Book Curmudgeon

In case it wasn't clear, I love books. I love reading. I love talking about books. I like hanging out with people who like reading. Reading is my jam. BUT there is one thing that it seems I would like. Should like. And that's books and stories and memes ABOUT reading and books and all of that stuff that I honestly do love.

But for whatever reason, they annoy me to no end. And I'm trying to work out what my problem is. Here's what I've got along with an exception (though I'm sure there are many more exceptions to these rules because while I say I hate these things, I am an annoying ball of contradictions.)

Books about bookish people
This can just be lazy short hand for "Look how much better this person is than everyone else because they read." And then it feels masturbatory. Mostly it comes down to a lot of times this is just lazy writing. I'm not going to instantly love a character cos you made them read. This one bugs me more than any of the others.

Exception: Hermione. She's bookish, of course, but there's more to her than that and the fact that she's bookish isn't tauted as the reason she's better than everyone. She's better than everyone for so many reasons (so smart, pragmatic, S.P.E.W. [even if she's not the best ally], etc.)

Books about books
I think this one bothers me when it becomes more about books as objects instead of about the stories. I like giant libraries and would very much love if I could have a room in my house that had bookshelves with a ladder (and also a door hidden behind a bookshelf) but if too much time is spent waxing poetic about books themselves or how great books are and how people who don't understand that the smell of old books is the best thing ever, I eye roll hard.

Exception: The whole Thursday Next series cos yeah, there's stuff about books themselves and people jumping in and out of books.

Bookish memes
"Other people want a boyfriend. I just want a big library and time alone to read." "I judge people who say they don't read." Some of this is just volume. at one point one of my social feeds was blowing up with bookish memes and at first I laughed, then lightly chuckled, then wanted to be like "OMG WE GET IT, YOU LIKE BOOKS." Though I realized the thing that started to bug me is any meme that was about "Other people do A and book people do B" or "I judge you if you don't like the thing I like". Why do we have to do that? Why can't you just like your thing without talking about how people who don't like your thing are worse? You like your thing, let other people like their thing.

Exception: Memes that aren't so judgmental.

So there you go. Should I just get over it? (Probably.) Anyone have their own "this is bookish and I should prob love it but I don't" thing?

Diversity Reading

For the last couple years I've had a personal reading resolution to expand my horizons beyond white US writers.* Typically I have to make an effort which is FINE. I mean the goal is to get to the point where I don't have to make such an effort, it just happens but hey, till then, I'll try to make a conscious effort.

Because I also track my stats each month,

Still trying for that high-five

when I do get books that fit the resolution criteria I try to spread the reading of them out. Basically, I don't trust that I'm going to read more than 1 resolution book in a given month, so if I get a couple books by say POC authors, I better not read them all this month or else next month my resolution reads will be pathetic.

As I mentioned, I recently went on a book buying binge. I added a couple more books, including Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng and was just approved for Don't Touch My Hair by Phoebe Robinson. So I was thinking out of my newest acquisitions, what should I read next? Right now I'm reading Second Hand Souls by Christopher Moore, which meets zero of the criteria so I wanted to make sure whatever I read next will count towards my goals. And then I realized something: every book I recently acquired does.

Almost all of the latest books, China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan, Tales of Burning Love by Louise Erdrich, and the two I listed above are all by POC authors. The only other recent addition is The Cuckoo's Calling, which while not a POC author technically does count since the author isn't from the US.

Obviously this doesn't mean I'm done focusing on my resolution reads or that I can stop making a conscious effort about what I'm picking up. But it does mean that I'm moving in the right direction.

*Those are the primary criteria, though there's also books that are translation (which is along the same lines, focusing on diversification) and books published before 2000 (which really just seems like something that should be easy and I fail at it constantly. I also make less of an effort to hit it but really, shouldn't be this hard).

Pain takes up a lot of space

After Blackass I decided to pick up Dietland since it was on sale and hey, let's keep going with the satire, yes? Besides, I'd heard some good things about it and hey

The story follows Plum, a woman who has been battling her weight since forever, trying every fad diet that's come out, including spending awhile as a member Waist Watchers, with their packaged meals and support meetings. But nothing has worked. At this point Plum spends most of her time alone, either in her apartment or else at a local coffee shop. She works from home for a teen girl's magazine, answering letters to the editor "Kitty". She's scheduled gastric bypass surgery and is now just waiting for her real life to begin.

Then one day, Plum notices a girl seems to be following her around. And she meets the daughter of the women who founded Waist Watchers and joins a group of women at a place called Calliope House who are working on their own projects to break away from the societal pressures put on women to look or act a certain way.

There's also a feminist terrorist organization called Jennifer, though really they consider what they're doing counter-terrorism to all of the expectations and rules and violence perpetrated against women. As these two story-lines begin to come together there's a tonal shift I did not anticipate, though that may be my fault since I only ever seem to get a vague gist of what a book will be like before I pick it up. I thought this would be a satire of diet culture and obsession with weight and appearance and policing women's bodies and yes, it is that, BUT ALSO it's about a terrorist organization that's killing rapists and kidnapping people and making demands on magazines that they have to feature mostly naked men instead of women.

These were two interesting premises that sort of got muddled when they were brought together. I feel like things would have been better if the focus had been on one or the other. Or maybe even if one was a spin-off of the other. I liked the idea of both of them, and the beginning of the book I was 100% there for but as it went on, I went down to like 70% there. And then...

