What Are You Reading Wednesday

Currently Reading:
Fiction: At Swim, Two Boys, which finally got its claws into me and ate my brain to the tune of 1/3 of the book on Sunday. There's a lot going on there, especially with MacMurrough.
Also: Yelena Moscovitch, Virtuoso, which is promising but hasn't got its claws into me yet, and Ali Smith's Winter, which not only hasn't got its claws in but seems less promising than Autumn.
Lit Mag: Latest issue of The Lifted Brow, the Blak Brow issue
Academic: nothing, on account of finishing something yesterday
Other: n/a

Recently Finished:

Maddern, McEwan, and Scott, Performing Emotions in Early Europe. Review copy. I haven't quite made up my mind what I think of it overall, but I do think if it had been able to be completed on time it would have been very useful to those of us involved in Emotions and Medieval Textual Media.

Online Fiction:

• John Chu (Tor.com), Beyond the El. Magic, family, grief, and paper dumplings. Relatively simple plot freights a lot of complex dynamics.
  
• Yoon Ha Lee (Lightspeed Magazine podcast / online text), The Coin of Heart's Desire. A very young empress inherits a dangerous throne, and makes a bargain with a dragon.
  
• Theodora Goss (Lightspeed Magazine podcast/text) Queen Lily. One part re-versioning of Through the Looking Glass through the POV of the white queen's daughter, one part story of an older Alice attempting to process the impact Wonderland and Rogson had on her as a child. Not... not easy going - there's that creeping feeling of 'oh no, what did he do, although nothing is specified within the text.
  

  “Lily? Lily? There’s someone here to see you.”

  The White Queen is hovering over her with an expression of concern. But then the White Queen always has an expression of concern. Her forehead, under her neat white cap, is permanently wrinkled.

  “It’s Alice. You remember Alice, don’t you?” The White Queen turns to Alice and says, “She hasn’t spoken for days. I’m not even sure how much she understands of what I tell her. At first I thought she was getting better because the coughing had stopped, but the doctor says we should prepare ourselves for the worst . . .”
  Alice presses her hand and says, “Thank you, Mrs. MacDonald. Can I sit with her for a little while?”
  “Of course, my dear,” says the White Queen. “I have to give George—Mr. MacDonald, that is—his dinner. I’m sorry my husband can’t see you—this is one of his bad days, and he has no strength for visitors. He’s so worried about Lily. After Mary died, he could not get out of bed for weeks. It’s just too much, isn’t it? A mother should not have to . . . Well. I’ll be back presently.” And then she leaves the room, her hands over her face, as though she can’t bear to see the dark forest closing around her.

  I had somehow missed the memo about Rogson (Carrol), so, uh, this all came as a bit of a shock to me. I suspect it's in conversation with Alan Moore's Lost Girls, but having never read that, I can't say how.
  
• Ashok K. Banker (Lightspeed Magazine podcast and online text), A Love Story Written On Water. I have mixed feelings about this one: it's engaging, it's good worldbuilding, and I really like fantasy fiction that works in the modes of orality and myth, with slippage between the divine and human realms. However, a lot of how this story treats sexuality got my back up. One way of summarising this plot would be 'a man stares too long at a naked woman, and, instead of being pissed, she desires him because he's 'bolder' than the other men who courteously look away, and so she moves heaven and earth to sleep with him, but ultimately messes him around, as supernatural women are wont to do'. That's... reductive, there's more going on here. But still. There's a lot of 'she will give you pleasure' and 'had her whenever he wanted', and her lust is figured in terms of willingness to pleasure him, if you see what I mean.
  At any rate, it's first in a series, short stories linked to Banker's Upon a Burning Throne, which itself draws on the Mahabharata. Perhaps if I knew the mythological references, I would appreciate them more. (Ed: or, perhaps, were I more aware of Indian literary context, I might have already known he didn't have a great rep re women)

Up Next: Nothing in particular. I still have a lot of NetGalley reads, some of which I think I will default on. I'm mostly feeling a compulsion to read *all* the Problematic Queer Literature. Every time someone complains about a queer classic I add it to my list. It's getting to be quite a long list.

Publication: Speaking of EMTM, it's apparently out now. I got my offprint PDF, and my hard copy awaits me in Geneva.

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Music Notes: As a result of figure skating I discovered Kaleo, the band behind the Way Down We Go song from the Logan movie, and I'm love!

Through listening to them on Spotify, I have also discovered Dermot Kennedy, who does a good line in pensive dude with piano. Likewise Bishop Briggs, British indie artist who has - on the bass of her lyrics - absolutely terrible taste in relationships, but impressive vocals.

Also, I found this one a few weeks back: did you know Avril Lavigne put out a new track last year? It's sort of country-pop?