What Are You Reading Weekend has actually read a thing

I read 'Fun Home' this week. I haven't seen the musical: if you have, does it do anything different with the part where her father is *sleeping with his (male) high school students*? I'm... I'm not objecting to the book, but I AM surprised no one ELSE is. Like. This is the same decade in which I saw both 25+ adults and younger queers getting righteously incensed about Call Me By Your Name being Bad Representation, but we're okay with Bechdel's narrativising of her father's crimes (yes, they are crimes! She specified at least one of the students was 17, and unless there's something I've missed about Pennsylvania state law that's underage? Also, homosexuality was probably illegal through some of the time she recounts(?)). The story she tells herself about her father is one of thwarted homosexuality, thwarted growing-up ending in relationships with teens.
( I have thoughts: more discussion of teacher-student and other adult-adolescent abusive situations; History Boys and At Swim Two Boys; also some mentions of clerical abuse )

But between Fun Home, History Boys, and At Swim, I'm wondering if this is... some kind of thread through early 2000s queer content? And if so, why on earth have I never seen anyone decrying it, given how much of contemporary queer discourse (especially online) is devoted to decrying queer cultures past?

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Currently Reading:
Fiction For Fun: Elif Shafak's 'Three Daughters of Eve', back in rotation again. I've also just started 'Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows', which promises to be fun brain candy.
Poetry: Still slowly working through Paradise Lost
Non-Fiction for personal interest: I made some further progress with Meanjin (autumn) but have recently misplaced it.
For work: I'm really enjoying the 18th c modernisations in Bowden's anthology, slightly to my surprise; I'm still puttering through 'The Invention of Race', having more qualms about the final three chapters than the earlier ones; and I'm listening to The House of Fame as an audio recording.

Recently Finished: Both 'Miroirs Arthuriens' and Jost's collection 'Chaucer's Humour'. The former I've filed a proper review of with Arthuriana; the latter doesn't deserve a goodreads review, as it's useful but tedious.

The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was in many ways better than I expected, and yet. Nothing quite exceeds 'Mrs Icarus' for excellence; and the whole thing is rather ruined by the redolent transphobia of 'Mrs Tiresias'.


Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Huh. I ... have many questions, there are many great things about this and some troubling ones, and... HUH. (see above).


Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure by Courtney Milan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I did enjoy this - it's rare to find f/f historicals, let alone ones that have both humour and sexual tension. As ever, though, I just don't quite gel with Milan's writing style.


Online Fiction:

Sayaka Murata, trans. Ginna Tapley Takemori: I married a stranger to be left alone (extract from the novel Earthlings, which I shall be reading I think...)

Up Next: As usual, I'm not sure, because I should be reading EVERYTHING.

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Some links:

Beth Plutchak (own blog), We aren't dragons: on the dsyfunctional ways that US society (and many others similarly structured) is set up so that the only route to security in old age is through wealth accumulation; and what alternatives could be considered

Patricia Morrisroe (NYT), The Woman Who Built Beethoven's Pianos. Fascinating!

Nicholas Thompson (Wired), A nameless hiker and the case the internet couldn't crack. This is also fascinating in a different way!

Harriet Sherwood (Guardian UK), Blue plaque to honour yorkshirewoman who was locked in asylum for calling vicar a liar

Autistic Science Person (Neuroclastic blog), Austistic people care too much, science says. On a bullshit research study that found autistic people are "morally inflexible" because they were unlikely to pick an option that involved an immoral action but personal benefit.

Vicky Spratt (Refinery29), Why do I think all my friends don't like me right now? I saw this being shared by autistic people on twitter as 'pandemic means neurotypicals experience problems we have all the time, but actually it kind of gave me a good explantion for why I seem to get this particular problem less often than most people.

Jennifer Romolini (Catapault), I lost my voice before I found it

Steve Kornacki (Slate, 2011), The coming out story I never thought I'd write. This is the elections numbers guy everyone was going mad for on twitter. Not a particularly astonishing story, but an interesting one - written AFTER he'd lost a relationship due to his unwilligness to come out, so it doesn't end on 'and now i have my fiancé and we're Just Like You'.

The Hatching Cat, Hafiz, the literary cat who lived in Manhattan's first apartment building.

Pamela Petro (Guernica), Shedding Light. In which the artist writes about a series of photographs taken around the globe in which she photographed light effects at dusk.