Saturday, March 31, 2018

Março


  1. Carmen (2003)
  2. Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own by Kate Bolick
    • Hmm... I enjoyed reading about the five women, but I was looking much more for the history part of spinsterhood, and it was this point of interest that was covered in two paragraphs or thereabouts in the last chapter.
  3. Idomeneus by Soulpepper
    • What is the true story? What actually happened? The Truth is so slippery; all we get are versions of events and different perspectives, sometimes wildly different, until after we have combined all that we have heard, we are left ever more confused than before.
    • I was confused about the costumes, as they didn't reference ancient Greece at all, yet everything just worked. From the costumes to the voices speaking out, one after the other, to the dance at the very end, it all came together incredibly well.
  4. The Imaginary by A.F. Harrold, illustrated by Emily Gravett
    • You really grow to pity Mr. Bunting at the end, when he slurps up his own imaginary. The description of how it had felt to him - like eating his own hand, then his wrist, and so on till he swallowed himself - was so cold and so sad. I would've liked to see Amanda conjure up an imagination strong enough to defeat Mr. Bunting with her own power and wit, but I suppose good timing will just have to do. The reunion between Friday and Amanda's mother was a nice touch, how he, too, disappears in the end.
  5. You'll Grow Out of It by Jessi Klein
    • Hilarious! And very relatable, as someone who spent much of my life avoiding what fell into my thinking as "stereotypically feminine". I kind of wish I listened to the audiobook version of this.
  6. Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ by Giulia Enders, illustrated by Jill Enders
    • This is a fascinating subject, and I don't get why we don't talk about intestine-aches rather than stomachaches, or why it's so incredibly taboo to talk about what goes on in our gut, because that silence makes it so we don't even know how our stool is supposed to look! The section on the stool scale was delightful, as was the explanation of the bacteria that live in our guts. I kind of wish it was a bit more detailed, but this is a great introduction to the subject. Next on the list: Gulp: Adventures On the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach.
    • "Women's large intestines are generally slightly more lethargic than men's. Medical researchers have not yet discovered why this is so, but the greatest likelihood is that it has a hormonal cause" (p.92).
      • Does this have anything to do with how girls are socialized as well? Because earlier in the book, Enders says "If we suppress our need to go [sic] the toilet too often or for too long, our internal sphincter begins to feel browbeaten. In fact, we are able to reeducate it completely. That means the sphincter and the surrounding muscles have been disciplined so often by the external sphincter that they become cowed. If communication between the two sphincters breaks down completely, constipation can result" (pp.14-15).
    • Spoon theory in hormone format?
      • "Under normal circumstances, we synthesize the stress-response hormone CRF (corticotropin-releasing factor) in the morning, creating a supply to help face the challenges of the day. CRF helps us tap into energy reserves, prevents the immune system from overreacting, and helps our skin tan as a protective response to stress from sunlight. The brain can also inject an extra portion of CRF into the bloodstream if we find ourselves in a particularly upsetting situation" (p.103).
    • I just read this Quanta article, Why Don't Patients Get Sick in Sync?, a day or two before reading this passage in Gut, which reminded me of it, especially the image halfway through the article illustrating How Chance Shapes an Invasion
      • "This effect is known as colonization resistance. The majority of the microbes in our gut protect us simply by occupying spaces that would otherwise be free for harmful bacteria to colonize" (p.157).
  7. So Sad Today: Personal Essays by Melissa Broder
    • Maybe I should be worried that I connect with so many of these essays on a rather disturbingly deep level, by which I mean to say: I guess whatever pervasive sadness is in my life and whatever depressing thoughts I have no reason in particular to be thinking don't even belong to me. In a way, perhaps the situation is even worse than it once was: my constantly berating myself for not being perfect, whatever insecurities and flaws and foibles I have that I once thought were something that were mine, turned out to be much more in the line of me absorbing the zeitgeist around me - even in the most depressing version of myself I'm outed to be much more boring and mundane than I ever could have hoped! Is this something to be happy over? To mourn? I'm not too sure, but I suppose statistically speaking, chances were that I wasn't special.
  8. Love Warrior: A Memoir by Glennon Doyle Melton
    • I'm reading this and So Sad Today around the same time, and everything's sort of blurring together, but I relate to both of these authors' insecurities to a degree that makes me worry. And I don't think I'm particularly alone in this either; it's not like it's a special niche or anything where people are just super insecure and get panic attacks and don't feel like they can be a proper human being in this world at a given time - it kind of feels like it might be a huge number of people (millenials?).
