), and the English countryside feels real and lived-in and more than a little war-weary.

Most importantly, though, the leads are complex and beautifully rendered. The dragon's slow awakening to respect and eventual love feels genuine—as does the parson's occasional frustration with the dragon's self-pity. Their dynamic works well, emphasizing their humanity even amidst the fantastic surroundings.

It's one of my favorite truisms that you can write a good story about anything—a transsexual glam-rock singer from communist East Berlin, a trigendered alien race, a postapocalyptic culture of car-obsessed warlords—if you find the love in it, the place where the characters and their struggles speak to the shared humanity in us. For a tale about a person supposedly incapable of love, this story is suffused with it, as ever-prevalent and ever-blooming as the enchanted roses. Fear, too, and grief, and anger, and the whole gamut of emotions; they anchor the novella and make it real and immediate in a way that many authors spend whole books never quite reaching. I loved Briarley and I can't wait to see what Gray does next.

...for once.

What I've just finished reading

Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This is one of those books you can't really discuss without discussing the ending; the last part ties together many of the themes raised throughout. As I think I mentioned before, what I kept turning over in my head was precisely what Tchaikovsky was saying about human nature. (Spoilers ahoy.) ( Read more... )

The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope. A super-fun (if super-Victorian) swashbuckling adventure read, with heroes and villains and swordfights and escapes and all manner of derring-do. (Also precisely the right kind of book one can describe with the phrase "derring-do".) Unsubtle in the extreme; when the characters profess surprise that someone named Black Michael, possessed of an isolated castle far in the woods, turns out to be a kidnapper and would-be usurper, well...I had to laugh. I admit I mostly read it because I'm looking forward to KJ Charles' upcoming The Henchman of Zenda...and having encountered the characters that telling is centered upon, I'm looking forward to it even more now.

What I'm currently reading

I actually picked up The Master and Margarita again, and I think I'm starting to gain the thread of it—so of course the thing to do now is to start all over again, with a different translation! Actually, I mostly wanted a Kindle edition with linked footnotes, so I invested in the 50th Anniversary Edition, which also came with a foreword and introduction that've provided some useful context on Bulgakov's life as well as a rundown of the various themes and characters. So I'm more hopeful this time around (and having easy access to the footnotes is helping as well.)

What I plan to read next

Probably something at random I grab off of the shelf, virtual or physical...it all depends.

Friends, readers, countrymen...which is to say, those of you who joined me in reading The Secret History of Wonder Woman this month...lend me your thoughts! What struck you about this story? What was unexpected? What did you find surprising, impressive, underwhelming, fascinating? Did it change your perception of feminist- or comic-book history at all?

I'll have my thoughts in the comments, but I'm really looking forward to seeing what you all come up with! Some of you have shared insights with me already and I'm having a hard time sitting on those because they're all excellent and I'm excited about them, but I'll hold off so you can post them in your own words.

What I just finished reading

Nothing this week, alas. Coming off the tail end of a couple of extremely busy weeks. However, I have today after my class and all of tomorrow blocked off...reading time, here I come!

What I'm currently reading

The Secret History of Wonder Woman, by Jill Lepore. I was surprised to realize I'm actually nearly done with this book—the footnotes are so extensive that they take up a good fifty-plus pages in the end. Lepore's clearly done her research her, conducting interviews with currently-living members of the Marston-Holloway-Byrne family and going through what had to be mountains of personal papers to construct her biographical narrative, as well as placing Wonder Woman's creation firmly within the context of the time, showing the links between her stories and the art and rhetoric of the suffragist and New Woman movements. I kind of feel for Marston; after decades as an incredibly-smart polymath with little to show career-wise for his efforts (his self-aggrandizing personality made him a bad fit for academia, and neither his scholarly or fiction writing earned him any real acclaim, in likely part due to an intolerance for the criticism required to become good at something), he has a wildly successful pop culture character preaching his feminist values—and whom other writers are practically champing at the bit to turn into a secretary, a helpless damsel, or a sex object. Which becomes something of a problem when he contracts polio and can't keep up with the punishing daily-newspaper-strip publication pace.