So if it's on sale or maybe you can get it from the library, check it out.

Gif rating:

Title quote from page 196, Location 2833

Walker, Sarai. Dietland. Mariner Books, 2015. Kindle

To the elements be free

I was browsing NetGalley for some new titles when I saw a new book by Margaret Atwood. So naturally I clicked on it to get so more information and what do you know? The very first line in the description is "William Shakespeare's The Tempest retold as Hag-Seed".

Naturally I had to request it and I felt pretty lucky when I was approved. And it's pretty great.

The story is both a re-telling of The Tempest as well as the story of a disgraced director putting on a production of The Tempest.

Felix was the Art Director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival taking an avant garde approach to Shakespeare. (A Winter's Tale but Hermione is a vampire! Macbeth with chainsaws! Pericles in space!*) And now his latest creation would be The Tempest and he's been putting his heart and soul into this production moreso than others due to his own personal demons. His wife died in childbirth and his daughter, Miranda, died when she was three. This would be a tribute to them and his opportunity to protect Miranda on stage the way he couldn't in real life.

What to do with such a sorrow? It was like an enormous black cloud boiling up over the horizon. No: it was like a blizzard. No: it was like nothing he could put into language. He couldn't face it head-on. He had to transform it, or at the very least enclose it.

But everything is taken from him by his business partner Tony who has been working behind the scenes to get Felix removed from his position. The Festival wants more popular, mainstream plays. And musicals.

Felix is fired and disgraced. Humiliated. He pushes himself into exile, spending years thinking about revenge and imagining his Miranda is alive again. Eventually he decides he has to get out there and, under the name Mr. Duke, he takes up position at a correctional facility, helping to create an arts program. Naturally they put on Shakespeare plays, with the class being a surprise hit among the inmates, despite some people who are less than thrilled with the program.

Prisons are for incarceration and punishment, not for spurious attempts to educate those who cannot, by their very natures, be educated.

If you're familiar with The Tempest, you can probably guess where the story goes, though there are still some tense moments. If you don't know it, well don't worry cos Atwood provides a summary. Though really, even if you aren't familiar with the story, it's still an entertaining read. And of course it's Atwood so the writing is beautiful.

This was great and if you like Atwood or Shakespeare, you should pick it up. Even if you don't, check it out anyway.

Gif rating:

*Though that probably would have made more sense than an A.R.T. production of Pericles I saw awhile back. At one point it included a woman dressed in a beigh body suit, pink sarong, and gorilla mask dancing across the stage. I'm sure there was some meaning behind it. I just never figured it out.

Title quote from location 3844

Atwood, Margaret. Hag-Seed. Crown Publishing, 2016. NetGalley. Pub Date Oct 11, 2016

Cheap books, you know I love you

So I wrote recently about how I bought some new books, cos that's always fun. And then I was thinking about how I could write a review (Hag Seed review up next!) instead I could write about BookSliced.com, which lets you set up alerts when ebooks reach a certain price point. So that's pretty swell and while I don't get the emails too often (probably cos I set the alert prices really low) it's a nice surprise when I get an email telling me about some book I had completely forgotten about is now on sale.

My and Tom's reactions to me buying more books

I've tried other sites like BookBub but that one just sends you an email with currently discounted titles and most of them...they are not my thing. And really a lot of the ones I can find browsing through BookSliced are in a similar "not my thing" group. That is also probably why the alerts are sporadic.

The one complaint I do have with BookSliced is OMG THE TEXT SEARCH IS SO BAD. I can't figure out exactly how the text search is working but searching for titles or authors is really hit or miss. It doesn't seem to recognize quotes or some other basic Boolean operators and almost regardless of what I type in, I tend to get a lot of self-help and romance titles that don't seem to contain any of the words I searched for.

So yeah, search takes some work but hey, discounted books, that's super fun.

Alright, fine. I'll get working on reviews.

August Reading Wrap Up

Oh man, summer. She's pretty much over now, isn't she? Not that I guess it means that much without school being a thing, but still, it's sad when summer is over. Even though I don't do summery things like "go to the beach" or "be in the sun in general". August was not too much different than July but I did take a mini-staycation. And by staycation I mean extended mental health break cos of July and mid-August was just the first point I could take the time. And I still ended up doing some work because hahaha of course. But my reading was an improvement over July and I even managed to squeak some resolution books in there, so win.

So hey, stat time!

Total books read

5

The Luckiest Girl by Jessica Knoll (3 stars)

The Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler (4 stars)

The Wander Society by Keri Smith (3 stars)

A Pleasure and a Calling by Phil Hogan (3 stars)

Hag Seed by Margaret Atwood (4 stars)

Total pages

1,618

Fiction

80%

Female authors

80%

White authors

80%

US authors

60%

Book format

ebook - 40%

hardback - 20%

paperback - 40%

Where'd I get the book

gift - 20%

Just the Right Book - 40%

Kindle - 20%

Netgalley - 20%

Rereads

0%

Review books

20%

Readalong/Bookclub

0%

Blogger reco

40%

Translation

0%

Books by decade

1990s - 20%

2010s - 80%

Books by genre

Creativity - 20%

Dystopia - 20%

Lit Fic - 20%

Thriller - 40%

Resolution books

60% - NOT NONE!

The Parable of the Talents was published before 2000 and is by a person of color. 

A Pleasure and a Calling and Hag Seed are both by non-US authors (UK and Canada, respectively).

Here's to fall and pumpkin spiced things.