  9. Wonder (2017)
    • There were a couple scenes where I almost cried, and while my tear ducts are significantly easier to persuade to overflow nowadays, that's still something. I was actually pretty taken with Jack's character and his development throughout the movie, especially the very real moments where he chooses to say callous things about Auggie in order to fit in with Julian's group. On the other hand, while I'm sympathetic to Auggie's self-centered personality in which everything revolves around him, and obviously his physical differences are the reason for literally everything, I kind of had to wonder whether I lived in much the same kind of bubble when I was 10.
  10. Black Panther (2018) x 2
  11. Animal Farm (Soulpepper)
    • The overall effect I got was that the play was funny and delivered on the message, but that Orwell's novel did a much better job. I was looking forward to the whole thing with Snowball, but that wasn't covered in as much detail in the play, and it felt at times that they focused too much on trying to be funny and getting the audience to laugh. I suppose part of that is because it's a satire and they wanted it to be a bit over the top in order to make sure that was obvious, but you get less a sense of the slow horror over the slippery slope down which Napolean & the farm went.
  12. If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look On My Face? by Alan Alda
    • This connects a lot with the rest of the self-help and Eastern philosophy area of our collections that tell you to be present in your surroundings, to fully let yourself be affected by what is going on around you and react to what is rather than blindly pushing forward based on what you would will it to be instead - to improv rather than follow the script mindlessly.
    • Nothing particularly life-changing in these pages for myself personally.
  13. Naoko by Keigo Higashino, translated by Kerim Yasar
    • This is such a bizarre premise: Heisuke's wife & daughter end up in an accident, and his wife dies, his daughter in a coma. Shortly after his wife dies, his daughter wakes up, but it's not his daughter's consciousness inside of her body - it's his wife, Naoko.
    • That ending really throws you for a loop! And throughout the entire novel, I feel as though the reader sympathizes with Naoko more than Heisuke overall, seeing where Heisuke's jealousy takes him. That being said, he does mature a bit at the absolute end, I guess? Kind of?
    • And I love that Heisuke basically brings it upon himself by doing the whole investigation thing and following up in his earnestness to get the full story.
  14. Paprika (2006)
    • Interesting concept - using technology to enter dreams and having the barrier between those who are awake and those who are asleep break down - and beautifully rendered. I'm not too sure how I feel about the resolution, to be honest, but I did enjoy watching it. Ibara no Ou (2009) also had a similar thing happen, where dreams or at least the imagination could have real impact on the real world, though they are very different movies.
    • For a moment, Tokita's vision about the beauty of sharing a dream came to life, though with a completely different outcome than he might have expected or wanted.
  15. Gulp: Adventures On the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach
    • While there was quite a bit of overlap between Gulp & Gut, I do think the two should be read together and that they complement each other rather than render the other redundant. Roach's humour here is used to much better effect than in Stiff, in my opinion, probably aided by the 9 years that separate the two publications. Interestingly enough, Gulp came out in 2013 and Roach notes in the introduction that the disgust associated with talking about what goes on in the gut & the taboo surrounding talk about is byproducts "has worked in my favor. The alimentary recesses hide a lode of unusual stories, mostly unmined. Authors have profiled the brain, the heart, the eyes, the skin, the penis and the female geography, event he hair, but never the gut. The pie hole and the feed chute are mine" (p.18). Two years later, in 2015, The Gut is published. Again, there's information in Gut that's not in Gulp and vice versa, so I'd say it's well worth reading both. Having done so in pretty quick succession, I can safely declare I wasn't bored reading Gulp even though I already knew a lot of the material from having read The Gut. And besides, the authors' enthusiasm over the gut is both palpable and infectious.
    • OMG. The possible origin of the fire-breathing dragon myths? Yes please! Find this on pps. 229-230, where Secor explains how the hydrogen buildup resulting from prey decomposition within the snake's stomach can exit through the mouth of a dead snake if someone, for example, steps on it, and if they further happen to be close to a campfire, this "breath" of hydrogen comes right out of the snake and bursts immediately into flame. Even better, "[t]he oldest stories of fire-breathing dragons come from Africa and south China: where the giant snakes are" (p.230).