I'm really enjoying Lepore's ability to avoid either lionizing or minimizing Marston's personality; given his role in feminist history, it had to have been tempting to hold him up as an ideal ally figure, or else magnify the problematic aspects of his philosophy (he believed strongly in the angelic nature of women, for instance, and his personal life didn't always match up with his principles—the family story has it that when he took up with Byrne, he told Holloway that either Byrne could come to live with them or he'd divorce her. Not precisely the sort of feminist poly hero I'd envisioned). She manages to do neither, and her biography feels much the richer for its complex portrayals of complicated people.

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery

I swear, at this point I kind of want to write a nonfiction book titled This Is Getting Ridiculous: Why the Long-Form Two-Part Colon-Separated Comma-Listing Nonfiction Title Is Unnecessary, Overused, and Distracting. :P Gripes about the title aside, this is another of Kean's enjoyable popular science books. Possibly my favorite point discussed so far is the way our brain operates along two entirely separate tracks—one logical and one emotional. This is hardly new information to anyone who's ever, say, fallen in love, but it turns out the systems are physically separated in the brain as well. And in case you've ever thought your decision-making processes would be better off without your emotions, take the case of Elliot: a responsible accountant and loving husband who, after a traumatic injury to his prefrontal cortex, completely lost the ability to make decisions. Even "where do you want to go for dinner tonight" was a multi-step process involving carefully weighing the respective restaurants' merits and drawbacks, driving by each of them to see how busy they were, etc...and even after that he was still stumped—without any kind of emotional attachment he couldn't say "I feel like Chinese tonight". Similarly, his work suffered due to his inability to prioritize tasks—he'd get caught up filing (and re-filing) paperwork and let his actual work slide. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he proceeded to make a series of (what we would call) completely boneheaded life moves; after (perhaps inevitably) his wife divorced him and he lost his job, he married a call girl and put most of his savings into a shady investment scheme, both of which turned out about how you'd expect.

What was most fascinating was that, if you proposed these situations to him as a hypothetical, he would absolutely agree that, say, marrying a prostitute you've known for a month is a Bad Idea and probably won't turn out well; but without that emotional urgency in his brain going "Hey! Don't do this! It's a bad plan!", to him it was all pretty much the same. (I find some interesting parallels to talking to someone in the grip of what poly people call New Relationship Energy, that notoriously strong and illogical sense that Your New Person Is The Best Ever; anyone who's tried to explain to a friend in a not-great relationship why their new relationship is not-great knows precisely this reaction of "oh yeah, I see what you mean, that's not great", completely divorced from any sense of "oh hey, my relationship that I'm in right now is Not Great!". Oh, chemistry.) Still, his new temperament did have one bit advantage: he might have been completely impaired with regards to decision making, but at least none of the crappy outcomes of his decisions ever bothered him much.

What I plan to read next

Um. Definitely trying to get back to Yoga Sequencing this week. And...well...we'll see!

Hello, book-friends! Well, it looked for a moment like my schedule was slowing down, but bookings have been picking right back up again—I booked two new people this week on the strength of my yoga classes. Between that, my teaching schedule, and trying to have a social life, I'm starting to veer dangerously close to overextended again; yesterday was supposed to be my day off, but I spent basically the whole day cleaning and grocery shopping and running errands that had gotten put off due to work. Wednesday I was either cleaning house, massaging, or teaching (with a short break for a piano lesson) from about 9 AM to 10 PM, hence why I'm playing catch-up this morning. I sense the need for a SOMA day soon...I have this weekend blocked off because Ian is visiting, and I hope he's down for movies and shows and other things that involve a lot of sitting, heh.

What I've just finished reading

Girl Waits With Gun, by Amy Stewart. I read somewhere that Stewart was basing this story on her own family history, which I have no trouble believing; history is messy and rarely streamlined, and much like its heroine, this reluctant-girl-detective story takes its time finding its way. That said, unlike many similar character-driven attempts, there is an identifiable arc and even a resolution of sorts, although more on an emotional level than a logistical one. That does leave plenty of dangling plot threads to be taken up in the sequels; Constance's new career as a deputy being one, Fleurette's interest in performance and the broader world outside being another. (While it's absolutely appropriate to the time and their characters, I can't help but bristle at Constance and Norma's constant infantilization of Fleurette—I get that her bohemian interests weren't quite respectable for 1914, but she's sixteen! Practically grown up! They've got to let her make her own decisions at some point, and the flapper movement is right on the horizon...) If there's one real issue with the narrative, it's that we don't get as strong a sense of Constance's character as do gruff, stolid-but-loyal Norma or flighty-and-creative Fleurette; but given that her whole arc is, in an understated way, her own search for identity, that actually sort of works. I'm not sure if I'm going to immediately listen to the rest of the series, but for a cozy comfort-read it'll definitely be on the list.

The Wicked & The Divine Vol. 6: Imperial Phase, Part 2, by Kieron Gillen et al. Still enjoying the heck out of this series. Ensemble pieces like this are extremely difficult to pull off without the various arcs all spinning out of control and away from each other (see: Orphan Black), and so far my gut says they've done a remarkable job keeping it all coherent. I'm definitely going to have to re-read these all in a line when the series is finished to get a sense of how well the themes and arcs mesh and hang together—its harder to judge when you're reading one or two trades a year—but certainly they're doing a good job of ratcheting up the stakes. (Man, just when you'd got used to Woden's general shitheadedness, you find out you don't know the half of it...I wonder if the authors have something to say about accepting people of questionable integrity into one's social circle, heh.) Things appear to be hurtling towards the conclusion; hopefully they'll be able to stick the landing.

Lumberjanes Vol. 1: Beware the Kitten Holy, by Noelle Stevenson, et al. I have a lot of friends who love this series, and I can see why people do—the umpteen synonyms for "charming" I tend to see in descriptions are all perfectly applicable. That said, the cartoony style doesn't really do a lot for me; it's cute, and I can absolutely get why people like a story of plucky girl-scout-esque characters solving a supernatural mystery, but not having been a Girl Scout back in the day, I suspect I'm missing some of the nostalgia, and overall it lacks the chewier depth of more character-driven pieces that's my personal preference.


What I'm currently reading

Caesar's Last Breath, by Sam Kean. Kean has a distinct talent for humanizing science, largely by telling the stories of the people involved in major discoveries or events related to a given field. (Appropriately enough, one of his first subjects in this story is quoted as having said to photographers taking pictures of Mt. St. Helens: "You've got to put a human being in the goddamn thing...a little human interest is what means so much to the goddamn public.") So far my favorite anecdote has been that of Antoine and Marie-Anne Lavoisier (a husband and wife chemistry team in pre-Revolutionary France) and their discovery of oxygen, thus rendering the then-dominant theory of "phlogiston" irrelevant. Not only did they publicly demonstrate the existence of oxygen, but proceeded, in the celebration afterwards, to put on an entire neo-Greek play, in the format of a trial, about the triumph of oxygen over phlogiston in the court of science. Which strikes me as possibly the most pre-Revolutionary French thing ever, and also kind of amazing, and also horrible since it was literally being funded (as was all of Lavoisier's research) by the obscene taxes levied on the peasantry. But muddled moral foundations are hardly unusual in the field of scientific progress; another story concerns the scientists who invented the Haber-Bosch process, by which nitrogen in the air is captured and rendered into fertilizer; literally half the food on our planet is now grown using such artificial fertilizers. Arguably they did humanity a great favor by (as their celebrants put it) conjuring bread from the air, they both won Nobel prizes for their work...and they both died shunned as war criminals (Haber is most infamously known for synthesizing chlorine gas to perpetrate the gas attacks of WWI, and Bosch discovered a process for extracting liquid fuel from coal that fueled the Luftwaffe throughout WWII). It certainly provides some food for thought on the subject of what happens when you divorce ingenuity from moral integrity.

The Secret History of Wonder Woman, by Jill Lepore. "William Moulton Marston, who believed women should rule the world, decided at the unnaturally early and altogether impetuous age of eighteen that the time had come for him to die. In everything, he was precocious." I love when I can tell from the opening line of a story that I'm going to enjoy it.

The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov. My efforts at research notwithstanding, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm really the best audience for this book. The dreamlike picaresque atmosphere is effective at evoking the topsy-turvy zeitgeist of Stalinist Russia, but I'm having a hard time staying interested; it makes me wonder if I'm missing something. Friends who enjoyed it, what should I be looking for? Or is this a book you can't analyze, only experience?

