missroserose | Entries tagged with wednesday reading

Time for a reading meme!

What I’ve just finished reading

Paper Girls, volumes 1-6 (the complete series), by Brian K Vaughan and Cliff Chiang. I’d subscribed to this ages ago and then dropped off reading, so three of the volumes were completely new to me, but it’d been long enough that I just went ahead and read straight through from start to finish. A thoroughly entertaining romp; it occasionally gets compared to Stranger Things (80s-era pre-teen girls on bikes encounter supernatural phenomena) but while there’s some shared DNA, it goes entirely different places; in this case, the band of main characters encounter a temporal war of sorts, with one side wanting to work to change the future and the other invested in preserving the status quo.

Sadly for ethics nerds like me, it becomes pretty apparent towards the sixth volume that the series is less invested in exploring the (potentially fascinating) arguments on either side than it is in designing more and more fantastic cityscapes and creatures for the girls to encounter. That said, there’s still a lot of interest here, including the budding friendship between the girls and the always enjoyable stories-out-of-order gymnastics inherent to any good time-travel tale. I was particularly entertained by the recurrence of the apple/Apple symbolism and some of the ethical gymnastics of Team Status Quo (”It’s okay if we raise dinosaurs to ride! We nabbed them from just before the asteroid hit Earth, so the timeline remains intact!”). One of the writers also worked on Saga, a series whose strength has long been the contrast between fantastical large-scale scenarios and smaller, more intimate, thoroughly human drama; there’s a lot of that here, and it works better for being constrained to a smaller arc.

What I’m currently reading

The Brotherhood of the Wheel, by R.S. Belcher. This was recommended to me by a @laveracevia specifically when we were talking about audiobooks with amazing voice work, and I’ll be damned if she wasn’t 100% on point—the narrator goes from Louisiana bayou drawl to Appalachian twang to “North Carolina by way of Glasgow” without breaking an (audible) sweat. I consider myself pretty good at reading aloud (in English, anyway)—I’ve been reading Gideon the Ninth to Brian at night, and have been able to reasonably approximate Moira Quirk’s voices, at least for the first few chapters—but I wouldn’t have the first idea where to start with this.

As to the story—so far it’s a solidly entertaining American road culture noir. There was one sequence towards the start that had me concerned it was going to go all-in on the Grittier And Darker Than Thou aesthetic, which, okay, valid choice, it’s just not my cup of tea—but so far (a couple of hours in) it’s actually been pretty interesting, with some killer action sequences and promising characters. I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.

What I plan to read next

I’ve been eyeing Astrid Lindgren’s Ronja Rövardotter on my shelf, but despite having thoroughly finished Duolingo Swedish, it still seems a bit out of my vocabulary range—I managed to get maybe 30% of the first couple of paragraphs without pulling up Google Translate. So I may have to save it for when I'm willing to invest that kind of time and effort.

Fanfiction Spotlight

I recently found myself going down a bit of a rabbit hole with, of all things, Harry Kim/Tom Paris slash. This seems a little odd, given how my usual tastes (Wincest, David/Michael from The Lost Boys, Harringrove) all center heavily around shifting power dynamics and obsessive angst, and Star Trek: Voyager was hardly an angsty or particularly changeable show (they tried, in places, but were overall roundly defeated by the arguably overbearing can-do optimism of 90s-era Star Trek). I think it’s been about nostalgia as much as anything; Voyager was the first show I ever wrote fanfic for (in long-form, on a paper tablet from OfficeMax with a colorful border I can still envision), waaaaaay back in high school before I even knew fanfiction was a thing. So there’s something weirdly comforting, here in these profoundly uncertain times, in reading these stories where the stakes are relatively low and nothing feels particularly life- or universe-threatening.

I particularly enjoyed Epiphany, by @rembrandtswife. The premise is so thoroughly 90s fandom: a sexually enlightened alien culture contrives to lead our main characters—in this case, Paris, Kim, and B’Elanna Torres—through the realization of their feelings for each other. That’s it, that’s basically the story. But its genuine earnestness is honestly endearing, and the author’s clearly put a lot of thought into the aesthetic; and there’s something I can’t quite pin down about the sex scenes that really sticks with me—a certain quiet vulnerability, maybe, that I think is undervalued in a lot of contemporary fic (cue that post about how orgasms always hit like a truck or a freight train...). In any case, I enjoyed visiting that world, and it’s given me a bit to think about in my own writing. (Also, if I might indulge my inner 13 year old for a moment, I’m rather entertained at having offered up the 69th kudos. XD)

Current Mood: thoughtful

So it turns out that trying to read when I’m on a writing bender is...actually fairly hard? It’s almost like working on a story between six and fourteen hours a day doesn’t leave me much time for...well, much of anything. But that fic is done, and holiday stuff is pretty much finished, so here we go again! We’ll see how long I last this time.

What I’ve just finished reading

Tender Morsels, by Margo Lanigan. I’ve been thinking a lot about story structure lately, in part because it’s something I’ve been aiming to have more of in my work, so this was a fascinating read in part because it didn’t follow a traditional structure at all. Or, really, you could almost argue that it’s the reverse of a traditional structure—where in a Hero’s Journey-style story you have the inciting incident that sends the main character out into the world to be forever changed, here you have a victimized teenage girl responding to further trauma by literally withdrawing into her safe, comfortable fantasy world and staying there for decades while she raises her two daughters. I appreciated that the story largely treated this choice with empathy; while she’s upbraided by one character later on for her selfishness in not allowing her daughters to experience the real world until they’re grown, most of the others are thoroughly understanding—and the price she pays ends up being a quiet and personal one rather than the Epic Potentially World-Ending Catastrophe that most Western storytelling would demand. There’s a lot to chew over in this story, about the effects of trauma, and culture, and how to make existing as a disempowered person bearable.

