What Are You Reading Weekend
Feb. 16th, 2020 06:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricCurrently Reading:
Fiction: I started 'Three Daughters of Eve' (Elif Shafak) and then got sidetracked. Otherwise, nothing right now.
Lit Mag: A few articles into Summer 2019 Meanjin
Poetry: Making further headway into Paradise Lost via podcast.
Academic: A chapter and a bit into Barrington's 'American Chaucers'; also puttering through 'The Shock of Medievalism'.
Other non-fiction: I started 'The Queer Child' last weekend, which was a good life choice, I think, although the way Stockton uses 'gay' and 'queer' as interchangeable annoys me.
Recently Finished:
Finding Nevo by Nevo Zisin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Huh. This is... an important book to exist. It's clear, accessible, evocative. It manages to put into words, into a relatively short book, some of the concepts that cis people struggle with most. It is likely, too, that it will be an Important Resource for trans and/or queer youth.
But oh, the author is so young, and it shows. They have a lot of insight but do not yet have the benefit of hindsight. This isn't the kind of nuanced, in-conversation-with-others, in-conversation-with-philosophy-and-theory memoir I like best (I thought of both Revathi's hijra memoir, for its deft use of hindsight and withholding narration, and Stone Butch Blues, for a depth of perspective over time and across communities this lacks). I don't know if that is a flaw: it might just be an audience thing.
There's also something complicated going on wherein a lot of the second part is tied up with the author's place in the Jewish community and their connection to Israel, but they don't *talk* about the latter, other than to say the queer community as a whole don't understand it. That's fine, but it's kind of glaring omission when a chunk of the narrative takes place in Israel. (Nor, to be fair, do they engage with Australia as a settler-colonial state; there's an acknowledgement of country, but that's a publisher thing, I think, not an author thing.)
I saw Nevo speak in Newcastle last year; they're a complex thinker. I have a strong suspicion whatever they're writing in 15 years time will be in some ways quite different to this, and possibly more to my taste.
Sometimes We Tell the Truth by Kim Zarins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Well that sure was an experience. I do not know what to make of it, which is why it's good I'm getting paid to think about it, I guess???
Telling Tales by Patience Agbabi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Read for work. Is good!
Online Fiction
I have read a surprising amount of online short fiction, lately.
Fangs by Sarah Andersen, a webcomic about a vampire and a werewolf dating.
Peter Kispert, In the palm of his hand, recommended at Electric Literature by Kristen Arnett. This one is not easy reading, folks - narrator is an asshole, another character suicidally depressed, but it's definitely striking.
Marc Fen Wolfmoor (Fireside Fiction), This is not a wardrobe door. Oh, my feels.
Madiha Sattar, (Guernica) The left behind: in which a broken-hearted woman and an abandoned elderly man struggle to cope in Pakistan's border regions.
Clara Madrigano, (The Dark Magazine) Mother Love. True to the mag's name, it is Dark.
Up Next:
I'm not sure. I need to find another Chaucer adaptation to start on for work. I want to read fluffy fiction but I also want to finish the things I've started. A friend finally found me the audiolivre of Anne of Green Gables in French (it's a RadioCanada podcast), so that might be a thing, too.
Fiction: I started 'Three Daughters of Eve' (Elif Shafak) and then got sidetracked. Otherwise, nothing right now.
Lit Mag: A few articles into Summer 2019 Meanjin
Poetry: Making further headway into Paradise Lost via podcast.
Academic: A chapter and a bit into Barrington's 'American Chaucers'; also puttering through 'The Shock of Medievalism'.
Other non-fiction: I started 'The Queer Child' last weekend, which was a good life choice, I think, although the way Stockton uses 'gay' and 'queer' as interchangeable annoys me.
Recently Finished:
Finding Nevo by Nevo ZisinMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Huh. This is... an important book to exist. It's clear, accessible, evocative. It manages to put into words, into a relatively short book, some of the concepts that cis people struggle with most. It is likely, too, that it will be an Important Resource for trans and/or queer youth.
But oh, the author is so young, and it shows. They have a lot of insight but do not yet have the benefit of hindsight. This isn't the kind of nuanced, in-conversation-with-others, in-conversation-with-philosophy-and-theory memoir I like best (I thought of both Revathi's hijra memoir, for its deft use of hindsight and withholding narration, and Stone Butch Blues, for a depth of perspective over time and across communities this lacks). I don't know if that is a flaw: it might just be an audience thing.
There's also something complicated going on wherein a lot of the second part is tied up with the author's place in the Jewish community and their connection to Israel, but they don't *talk* about the latter, other than to say the queer community as a whole don't understand it. That's fine, but it's kind of glaring omission when a chunk of the narrative takes place in Israel. (Nor, to be fair, do they engage with Australia as a settler-colonial state; there's an acknowledgement of country, but that's a publisher thing, I think, not an author thing.)
I saw Nevo speak in Newcastle last year; they're a complex thinker. I have a strong suspicion whatever they're writing in 15 years time will be in some ways quite different to this, and possibly more to my taste.
Sometimes We Tell the Truth by Kim ZarinsMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Well that sure was an experience. I do not know what to make of it, which is why it's good I'm getting paid to think about it, I guess???
Telling Tales by Patience AgbabiMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Read for work. Is good!
Online Fiction
I have read a surprising amount of online short fiction, lately.
Up Next:
I'm not sure. I need to find another Chaucer adaptation to start on for work. I want to read fluffy fiction but I also want to finish the things I've started. A friend finally found me the audiolivre of Anne of Green Gables in French (it's a RadioCanada podcast), so that might be a thing, too.