What I plan to read next

Honestly, I think I've got plenty on my plate already what with the Wonder Woman Book Club (and I haven't made any progress in Yoga Sequencing at all this week), but ivy sent Brian and me The Hope of Another Spring, an absolutely stunningly-produced art book featuring ink drawings and diary entries from a Japanese-American man interred during WWII. I'm definitely eyeing that one.

What I've just finished reading

Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis. My previous complaints about structural patriarchy still stand, but man. I was completely sucked in to the second half of this story. I loved that, despite screwing up big-time where her sister was concerned, Orual worked hard to become a strong ruler after her petty and small-minded father died; I enjoyed seeing her growth and enjoyed even more seeing where she couldn't grow, where she was stuck; it was a very human story. And then, in the much-shorter second part, she's confronted with all those shortcomings and stuck places—the kind of late-stage character growth you almost never see in stories, but that's fantastically important (and common!) in life. Dammit, Lewis. You and your fabulous insight into human nature won me over...again.

Love is Love: A Comic Book Anthology to Benefit the Survivors of the Orlando Pulse Shooting, by a whole mess of folks. This is one of those "bought ages ago (in this case, around the time of the Pulse shooting) and been sitting on my bedside table" books; I picked it up for some before-bed reading because I was too tired to go and get my Kindle. I'm not sure what made me think it'd be good bedtime fare—I think I had some vague impression it was going to be a quick, easy, affirming read, mostly from the cover. Eight stories in, when I was uncontrollably crying, I realized I'd miscalculated a bit, heh.

That's not to say that it isn't encouraging and affirming—one of the requirements for contribution was to keep it positive, and there are many fiercely supportive tales amongst the various one- and two-page comics. But it's not an easy read, and it's definitely not quick. The format ranges from single-panel pieces to whole small arcs to illustrated poetry to (in one of my favorite contributions) a poem that's clearly meant to be a spoken-word piece; I might have to try it out sometime at a poetry slam (with attribution, of course). All of them are pretty emotionally raw, as you'd expect for art created in the wake of such a horrific tragedy. One particular image, a close-up of a victim's phone still displaying the dying text they'd sent telling their partner they loved them, haunts me particularly. Worth the time, and potentially cathartic, but not easy.


What I'm currently reading

Yoga Sequencing, by Mark Stephens. I'm trying to avoid berating myself for not making it through this as quickly as I would like, and instead just focus on reading a bit at a time. It's useful information, but takes more effort to process and integrate than a novel, so often when I have reading time I gravitate towards the latter. That said, I'm noticing a difference in my C2 teaching; not so much from any particular piece of advice as a general sense that I have a better idea of what I'm doing. I have more trust that the knowledge will be there, and more flexibility in my planning; if something doesn't quite pan out in class, I don't panic and freeze trying to figure out a workaround. I don't know how much of this is just from experience and how much from reading, but I plan to continue with both.

The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov. I'm only a couple of chapters in, and primarily struck by the structure of the story—it's felt like nothing so much as a dreamscape, with little moments of seeming coherence that nonetheless seem to function on an opaque and alternate set of rules, interspersed among action sequences that follow nothing so much as dream logic, always with an undercurrent of strong emotion—fear? dread?—that threatens to overwhelm the whole thing. Having just listened to Symphony for the City of the Dead and its excellent rundown of twentieth-century Russian history and art, it's basically exactly what I'd expect from a Russian writing under Stalin.

Girl Waits With Gun, by Amy Stewart. Another Audible Daily Deal I picked up some time ago. I'm not quite sure how to categorize it; I honestly don't think the author's quite sure whether she's telling a period family drama, a quirky domestic tale, a plucky girl detective story, or a gangster action tale. That said, despite a somewhat slow pace, I'm finding myself somewhat charmed by the story's refusal to fit into any one archetype; the personalities of the three sisters (the competent if staid spinsters Constance and Norma, who take care of their much younger and more artistically inclined future-flapper sister Fleurette) are extremely well-drawn, and their family dynamics (both supportive and repressive) remarkably fleshed out. Maybe the story's not sure where it's going, but the characters are interesting enough that I'm happy to hang around and find out.


What I plan to read next

I just picked up Hidden Figures on another Audible Daily Deal! Also, my mother wants to do a book-club reading of The Secret History of Wonder Woman this month—I may do a separate entry about that and see if I can recruit more participants!

Posting slightly early because tomorrow is slated to be mega-busy - breakfast, massage, yoga, lunch, volunteering, teaching. Also it's my first shift tutoring kids at the library and I haven't worked with kids in years and it's Valentine's Day so they're all going to be hopped up on candy and YOU GUYS I MAY BE LITERALLY INSANE. Yeah, I'm slightly terrified. But it's a good and useful thing I can do to try and make the world a little better...so I'm going to give it my best shot. At least I'm joining up mid-year; if it turns out I just hate it, I can get away with quitting when school's out in June without being a jerk. But it'd be nice if I actually enjoyed it.

What I just finished reading

Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I admit that a good part of why I read this now was sheer spite—the VRBO we stayed in last week had an entire bookshelf with a particular political bent, so I bought this specifically with the intent of reading it before we left and leaving it on said shelf. As for the book itself, I could go on for pages about my reactions to it, but for the sake of brevity I'll stick to the biggest revelation: Coates' framing of the fear African-American people live with every day not as fear for their liberty or their property, but specifically for their bodies. It's one of those concepts that's obvious in retrospect but which I'd never seen articulated; it's probably more comfortable for white folks (like me) to debate airy principles like "civil liberties" when, in fact, what black people are afraid of is being deprived of their bodily autonomy and their lives, often by agents of the same state they're expected to swear allegiance to and depend upon for protection. Speaking as someone who's spent a fair amount of time mulling over what I would do if I no longer felt safe in the country of my birth, and debating the benefits and difficulties of the homeless expatriate versus the persecuted minority, it was a bit of a shock to realize there's a whole community of people already living that question right here in my country. (In retrospect, I'm a little ashamed to admit that this shocked me so much—it's not like I haven't been following the news—but somehow I'd never made the connection.) Interestingly, it also intersected with my experiences in the massage field: I'd noticed for quite some time that the African-American people I've worked with tend to have bodies that are stiffer, with fascia that's adhered in patterns you see when people are often in fight-or-flight mode. I had figured it made sense, what with literally having to fight the system everywhere you go to be recognized as a human being, but again, I hadn't quite realized precisely how corporeal that fear was.

What I'm currently reading

The Beekeeper's Apprentice, by Laurie R. King. I got this from Audible some time ago, and with all the driving we were doing visiting friends in AZ, Brian and I broke it out to listen to. The narrator is competent enough, if a little limited in her range, which mirror's the writer's ability level as well - there are more than a few parts where I can't tell if she's rehashing intentionally in reference to the original Holmes stories or if she just needed another pass by the editor. But Mary Russell is an engaging enough protagonist, and the mysteries themselves (once we get past the somewhat slow beginning) quite well constructed. Holmes and Russell are up against the Big Villain of the piece now, and I have some pretty solid suspicions of who it might be, though I'll keep them to myself to avoid potential spoilers. I also am very much enjoying the not-always-comfortable evolution of Holmes' and Russell's relationship from master-apprentice to partners; I'm at times slightly concerned King is angling for a future romance, which argh no unnecessary and also way creepy between a twentyish woman and a sixtyish man? But so far the tension's been subtle enough that it could be chalked up to "older dude in sex-segregated society unused to having female company", so I'm hoping it's just my literary conditioning causing me to read too much into it.

What I plan to read next

I hang my head in shame - I'd planned to read The Master and Margarita on the plane back but I was so braindead I ended up watching Zootopia on the plane's streaming service instead. (Which I can't say I regret because it was funny and well-constructed and so much smarter than I was expecting and really go give it a watch, especially if you're having a day when your faith in humanity is low. And seriously, there are some great gags.) Soon, though, I promise!

Hello, book-friends! A couple of years ago, my local neighborhood-happenings blog posted a call for volunteers to help tutor kids from the local grade schools - my neighborhood has a big low-income and immigrant population, so there are a lot of children who can't get much help with their homework at home. I remember thinking that maybe I should apply, but shortly thereafter I started massage school and life sort of got in the way. Since then, I've thought about it more than once; it seems a good way to both get involved with and give back to the community. Still, I've had a hard time overcoming my hesitation. I've been concerned about the time commitment (nothing like running a business where availability is prized to realize exactly how much time the rest of your life takes up), and the last few times I tried dealing directly with kids, it didn't go so well (though admittedly that was en masse rather than one-on-one). This morning, the same blog posted another call, and wouldn't you know it, one of the available sessions they need tutors for is Wednesday afternoons, right up the street from the yoga studio where I work Wednesday evenings, and ends right when I'd need to leave for work. Kinda seems like it's not going to get any more pointed than that, heh. We'll see if I overcome my hesitation - I do have a regular massage client that likes to book during that time, but that's like once a month at most, or I might be able to convince her to shift her regular appointment time.

What I've just finished reading

Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dimitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad, by M.T. Anderson. I capital-letters LOVED this book. Not only is it a surprisingly good survey of 20th-century Russian history (I feel much more prepared to read The Master and Margarita now), it's a compellingly told tale of a very human person laboring to create art while under threat from no fewer than two fascist regimes, one of which disliked him personally for his talent and celebrity and the other of which was bent upon the destruction of his entire race. I doubt anyone can read the story of the piece's Leningrad premiere and not be touched; after nearly a year of starvation rations, the orchestra was down to seventeen members, many of whom barely had the strength to blow into their instruments; the government had to supplement with (comparatively) better-fed military musicians. Towards the end of the piece, the players were on the verge of passing out with fatigue, but the audience stood up, willing them to go on. The entire city heard the piece broadcast over loudspeakers and radios; the Russians blasted it over loudspeakers set up at the blockade in a huge display of defiance, proving that they were still alive, still creating art.

Later in the story, I found the tension between Shostakovich's global lionization and his personal desire to remain anonymous particularly poignant; Shostakovich was shy to begin with, and in the Stalinist era fame made you stand out, which could be deadly. And yet Shostakovich never stopped composing, not when his work was censored by the NKVD, not when Hitler blockaded his beloved home city and destroyed its food supplies, not when his Leningrad Symphony won him global acclaim, not even when the war ended, the iron curtain came slamming down, and his work was once again out of favor. He signed whatever statements the government put in front of him, no matter how reprehensible, but he kept composing; even more tellingly, during a time when compassion was definitely out of favor, he used what resources he could to help his friends who'd been caught up in the purges, paying for a fellow composer's son to attend conservatory and writing so many letters to the government that eventually they stopped paying attention to them. He may not have been cut out to be a hero or a martyr, but by all accounts he was a kind man, and he never stopped making art and never stopped trying to help people, which is a quieter and perhaps more effective sort of heroism in itself.

What I'm currently reading

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore. Having found and studied under all three of the Magi, learning Buddhist, Hindu, and even Yogic disciplines, Joshua has returned to Nazareth and begun collecting disciples. I'm honestly not finding this part as entertaining as the first couple; maybe it's just that this story's been wrung out for jokes before (Christ and his followers were basically barefoot hippies! Isn't it funny realizing how they'd basically be outcasts now!), or maybe it's that Moore seems hesitant to satirize Christian philosophy as he did with others. Especially after the Hindu episode, which was oversimplified to the point of offensiveness and read like nothing so much as a white dude who'd seen Temple of Doom too many times writing jokes about a culture he had no context for, he's been surprisingly unwilling to examine Christianity with the same eye. I mean, I don't know a whole lot about religious history, but even I know that Christianity was a radical philosophy for its time; I don't think a single other major religion of the period preached tolerance and compassion towards those who wronged you. (One of the things I liked most about HBO's Rome, at least in the first season before it got all soapy, was how it got across the difference in primary cultural philosophy; forgiveness and compassion were seen as weaknesses to be exploited, not desirable traits to be emulated, or even pretended to.) It seems like that'd be a pretty good source of jokes, but perhaps Moore doesn't have the outsider's perspective towards Christian philosophy that he does towards the others.

Yoga Sequencing, by Mark Stephens. I've fallen somewhat short of my chapter-a-week goal this week, though in fairness, this is a particularly long chapter on sequencing within asana families. I feel like this is one section where the material was adequately covered in my teacher training; there've been some good bits of advice, though nothing that's really given me new insight. (But then, I still have *hangs head* two-thirds of the chapter to read, so stay tuned for updates.)

What I plan to read next

Time to pick a new audiobook, and I just saw on Goodreads that asakiyume is reading Ann Leckie's new book Provenance, which Brian already got on Audible - for once, I think I know what's up next!