If I had one complaint about it it’d probably be that the story treats the “real” world’s brutally patriarchal culture as an inevitability, something that can’t be fought directly, but only undermined covertly, through magic and other hidden means. I guess I have just enough of my mother’s crusader tendencies to want to say “forget that, we can do better”...but power dynamics are forever a tricky thing to alter, and from the perspective of the main characters, there’s really not that much they can do; it’s something of a triumph even to learn to exist within it.

What I’m currently reading

Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir. I’m almost through the audiobook, and hoo boy have I been enjoying it. The author and the narrator both are doing a bang-up job in helping my brain keep the large ensemble cast straight—every character has a distinct personality and voice, and the ways they bounce off each other are eminently believable. Gideon, with her irreverent attitude and occasional brilliance, and Harrowhawk, with her continual brilliance and equivalent insufferability, continue to be one of my favorite fictional pairings; even once they start to trust each other somewhat, their chemistry is just phenomenal. The worldbuliding I’m a little fuzzier on, but the characters are so propulsive that I’ve been more than willing to just go with it. And given that they’re basically acolytes of a mysterious and claustrophobic religious order that requires absolute faith from its adherents, to a degree it works that the origins are mysterious, even if I occasionally find myself wondering about practicalities like “okay, so, who exactly maintains the shuttles? And the atmosphere processors? And grows the food? And who’re they fighting in this mysterious war that’s only occasionally mentioned...?“ I’ll be interested to see if she expands on that in the further books.

What I plan to read next

To be honest, I have no idea. I may well just pick up something from one of the piles of books around my house—God knows I have enough of them, haha.

Fanfiction Spotlight

This week I want to point out Solus, Soulless, Solace by Blake (@newleafover on tumblr). I’ve often thought that the soulless version of Sam we meet in Season 6 of Supernatural is one of those opportunities practically tailor-made for fanfic—the direction they took him in the show worked fine, but there’s just so much potential for exploration there, especially with Sam’s internality. What does the world look like, to a human being without a soul? How does his inability to feel emotion change how he relates to his loved ones, and especially to the one person his life revolves around? And without the ability to love, what is it that keeps him so tied to Dean?

Blake uses the opportunity to present an unrelentingly crystalline portrait of trauma-induced functional depression, where habit and careful consideration carries you through most of the motions of your life but you’re acutely aware that your usual breadth and depth of emotional experience is just—gone. Further, they write it in second person, unusual for a non-reader-insert fic but powerful in that it strips away that layer of insulation. And damn if it isn’t 100% effective. I happened to come across it after a week that had involved more than a little emotional heavy lifting; reading it was like going outside during a sunny eighteen-degree day when all my muscles were sore. It felt therapeutic, if only in the sense of “oh, right, this is why I’m doing all this painful internal work, so I don’t end up here again.”

I am not giving up on my recently-relaunched Wednesday reading posts! I am, however, skipping this week—I'm on deadline for my holiday fic, so (in addition to needing the time to write) I honestly haven't read much this week, anyway.

See you next week!

It’s a beautiful sunny day today, which might not seem like that big a deal except that we’ve had a string of of those brooding dark iron-grey days where there’s little difference between noon and twilight, other than night coming even earlier than usual. So for all that it’s only supposed to last for a day or so, I’m glad to have the break.

What I’ve just finished reading

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn. I note right off the bat that the day Solzhenitsyn relates to us is a pretty good one, all told—the various gambles our title character undertakes in order to find minor alleviations to the privations of camp life (swiping an extra bowl of oatmeal at lunch, for instance, or hiding away a hacksaw blade in his mitten despite the threat of solitary confinement if it’s found during searches) all pay off, and he manages to avoid the ever-present threat of violence from either the guards or the other prisoners. It’s a clever approach, as it both keeps the narrative from becoming unreadably depressing (it’s not hard to imagine what life is like on the less-good days) and also shows exactly how close to the line many prisoners live, as such tiny things bring such intense pleasure.

That said...I think I’m supposed to admire our protagonist’s scrappy resourcefulness and determination to continue under such unforgiving circumstances—and I do!—but the strongest emotion that his story stirs in me is grief—there’s so much human potential being wasted in these camps and for such objectively ridiculous reasons. I think that might ultimately be where I have trouble with so much Russian literature—culturally, so many of their stories involve people at the mercy of their environment, whether the harsh natural environment or the harsher artificially-constructed society. And they either struggle against it and are miserable, or find some way to exist within it and find a measure of peace. Whereas I, being by nature more of a big-picture person, just sort of sit here shaking my head and thinking but it doesn’t have to be like this...even though I realize that’s beside the point. For those people living in that world, it does, because there’s nothing they can do to change it.

I find that a very uncomfortable place to be in, mentally, which probably explains a lot about how tough I’ve found it to exist in America in 2020.

What I’m currently reading

Tender Morsels, by Margo Lanagan. This is definitely the sort of story that gives you pause before describing anyone’s “fairytale life”. The stark and terrible realities of Liga’s life under the thumb of a cruel and controlling father, and then later as a woman unprotected, are softened a bit by some truly lovely prose that gives equal weight to the little poetic moments of beauty as to the deeply-engrained awfulness. I appreciate the focus on Liga’s internality, as well—it does a lot to make her a character in her own right, rather than simply a victim.

Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir. I’m about a fifth of the way in, and while the plot’s taking a little bit of time getting started, I am absolutely living for Gideon and Harrowhawk’s chemistry. The sheer and utter loathing they harbor for each other, despite having been thrown together by circumstance, practically throws off sparks—I’ve found myself giggling maniacally more than once, which is probably disconcerting when I’m listening via headphones. (Props to the audiobook narrator too; she clearly relishes these characters just as much as I do.) I’m genuinely uncertain if I want this to be an enemies-to-lovers story or an enemies-to-world-shattering-nemeses story or some combination of the above; I may not be sure where their relationship (or the story) is going but I’m completely convinced it’s not going to be boring.

What I plan to read next

Honestly, I’m not sure right now; I’ve got a lot on my plate for the next couple of weeks so I have a feeling my current books will keep me occupied for the next week or two. Still, there’s no shortage of books in my TBR pile...

Fanfiction spotlight

“Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”, by porthos4ever. After the events of Dark City, Daniel Schreiber finds himself in the not-entirely-uncomfortable role of potential check to John Murdoch’s godlike powers. But as his feelings grow, so does the complexity of the role he’s assigned himself. Can love really exist when you hold the key to your near-omnipotent beloved’s destruction? But without it, wouldn’t the imbalance of power tear the relationship apart?

If you know me at all, you know I adore complicated love stories, where the space between genuine affection and manipulation is grey and vast, and the balance of power tips back and forth unexpectedly. This is a beautifully-written example—I love the way their growing trust allows them to navigate the choppy waters of their dynamic. And I’m pretty sure there’s a very indirect reference to an early-2000s pop song in there, which I feel slightly smug for having picked up on.

Current Mood: hungry

Sadly, "bathroom grinding" isn't half so naughty as it sounds. Whatever the remodelers are doing downstairs, it sounds like they're vibrating the whole damn room apart. But! We're three days in and they've been consistently on time, our project manager has been communicative, and (to my admittedly untrained eye) they appear to be doing excellent work. And they've been super courteous about wearing masks, too. So really, I can't complain.

What I've just finished reading

Angels & Insects, by A.S. Byatt. Confession time: I noped out about a third of the way through The Conjugial Angel. There was some interesting cultural examination of the various social forces that gave rise to spiritualism (and the ways it allowed women of a certain age/lack of marital status to participate in society in a culturally-sanctioned way), but the farcical characters and lack of anything resembling a plot just Did Not Do It for me, especially when combined with Byatt's heavily-Victorian-esque writing style. It didn't even have Morpho Eugenia's implied-incest subplot to add spice.

The Trouble With Peace, by Joe Abercrombie. I forgot to write about this last week because I didn't think about audiobooks, and also because I'd been taking a bit of a break from it. Joe Abercrombie is absolutely masterful at that style of writing where the bulk of the story involves setting up all the individual characters and their histories, connections, abilities, and motivations (overt and covert)—and then, in the third act, flicking one of the dominoes and watching everything fall. It's satisfying as heck in the end, but can sometimes be a little long in the windup. Still, Peace definitely fulfills its promises, and ends on that perfect kind of cliffhanger that I both kicking myself for not seeing coming and absolutely get why I didn't see it coming. Related, I note that his major themes for this trilogy include the shifting of norms in the face of new technology, the breakdown of social institutions in the wake of increasing wealth stratification, and the dangers of fanaticism directly related to increasing polarization—definitely none of which have any resonance with current events whatsoever. Definitely looking forward to the third book, and (at the risk of repeating myself) Steven Pacey continues to do an absolutely phenomenal job performing these books.

What I'm currently reading

One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn. Straightforward almost to a fault, I'm not sure I have a whole lot to say about the story yet. I get that it was a huge deal in its time, since it was one of the first truly honest portrayals of life in a Soviet gulag that was allowed to be published, but given that my previous exposure to Solzhenitsyn had been in the context of his more philosophical work, I guess I was expecting a little more philosophizing? Still, there's some reflection around the edges; I note the recurring theme of "the guards are just as trapped in their roles as the prisoners are in theirs, and subject to many of the same privations", which feels very Russian. Bureaucracy dehumanizes us all.

I did note a passage in the Yevgeny Yevtushenko's foreword where he talks of Solzhenitsyn's disdainful attitude towards liberals, artists, and the intelligentsia, as none of their ideals or pretensions are of any use in the camps. He goes on to note that without the aid of the intelligentsia, who rallied under its banner, Ivan Denisovich would likely never have been published, but appears to dismiss this as a "complicated relationship" without going much further into it. Which struck me as more than a little odd; presumably, Solzhenitsyn had some artistic pretensions—you don't generally write a book, otherwise!—even if it was only to portray harsh realities that had been hidden from the general public. I wonder if this is a Soviet cultural thing, wanting to prove Solzhenitsyn's bona fides at writing working-class characters by separating him out from the pretentious elites? I should ask Ksenia about it.

Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir. I nabbed this audiobook entirely on the basis of some chatter about it in my writing group, and so far it hasn't lead me astray—I've only really listened to the first sequence and a bit of the following backstory, but I really like the two major characters we've introduced so far. (I'm not sure you're supposed to like Harrowhawk, but given that her name is the title of the second book, I don't think you're supposed to not like her. And I admire her absolute ruthlessness.) I admit that I'm a little concerned about the extensive Dramatis Personae listed at the start of the book—I have a mixed track record with high fantasy/sci-fi stories with large casts that I often lose track of—but if the book can keep up the strength of Gideon's voice, that'll do a lot to keep my interest.

What I plan to read next

Still looking forward to Tender Morsels! After that, it occurs to me that I have the sequel to Naomi Novik's Uprooted, which I enjoyed immensely, sitting on my to-be-read pile...we'll see!

