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highlyeccentricAnd on the off-week of my fortnightly pattern, too. Time to catch up where I'd gotten behind.
What Are You Reading Wednesday:
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?
What are you currently reading?
For work: George Duby (ugh), and a book on Chrétien that was co-written by a cabal of lady scholars.
For funsies: Baraba Baynton's 'Bush Studies', on the alkido app; Jan Clausen's 'Apples and Oranges: My Journey Through Sexual Identity' (the latest in my bisexual angst reading list); and the audiolivre.fr recording of La Petite Princesse.
What did you recently finish reading?
Positive mention goes to the short story A Box, a Pocket, a Spaceman by E. Catherine Tobler at Lightspeed Magazine.
I don't normall review work reading, but these two are unusual:
The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions by William M. Reddy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Deserves special mention for being personally useful to think through as well as academically interesting.
Friends: Why Men and Women are From the Same Planet by Lisa Gee
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This was a really weird read. I ought to have liked it - it's about some of my favourite topics, through a mix of literary, sociological and interview-based evidence. I liked the connections Gee drew between the way friendship functions and the way cross-sex kin bonds function. But actually the book drove me bonkers: it was insufficiently critical of its secondary sources, sprinkled with evo-psych, and tried to blend feminist thinking with accepting the premises of "The Surrendered Wife" (which I haven't read) and "In Defense of Modesty" (which i have, and it too pulls that weird trick of sort of accepting feminist logic and then offering regressive solutions).
I also finished with 'Love, Friendship and Faith in Medieval and Early Modern Europe' and Yasmina F-J's 'La Jeune Fille et L'amour'.
From the nominally fun reading list:
Fat Is a Feminist Issue by Susie Orbach
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was *weird*. It was an interesting read, which posed engaging questions about gender, body issues, weight, and food. I don't think of myself as someone with disordered eating habits, nor particularly angsty about my body (less so than many women, I think), but it got me thinking about the food/self-care axis again, which is always relevant when I'm depressed.
More surprising was that it got me thinking about *the way I expect others to react* to my body (especially vis-a-vis size), and the fact that, having put on weight slowly (with plenty of sudden drops along the way) over the last few years I've reached a point of *security*. It's difficult to buy pants, but easier to talk to other women about buying clothes. My age-peers in my friend groups these days are all smaller than me, and no one is making snide comments about my thinness and my eating habits and how unfair it is that I can eat cupcakes, etc. It's nice. I reacted with dread and anger when someone recently suggested I would lose weight because of running (and i have lost girth, at least) not just because I really object to the society-wide assumption that weight loss is either the chief reason for exercise, or the #1 bonus side effect. I'm *happy* to have outgrown the high-metabolism lanky teenage girl preiod, and I do not look forward to the possibility (probability?) that if I lost a lot of weight, I would be on the recieving end of compliments that aren't compliments, or outright nastiness, mostly from other women. But I don't think that's affecting my eating habits, so.
What was weirdest about this book is that I picked it up expecting a foundation text of Fat Positivity, and I can see why it is... but it says things that would get you hounded out of the Fatosphere now. Most fat people are afraid of becoming thin, and overeating is the number one reason for being overweight: these are two basic assumptions throughout the book, which make sense given Orbach's audience are compulsive eaters. There's good questioning of patriarchal social conditioning as pertains to women and food, but very little concerning capitalist industry, the availability of various foods, and so on.
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was pretty delightful. The opening essay - in which the Agent comes for David during his fifth-grade afternoon lessons and takes him away for endless lessons in failing to pronounce the letter "s" - was bright, engaging and hooky. I liked the second part, which mostly deals with the horrors of learning French, a lot more though, for what I assume are obvious reasons.
I was mostly bored with Sedaris' tales of his drug-fueled escapades, and it bothered me that he didn't seem to acknowledge that, if his father really does twit his sisters constantly about their weight, *this is really dickish behaviour*. It seemed like he wanted to celebrate Amy Sedaris' victory over their dad in that arena without actually condemning Dad's behaviour, which felt unbalanced.
What do you think you'll read next? I've packed up most of my books, including the to-read pile, for moving, so I suspect it'll be something on the Kobo. Or something at friend L's place: she has a copy of Mrs Beeton's!
