still i read
Nov. 15th, 2017 02:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishBecause books make everything less terrible.
What are you reading right now?
Just (finally) started Leah Bobet's An Inheritance of Ashes, which appears to be about rural family strife in the aftermath of a big war. I suspect it's fantasy but nothing fantastical has made an appearance yet, but then I'm maybe twenty pages in.
What did you just finish reading?
Reread of Strong Female Protagonist book 1. It's more rambly than I remember (and than the more recent storylines have been, I think), but still quite good. I'm impressed with how Allison has grown, I'm impressed with the worldbuilding and hints of larger plot that get dropped in, and it's neat to see Molly Ostertag's art improve over the course of the volume.
Before that, Above, by Leah Bobet. Impressions from first read, some years ago, for comparative purposes. I'm clearly not the same person I was then. What stood out for me this time was how damaged Matthew is, and how he's perpetuating that damage without realising it. (He does recognise it eventually, and comes to terms with it.) It's about growing up, sure, but (again, to quote the author) it's more about cultural trauma, and having compassion and respect for the things your parents lived through without having to agree about how the world is, and the terrible balance between redress for having been victimized and starting to victimize other people too. It hit me less hard overall this time, but certain places connected with much more force. As it should be, I think.
And most recently, Jennifer Stevenson's Coed Demon Sluts: Beth. I think Sherwood must have recommended this, and it was free some time ago so I picked it up. I read Stevenson's first book, Trash Sex Magic, ages ago, right before Kelly broke up with me, and ... I would have really liked to have had a chance to talk about that book, because as a book it didn't work for me at all but as an exploration of sexuality and power it ... I couldn't make sense of it myself, I needed someone to talk it out with, and that would have been Kelly except, well. And then I collapsed in on myself, and then we moved to Vancouver and I couldn't justify keeping a book that I was that unimpressed with as a book. I think I regret that now, I think I'd like to reread it, but at the time it made sense.
Anyway, CDS: Beth. This ... I haven't read a book that was this deliberately targeted at not-me in, maybe ever. I didn't feel personally attacked by it, which was nice (cf. Kristin Cashore's Fire, or Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera); I was just not relevant. Which was ... also nice? It's ... I guess it's a romance, it's about a fiftysomething housewife who's suddenly been dumped, stripped of her life and livelihood and what she thought of as love, and who becomes a succubus for an exceptionally bureaucratic and apathetic Hell, working with three other succubi. There's a somewhat zany plot involving Beth's terrible ex-husband, and less sex than you might expect, and a lot of personal growth for Beth, and an adorable actual-romance-romance.
And it's all very clearly written for not dudes which is ... pretty great, honestly. And I'm not sure I can quantify it, either. It's not (just) the lack of primary male characters, or the way the book focuses in tight on the relationships between the four succubi, or how these are Women In Control and The Tables Are Turned. Or maybe it is, I'm not sure. I enjoyed it, in any event.
There are I believe four other books in the series. I don't know if I'll read them, or if I'll read any of Stevenson's other stuff: apart from being not targeted at me, it's not really up my alley. But it's definitely under consideration.
What do you think you'll read next?
I have no idea. Kat Howard and Claire Humphrey's books are both calling to me for a first-read, but if Inheritance of Ashes punches me in the gut as hard as Above did on first read I may need to go back to something comforting first.
(Unintentionally tangentially relevant to the content of this post, It's Raining Men: Seeking Out Women Writers, By the Numbers.)
What are you reading right now?
Just (finally) started Leah Bobet's An Inheritance of Ashes, which appears to be about rural family strife in the aftermath of a big war. I suspect it's fantasy but nothing fantastical has made an appearance yet, but then I'm maybe twenty pages in.
What did you just finish reading?
Reread of Strong Female Protagonist book 1. It's more rambly than I remember (and than the more recent storylines have been, I think), but still quite good. I'm impressed with how Allison has grown, I'm impressed with the worldbuilding and hints of larger plot that get dropped in, and it's neat to see Molly Ostertag's art improve over the course of the volume.
Before that, Above, by Leah Bobet. Impressions from first read, some years ago, for comparative purposes. I'm clearly not the same person I was then. What stood out for me this time was how damaged Matthew is, and how he's perpetuating that damage without realising it. (He does recognise it eventually, and comes to terms with it.) It's about growing up, sure, but (again, to quote the author) it's more about cultural trauma, and having compassion and respect for the things your parents lived through without having to agree about how the world is, and the terrible balance between redress for having been victimized and starting to victimize other people too. It hit me less hard overall this time, but certain places connected with much more force. As it should be, I think.
And most recently, Jennifer Stevenson's Coed Demon Sluts: Beth. I think Sherwood must have recommended this, and it was free some time ago so I picked it up. I read Stevenson's first book, Trash Sex Magic, ages ago, right before Kelly broke up with me, and ... I would have really liked to have had a chance to talk about that book, because as a book it didn't work for me at all but as an exploration of sexuality and power it ... I couldn't make sense of it myself, I needed someone to talk it out with, and that would have been Kelly except, well. And then I collapsed in on myself, and then we moved to Vancouver and I couldn't justify keeping a book that I was that unimpressed with as a book. I think I regret that now, I think I'd like to reread it, but at the time it made sense.
Anyway, CDS: Beth. This ... I haven't read a book that was this deliberately targeted at not-me in, maybe ever. I didn't feel personally attacked by it, which was nice (cf. Kristin Cashore's Fire, or Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera); I was just not relevant. Which was ... also nice? It's ... I guess it's a romance, it's about a fiftysomething housewife who's suddenly been dumped, stripped of her life and livelihood and what she thought of as love, and who becomes a succubus for an exceptionally bureaucratic and apathetic Hell, working with three other succubi. There's a somewhat zany plot involving Beth's terrible ex-husband, and less sex than you might expect, and a lot of personal growth for Beth, and an adorable actual-romance-romance.
And it's all very clearly written for not dudes which is ... pretty great, honestly. And I'm not sure I can quantify it, either. It's not (just) the lack of primary male characters, or the way the book focuses in tight on the relationships between the four succubi, or how these are Women In Control and The Tables Are Turned. Or maybe it is, I'm not sure. I enjoyed it, in any event.
There are I believe four other books in the series. I don't know if I'll read them, or if I'll read any of Stevenson's other stuff: apart from being not targeted at me, it's not really up my alley. But it's definitely under consideration.
What do you think you'll read next?
I have no idea. Kat Howard and Claire Humphrey's books are both calling to me for a first-read, but if Inheritance of Ashes punches me in the gut as hard as Above did on first read I may need to go back to something comforting first.
(Unintentionally tangentially relevant to the content of this post, It's Raining Men: Seeking Out Women Writers, By the Numbers.)
no subject
Date: 2017-11-16 05:30 pm (UTC)