What Are You Reading Weekend
Jun. 24th, 2018 08:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricCurrently Reading: Rohinton Mistry, 'A fine balance', which is, in every possible respect, an excellent book, but not succeeding in holding my attention at the moment. The inevitable brain meltdown has happened, and I require pulp. Accordingly, Lydia San Andres, 'A Summer for Scandal'. Still plodding through Villette, and some way into 'Erotic Tales of Medieval Germany'.
Recently Finished:
Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work by Melissa Gira Grant
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I gave up on this a couple of chapters in. It's not WRONG, by any means, but it's also... journalistic, in a kind of shallow way, and certainly not telling me anything I don't know. If you've no prior knowledge of basic principles like 'sex work is work' and concepts like 'the nordic model is a net Bad for sex workers', this is probably a great read; if you've mastered that level, look for something either more academic or more personalised (Grant is not a sex worker herself), or both.
Archer: the History Issue by Adolfo Aranjuez
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is the last issue in my subscription - I'll be moving around too much and too financially ?? to justify keeping it up - so my thoughts are mostly 'dang, I'll miss this'. The photography in this one is absolutely gorgeous, both the fashion spread and the photo-essay. Archie Barrie's essay ' Trans erasure in archives' is a highlight - it's not an essay on archival practice, in fact, it's a response-essay on having been asked to create art on trans themes using a particular archive, and on what they did and did not find and could and could not do there. Peter Waples-Crowe on being an indigenous queer elder was also fascinating. Greta Parry on penetration trauma/painful intercourse was... I don't know, exactly, but it was both more gut-wrenching and more nuanced in its outlook than anything I've read in mainstream publications.
The essays on sex work and 'butch lineage' I liked; the one called 'Dominatrix across time' was a mixture of fascinating (data on 'governess' services in edwardian London, ohoho) and infuriating flattening of historical specificity (interpreting Ishtar figures as of 'the dominatrix', which also assigns a weird trans-historical status to the figure of dominatrix, do not like).
The Henchmen of Zenda by K.J. Charles
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was adorable, amusing, and did not make me want to read the original at all because I could see where KJ Charles had worked hard to work /around/ some of the general terribleness, and I am sure I prefer this version. Particular A++ for strong & vibrant opposite-sex friendship as plot driver, and for Not A Damsel princess.
Overland - Issue 230 Autumn 2018 by Jacinda Woodhead
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I seem to be liking Overland better every issue, which is awk, as I decided after my second not to continue the subscription.
Highlights:
Tony Birch, Rise From this Grave, on the 2008 indigenous occupation of King's Domain in Melbourne, and the impact of that movement (a group named Black GST) on subsequent indigenous liberation politics. I regret to say I had no idea about any of the 2008 events he describes - I was not in a good place in 2008, I guess, not paying attention to the news much at all. (Other things I missed in 2008: Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, a still-disputed status that I only found out about this week thanks to World Cup coverage)
Jennifer Mills, Swimming with Aliens, on snorkelling with cuttlefish in the only mass cuttlefish breeding site, near Whyalla, South Australia. Yay cuttlefish!
Evelyn Araluen, Dropbear Poetics (3rd Place, Judith Wright Poetry Prize)
Ben Brooker, I'm afraid something might be coming, on pre-traumatic stress disorder, which he relates to climate chaos.
Ashleigh Synnott, Locked, fiction. I love the structure of this one - the pieces of information linking back and forth, the listening man who just does not understand. The ending that isn't enough.
Nicole Curby, Limbo, a profile of a friend of the author, a gay Iranian asylum seeker in the Indonesian 'queue'. Both an attentive individual portrait, and informationally very useful - fills in a bunch of gaps in my knowledge about what happens in the 'queue' (aside from the fact that Australia is taking no one who registered after 2014, because... we're terrible, I had only a hazy idea).
Jane Rawson, One Plot, at most, on the Australian short story. I was a little disappointed in this one - it glossed relatively quickly over the niche of non-authors she found who DO read short stories: women, readers of pulp romance, chicklit, sci fi, fantasy, etc. Aside from a comment that some successful overseas short story authors first published in genre magazines, which Rawson dismisses with 'can you imagine Helen Garner publishing in Aurealis?' (I'd rather ask: can you imagine 'Best Australian Short Stories' anthologising from Aurealis? No. Why not?), she just... doesn't do anything with this information that there's a body of enthusiastic short story readers out there other than authors-showing-off-for-authors.
Brigid Magner, From Grenfell to Gulgong and back, notable first because I saw the title and assumed it would be an article on international failures in fireproof building materials, but it is not. It's about Henry Lawson festivals / sites preserved from Lawson's childhood. Interesting mix of archival information and commentary on why people are attached to these sites. I think perhaps not quite enough engagement with his wife's role in the preservation thereof - and the complications that remembering Lawson as husband bring in.
Laurinda by Alice Pung
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Did you want Mean Girls cut with Looking for Alibrandi cut with realistic details from Pung's own biography? Congrats, you found it!
It's good, but having seen or read all three of Mean Girls, Looking for Alibrandi and Unpolished Gem, I found this offered me little /new/. And tbh I was not convinced by the ending, with Lucy's coming to terms with her place at Laurinda. Not enough attention to her new friendships means they have little weight against the TERRIBLENESS of everyone and everything else, and... well, I can't help thinking she would have been better off back at St Saviours.
I've also finished the 'The Edge of the Abyss', and 'Toad Words', which I'll write up when I get back from the UK.
Up Next: by the time I get back I will probably have torn through several of the pulp novels I have on my phone. That's as far as my ambition goes.
