Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Atlanta Burns: Nothing good's gonna come out of this, Atlanta Burns. Nothing

I picked up a copy of Chuck Wendig's Atlanta Burns when it was on sale without actually reading what it was about because there is a level of trust there. I've yet to be disappointed in anything of his that I have read* so if I see something come up, I'm going to give it a whirl.

Once again, I'm glad I did. Atlanta Burns is about the titular teenage girl dealing with some high school bullies. Lest you think that sounds very after-school-special, know there are also neo-nazis and dog fighting and a fair amount of violence because this is Wendig we're talking about.

Atlanta Burns has had some horrors in her past and she is determined to not be a victim. She hopes to just keep her head down and just get through school, but she can't abide by others being tormented either and thus she finds herself helping out a few of the school outcasts. And without getting into plot details, let's just say things escalate. There's tension, there's excitement. Edge-of-your-seat kind of stuff.

Wendig has a skill in making characters feel fleshed out. They don't always make smart choices but they feel like real people making real choices in extreme situations. Atlanta is tough but she's still a teenage girl and there is a vulnerability behind her actions.

Warning that the book is violent and that there is dog fighting so there is some violence around the dogs so if that bothers you steer clear. Why did violence against a dog bother me more than violence against people? Well, because dogs are way better. Obviously.

This wasn't my favorite Wendig (Miriam Black, you are the BEST) but I did really enjoy it. Kick ass, teen girl who kicks all kinds of ass, yes please.

(Also, I love that cover. Wendig has some good covers.)

Gif rating:
*What's that? A link roundup of all of the Wendig I have read and reviewed? If you insist.
Blackbirds
The Blue Blazes
Mockingbird
Invasive
Zer0es

Title quote from page 196, location 2392

Wendig, Chuck. Atlanta Burns. Skyscape, 2015. Kindle

Friday, November 17, 2017

Sex Object: I know I'm meant to be the bigger person

Sex Object is a memoir of resignation. Valenti writes about her life and mostly her experience being treated as a sex object before being treated as a person. It's an experience many women face and she focuses on how this sort of behavior can wear a person down. Some women who write online face an onslaught of constant abuse and are often expected to respond with sarcasm and humor.
Pretending these offenses roll off of our backs is strategic--don't give them the fucking satisfaction--but it isn't the truth. You lose something along the way.
This is not the most uplifting story. There's no silver lining and no real redemption. She starts with cat-calling and guys pressing up against her on the subway, going through her own sexual experiences, and eventually having a daughter and worried about her navigating this world. How your identity gets caught up in this treatment as a sex object.
A high school teacher once told me that identity is half what we tell ourselves and half what we tell other people about ourselves. Bu the missing piece he didn't mention--the piece that holds so much weight, especially in the minds of young women and girls--is the stories that other people tell us about ourselves. Those narratives become the ones we shape ourselves into.
The book doesn't offer solutions how to handle or respond to this kind of treatment. It's why it's a memoir instead of a self-help book. It's instead and opportunity to just acknowledge what happened, how it is tiring and how a funny quip isn't always the answer.
I know I'm meant to be the bigger person; I know you're not supposed to hate people because hate is bad for your soul. But so is getting called a cunt every day for ten years. 
It's hard to get excited over this book. It's good, and I'm glad I read it, but it's not a happy read.

Gif rating:
Title quote from page 141

Valenti, Jessica. Sex Object: A Memoir. Harper Collins, 2016.

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Reading Slump-date

Get it? It's like update but because it's a slump, it's a slump-date.

Anyway, I'm apparently in a bit of a blogging slump to go along with the reading slump. OK, that's not entirely true. It's mostly because the next book I need to review is Sex Object by Jessica Valenti and while it was good and I enjoyed it, it is a bit of a downer and I am not in the mood for downer stuff right now. Because everything in the world is a super downer right now? Yeah, probably.

I am getting some reading done. I decided the answer here was to go with a favorite so I'm re-reading Lamb and super loving it. Hopefully this will snap the slump and I can get to all those other books I want to read. Or I just reread another favorite. Life is hard.

Or whatever, I'll keep watching a bunch of Stranger Things and Futurama. 

Thursday, November 9, 2017

Reeeeeaaaading Sluuuuump

I want to read. Something. But I don't know what.

I have books. I have lots of books. (Too many? Yeah probably, but that's a different post.)

I started Aurora Leigh for a super awesome fun-time readalong but that is a whole long piece in verse and I tried but I can't.