What Are You Reading Wednesday:
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?
What are you currently reading?
For work: George Duby (ugh), and a book on Chrétien that was co-written by a cabal of lady scholars.
For funsies: Baraba Baynton's 'Bush Studies', on the alkido app; Jan Clausen's 'Apples and Oranges: My Journey Through Sexual Identity' (the latest in my bisexual angst reading list); and the audiolivre.fr recording of La Petite Princesse.
What did you recently finish reading?
Positive mention goes to the short story A Box, a Pocket, a Spaceman by E. Catherine Tobler at Lightspeed Magazine.
I don't normall review work reading, but these two are unusual:
The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions by William M. ReddyMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Deserves special mention for being personally useful to think through as well as academically interesting.
Friends: Why Men and Women are From the Same Planet by Lisa GeeMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
This was a really weird read. I ought to have liked it - it's about some of my favourite topics, through a mix of literary, sociological and interview-based evidence. I liked the connections Gee drew between the way friendship functions and the way cross-sex kin bonds function. But actually the book drove me bonkers: it was insufficiently critical of its secondary sources, sprinkled with evo-psych, and tried to blend feminist thinking with accepting the premises of "The Surrendered Wife" (which I haven't read) and "In Defense of Modesty" (which i have, and it too pulls that weird trick of sort of accepting feminist logic and then offering regressive solutions).
I also finished with 'Love, Friendship and Faith in Medieval and Early Modern Europe' and Yasmina F-J's 'La Jeune Fille et L'amour'.
From the nominally fun reading list:
Fat Is a Feminist Issue by Susie OrbachMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was *weird*. It was an interesting read, which posed engaging questions about gender, body issues, weight, and food. I don't think of myself as someone with disordered eating habits, nor particularly angsty about my body (less so than many women, I think), but it got me thinking about the food/self-care axis again, which is always relevant when I'm depressed.
More surprising was that it got me thinking about *the way I expect others to react* to my body (especially vis-a-vis size), and the fact that, having put on weight slowly (with plenty of sudden drops along the way) over the last few years I've reached a point of *security*. It's difficult to buy pants, but easier to talk to other women about buying clothes. My age-peers in my friend groups these days are all smaller than me, and no one is making snide comments about my thinness and my eating habits and how unfair it is that I can eat cupcakes, etc. It's nice. I reacted with dread and anger when someone recently suggested I would lose weight because of running (and i have lost girth, at least) not just because I really object to the society-wide assumption that weight loss is either the chief reason for exercise, or the #1 bonus side effect. I'm *happy* to have outgrown the high-metabolism lanky teenage girl preiod, and I do not look forward to the possibility (probability?) that if I lost a lot of weight, I would be on the recieving end of compliments that aren't compliments, or outright nastiness, mostly from other women. But I don't think that's affecting my eating habits, so.
What was weirdest about this book is that I picked it up expecting a foundation text of Fat Positivity, and I can see why it is... but it says things that would get you hounded out of the Fatosphere now. Most fat people are afraid of becoming thin, and overeating is the number one reason for being overweight: these are two basic assumptions throughout the book, which make sense given Orbach's audience are compulsive eaters. There's good questioning of patriarchal social conditioning as pertains to women and food, but very little concerning capitalist industry, the availability of various foods, and so on.
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David SedarisMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was pretty delightful. The opening essay - in which the Agent comes for David during his fifth-grade afternoon lessons and takes him away for endless lessons in failing to pronounce the letter "s" - was bright, engaging and hooky. I liked the second part, which mostly deals with the horrors of learning French, a lot more though, for what I assume are obvious reasons.
I was mostly bored with Sedaris' tales of his drug-fueled escapades, and it bothered me that he didn't seem to acknowledge that, if his father really does twit his sisters constantly about their weight, *this is really dickish behaviour*. It seemed like he wanted to celebrate Amy Sedaris' victory over their dad in that arena without actually condemning Dad's behaviour, which felt unbalanced.
What do you think you'll read next? I've packed up most of my books, including the to-read pile, for moving, so I suspect it'll be something on the Kobo. Or something at friend L's place: she has a copy of Mrs Beeton's!