  16. Una Mujer Fantastica (2017)
  17. Callgirl: Confessions of an Ivy League Lady of Pleasure by Jeanette Angell
    • So... I was really hoping for something with a bit more substance than this. I guess less an "this is how I'm different from others who were working in the sex industry" (even aside from the streetwalker v.s. escort demarcation) and more something that actually took a look at what exactly the stereotypes are concerning prostitutes, exploring why they're problematic and debunking them (or not!) through the author's experiences. What we actually get with Callgirl is the feeling that Angell is probably a bit infatuated with herself and that she thinks she's smarter than all men (and probably you, dear reader) - there are quite a number of generalized comments about men as a whole that I really, really didn't care for. On the whole, completely disappointed. Maybe taking her class would've been a better alternative to reading her book?
    • Can we also talk about the spelling mistakes in here? As well as the poor flow throughout? Well I mean, that's about as much as I have to say on the topic, but it could really have used several rewrites.
  18. Nise: O Coracao da Loucura (2015)
  19. The Constant Gardener (2005)

Maybe saying that I'm "working on" these books isn't quite as true as saying I've opened them and I've started reading them, but some just aren't going to get done anytime soon.
  1. A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and the Mind by Siri Hustvedt
    • Am I the only one who found the titular essay kind of halting and awkward?
  2. All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation by Rebecca Traister

Thursday, March 1, 2018

February

I foolishly set for myself a 150 books in 2018 challenge at the beginning of the year on Goodreads, which happens to be woefully public, so I was kind of worried, but given that I'm also counting picture books, I'm somehow now 23 books ahead of schedule? This is even more worrying - this time for my apparent lack of a life.
  1. Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link
    • Whoa. Is magic realism the genre under which to file this? I've been told that García Márquez is the king of magic realism, and this strikes me as quite different, but at the same time kind of similar in that it's rooted in reality, yet it's like the fabric of reality as we know it is warped, or wasn't warped quite as evenly as it appears in our day to day lives. Likewise with Shirley Jackson. Or would this just be horror? Either way, the stories range from disturbing to odd to haunting, and I love them.
  2. Seashore/Beira-Mar (2015)
    • Coming of age film. It seems like blue hair is the identifier in movies for LGBTQ characters? Or at least, I'm going by Blue is the Warmest Color and this one, so perhaps not quite representative, but enough for me to wonder.
  3. Carmo/Carmo, Hit the Road (2008)
    • Way to mark out the bad guys using physical deformities in facial features. I'm not sure if this was done for comic effect, but it's also not a funny movie, per se, which is why I'm a bit confused. Otherwise the friction between Carmo & Marco was nice to watch as they figured each other out and how to live with one another.
  4. Scapegoat: A History of Blaming Other People by Charlie Campbell
    • One of my favourite lines: "And that is how to excommunicate an insect" (p.136). Campbell has a rather dry sense of humour that I found fitting for the subject. You never get the sense that he's calling out past deeds and judging them using modern standards so much as highlighting past instances of human folly that might strike us as either somewhat obvious or perhaps understandably the lesser of two evils.
  5. The Bad Guys Episodes 4 & 5: Apocalypse Meow & Intergalactic Gas by Aaron Blabey
    • There's a script being followed here for each of the books, but it's great that everyone gets a chance to redeem themselves, each overcoming their fears or their weaknesses. It's funny, a bit out there, and every ending makes you think Blabey might be trying too hard to stretch the series out, but it's fine. I'd probably recommend this to Captain Underpants lovers.
  6. Operation: Secret Recipe (Geronimo Stilton) by Geronimo Stilton
    • It's pretty distracting, the layout, as well as the way the pages would sometimes cut off parts of the story while introducing information about Milan. I did enjoy the clues being dropped throughout the story that it was a cat that stole Stilton's identity, but I wish it were less obvious - that being said, it's intended for a younger audience than me, so it's fine. On the whole though, I didn't find the plot that engaging, and the recipe doesn't actually tell you how to make the panettone either! Maybe if you started reading from the beginning you would be more interested in all the characters in the family, but myself personally? I won't be picking up another Geronimo Stilton.
  7. Now Go Out There (and Get Curious) by Mary Karr
    • The anecdote about Walt Mink was beautiful, but I don't know how I feel about the layout of the entire book, with each page coupled with the illustration that grows and recedes over the pages as you read. Perhaps this works better as a speech than in written format. Either way, it takes constant reminders to yourself to remember to care about others and give them the benefit of the doubt, to treat them to lunch, and this is one such reminder amongst many others.
  8. Que Horas Ela Volta?/The Second Mother (2015)
    • An exploration of social class and how the it is only in the breach of those barriers (in this case with the arrival of the daughter, Jéssica) that those following its script become aware of the uncomfortable fact that they are in fact playing a role. It also addresses how the maids hired to take care of other people's homes and children end up leaving their own children and home behind in order to support them: Val is estranged from Jéssica in similar fashion to how Bárbara is estranged from her son, though to a lesser degree, and the threat of this happening all over again in the new generation with Jéssica and her son Jorge is circumvented only by Val leaving her job and by having the nuclear family stay together (as much as is possible). There's also this interesting contrast between Fabinho, who seems to sway between upholding class barriers - e.g. in his initial surprise that Jéssica is applying to FAU - and completely disregarding them as he treats Jéssica as any other person, dragging her into the pool to play just as another friend, and missing the reference made by his mother that Jéssica is the rat that polluted the pool. Of course, there's also Fabinho's relationship with Val, which is aware of the class barrier while simultaneously breaks it down in his going to her for comfort - for a mother, really.
  9. The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief, and Compassion by Peter Wohlleben, with a foreword by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, translated by Jane Billinghurst
    • I loved The Hidden Life of Trees by Wohlleben, so the moment I heard about this new book I put myself on hold... and then promptly deactivated it because I had a million other things already out, waiting for me to read. The conclusion was a fitting one, and reflected almost word for word a conversation I had with a friend:
      • "How, pray tell, are we supposed to feed ourselves in a morally acceptable manner if we are now justified in feeling sorry for plants, as well? Like many species, we cannot photosynthesize to create our own food, so we have to eat living entities to survive. The choices we make are very personal" (Wohlleben, p.248). Hasn't it always been the case?
    • While I enjoyed the anecdotes presented as evidence for animals being much more complicated creatures than many people give them credit for, and totally agree with Wohlleben that it's kind of weird we think of ourselves as somehow removed from the natural chain and call anthropomorphism foul in an attempt to keep humanity's exalted place at the top of the animal hierarchy, I found this collection much more scattered and less well organized than could be hoped for. There are also so many other books that focus on this topic, as Wohlleben himself acknowledges, and while I might not be the average layperson in terms of reading into how academic a book looks (because I tend to search those out and use those as the standard against which to compare everything else - or at least, the ones that appear to me as though more academically sound, which might in fact not stand for anything other than a cheap reassurance that what I'm reading is likely to be fact), I think others such as Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are by Frans de Waal and Animal Wise by Virginia Morell are both pretty accessible. From what I remember, they also cover most of what Wohlleben does in his examples, save maybe Wohlleben's expansion of the focus to insects and other unlovable creatures such as tardigrades and ticks.
    • There were things I think Wohlleben did pretty well though, including the chapter on instincts and how people actually come up with explanations to justify their emotions way after the emotion has already been decided upon - which is why there's no reason one should disregard instinct outright in animals - as well as one of the last chapters on the soul, where he raises the metaphorical eyebrow in his answering of the question of what would belong in heaven if heaven were to exist.
    • Overall, The Inner Life of Animals was an enjoyable read, if less in-depth than I would've liked, even for such a little book as this, as was found in The Hidden Life of Trees. Did we need another book like this in the market? I want to say no, but maybe. Especially given the popularity of The Hidden Life of Trees, perhaps this will reach a different audience than Are We Smart Enough and Animal Wise.
  10. Letters from Fontainhas: Ossos (1997) by Pedro Costa
    • Maybe if I actually gave it time and watched the entire trilogy it would be a more powerful experience?
  11. Aquarius (2016)
    • That did not go how I thought it would. Oh damn. Clara is such a boss! I absolutely love her interactions with people and her relationships all around (though you do start thinking that maybe she's being too obstinate or frank, except she just knows what she wants and makes it happen, obstacles be damned).
      • Also, "It's always good to ask" - yes.
  12. Whiskey Words & a Shovel III by r.h.Sin
    • Not that it's important, but I thought for the longest time that the author was a woman. Now I'm wondering whether they're writing for all the women they've come across that seemed to need these messages?
    • Repetitive. I don't really even want to read the second volume anymore because I've kind of grown tired of reading basically the same thing over and over and over again. Maybe it's because I tried to get through several at a time instead of reading one a day, or however they're meant to be experienced? And there's this sort of assumption that settling for anything less than perfection is somehow the wrong choice, even though I'm pretty sure relationships are based on more than just love - not to be too unemotional about it.
    • Also, while some of the passages made me feel like I really wanted to connect with them, it was hard for me to do so because I guess I've been really lucky and have only come in contact with decent human beings. (Is this the case? Is it just that I've been super lucky?) It kind of felt like I had to feel like a victim that was now rebuilding herself from whatever broken pieces someone else had made of my being in order for these poems to really resonate with me, and I want to know whether this actually feels touching on a personal level to that many people. I'm sure it does, but I also can't help feeling it feeds into the whole thing where women are made into victims (first, even if they're later told they're worth it and then are expected to empower themselves and make it their own way alone if they can't find Mr.Right). I know this is supposed to feel empowering to read, but I'm just really tired of hearing the same message again and again and again and again.
  13. Wildwood (Wildwood Chronicles #1) by Colin Meloy, illustrated by Carson Ellis
    • While I found the entire narrative quite compelling and I loved how unclear it seemed to the characters which side was good and which was bad - as it can often be in real life - there's something about the endless descriptors that had me putting down the book every so often because I'd find myself skimming for plot. This isn't to say that it sounds overly flowery or excessive, or that it's poorly written, so much as, I'm not sure what the target audience is here. I would probably have put this book right down if I were a kid, even as book-loving a kid as I was when I actually was one.
    • The illustrations are lovely, and I looked forward to seeing them every time whenever I felt the slight difference in paper weight in the coming pages.
  14. On Truth by Harry G. Frankfurt
    • Finished this sometime in February...
    • Maybe Frankfurt's preaching to the choir, but I agreed with basically everything - in fact, I don't think I remember a specific point he made I didn't agree with? Though I can't say it was all that compelling a read.
  15. O Lobo Que Queria Mudar De Cor by Orianne Lallemande, illustrated by Éléonore Thuillier
    • I've been trying to get back into learning Portuguese, starting out with Transparent Language then moving onto duolingo, which I prefer by far because it gamifies the experience and helps you keep better progress of how far along you are in learning the language. Though I'm not sure how accurate the assessment is in terms of how fluent you are in the language, that percentage. I certainly don't feel 40% fluent in Portuguese just yet! So I figured I could help that along by reading some picture books. A lot of the ones I read before I don't see in our catalogue anymore, which means either I haven't browsed enough pages to go that far back, or they've been weeded because I assume our Portuguese collection doesn't really move all that much.
    • Anyway, back to the book. It's pretty cute, and I love the frame of Little Red Riding Hood on the first page! And I'm kind of not sure about the amorality of the entire tale - plucking all the feathers from a peacock, for one, or stealing the neighbour's roses - but it moves along in a fun manner and you know where it's headed. I also found that I could understand the story even though I didn't know all the words, which is great for me trying to learn, though I'm not sure what tense it's all told in.
  16. The Gods of Tango by Carolina de Robertis
    • Oh. My. Goodness. Read this in one day because I didn't want to put it down, which hasn't happened with another novel for a very long time. Incredible character development, and I love Leda-Dante's navigation of their identity and how to fit into the world they've been thrown into, grabbing it by the reins and throwing all caution to the wind. The subplot in the form of memories of Cora surfacing and having Leda-Dante figure out how to live with themselves, forgiving themselves for not being able at the time to help Cora, was also woven into the rest of the story quite well; though you pretty much guess most of what happened to Cora early on in the book, it's the way in which Leda-Dante goes back and back to the memories and faces them more and more each time as they are also developing as a person.
  17. O Lobo Que Se Achava O Maior by Orianne Lallemand, illustrated by Éléonore Thuillier
    • Wow. I found a book that's not on Goodreads! (I mean, technically, O lobo que queria mudar de cor was also not on Goodreads in Portuguese, but this one's just not there at all.)
    • Awww this is a pretty cute one. A bit tongue in cheek considering how wolves are supposed to compete for the most villainous title, then the other wolves get miffed when Lobo plays dirty (as he's supposed to, right?). But of course, all ends well for him when his friends show up when he's most in need of them - only after a night of reflection, of course.
    • I got really lost on that page when the owl flies by Lobo down in the hole. I'm going to need to parse out that entire page and search up basically every word, I think. But on the whole, I think this age bracket (0-8, from what it says on the back cover) is a good range for me right now. I'm quite liking the series as a whole, though the one about O Lobo Que Queria Ter Uma Namorada isn't the greatest. (What is it with books that feature love as a grand quest? Why does the story just end when things are finally picking up? It's not like it's for sure that Lobo can win over the loba! We literally don't even see them together on their first date in loba's house with Lobo recovering from his starstruck wonder.)
  18. The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
    • The way Solnit leaves hooks throughout her essays and weaves in references to them from chapter to chapter, slowly making her way through, doubling back, continuing forward, is exactly the sort of writing I aimed for in my artist statements back when I wrote those still. And this was all the more poignant for me because of the weaving references, about all the fiber-related language we use in our day to day speech without even realizing that we're weaving in more than just an idiom into what we say: the thread reaches much further back than we realize most of the time. (That thought being basically my entire artist statement in my last year's independent study, except tie in the concept on identity.)
    • The running script in the footnote section of every page that runs through the entire book was an interesting touch, though I'm not sure how you're meant to read it - I personally ignored it till I finished the main text, then flipped back to the beginning to start the one ribbon of text that takes you through all the essays all over again.
  19. Fèlix et Meira (2014)
    • The strongest scene probably comes towards the end, when Meira says to her husband, "Who says I'm not already dead in this life I lead here?" in response to why she no longer plays dead for him. I also quite appreciate the ambiguous ending, where Meira chooses for herself what strictures she discards and what to keep, continuing to speak in Yiddish to her daughter, a language that excludes Fèlix from the relationship, highlighting the instability of their foundations and inherent uncertainty of their future together.
  20. I Funny: A Middle School Story by James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein, illustrated by Laura Park
    • To be honest, I didn't find the jokes all that funny, but I'm also no longer 12. The dis/abled protagonist is great to see, as he's perfectly capable and makes a note of it throughout the entire novel. There's no point at which his being in a wheelchair gets in the way of what he wants to do (save the instance when his wheelchair is taken from him, which is to say when other people don't give him the respect as a human being that he deserves, with or without his disability). That being said, I kind of wish the Cool Girl wasn't such a miracle cure, and that he stayed down for a little bit longer - maybe that's just the part of me that wants to see the Dostoevsky-esque internal turmoil in every novel I read, even when it's not called for. Anyway, this would be a good series to look into for readers who enjoyed Diary of a Wimpy Kid and I think maybe even Captain Underpants lovers.
  21. A Call Girl/Slovenka (2009)
  22. Bunny at Tarragon Theatre
    • I'm so on the fence about this one even though I really wanted to love it, and it's because of the way that it was set up, in that Bunny took us through her life and sexual hangups, stopping to break the fourth wall and talk to the audience directly at the peak moments of each of these vignettes. I identified with Bunny... somewhat? But that's as much as I can give it. Maybe I need more time to vegetate with it.
  23. Available: A Memoir of Heartbreak, Hookups, Love and Brunch by Matteson Perry
    • I think the one takeaway from this entire book is this: have intense long brunches, often. Which I'm down for, going by the fresh goat cheese description that peppers Perry's differentiation between "breakfast" and "brunch".
    • While it's somewhat frustrating that the entire narrative ends in a happily ever after of sorts, even as it acknowledges that relationships are ongoing things that require daily watering and grow better if you talk to them - I don't think Perry writes this out exactly, but I do come away from this book thinking it's not just a rehash of the fairytale story that floats around about us having soulmates and that there is someone out there that is tailor-made just for you - Perry does a pretty sound job making his sleazy project fun to read about (or maybe that's not as difficult as it sounds: people do love reading about sex and sleaziness, and not even necessarily both of those together), going from enthusiastic sleaze to having a moment where he realizes he might be taking things too far, followed by actually learning from his mistakes. Overall a fun read, I would recommend it if you're in the mood for some laughs and not taking yourself too seriously.
      • I wonder if all the women he wrote about recognize themselves in the book/were told they would be written about? I'm assuming all the names got changed, but still.
