What Are You Reading Wednesday
Oct. 10th, 2018 07:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricHow is it Wednesday again?
Currently Reading: G. Willow Wilson, The Bird King (netgalley review copy); Sujata Massey, 'The Widows of Malabar Hill'; Jamie O'Neill, 'At Swim, Two Boys'; an edition of The Lifted Brow.
Recently Finished: This is starting to catch up to the actually recent now - books started since I moved to the UK. But I'm ploughing through books at a great rate, so I'm still a bit behind. Mostly this update is books that annoyed me!
She Whom I Love by Tess Bowery
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This was... such a disappointment. I LOVED the concept, I loved the set-up, loved the array of characters and the investment in working and middle class characters. Unfortunately, the sex scenes were painfully cliche, and it... perhaps this is what people read menage for? Things that collapse into all threesome, rather than delicate individual axes? It felt like Bowery was /trying/ for a poly romance but mostly got stuck on hot (to her? I hope?) threesome action.
Also the solution to the whole thing was screamingly obvious, and the girls should have negotiated for it from the start - in fact I thought they were. Consequently the feelingsdrama seemed ridiculous.
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I blame having moved to England for my sudden and inescapable urge to re-read this book. I have many impressions and no real logical thoughts. They are, in no particular order:
- I like it, it makes me feel warm and safe. I assume this is out of long associative memory, because the content...
- holy fuck the racisms, mildred. (Following this with Sujata Massey's 'The Widows of Malabar Hill' really brought that home.) I remember noting this about A Little Princess when I re-read it a while ago, but I think it's even starker here. For some reason, I hadn't realised or had forgotten that the English talked about the indigenous population of India in the same terms that they talked about indigenous Australians.
- I'm not sure that being alone all day and skipping in a garden is necessarily any better for bringing up a healthy child than leaving them to tyrannise over subaltern caregivers
- WOW so basically Mary has to convert her entire personality to that of caregiver, while Colin only has to rub the edges off his brattiness and develop physical prowess, while still being lauded for the same egocentric behavior that made Mary a Bad Little Girl?
- Also the ableism, mildred, the ableism
Ellen Wilkinson, 'The Division Bell Mystery': netgalley review copy, which I gave 4 stars. Full review to come closer to (US) publication date.
The Next Competitor by Keira Andrews
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Sigh. Romance has been disappointing me a lot lately. This one is... a thing. I suspect it may actually have been a better thing in its previous incarnation as a sweet YA. The first sex scene is certainly notable, but the rest get tedious. The pacing is okay, but everything felt a little bit mechanical.
I may be judging it harshly because, in the ranks of plots that are essentially 'regain your love of figure skating for fun, not winning, and also, be gay', there's... some stiff competition out there since 2016. Starting with YOI and moving on through a vast pile of fanfic.
Online/other recs:
I listened to Timothy Mudie's The Elephant's Crematorium on the lightspeed magazine podcast, the day the climate change report came out. If you'd like to cry about the apocalypse, and elephants, I strongly recommend it.
I read Kristen A. Arnett's The Graveyard Game (Guernica Magazine) a few weeks back. It's spooky and flesh-crawly and yet not supernatural in any way.
I recommend Edna Ferber's the homely heroine, a spite story written when the author was criticised for her genre's heroines always being beautiful. It's point is that that's what the genre demands, and in making that point it offers a story that skirts the edges of, pinches at, thumbs its nose to, romance/women's fiction genres.
Speaking of genres, I've been listening to Be the Serpent, a podcast by people who love genres and attempting to define them. I love it, except when they're trying to historicise courtly love, in which case I want to open my mouth and pour fire on them. So, I haven't changed much since 2008.
Up Next: I have a review copy (for a journal) of an academic book on 'Queer Experimental Media' so I guess that's next. There's also a weird amount of poetry on my TBR shelf, and I haven't had a poetry book on the go for a while now. Oh, and tomorrow is pub day for the next KJ Charles so that's on the agenda too.
Music notes: Nothing new to report, except that Stravinsky's Firebird Suite continues to be A Mood.
