Wednesday Reading Meme
Sep. 18th, 2019 11:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I Just Finished Reading
Loads of books! I went on a short vacation this weekend and did not take my computer, and I read piles of books and also did a lot of hiking and even got to see a couple of movies for my women film directors project, one by Agnes Varda & another by Dorothy Arzner, about which I will write reviews… later.
And by “piles of books” I mean three. (And I also finished Enid Blyton’s Last Term at Malory Towers before I headed out on the trip. The last of the Malory Towers books! How shall I get my boarding school fix now??? Probably the Twins at St. Claire’s or the Naughtiest Girl, this is actually not a difficult question at all.)
I finally got to read Dorothy Sayers’ The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club! Which I believe means that I am out of Lord Peter books, aside from Five Red Herrings which I have been Warned Against, which on the one hand is sad, but on the other… well, none of these books have Harriet Vane in them, now do they?
I also read E. K. Johnston’s Queen’s Shadow, which I thought was supposed to be super femslashy? - but now it occurs to me that it may have been Johnston’s Ahsoka that was supposed to be super femslashy, hmm. This one does include the delicious (and repeated!) line “My hands are yours,” but Padme and Sabe are separated for most of the book which does cut down on just how femslashy it can get.
Mostly what this book made me feel was exasperated at the prequel trilogy for just how criminally is underutilized Padme. Given that the trilogy is about, you know, the fall of the Republic, her political plotline should have gotten AT LEAST equal billing with whatever shenanigans Anakin was up to… but NO.
And! Last but far from least! Elizabeth Gilbert’s City of Girls, which is the third book I tried for my reading challenge “a book outside your (genre) comfort zone,” - and third time’s the charm! Because I really liked this book. In fact, I liked it so much that I’m going to have to write a longer review of it; for now I will just say that it was really refreshing to read a book about quote-unquote “bad” girls in which the bad girls, although they sometimes suffer from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (and sometimes those slings etc. arise from the fact that their behavior is socially unacceptable), never suffer a comeuppance.
What I’m Reading Now
Henry Louis Gates’ Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow, which is… well, it’s about as cheerful as you might imagine, from that title. It’s so depressing to read about Reconstruction, because the more I learn, the clearer it gets that the only thing that might have really changed the outcome was a lengthy Union military occupation, and even then… I’m not sure there’s a military occupation long enough that southern whites, at the end of it, would have gone “Oh yeah, white supremacy IS bad, maybe we should try… racial equality?”
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve decided that I should take advantage of the fact that I’m still working on Honeytrap to cram in at least one more Soviet history book: Anna Larina’s This I Will Not Forget: The Memoirs of Nikolai Bukharin’s Widow which has been on my list… probably since I studied Soviet history in college.
Loads of books! I went on a short vacation this weekend and did not take my computer, and I read piles of books and also did a lot of hiking and even got to see a couple of movies for my women film directors project, one by Agnes Varda & another by Dorothy Arzner, about which I will write reviews… later.
And by “piles of books” I mean three. (And I also finished Enid Blyton’s Last Term at Malory Towers before I headed out on the trip. The last of the Malory Towers books! How shall I get my boarding school fix now??? Probably the Twins at St. Claire’s or the Naughtiest Girl, this is actually not a difficult question at all.)
I finally got to read Dorothy Sayers’ The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club! Which I believe means that I am out of Lord Peter books, aside from Five Red Herrings which I have been Warned Against, which on the one hand is sad, but on the other… well, none of these books have Harriet Vane in them, now do they?
I also read E. K. Johnston’s Queen’s Shadow, which I thought was supposed to be super femslashy? - but now it occurs to me that it may have been Johnston’s Ahsoka that was supposed to be super femslashy, hmm. This one does include the delicious (and repeated!) line “My hands are yours,” but Padme and Sabe are separated for most of the book which does cut down on just how femslashy it can get.
Mostly what this book made me feel was exasperated at the prequel trilogy for just how criminally is underutilized Padme. Given that the trilogy is about, you know, the fall of the Republic, her political plotline should have gotten AT LEAST equal billing with whatever shenanigans Anakin was up to… but NO.
And! Last but far from least! Elizabeth Gilbert’s City of Girls, which is the third book I tried for my reading challenge “a book outside your (genre) comfort zone,” - and third time’s the charm! Because I really liked this book. In fact, I liked it so much that I’m going to have to write a longer review of it; for now I will just say that it was really refreshing to read a book about quote-unquote “bad” girls in which the bad girls, although they sometimes suffer from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (and sometimes those slings etc. arise from the fact that their behavior is socially unacceptable), never suffer a comeuppance.
What I’m Reading Now
Henry Louis Gates’ Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow, which is… well, it’s about as cheerful as you might imagine, from that title. It’s so depressing to read about Reconstruction, because the more I learn, the clearer it gets that the only thing that might have really changed the outcome was a lengthy Union military occupation, and even then… I’m not sure there’s a military occupation long enough that southern whites, at the end of it, would have gone “Oh yeah, white supremacy IS bad, maybe we should try… racial equality?”
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve decided that I should take advantage of the fact that I’m still working on Honeytrap to cram in at least one more Soviet history book: Anna Larina’s This I Will Not Forget: The Memoirs of Nikolai Bukharin’s Widow which has been on my list… probably since I studied Soviet history in college.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-18 11:42 pm (UTC)You are EXTREMELY correct about the criminal underuse of Padme in the prequels.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-19 01:22 am (UTC)I learned somewhere that there was supposed to be a whole subplot about Padme's political activities with the nascent rebellion in Revenge of the Sith, which would have made the movie so much more coherent and also explained why the hell they give baby Leia to Organa, and I have felt BETRAYED ever since.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-19 12:46 am (UTC)What seems to be the Don't Bother Reading It-ness of it? I know I read Five Red Herrings but I honestly don't remember anything about it, either good or bad. You're not the first person who I've heard either warning or being warned against reading it, though.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-19 01:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-19 01:29 am (UTC)