Fanfiction Spotlight

ancientreader's "Riddle Me This, Mr. Holmes" is a complete delight, both in its concept and in its execution. Watson, traveling to visit family but concerned about his friend and lover's somewhat fragile mental health, takes to sending him lines of a riddle via telegram and urchin-enacted charade each day. It's precisely the sort of thing you could see Watson doing for Holmes (no matter how you view their relationship); understated, thoughtful, and introducing just that little bit of extra chaos into the buttoned-up detective's life. I was completely and utterly charmed, all the more so by their banter-via-telegram once Holmes cottons on.

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.

Current Mood: calm

Hello, book friends who haven't yet deserted me (heh). What I had anticipated to be a constantly-scrabbling-to-find-this-or-that-piece-of-paperwork process (i.e. closing) has turned out to actually be mostly waiting, with only occasional scrabbling for this or that piece of paperwork. (My lender, my realtor, and my attorney (or his paralegal, really) have all complimented me on my speed and organization. I sorta feel like, compared to when I was regularly working as an admin, I'm only halfway to where I should be, but apparently that's enough to put me in the top percentile when it comes to filling out forms/finding personal information to fork over.) In any case, I have time to read again, albeit not a lot—my as-yet-unnamed Giant Writing Project of Goth Angst is spilling out into my paper diary, my playlists, and has begun scrapbooking pieces from the Met Fashion Gala. I've redownloaded Scrivener just to have a virtual corkboard where I can organize things. Not a lot of actual writing happening as of yet, but given how complex this is becoming in my head, I think a little more outlining than I usually do is in order.

What I've just finished reading

Nothing recently! Hoping to fix that this week.

What I'm currently reading

The Cloud Roads, by Martha Wells. I picked this up as a freebie from Antigone Books, which should give you an idea of how long ago it was (this was not on my recent trip back to Tucson). I have a thing for the symbolism of wings (says the woman with the giant wing tattoo on her thigh) and I suspect that's going to crop up somewhere in my Giant Writing Project of The Dark and the Light In All of Us, so I thought I'd give this a read and see what another author's done with it. It's turning out to be a competently if somewhat artlessly written bit of fantasy about a race of winged humanoids and their political maneuverings; I feel like the author could maybe stand to learn a bit from Ann "Screw Two, Make Every Scene Serve Five Purposes" Leckie, but the pacing's moving along at a good clip and Moon's outside perspective on the Raksura is interesting.

The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin. I've only just started this one (I was listening to it while I did my hair the other day), but it's put me in mind more than anything of Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightning. There's been a little less philosophy (so far), but something about the intellectual tone and the descriptions of a world with a single androgynous gender contribute to s similar sense of atmosphere. I have a feeling there will be far fewer "characters debating moralism vs. determinism while engaging in an orgy" sequences...though I wouldn't necessarily mind being proven wrong, haha. I'm interested to see if the comparison holds up; it wouldn't surprise me if this was one of Palmer's major influences.

What I plan to read next

I still have Yoga Sequencing on my plate, and now I've got another yoga book on top of that—I'm going to be a coach-in-training for the Sauganash studio's teacher training in October, and we have a new book that we're having the students read from. (Which I am 100% in favor of. When I was in training we were using Baron Baptiste's Journey Into Power, which I found almost offensively self-helpy and simplistic in its message. Obviously anything that's wrong in your life is wrong because you aren't doing hot power yoga! Start doing hot power yoga and you'll be amazed at the changes in your life! Yoga can heal the sick/make the lame walk/make blind men see/fill your wallet/find you a new job/cure cancer/bring about world peace! I'm only exaggerating slightly; I get that Baptiste was writing this as a sales pitch but man did I feel oversold to. Possibly the more so because I'd already been through the "yoga is making all of these positive changes in my life, everyone should try it!" phase and felt like I'd come to a more nuanced understanding of why it works for me, what its limitations are, and why it might not work for others.) So probably I'll be picking up Michael Stone's The Inner Tradition of Yoga.

Current Mood: chill

...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.

Hello, book-friends! I'm back, if a bit early; today I'm on the tail end of a cold and taking one last day to recuperate, whereas tomorrow my schedule goes back to its usual breakneck pace. So a slightly-early Wednesday reading meme it is.

I still haven't been reading as much as I'd like to; between work and condo-hunting (have I mentioned that Brian and I are seriously looking to buy a place?) and social engagements and now fighting off this cold, I've been short on either time or brainpower or both. But having to hold myself publicly accountable for my progress (or lack thereof) is one of the few things that motivates me, I've found. Which is probably why I've grown so much as a yoga teacher and massage therapist over the past couple of years, whereas my more private projects like writing or music tend to progress only haltingly.

What I've ~~just~~ recently finished reading

The Secret History of Wonder Woman, by Jill Lepore. I'm going to point you all at my Wonder Woman Book Club post again—not only because I've already put down my impressions there, but also because there's some excellent discussion going on. I love having literate friends with interesting (and differing!) perspectives on history.

