What Are You Reading Wednesday
Nov. 7th, 2018 05:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricCurrently Reading:
Fiction: Fiona Mozley, 'Elmet' (library loan); Ann Aptaker, 'Flesh and Gold' (netgalley ARC); Jamie O'Neill, 'At Swim, Two Boys' (own copy, on hiatus)
Academic: Tyler Bradway, 'Queer Experimental Literature'. Nearly up to the chapter on Alison Bechdel!
Recently Finished
On the Eighth Day Adam Slept Alone: New Poems by Nancy Boutilier
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I like the range of concepts addressed here, and I don't have anything against free verse per se. But this particular take on free verse got repetitive after the first fifteen or so, and then all I'm seeing is prose with line breaks in. DNF'd about 1/3 through.
The Lifted Brow issue 39 by Jini Maxwell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Not my favourite issue yet. I skipped or skimmed more than I'd like.
High points:
Madeline Lucas, 'In conversation with Leslie Jamison', on memoir and truth. (Exerpt)
Eloise Grills' 'Big Beautiful Female Theory', one of the few more experimental pieces I enjoyed - I've since heard she's been given a grant to develop it.
Poetry by Hanif Abdurraqib
Ainslee Meredith, 'Trace Adhesive on Plastic, Dimensions Variable', which doesn't seem to be online. It's a fascinating piece connecting archival practice and traumatic memory.
Bridgeth Lutherborrow, Foraging (Exerpt), which made me think more thoughts about the nature of food writing than I had expected.
Nancy Lee, Consuming Homonyms for Desirable Traits, also about food, food journalism, and culture.
Kim Ye Seol, 'Mothers', which is not online and apparently also represents the first translation of her work into English. Some has been translated into French, and I'm tempted to look that up, because this was fascinating and discomforting. The translator's (Janet Hong's) notes at the end are illuminating.
And, of course, Law School, which is what I subscribe for in the first place.
Checked Baggage: A Thanksgiving Romance by Valentine Wheeler
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a sweet, long-ish short story. Faris, stranded en route from Lebanon to Boston on Thanksgiving weekend, encounters Charlie, an exuberant and equally stranded American on his way home from a disappointing trip to seek his grandparents' history. Shenanigans ensue, including the predictable hotel-room-sharing, a fade-to-black encounter, and some high quality avoidant behaviour on Faris' part. Fate throws them into each other's paths again at the American end of the journey...
I'm grateful to Nine Star Press for giving me the chance to read this in ARC from NetGalley, and have high hopes for their other books! This one I must say I've rounded up to 3 from a 2.5 - I rounded up, because my problems with it are all, essentially, that it felt like it ought to be a book or at least a novella, and that book or novella could be a very good one.
The way I see it, short stories have to walk a fine line: they need to invoke a surplus of meaning, enough to hint at a whole world and complex characters. But they also need to work very tightly to a single plot line, and, for romance, that can't be the same complete arc that a comparable novel would go through from meet cute to HEA via several key problems. This story raises a bunch of character threads which are complex and interesting and just not pursued; and it finishes a little too soon, cutting off the emotional resolution on the strongest of them.
Up Next: With the latest TLB finished, I shall turn my attention to Meanjin. When I'm through with the Aptaker I think I'll start Sydney Blackburn's 'A Deceptive Alliance', also a netgalley ARC. I've got a book of Pablo Neruda poems to replace the Boutillier.
Other Media:
I've been listening to Be the Serpent assiduously, and still love it, except when they start talking about medieval things, at which point i hiss at my phone.
I also started listening to TAZ, it's currently 50/50 whether I fall into a deep dark hole over it or get fed up by the third episode.
Fiction: Fiona Mozley, 'Elmet' (library loan); Ann Aptaker, 'Flesh and Gold' (netgalley ARC); Jamie O'Neill, 'At Swim, Two Boys' (own copy, on hiatus)
Academic: Tyler Bradway, 'Queer Experimental Literature'. Nearly up to the chapter on Alison Bechdel!
Recently Finished
On the Eighth Day Adam Slept Alone: New Poems by Nancy BoutilierMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
I like the range of concepts addressed here, and I don't have anything against free verse per se. But this particular take on free verse got repetitive after the first fifteen or so, and then all I'm seeing is prose with line breaks in. DNF'd about 1/3 through.
The Lifted Brow issue 39 by Jini MaxwellMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Not my favourite issue yet. I skipped or skimmed more than I'd like.
High points:
Madeline Lucas, 'In conversation with Leslie Jamison', on memoir and truth. (Exerpt)
Eloise Grills' 'Big Beautiful Female Theory', one of the few more experimental pieces I enjoyed - I've since heard she's been given a grant to develop it.
Poetry by Hanif Abdurraqib
Ainslee Meredith, 'Trace Adhesive on Plastic, Dimensions Variable', which doesn't seem to be online. It's a fascinating piece connecting archival practice and traumatic memory.
Bridgeth Lutherborrow, Foraging (Exerpt), which made me think more thoughts about the nature of food writing than I had expected.
Nancy Lee, Consuming Homonyms for Desirable Traits, also about food, food journalism, and culture.
Kim Ye Seol, 'Mothers', which is not online and apparently also represents the first translation of her work into English. Some has been translated into French, and I'm tempted to look that up, because this was fascinating and discomforting. The translator's (Janet Hong's) notes at the end are illuminating.
And, of course, Law School, which is what I subscribe for in the first place.
Checked Baggage: A Thanksgiving Romance by Valentine WheelerMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a sweet, long-ish short story. Faris, stranded en route from Lebanon to Boston on Thanksgiving weekend, encounters Charlie, an exuberant and equally stranded American on his way home from a disappointing trip to seek his grandparents' history. Shenanigans ensue, including the predictable hotel-room-sharing, a fade-to-black encounter, and some high quality avoidant behaviour on Faris' part. Fate throws them into each other's paths again at the American end of the journey...
I'm grateful to Nine Star Press for giving me the chance to read this in ARC from NetGalley, and have high hopes for their other books! This one I must say I've rounded up to 3 from a 2.5 - I rounded up, because my problems with it are all, essentially, that it felt like it ought to be a book or at least a novella, and that book or novella could be a very good one.
The way I see it, short stories have to walk a fine line: they need to invoke a surplus of meaning, enough to hint at a whole world and complex characters. But they also need to work very tightly to a single plot line, and, for romance, that can't be the same complete arc that a comparable novel would go through from meet cute to HEA via several key problems. This story raises a bunch of character threads which are complex and interesting and just not pursued; and it finishes a little too soon, cutting off the emotional resolution on the strongest of them.
Up Next: With the latest TLB finished, I shall turn my attention to Meanjin. When I'm through with the Aptaker I think I'll start Sydney Blackburn's 'A Deceptive Alliance', also a netgalley ARC. I've got a book of Pablo Neruda poems to replace the Boutillier.
Other Media:
I've been listening to Be the Serpent assiduously, and still love it, except when they start talking about medieval things, at which point i hiss at my phone.
I also started listening to TAZ, it's currently 50/50 whether I fall into a deep dark hole over it or get fed up by the third episode.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-07 06:46 pm (UTC)