Currently Reading: G. Willow Wilson, The Bird King (netgalley review copy); Sujata Massey, 'The Widows of Malabar Hill'; Jamie O'Neill, 'At Swim, Two Boys'; an edition of The Lifted Brow.
Recently Finished: This is starting to catch up to the actually recent now - books started since I moved to the UK. But I'm ploughing through books at a great rate, so I'm still a bit behind. Mostly this update is books that annoyed me!
She Whom I Love by Tess BoweryMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
This was... such a disappointment. I LOVED the concept, I loved the set-up, loved the array of characters and the investment in working and middle class characters. Unfortunately, the sex scenes were painfully cliche, and it... perhaps this is what people read menage for? Things that collapse into all threesome, rather than delicate individual axes? It felt like Bowery was /trying/ for a poly romance but mostly got stuck on hot (to her? I hope?) threesome action.
Also the solution to the whole thing was screamingly obvious, and the girls should have negotiated for it from the start - in fact I thought they were. Consequently the feelingsdrama seemed ridiculous.
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson BurnettMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I blame having moved to England for my sudden and inescapable urge to re-read this book. I have many impressions and no real logical thoughts. They are, in no particular order:
- I like it, it makes me feel warm and safe. I assume this is out of long associative memory, because the content...
- holy fuck the racisms, mildred. (Following this with Sujata Massey's 'The Widows of Malabar Hill' really brought that home.) I remember noting this about A Little Princess when I re-read it a while ago, but I think it's even starker here. For some reason, I hadn't realised or had forgotten that the English talked about the indigenous population of India in the same terms that they talked about indigenous Australians.
- I'm not sure that being alone all day and skipping in a garden is necessarily any better for bringing up a healthy child than leaving them to tyrannise over subaltern caregivers
- WOW so basically Mary has to convert her entire personality to that of caregiver, while Colin only has to rub the edges off his brattiness and develop physical prowess, while still being lauded for the same egocentric behavior that made Mary a Bad Little Girl?
- Also the ableism, mildred, the ableism
Ellen Wilkinson, 'The Division Bell Mystery': netgalley review copy, which I gave 4 stars. Full review to come closer to (US) publication date.
The Next Competitor by Keira AndrewsMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Sigh. Romance has been disappointing me a lot lately. This one is... a thing. I suspect it may actually have been a better thing in its previous incarnation as a sweet YA. The first sex scene is certainly notable, but the rest get tedious. The pacing is okay, but everything felt a little bit mechanical.
I may be judging it harshly because, in the ranks of plots that are essentially 'regain your love of figure skating for fun, not winning, and also, be gay', there's... some stiff competition out there since 2016. Starting with YOI and moving on through a vast pile of fanfic.
Online/other recs:
I listened to Timothy Mudie's The Elephant's Crematorium on the lightspeed magazine podcast, the day the climate change report came out. If you'd like to cry about the apocalypse, and elephants, I strongly recommend it.
I read Kristen A. Arnett's The Graveyard Game (Guernica Magazine) a few weeks back. It's spooky and flesh-crawly and yet not supernatural in any way.
I recommend Edna Ferber's the homely heroine, a spite story written when the author was criticised for her genre's heroines always being beautiful. It's point is that that's what the genre demands, and in making that point it offers a story that skirts the edges of, pinches at, thumbs its nose to, romance/women's fiction genres.
Speaking of genres, I've been listening to Be the Serpent, a podcast by people who love genres and attempting to define them. I love it, except when they're trying to historicise courtly love, in which case I want to open my mouth and pour fire on them. So, I haven't changed much since 2008.
Up Next: I have a review copy (for a journal) of an academic book on 'Queer Experimental Media' so I guess that's next. There's also a weird amount of poetry on my TBR shelf, and I haven't had a poetry book on the go for a while now. Oh, and tomorrow is pub day for the next KJ Charles so that's on the agenda too.
Music notes: Nothing new to report, except that Stravinsky's Firebird Suite continues to be A Mood.