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery, by Sam Kean. Fascinating to the end, Kean finishes the book with an extended examination of one of the most well-known stories in the history of neuroscience—that of Phineas Gage, the luckless railroad worker who was tamping down explosives when an errant spark blew his rod straight through his skull, damaging both frontal lobes of his brain—and, when he not only survived the blast but appeared still fully awake and cognizant, became a medical celebrity. The 'traditional' narrative of Gage's life is that, while he miraculously survived both the injury and the subsequent infection, his personality radically changed, going from an intelligent, responsible, savvy businessmen and God-fearing soul to a short-tempered foul-mouthed jerk unable to hold down a job and had to resort to exhibiting himself as a sideshow. Kean questions some of this, noting that we have no actual medical history, and in fact what little we know of Gage's life mostly comes from his town doctor's occasional case notes; going through various records, Kean discovers that Gage in fact traveled to Chile and worked for several years as a stagecoach driver, a task that (especially on windy mountainous Chilean roads) required no small amount of skill, dexterity, and reflexes. There's at least some evidence that his brain made some recovery over the years, although eventually his injury caught up with him; he began having seizures fifteen years or so after the accident, and eventually hit a state of permanent seizure before dying. It's a remarkable story, probably worth a book of its own.

Saga, vol. 8, by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples. Up until the past couple of books, this series' conceit of "construct a completely unrecognizable universe filled with beings both monstrous and beautiful, then have them deal with immediately-identifiable human feelings and problems" has worked remarkably well. But while there's no shortage of humanity for the characters to explore (including, in this volume, the emotional and logistical difficulties of a late-term miscarriage), it's starting to feel just a little thin. Maybe this is just a reflection of my personality, or maybe it's something about how broadly drawn the characters have remained, but at this point I'm less interested in our star-crossed lovers and more curious about how this entire universe came to be. Anthropomorphic seals? Truth-sniffing cats? A whole caste of bounty hunters? An entire race of humanoids with TVs for heads? Surely there's a fascinating history here, but the story's been reluctant to explore it—which makes the entire thing feel just kind of...arbitrary.

Untitled, by a friend of mine. Being sick and stuck on the couch this weekend anyway, I offered to beta-read a friend's novella, and I'm not going to talk about the premise or the content because I don't think that's public information but YOU GUYS IT IS SO GOOD. Even in its current, unpolished state, I stayed up until 12:30 AM last night finishing it, I was that engrossed. I really can't wait to recommend it to you all.

What I'm currently reading

Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. In contrast to Saga, this one's all about history, as well as future. It's the twin history of two civilizations, one (humanity) fighting to stave off the end for its few survivors, and one (a race of intelligent spiders, the result of a terraforming project on another planet gone sideways) developing sentience and social structure, and eventually taking its first steps into awareness of the greater universe. It's fascinating stuff—I can't think of another example of evolutionary biochemistry used so prominently in a science fiction novel—but perhaps suffers a bit from the opposite problem, i.e. we're looking at the respective civilizations over such long periods of time that it's difficult to get attached to the characters at all. The author ameliorates this issue somewhat by focusing on a particular genetic line in the spider civilization and referring to them all by similar names, which at least helps with a sense of continuity; on the human side, the audience-stand-in character is experiencing the various episodes of the human struggle in between episodes of hypersleep. Likable as he is, however, his role as observer rather than influencer is becoming increasingly apparent, and I'm getting the distinct impression that the author's not a particular fan of humanity—not least because the humans appear to be devolving, whereas the worst aspects of the spider civilization appear to be a direct result of human influence. We'll see how it all shakes out...

What I plan to read next

Right! Books. Those are a thing I read sometimes. Um...something in paper, I think, because I've missed that. Really I should keep plugging away at Yoga Sequencing. Other than that...hm. Weirdly, I'm having trouble working up interest in anything new, probably because of the time investment problem. But I do have a book titled Between the Sheets: Nine 20th Century Women Writers & Their Famous Literary Partnerships that I picked up from a Little Free Library, read the foreword, and immediately put back down again, largely because holy crap am I going to hate this author and her entire premise. But maybe I'll pick it back up—nothing like a good argument to get one's enthusiasm flowing again, haha.

So for once, I have plenty of time to write my weekly book post (my jury duty today was cancelled so I have an unexpected free day), but here's the truth: I'm just not feeling like talking about books today. (Maybe I should go see a doctor, heh.) Between work and house-hunting and changes in my personal life I have a lot on my plate right now and I think the cycles I usually devote to literature analysis are being diverted to other ventures. I'm still reading, but much less over the past few weeks; even my audiobook listening has been taken over mostly by more undemanding fare like Maximum Fun network podcasts. We'll see how I'm feeling next week—I don't intend give this up permanently (I enjoy the discussions far too much), but right now I'm going to see about making some dinner and maybe going to a yoga class.

Current Mood: weird

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!

Current Mood: hungry

What I've just finished reading

Caesar's Last Breath, by Sam Kean. A completely delightful read from start to finish, Kean addresses the topic of our planet's many gases and their effects on our history (as well as, more recently, our history's effects on them) in an accessible and entertaining way. (A particularly favorite description was that of Sir William Ramsay, the discoverer of the noble gases, as "possibly the man with the most tolerance for scientific tedium in history". While Kean doesn't fall into the trap of applying armchair diagnoses, it's distinctly possible that Ramsay was on the spectrum; attempting to isolate and prove the existence of helium with 19th-century technology was a process that gives new meaning to the term "painstaking".) Although he doesn't shy away from bluntly discussing the more serious effects of greenhouse gases and climate change, he keeps things generally hopeful to the end, and posits a future for human beings (and our planet's gases) more than a little profound. I think my favorite thing about the book, though, was the continuing theme of, well, continuation—no matter how traumatic or inevitable the event, nothing is ever truly lost; it simply takes on different shapes. It gives me hope that consciousness functions in much the same way. (Time to listen to Kean's book on neuroscience!)