  24. Whiskey Words & a Shovel I by r.h.Sin
    • Perhaps I should've started with the first volume when reading this series? There's an introduction there that addresses what I wrote about for III (above), though the whole image still stands unquestioned. By which I mean the whole narrative about how there's someone out there for you, that they can save you, that obviously the let downs in previous relationships are due to your partner not being good enough for you (though in fairness, there are relationships in which people are horrible to one another or one to the other and I realize there are cases where the poetry will ring very true) rather than about your expectations about them being your saviour not being fulfilled... there was one poem where Sin addresses his expectations, something about being in love with the idea of you, except that he took it in a completely different direction than I thought it was going to go, namely saying he fell out of love with what they transformed into (or something along those lines)? I was thinking more that it wasn't the person at any point in time, rather the idea.
    • If I started off with this volume, I probably wouldn't have continued.
  25. Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
    • Thank you for putting into plain words what I have struggled to before when I asked a friend about whether he thinks about gender in bringing up his young daughter. They're all things I know, and things I should in theory have been able to articulate, but somehow the words got stuck in my throat and I couldn't communicate exactly what I was trying to say. This is everything and more.
Articles:

  1. Why We Forget Most of the Books We Read... by Julie Beck (The Atlantic) and The Curse of Reading and Forgetting by Ian Crouch (The New Yorker)
    • YES. I've noticed this more and more in myself as well, that I am ever more so less capable of bringing up synopses or reasons for which I enjoyed a particular book the further away from the undergrad life I get. And I think part of it, for sure, is that I'm not necessarily doing a close reading of everything that comes under my scrutiny - that is to say, I'm skimming quite a bit. But surely I should be able to at least hold a conversation about novels I've read recently, make recommendations to patrons who come to the desk asking for them, or, at the very least, be able to list more or less all the books & movies I've read & watched in the past couple of weeks or so? Not so. And if Beck's article is to be trusted, I think I can attribute most of the issue to the fact that I tend to read books in spurts, as close to reading it all in one go as I can. (It's actually rather sad to think that the books that actually make me want to devour them all in one day shouldn't last as long in my memory than the ones I read less enthusiastically, or sometimes even drudge through. Though for the latter, sometimes it takes so long I've forgotten the premise by the time I reach the end, so then again, perhaps not.)
      • This also explains why I still remember quite a bit of cetacean trivia, because I read The Cultural Lives of Whales & Dolphins over the course of a couple of weeks (or at least one full week, I think) if I remember correctly, then reinforced all the information by 1)making notes along the way, and 2)reading more books about similar subjects, on whales and dolphins, then finally 3)making comparisons between Cultural Lives and the other ones, which led to me reviewing parts of Cultural Lives and the other books and writing extensively on the subject (I think I typed out something like 10k in words just on those 3 books in that installment of what I read that month?).
    • But all this doesn't tell me what I really need to know: should I disparage myself for not remembering most of what I read, and what's the point, really, if it gets to the point where you have to re-read 5 pages into the book to remember that "Oh, right! I have read this before!"... and yet still not have that jog your memory of the rest of the novel? Is it for the temporary pleasure during the reading itself? Or is it as Crouch describes it, the reader as valiant hero slaying another monstrous beast of a book?
  2. Not really an article at all, but I moved on from Transparent Language to duolingo at the suggestion of my brother, and I love it! I'm much more committed because duolingo gamifies the whole experience of learning a language and gives you virtual currency that allows you to purchase more lessons and learn more (to an extent). It also tells you how fluent you are in the language in percentage format, though I find it to be rather optimistic: I highly doubt I'm actually 45% fluent in Portuguese.


Working on:
  1. Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own by Kate Bolick
    • I'm really hoping this will take us through the history of the term spinster in more detail than it covers in the introduction or the first chapter, wherever it was that Bolick quickly compared the trajectory of the terms "bachelor" (which went from being pejorative to neutral) and "spinster" (which went from being a positive term to being pejorative).
    • Halfway through, my hopes are slowly being crushed and strangled (yes, both) because it doesn't seem like Bolick has too much interest in discussing the history of the gendered terms beyond the introduction. That being said, I'm learning about women who lived (somewhat) alone, making (somewhat) spinstery lives for themselves. Well at least the book never purported to be anything other than it currently seems like it is: a journey through the author's life and experiences, told through her encounters with dead women writers who have influenced her life decisions. (It's actually filed under our Biography & Memoir section, so I really should've known better. But that title!)