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highlyeccentricCurrently Reading:
Fiction for fun: none / all on hold
Poetry: AJ Odasso's 'The Sting of It'; Paradise Lost via podcast
Lit Mag: Summer Meanjin (my spring copy hasn't arrived yet. I might still finish summer before it does...)
Non-Fiction for fun: Still slow progress on The Queer Child; Jack Monroe's cookbook Vegan(ish)
For Work: Kim Solga, Violence Against Women in Early Modern Performance, which is so far really good!
Recently Finished:
Both for work: Birgit Spengler, 'Literary Spinoffs', and the full Canterbury Tales. Plus some articles and so on.
Online fiction:
Bernadine Evaristo (New Statesman), The White Man's Liberation Front. Everyone found this a hilarious satire, but I found it deeply unsettling.
Carmen Maria Machado (Granta), The Lost Performance of the High Priestess of the Temple of Horror. I was very taken with this, and read it aloud to my partner over several days. Only some time later, courtesy of Kim Solga, did I find out that the theatre and the actress in question are historical figures, so I will need to read again with that information. Warning for... oh, it's hard to say, but it deals with some extremely messed up f/f dynamics. I could see the influence of Sarah Waters, but it really commits to the manipulative vibe, and the POV character doesn't seem to be *utterly clueless* of it, so where I found Tipping the Velvet impossible embarrassment-squick wise, I loved this even at its most fucked up. I think I love it extra because fiction that really bites into fucked-up f/f dynamics (and doesn't make it about a Treacherous Bisexual trope) is such a rarity.
Seanan McGuire (Lightspeed Magazine and Podcast), Hello, Hello.
Lu Fine (The Fiction Pool), Give it to me as if I knew I wanted it. This one also deals with messed-up dynamics (and in this case, with a protag who doesn't really understand the social rules around them, but does learn to use sex), and medical... trauma? Lack of information? The fact the protag is trans might also compound the above for some audiences.
Online Essays of Note:
Elisabeth Hanscombe (Meanjin Summer 2019), A finger laid upon the lips. This is an essay with strong memoir components, about incestuous child sex abuse.
Bri Lee (Meanjin Summer 2019), How We Keep Our Pens Mighty. This one (by the author of Eggshell Skull) is about sexual assault survivors and the legal system.
Sinead Roarty (Meanjin Summer 2019), Life on the Edge - a sort of place-study of The Gap (Sydney's notorious suicide hotspot).
Liz Kinnamon (Feminist and Women's Studies Association blog), The male sentimental. The “sensitive guy” should be understood through the lens of what pop psychologists call emotional manipulation, and his proliferation is the result of two things: the rise of feminism and the rise of immaterial labor.
Steven Morris (Guardian), New twist in mystery of Brunel's birthday sunrise. Historical sourcework, and trains!
Kate Armstrong (MOAD/APH blog), Hanging on the computerphone: on the sole Telecom Computerphone held at the Museum of Australian Democracy: what was it, who had one, and why they didn't catch on.
Dave Gershon (OneZero), Our government runs on a 60-year-old coding language and now it's falling apart: on the sudden dire shortage of COBOL programmers.
Olivia Durand (Conversation UK), Quarantine used to be a normal part of life, and wasn't much liked then either.
Elizabeth Yuko (CityLab), How Infectious Disease Defined The American Bathroom.
Various, (The Point Mag), Quarantine Journal. Rolling contributions, some really good, some meh.
Siri Hustvedt (LitHub), Fairy Tales and Facts: Siri Hustvedt on how we read in a pandemic.
Lauren Markham (LitHub), The Last Train Trip Before Everything Changed.
Am I reading a LOT of 'how we live now' thinkpieces? Yes, yes I am. And a lot of news. I read a LOT of analysis of the Pell appeal verdict, which I have spared you links to. If it's something you're following, you'll have found them yourselves.
Up Next: My brain is starting to get itchy, at last. Unfortunately many of the things it itchily wants to read are not things on my current TBR stack / kobo unread pile. Hopefully this week I can finish the Solga book and get back to 'American Chaucers', then Carissa Harris' 'Obscene Pedagogies'; and when I've finished the summer Meanjin maybe I'll start White Teeth.
Fiction for fun: none / all on hold
Poetry: AJ Odasso's 'The Sting of It'; Paradise Lost via podcast
Lit Mag: Summer Meanjin (my spring copy hasn't arrived yet. I might still finish summer before it does...)
Non-Fiction for fun: Still slow progress on The Queer Child; Jack Monroe's cookbook Vegan(ish)
For Work: Kim Solga, Violence Against Women in Early Modern Performance, which is so far really good!
Recently Finished:
Both for work: Birgit Spengler, 'Literary Spinoffs', and the full Canterbury Tales. Plus some articles and so on.
Online fiction:
Online Essays of Note:
Am I reading a LOT of 'how we live now' thinkpieces? Yes, yes I am. And a lot of news. I read a LOT of analysis of the Pell appeal verdict, which I have spared you links to. If it's something you're following, you'll have found them yourselves.
Up Next: My brain is starting to get itchy, at last. Unfortunately many of the things it itchily wants to read are not things on my current TBR stack / kobo unread pile. Hopefully this week I can finish the Solga book and get back to 'American Chaucers', then Carissa Harris' 'Obscene Pedagogies'; and when I've finished the summer Meanjin maybe I'll start White Teeth.