What Are You Reading Wednesday
Feb. 6th, 2019 09:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricCurrently Reading:
Fiction: Hannah Kent, The Good People, which shows the same impressive mastery of historical realism as Burial Rites. I'm not quite as engrossed, though, and am reserving judgement re: disability.
Yelena Moscovitch, Virtuoso, which is still engrossing, but I am foolishly trying to read it on my phone and it's not suited to that.
Lit Mag: Lifted Brow 'Blak Brow' edition, although I haven't picked it up for a while
Academic: Contemporary Chaucers, still.
Recently Finished:
Online fiction:
Have I mentioned Motherlover, a webcomic about moms and love? Chapter three just finished a few weeks back and I remain hearteyes at it - although I want to smack the Husband, I applaud Lindsay for creating a character who's not exactly a villain and yet so eminently hateable. I'm honestly surprised the narrative isn't about polyamory, he's such a perfect Type of that *specific kind of straight poly guy you know the one*.
Up Next: The 'Unread Shelf Project 2019' challenge is an unread gifted book, and I also want to remedy the thing where my entire book-based reading this year has been pretty white, so I think A. Revathi's 'The Truth About Me' is high up the priority list.
Music Notes: I bought Kaleo's 'A/B', and still listening to a fair bit of Tracy Chapman.
Fiction: Hannah Kent, The Good People, which shows the same impressive mastery of historical realism as Burial Rites. I'm not quite as engrossed, though, and am reserving judgement re: disability.
Yelena Moscovitch, Virtuoso, which is still engrossing, but I am foolishly trying to read it on my phone and it's not suited to that.
Lit Mag: Lifted Brow 'Blak Brow' edition, although I haven't picked it up for a while
Academic: Contemporary Chaucers, still.
Recently Finished:
Online fiction:
- Alex Acks (Shimmer Zine), 40 Facts About the Strip Mall Between Never And Was. Example:
5. The candy shop was replaced by the costume shop. The smell of burnt caramel squeezes up from under the foundations on hot days and makes everything faintly sticky.
6. The payday lender stands empty, with what were once its glass doors a gaping hollow. That’s where the grackles live, after they declared paper and electronic money anathema and peanuts the only currency.
7. The little gas station has only two pumps, and one of them is always broken. No one buys gas; rather, they throw peanuts into the parking lot and walk away with coffee that tastes like burnt metal and cigarettes that trail green smoke.
- Yoon Ha Lee (Beaneath Ceaseless Skies), Foxfire, Foxfire. I believe I picked up the link to this as a recommended introduction to Yoon Ha Lee's work, and ended up forgetting about it until I listened to 'The Coin of Heart's Desire' a few weeks back. It's as good as promised.
- Natalia Theodoridou (Beneath Ceaseless Skies podcast & text), To Stab with a Rose, to Love with a Knife. Not paradigm-changing work, but sweet, with an interesting thread of cultural dislocation. I liked it for not going for the simplistic romance style ending. Ergo, if what you require from queer fantasy is HEA at all costs, you will probably not like it.
- Yuko Tsushima, excerpt from Territory of Light (1979) (trans. Geraldine Harcourt, 2018), recommended by Catherine Lacey (Electric Lit Recommended Reading) as The light in this apartment is better without you in it. Absolutely gorgeous and I think I need to read the full novel.
- Vin Jae-Min Prasad, (Uncanny Magazine) Fandom for Robots:
Computron feels no emotion towards the animated television show titled Hyperdimension Warp Record (超次元 ワープ レコード). After all, Computron does not have any emotion circuits installed, and is thus constitutionally incapable of experiencing “excitement,” “hatred,” or “frustration.” It is completely impossible for Computron to experience emotions such as “excitement about the seventh episode of HyperWarp,” “hatred of the anime’s short episode length” or “frustration that Friday is so far away.”
- I also read/listened to Robert Parks (Beneath Ceaseless Skies) An Account of the Madness of the Magistrate, Chengdu Village, but hesitate to recommend it, as I figured out subsequently that the author is an old white dude (playing around in Chinese mythology), and the kind who describes himself as an 'ex-pat Southerner' at that. It's got a tight plot, and I can't put my finger on any specifically offensive in it, but I read it not long after Yoon Ha Lee's 'Foxfire, Foxfire', and the... feel of the fox-spirit mythology as used here is different, certainly. I don't know enough about that myth to know if it's Wrong or just different.
Have I mentioned Motherlover, a webcomic about moms and love? Chapter three just finished a few weeks back and I remain hearteyes at it - although I want to smack the Husband, I applaud Lindsay for creating a character who's not exactly a villain and yet so eminently hateable. I'm honestly surprised the narrative isn't about polyamory, he's such a perfect Type of that *specific kind of straight poly guy you know the one*.
Up Next: The 'Unread Shelf Project 2019' challenge is an unread gifted book, and I also want to remedy the thing where my entire book-based reading this year has been pretty white, so I think A. Revathi's 'The Truth About Me' is high up the priority list.
Music Notes: I bought Kaleo's 'A/B', and still listening to a fair bit of Tracy Chapman.