What I'm currently reading

The Secret History of Wonder Woman, by Jill Lepore—as a Facebook friend of mine pointed out, an appropriate selection for International Women's Day! This is turning out to be a surprisingly nuanced portrait of the Marston-Holloway-Byrne family; for a triad (sometimes quartet, when Marjorie Wilkes comes through town) that was so steeped in the principles of free love and defiance of the patriarchy, it seems to have been founded for a far more practical (and patriarchal) reason—Elizabeth wanted to have a career and children, and Olive's presence meant she could do both (as someone was always there to care for the children). This turned out to be beneficial all around, both because Olive was by all accounts a loving mother figure, and Marston (as so often happens with charismatic egotistical polymaths) had trouble holding down a job for more than a year at a time. It's a surprisingly pragmatic arrangement for something that seems to have began in a small cult dedicated to bondage ("love binding") and worship of female sexual power; still, it does serve as a demonstration of how any given subculture is most stable when it finds some way to fit within the expectations of the larger culture, even when its values are sharply opposed.

What I plan to read next

Conveniently, Brian has already bought the audiobook for The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, so probably that...I also need to get back to Yoga Sequencing, and finish The Master and Margarita.

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!

Current Mood: calm

What I just finished reading

Provenance, by Ann Leckie. After the galaxy-spanning scope of the Ancillary books, this story initially feels almost an afterthought; the Radch Empire would likely consider the Hwaeans a backwater culture, and their obsession with vestiges (artifacts relating to events of personal or cultural significance) quaint at best. And yet, through the eyes of Ingray, this culture feels just as real and important, even though much of the narrative is about Ingray's questioning as to whether provenance (of her culture's artifacts, of herself as an adopted child, of her friends and their presumed species) is as important as she's always thought it was. I particularly liked how closely integrated this book felt with the Ancillary books, even though it stands just fine on its own; the events in those books, and Breq's actions in particular, reverberate throughout the story and trigger much of the plot, even though the books share no major characters. It helps to contribute to the sense of "upending the entire status quo" that the first three books implied while being entirely its own story––a neat trick. But most of all, I continue admire how Leckie interweaves character development, worldbuilding, and thematic relevance together with such apparent ease; I'm sure she's worked hard to learn the trick of it, but she makes it look like it's nothing at all. (And on a weirder/more personal note, I find the word "nuncle" oddly appealing to say - it feels full and juicy in my mouth, like a ripe apricot.)

The Beekeeper's Apprentice, by Laurie R. King. I have...very mixed feelings on this one. On a surface level I found it quite engaging, and the slow start was more than balanced by a thoroughly interesting couple of adventures that Russell and Holmes undertake in the latter half. King does a good job slowly ratcheting up the stakes and therefore the dramatic tension, without seeming sudden or melodramatic; similarly, her pacing in developing the intimacy between the two feels authentic and sweet. The ending, however, was something of a let-down; in the best Holmes stories (and the best mysteries in general), there's a certain trompe l'oeil aspect, where the various pieces of information and evidence seem unrelated and confusing right up until that moment when you look at them from the proper angle, at which point everything falls into place. I think King was going for that here, but she didn't quite make it; the villain basically came out of nowhere and only seemed to really exist to foster that sense of closeness between Russell and Holmes. Similarly, having looked at some of the further books in the series, I'm disappointed to discover that my future-romance-radar wasn't malfunctioning; apparently Russell and Holmes do end up romantically involved, though it takes thirteen books for them to actually get together. I'm not saying it's an impossible sell, but the concept feels so creepy and exploitative that I'm not really in any hurry to read future books. Can't we have one series where there are two characters of opposite gender who share a mental and emotional closeness without it also having to be a romance?

Moscow But Dreaming, by Ekaterina Sedia. I'm not sure I really have anything new to say about this anthology; the stories are hauntingly atmospheric and often dreamlike, but lack a certain sense of structure. I did quite like "The End of White", where the leaden gauzy feel of the prose was particularly appropriate; and having read what little I have about twentieth-century Russian culture, I appreciated the recurring theme of facing the horrors of the past and the scars they've inflicted on the collective Soviet psyche. But on the whole, I personally like at least a little more structure in my impressionist sketches.

What I'm currently reading

Yoga Sequencing, by Mark Stephens. I've only just picked this up again (I didn't want to haul its textbook-size bulk to Arizona and back), but I'm chugging along on the section on asana-family sequencing!

Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis. I think I picked this up on an Audible Daily Deal, and I have somewhat mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, Lewis is steeped in sexist and patriarchal assumptions I generally loathe, and I'm particularly unfond of the physical ugliness=emotional/spiritual stuntedness trope. But at the same time, there's a certain comfort (especially during a week when I'm feeling ill) in listening to a story that follows the patterns you learned in childhood. And Lewis is, as always, a far better writer than his assumptions deserve; his characters follow familiar tropes but surprise me with their depth and complexity, and his themes on the limitations of philosophy and science and the human need for faith in the unknown resonate with me on a profound level. I guess you could say I'm enjoying it in spite of myself, heh.

What I plan to read next

This depends entirely on how much reading time I have this upcoming week...I'm starting to feel the urge to just pick a book at random off my shelf.

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!

Current Mood: determined

Good morning! Chicago is currently cloudy, twenty-two degrees, and under a winter storm watch, with five to nine inches of snow expected...and I am luxuriating in a sunny bedroom in Bisbee, with a high of 68 degrees and a visit with several delightful friends expected throughout the day. Totally worth the two-hour delay for de-icing that our plane experienced on Sunday; Brian and I seem to have timed our escape just about perfectly.

What I've just finished reading

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore. This one sort of fizzled out by the end, which saddens me somewhat; it had so much potential and I enjoyed a lot of its pointed satirization of various religions and philosophies. I think it suffered somewhat from the proscription of the ending; we know how the end of the story goes, and while Biff's desperate plan and eventual descent into grief and anger was understandable and even touching given his devotion to Joshua, there wasn't really much interesting there. What's especially frustrating is that there was some real potential here. There's a moment where he takes revenge against Judas that could've been a really chewy dramatic action-hero-gone-bad moment, but it's just related kind of matter-of-factly and without acknowledging any of the emotions that must've played into it. I can't tell if Moore was just running out of enthusiasm for the narrative, or if he was afraid that directly portraying Biff's very human and fallible emotions would drain the venom from the earlier, more removed, more satirical sections, but it was really a missed opportunity. As was the red herring of the paralytic poison (established early in the story) - Biff's desperate plan of dosing Joshua with the poison and 'burying' him only to bring him to life with the antidote would certainly have had some satirical bite, but it feels like Moore loses his nerve, instead allowing Joshua to follow the path we're all familiar with from Sunday school.

Also, in the afterword, I discovered partly why the Hindu section felt so Western-centric - Moore cites his primary research source as Joseph Campbell's writings about the Kali worshippers. Well...all right then. I get that the Thuggee death cults were a real thing, but it saddens me that so many American stories focus on them due to their sensationalistic aspects, and completely ignore the many, many other facets of a highly complex and fascinating religion.

What I'm currently reading

Provenance, by Ann Leckie. I'm listening to this as an audiobook, and I'm kind of thinking that in the future I should really stick to reading Leckie - not that her work doesn't stand up as an audiobook! But part of what I love about her work is how she's so masterful at the worldbuilding-in-passing; there's little to no infodumping, you're just expected to sort of pick things up from context (and she's extremely careful to provide just enough context). I hadn't realized it until I started listening to this story, but often in reading her Ancillary books I would stop for a moment when I stumbled across some new piece of information, both to admire the clever way she delivered it and to file it away in my mental index; with an audiobook, I find myself swimming in a stream of context I'm having to process much faster. I feel like I'm keeping afloat, though, and (at about halfway through) I'm entertained as heck to realize that this is basically a carefully-worldbuilt, space-opera version of Charley's Aunt. The identity-swap farce will never die!

Moscow But Dreaming, by Ekaterina Sedia. The title feels more and more appropriate the more of these stories I read; many of them feel like they function on dream-logic, either lacking a clear arc, or beginning or ending in odd-seeming places. But they're surprisingly effective on an emotional level; also much like dreams, they're clearly most interested in exploring the protagonists' desires, transmuted through prisms of culture and environment. It's a different sort of fiction, but makes for excellent bedtime reading.

What I plan to read next

I have The Master and Margarita on my Kindle!

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!

Hello, book-friends! Capping off my weird week, today I finally managed to defeat my car's idiot-proofing and lock the key in the trunk. (Literally every time I've locked my keys in the car, this has been how I've done it. Our current car has RFID keys and a system that senses whether your key is in the trunk; if you try to close the trunk with the key in it, it pops the trunk back open and beeps twice, like "Hey dumbass, you left your key in here." Unfortunately, it's not a perfect system - I suspect the aluminum water bottle in my backpack was shielding the key from the sensor.) Like the rest of the week's challenges, though, it was fairly easy to surmount - the AAA guy got the car unlocked without too much trouble, and it turns out Land Rover's warranty covers roadside assistance, so I'm only out the hour I waited for the service. And today I talked to the insurance adjuster about our claim; she seems pretty competent and was a little impressed at how much documentation I'd sent her. (Joys of being a lawyer's daughter/former admin; you learn to keep records, especially of things that're attractive targets.) At this point, my mood is somewhere between "Okay, week, what else are you going to throw at me? Bring it on!" and "...but for reals, can we get back to just the usual level of crazy?"

What I've just finished reading

Nothing this week, partly due to the craziness and partly how fragmented my efforts have been. I did make quite a bit of progress on Lamb, though - I've needed some goofiness in my life.

What I'm currently reading

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore. I continue to enjoy this rather more than most of Moore's work; the dynamic between spiritually-wise-but-innocent Joshua and worldly-wise-but-spiritually-hapless Biff really drives the plot and gives Moore an excellent opportunity to both discuss and poke fun at all manner of different philosophical beliefs. I was somewhat less than pleased, however, with the episode involving the first of the Magi's Eight Beautiful Chinese Concubines, each trained in martial and sexual arts and given a ridiculous name and the personality of a sheet of toilet paper, and whom Biff sees no problem with deceiving into sex. I mean, I get what Moore is going for humor-wise, but there's just so much racism and exoticism and sexism and other -isms going on here that the whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth, especially when there've been literally no other female characters with any kind of agency in the story, period. (You'd think Joshua would have something to say to Biff about lying in order to get into bed with the concubines, but apparently they're not really worth his interest.) It's not that I have any problem with jokes about sex, but when it's literally at the cost of the women involved...let's just say I had no particular sympathy towards Biff when the next of the Magi started beating him with a bamboo cane whenever he stepped out of line.

Yoga Sequencing, by Mark Stephens. As with a lot of yoga books (I'm finding), I'm alternately frustrated and engaged by the prose here. Some chunks of it feel more than a little self-aggrandizing; maybe it's just that I already went through my "yoga is amazing and everyone should try it!" stage and no longer have much interest in proselytizing, but that kind of rubs me the wrong way. What's maybe more frustrating is that I can't deny that the passages about the benefits (both physical and mental) speak very much to my experiences, so I can't say they're *wrong*; I just know they're not going to be everyone's experience, so listening to someone go on like they're Great Universal Truths just makes me kind of sigh. Also, there are some parts that could really use an editor - there's one paragraph in particular that talks particularly about what I want to do as a teacher...but it's smashing so many different concepts together that I just want to take a red pen to it and separate it out into three or four paragraphs. (Entertainingly, I sent it to a friend and she was quite enthusiastic about...a completely different concept than I had meant to highlight. Editing! It's a thing!) That said, I'm seeing quite a bit of value from it and the associated journaling I've been doing, so I'll keep going in spite of my frustrations. (This seems to be becoming my theme for this whole week, heh.)

What I plan to read next

I need another big long housework day so I can finish listening to Symphony of the Dead, haha. (I've tried listening to it in small chunks but there's enough going on that my brain does better listening to it when I have time to go on for an hour or three.) Other than that...my mother's been recommending Radical Acceptance, which I already have a copy of because she's like the fifth person to recommend it to me. She recently listened to The Body Keeps the Score (one of my favorites) and says she likes them as complements to each other, since one focuses more on the physiological and one on the psychological side of the same subject, but there's lots of overlap. So that's high on the list too!

What I've just finished reading

Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine. I enjoyed the heck out of this one - the heroine's bravery, resourcefulness, and agency even as circumstances conspire to rob her of it are all delightful. That said, Ella's great strength as a character also becomes a significant handicap in the third act. Forced by her obedience-curse into the Cinderella role of servant, she spends a good amount of time chafing at her own passivity - and not much else happens. It feels like a missed opportunity; she could have spent some time learning more emotional maturity and alternate coping strategies to deal with her powerlessness, which would have given the finale more punch. But even as written, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it for a fun lighthearted read.

What I'm currently reading

Yoga Sequencing, by Mark Stephens. I had a bit of a rocky start with this one, but the second part of the first chapter was much more interesting. I particularly liked what it had to say about how we often think of poses as static, something we hold (an impression reinforced by photos in Yoga Journal or Instagram), when in fact our bodies are always moving - we breathe, our heart beats, electric signals travel along our nerves. I've been building my classes this week around the theme of dynamic stillness; finding the place in a pose where we feel the shape in our body and feel how it changes as we breathe and adjust to keep our balance.

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore. I have something of a love/hate relationship with Moore's work; like many humorists, he has a lot of sharply drawn observations on human nature and entertaining takes on our hypocrisy and foibles. However, I'm less of a fan of his attitude towards his characters; rather than evoking a sense of compassion for their shortcomings, he more often seems to be jabbing pointy things in their soft places and mocking them for their inability to live up to their ideals. (Maybe it's not surprising that many of my friends who share my perfectionist streak are big fans of his.) I'm a couple of chapters in and so far this one feels less condescending than some of his other books; maybe it's just that this is a story so often- and self-seriously-told that it's ripe for a little satire. Regardless, I'm enjoying his portrayal of Christ and Biff as Twain-esque boyhood troublemakers.

Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dimitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad, by M.T. Anderson. Oh man. If I didn't have a massage booking coming up fast I would go on about this book for paragraphs (and indeed already have, to several people). It's a good follow-up to Winter Garden, dealing with a lot of the same events from a more historical perspective, and it's turned out to be precisely the kind of survey of 20th-century Russian/Soviet history that I was hoping to find (and even better, through the lens of the art of the period, possibly my favorite type of history). I also love that Anderson spends some time critically examining his sources, and explaining why any given anecdote is suspect; the combination of the unreliability of Stalinist-era accounts (when saying the wrong thing could mean arrest, torture, and execution) and Shostakovich's global fame (which meant lots of people wanted to be associated with him) means that a lot of what we 'know' about his life has to be taken with a grain of salt. That said, his music speaks for him - and one of Anderson's great strengths as a writer is his ability to describe precisely what it is about the music that makes it so resonant. (I'm listening to the audiobook, which includes short clips of some of the pieces discussed, which is great - but I wish they were longer and that there were more of them!)

Moscow But Dreaming, by Ekaterina Sedia. Continuing my current reading kick, this is a series of short stories by a contemporary Russian author, many of which include fantastical elements. Even though they deal mostly with recent history and present-day Russia, there's a strong streak of sadness and pathos that runs through them. (It's almost like spending decades trapped between an insane and paranoid dictator bent on maintaining control at all costs and an insane dictator bent on the genocide of your people at all costs leaves a cultural mark, heh.) Many of them feel more like vignettes than traditional stories, portraits of people processing the emotions left by a traumatic past; but they're certainly evocative and haunting.

What I plan to read next

Pretty sure I have enough on my plate for now, but you never know...

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oh right! It's Wednesday.
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It's Only A Paper Rose

an artist's journey through the labyrinth

Entries tagged with wednesday reading

oh right! It's Wednesday.

Return of the return of the Wednesday reading meme?

Wednesday reading, on-deadline edition

Wednesday reading, sunny day edition

Wednesday reading, bathroom grinding edition

Holy shit...a Wednesday reading post??

Wednesday book meme thing, In the Limbo of Closing edition

Wednesday book meme thing, actually posting on Wednesday edition

Wednesday book meme thing, time travel edition

Wednesday book meme thing, week off edition

Wednesday book meme thing, extremely large values of Wednesday edition

Wednesday book meme thing, pounding this out quickly edition

Wednesday book meme thing, slightly overextended version

Wednesday book meme thing

Wednesday book meme thing

Wednesday book meme thing, whoa hey it's not even Wednesday version

Wednesday book meme thing, sunny morning edition

Wednesday book meme thing, reluctant volunteer edition

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