I was going to read Where The Line Bleeds by Jesmyn Ward and while Sing, Unburied, Sing was excellent, it is also somewhat of an emotional commitment and I'm not there right now.

I'm about 100 pages into Tales of Burning Love by Louise Erdrich and I have nothing bad to say about what I've read so far, but I am also not super into it at the moment.

So right now I don't know what I do want to read. I just know what I don't want to read. Which is not super helpful.

And that's where I am. I suppose I shall listen to the Hamilton soundtrack on repeat until I figure out what to read. A real sacrifice, I know. (Like I'm not listening to the soundtrack on repeat anyway...)


Monday, November 6, 2017

Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race: There is no justice. Just us.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A few factors go into determining if I'll read a book. Am I already familiar with the author? Have I heard good things around the interwebs (but really, mostly from fellow bloggers where I get roughly 80% of my book recos)? And, while not all the time but often enough that's def a major reason, is the title and/or cover eye catching? That was certainly the case here. 

I would like to first address the title. No, this is not racist against white people, that's not a thing.* No, it's not reverse racism.
Besides all that, Eddo-Lodge talks about the irony that as soon as she published her blog post of the same title, all she did was talk to white people about race. Basically, if the title is bothering you, maybe you should just calm down a bit and try to figure out why.
Song book
ANYWAY, so I wanted to read this book based on the title and the fact that there are obviously a lot of problems around race and I need to better educate myself so let's see what this is about. What I didn't realize is that this is a book about race in the UK, which is something that I know even less about than race here in the US. 

Eddo-Lodge starts talking about how the history of POC people in the UK is not something you come across unless you're in a college class specifically on the topic. But if you're in grade school (or whatever the UK equivalent is, I didn't learn that part, shhhh) good luck getting a history about black people in your own country. Whatever is learned seems to be focused on shit going down in America. And that's sort of messed up. Not because learning about history elsewhere is bad. But as she says,
While the black British story is starved of oxygen, the US struggle against racism is globalised into the story of the struggle against racism that we should look to for inspiration - eclipsing the black British story so much that we convince ourselves that Britain has never had a problem with race.
And that, of course, is a problem. If you don't have knowledge of an issue, how will you fix it? 

From here she has essays that tackle structural racism and white privilege and being bi-racial and "color-blindness" and intersectional feminism and the role of race and class in society. 
yes, yes we are
If this stuff IS your jam, then outside of the history stuff, there wasn't a lot of new ground here. That doesn't mean it isn't worth the read cos there are a lot of excellent points and she does a good job of putting these things into words and providing examples that illustrate the problem. Like talking about the "well-meaning but guilty-feeling white liberal" that is Hermione Granger when dealing with S.P.E.W. (Oh Witch, Please would be so proud).

If this is the type of stuff that you are already seeking out, read this. If this isn't the type of stuff you typically read, maybe that's even more of a reason you should pick this up. If you aren't already familiar with structural racism or intersectionality or why "I don't see color" is not helpful, perhaps this would be a good thing to read.

Gif rating:
*You can be prejudice against white people, but given basically all of the power structures are in white people's favor, not racist. Also this book is not prejudice against white people either so hush.

Title quote from location 2455 but she is quoting Terry Pratchett. But I like the line and the title is so long I wanted something shorter for the post title so I went with it. 

Eddo-Lodge, Reni. Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017. NetGalley

Friday, November 3, 2017

October Reading Wrap-Up

This has not been a particularly fall like October. It hasn't been that cool out for the most part which one part of me wants to enjoy and other part of me is terrified because hahaha we're all going to die. But hey, other than that, fine month. Didn't do too much Halloween-y either, but whatchya gonna do? Just get to the stats? Yeah, good idea.

Number of books read
5
The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
On Writing by Stephen King
It's All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World's Family Tree by A.J. Jacobs
Everything's Eventual by Stephen King
Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge

Number of pages
1,704

Fiction
40%

POC authors
20%
US authors
80%

Book formats
ebook - 40%
paperback - 60%

Where'd I get the book
Chain bookstore - 20%
Indie - 40%
NetGalley - 40%

Reread
40%

Review book
40%

Books by decade
1990s - 20%
2000s - 20%
2010s - 60%

Books by genre
Horror - 20%
Lit fic - 20%
Memoir - 40%
Sociology/history - 20%

Resolution books
40%
Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge is by a POC, non-US author
On Writing by Stephen King was published in 1999 so riiiiight on the border but still counts as published before 2000

Alright so not bad. I mean, not GREAT but not bad. Let's see how February November (not sure why I decided to skip a bunch of months) goes