Wednesday Reading Meme
Dec. 19th, 2018 09:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Lia Silver’s Mated to the Meerkat, whichasakiyume suggested when I complained that paranormal romances never draw as much on the interesting animal behavior stuff as I want. It’s lots of fun! And there is indeed some great meerkat stuff in here. (I also really liked the lawyers who are literally snakes.)
But I’ve concluded that paranormal romance will probably never be my genre, because what I really want is paranormal shifter family drama, and for obvious reasons a romance needs to focus on the romance and not the “But what do you mean you’re leaving the elephant seal colony to go pairbond with an whooping crane? You’re supposed to spend your days fighting to protect your harem of fifty, not wandering around with a single solitary bird!”
And I’ve finished Skirting the Issue: Stories of Indiana’s Historical Women Artists, which I feel could have more enthralling prose, but it’s interesting nonetheless - who knew there were so many historical women artists in Indiana? (Actually Indiana was kind of a cultural center in the early twentieth century. You heard it here first.) And it has occurred to me that we do ourselves a disservice when we talk about women artists and reference only the most famous ones: there were so many women who made the living in the arts, even if they didn’t become household names, that it gives a false feeling of scarcity to trot out Mary Cassatt and Georgia O’Keefe over and over again.
Oh! And I finished the nun book. It was all right, but I feel there must be better nun books out there.
What I’m Reading Now
Hurrying to finish my books for my 2018 Reading Challenge. I’m about halfway through I’ll Give You the Sun, for “a book recommended by a librarian or indie book seller,” which always seems to be the challenge I struggle with, presumably because I didn’t choose the book myself. The book is told in two interlocking strand one of which is a few years earlier than the other, and in the later strand the characters keeping making Ominously Vague References to the terrible events that took place earlier, but they never actually spell out what happened and keep you in a false state of suspense.
I hate this structure. It makes the characters feel irritatingly coy. Also, one of the characters seems to be hallucinating, although I’m pretty sure it’s just the author’s way of trying to show that he’s creative and artistic, but it really sounds like he’s losing touch with reality and maybe somebody should be trying to get him help.
On a cheerier note, I’m reading Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits for “a book by an author of a different race, ethnicity, or religion than your own.” I’ve only just started but I’m really liking it so far.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve been pining for Alicia Malone’s The Female Gaze: Essential Movies Made By Women, but I don’t think the library’s going to get it for a good long while yet.
Lia Silver’s Mated to the Meerkat, which
asakiyume suggested when I complained that paranormal romances never draw as much on the interesting animal behavior stuff as I want. It’s lots of fun! And there is indeed some great meerkat stuff in here. (I also really liked the lawyers who are literally snakes.) But I’ve concluded that paranormal romance will probably never be my genre, because what I really want is paranormal shifter family drama, and for obvious reasons a romance needs to focus on the romance and not the “But what do you mean you’re leaving the elephant seal colony to go pairbond with an whooping crane? You’re supposed to spend your days fighting to protect your harem of fifty, not wandering around with a single solitary bird!”
And I’ve finished Skirting the Issue: Stories of Indiana’s Historical Women Artists, which I feel could have more enthralling prose, but it’s interesting nonetheless - who knew there were so many historical women artists in Indiana? (Actually Indiana was kind of a cultural center in the early twentieth century. You heard it here first.) And it has occurred to me that we do ourselves a disservice when we talk about women artists and reference only the most famous ones: there were so many women who made the living in the arts, even if they didn’t become household names, that it gives a false feeling of scarcity to trot out Mary Cassatt and Georgia O’Keefe over and over again.
Oh! And I finished the nun book. It was all right, but I feel there must be better nun books out there.
What I’m Reading Now
Hurrying to finish my books for my 2018 Reading Challenge. I’m about halfway through I’ll Give You the Sun, for “a book recommended by a librarian or indie book seller,” which always seems to be the challenge I struggle with, presumably because I didn’t choose the book myself. The book is told in two interlocking strand one of which is a few years earlier than the other, and in the later strand the characters keeping making Ominously Vague References to the terrible events that took place earlier, but they never actually spell out what happened and keep you in a false state of suspense.
I hate this structure. It makes the characters feel irritatingly coy. Also, one of the characters seems to be hallucinating, although I’m pretty sure it’s just the author’s way of trying to show that he’s creative and artistic, but it really sounds like he’s losing touch with reality and maybe somebody should be trying to get him help.
On a cheerier note, I’m reading Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits for “a book by an author of a different race, ethnicity, or religion than your own.” I’ve only just started but I’m really liking it so far.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve been pining for Alicia Malone’s The Female Gaze: Essential Movies Made By Women, but I don’t think the library’s going to get it for a good long while yet.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-19 03:08 pm (UTC)I have also been reaching similar conclusions with regard to women in most professions in the past, not just art.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-20 02:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-20 03:01 am (UTC)Beyond Carrie Vaughn, Rhiannon Held, and Kit Whitfield (all werewolf books), I find most books don't give me enough of the inter-group relationships.
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Date: 2018-12-20 02:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-20 03:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-20 02:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-20 06:10 pm (UTC)I read this sentence and immediately sent a chat to my friend Jo, who I was sure had a list of good nun books. As indeed she did, although she didn't have any recommendations for nonfiction about modern nuns. Still, I am passing her rec list on to you.
Fiction, to be read as a set:
In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden*
Unfinished Desires by Gail Godwin
Also fiction by Rumer Godden, but apparently not as good:
Black Narcissus
Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy
Nonfiction:
Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance Florence by Sharon Stroccia
* You may be, as I was, most familiar with Rumer Godden as an author of children's books, particularly Miss Happiness and Miss Flower. I was surprised to learn that a) she wrote a lot of books for adults too, and b) she was still writing up until 1997.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-20 10:57 pm (UTC)A lot of authors IMO have trouble writing religion, but Godden is so good at it (at least sometimes; other people have told me that Black Narcissus and Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy aren't as good).
I want to read about Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance Florence but the library doesn't have it. :( :( :( Maybe I should interlibrary loan it.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-21 05:13 am (UTC)