Music notes:
I've been buying books instead of music with my self-bribery money. Music continues to be, well, music. I pre-ordered the new Amy Shark album a while ago, early releases off that are pretty good. The Spotify release of Snail Mail's latest is also good.
Up Next:
Recently Finished:
Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work by Melissa Gira GrantMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
I gave up on this a couple of chapters in. It's not WRONG, by any means, but it's also... journalistic, in a kind of shallow way, and certainly not telling me anything I don't know. If you've no prior knowledge of basic principles like 'sex work is work' and concepts like 'the nordic model is a net Bad for sex workers', this is probably a great read; if you've mastered that level, look for something either more academic or more personalised (Grant is not a sex worker herself), or both.
Archer: the History Issue by Adolfo AranjuezMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is the last issue in my subscription - I'll be moving around too much and too financially ?? to justify keeping it up - so my thoughts are mostly 'dang, I'll miss this'. The photography in this one is absolutely gorgeous, both the fashion spread and the photo-essay. Archie Barrie's essay ' Trans erasure in archives' is a highlight - it's not an essay on archival practice, in fact, it's a response-essay on having been asked to create art on trans themes using a particular archive, and on what they did and did not find and could and could not do there. Peter Waples-Crowe on being an indigenous queer elder was also fascinating. Greta Parry on penetration trauma/painful intercourse was... I don't know, exactly, but it was both more gut-wrenching and more nuanced in its outlook than anything I've read in mainstream publications.
The essays on sex work and 'butch lineage' I liked; the one called 'Dominatrix across time' was a mixture of fascinating (data on 'governess' services in edwardian London, ohoho) and infuriating flattening of historical specificity (interpreting Ishtar figures as of 'the dominatrix', which also assigns a weird trans-historical status to the figure of dominatrix, do not like).
The Henchmen of Zenda by K.J. CharlesMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was adorable, amusing, and did not make me want to read the original at all because I could see where KJ Charles had worked hard to work /around/ some of the general terribleness, and I am sure I prefer this version. Particular A++ for strong & vibrant opposite-sex friendship as plot driver, and for Not A Damsel princess.
Overland - Issue 230 Autumn 2018 by Jacinda WoodheadMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I seem to be liking Overland better every issue, which is awk, as I decided after my second not to continue the subscription.
Highlights:
Tony Birch, Rise From this Grave, on the 2008 indigenous occupation of King's Domain in Melbourne, and the impact of that movement (a group named Black GST) on subsequent indigenous liberation politics. I regret to say I had no idea about any of the 2008 events he describes - I was not in a good place in 2008, I guess, not paying attention to the news much at all. (Other things I missed in 2008: Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, a still-disputed status that I only found out about this week thanks to World Cup coverage)
Jennifer Mills, Swimming with Aliens, on snorkelling with cuttlefish in the only mass cuttlefish breeding site, near Whyalla, South Australia. Yay cuttlefish!
Evelyn Araluen, Dropbear Poetics (3rd Place, Judith Wright Poetry Prize)
Ben Brooker, I'm afraid something might be coming, on pre-traumatic stress disorder, which he relates to climate chaos.
Ashleigh Synnott, Locked, fiction. I love the structure of this one - the pieces of information linking back and forth, the listening man who just does not understand. The ending that isn't enough.
Nicole Curby, Limbo, a profile of a friend of the author, a gay Iranian asylum seeker in the Indonesian 'queue'. Both an attentive individual portrait, and informationally very useful - fills in a bunch of gaps in my knowledge about what happens in the 'queue' (aside from the fact that Australia is taking no one who registered after 2014, because... we're terrible, I had only a hazy idea).
Jane Rawson, One Plot, at most, on the Australian short story. I was a little disappointed in this one - it glossed relatively quickly over the niche of non-authors she found who DO read short stories: women, readers of pulp romance, chicklit, sci fi, fantasy, etc. Aside from a comment that some successful overseas short story authors first published in genre magazines, which Rawson dismisses with 'can you imagine Helen Garner publishing in Aurealis?' (I'd rather ask: can you imagine 'Best Australian Short Stories' anthologising from Aurealis? No. Why not?), she just... doesn't do anything with this information that there's a body of enthusiastic short story readers out there other than authors-showing-off-for-authors.
Brigid Magner, From Grenfell to Gulgong and back, notable first because I saw the title and assumed it would be an article on international failures in fireproof building materials, but it is not. It's about Henry Lawson festivals / sites preserved from Lawson's childhood. Interesting mix of archival information and commentary on why people are attached to these sites. I think perhaps not quite enough engagement with his wife's role in the preservation thereof - and the complications that remembering Lawson as husband bring in.
Laurinda by Alice PungMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Did you want Mean Girls cut with Looking for Alibrandi cut with realistic details from Pung's own biography? Congrats, you found it!
It's good, but having seen or read all three of Mean Girls, Looking for Alibrandi and Unpolished Gem, I found this offered me little /new/. And tbh I was not convinced by the ending, with Lucy's coming to terms with her place at Laurinda. Not enough attention to her new friendships means they have little weight against the TERRIBLENESS of everyone and everything else, and... well, I can't help thinking she would have been better off back at St Saviours.
I've also finished the 'The Edge of the Abyss', and 'Toad Words', which I'll write up when I get back from the UK.
Up Next: by the time I get back I will probably have torn through several of the pulp novels I have on my phone. That's as far as my ambition goes.
Music notes:
I've been buying books instead of music with my self-bribery money. Music continues to be, well, music. I pre-ordered the new Amy Shark album a while ago, early releases off that are pretty good. The Spotify release of Snail Mail's latest is also good.
Up Next: