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.

Most recent book acquisitions

I want to write a post. But I don't feel like writing a review. I can't focus right now. Even these three sentences have taken me a good few minutes to write, though a lot of that is because I started Stranger Things. Instead of writing a real post I figured hey, I bought a bunch of books recently. Let's post about that instead.

I go through phases with book purchasing, getting a stack and going on a buying ban till I read them, repeat. Recently I just finished the unread pile I had, so it was clearly time I buy a bunch. It's never my intention to suddenly buy a bunch of books. It just sort of...happens that way. We just found ourselves at some bookstores (Just tripped and fell into them, I'd say) and then there were a few sales going on. So why don't we take a look at the latest additions.

Bottom to top we've got

Romeo And/Or Juliet by Ryan North. Another Shakespeare choose-your-own-adventure book (you know, those old things). My friend had gotten me To Be or Not To Be which I never actually reviewed because how can you actually be DONE with a choose-your-own-adventure book? Anyway, I saw this and decided yes, I need more of this in my life. It was the right choice.

China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan. The sequel to Crazy Rich Asians which was a very good time so hey, why not read more about people who "have more money than god"? Besides, CRA sort of ended assuming you would read the sequel so I'm doing what I can.

Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore. Always more Moore. I've been waiting for this to come out in paperback and look at that, it did. I also happened to forget to bring a book with me, so naturally I had to pick up a couple others. Didn't have a choice, really. It's the sequel (another sequel!) to A Dirty Job one of my fav Moore's about collecting souls and things maybe not going so well.

Tales of Burning Love by Louise Erdrich. I need to expand my reading and I like the Erdrich I have read (even if it's suuuuuper intense) and since this is a bunch of short stories building to a larger narrative I thought that would be fun. Also it's on sale and those are swell.

Above that is my Kindle cos I got a few eBooks as well.

Hag Seed by Margaret Atwood. I got approved for a NetGalley for Atwood's new book (YAY) that is about a guy putting on a production of The Tempest with prisoners.

The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (wink) It was on sale and I like sales and people have been talking about this one for awhile so hey, why not?

What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe (aka, guy that does XKCD webcomic) I've been wanting to pick this up for awhile but it was always so expensive. I hope it works well as an ebook cos I had been waiting for an actual copy to go on sale but then this version was cheap and I like cheap.

Maybe this new stack will inspire me to get ahead on reviewing. But for now, I'm gonna keep watching Stranger Things.

It is easier to be than to become

I picked up Blackass as something to read on our vacation, though it is too bad I had it as an ebook instead of some other form because it means the cover was hidden from fellow cruisers and I'm pretty sure it would have started up some interesting conversations. I was looking for something that would be funny and that would help my reading resolutions since I could be doing better there. And I'd heard good things about it so that's always good. Plus the book gave Tom an excuse to quote Happy Endings at me.

Furo Wariboko awoke this morning to find that dreams can lose their way and turn up on the wrong side of sleep.

The story is a spin on The Metamorphosis except instead of waking up as an insect, the main character Furo wakes up as a white man. Except his ass, which turns out is still black. He has a job interview scheduled in Lagos and instead of stopping to consider what this super strange transformation means or how it could happen, he is super concerned with making it to his interview. So he sneaks out of the house and begins is journey into the city.

He gets strange looks on the street, a white man being uncommon, especially one with a Nigerian name and accent. But his whiteness allows him access into a world that he otherwise would be locked out of. Though that doesn't mean everything is going perfectly for him.

No one asks to be born, to be black or white or any colour in between, and yet the identity a person is born into becomes the hardest to explain in the world.

In general I liked the story, especially the parts about life in Lagos, although the story doesn't really go anywhere. Though there are some some odd detours. There's a subplot with this person Furo meets immediately after his change that keeps popping back up to narrate chapters. The become obsessed with Furo's story (which sort of makes sense cos that story is nuts) but doesn't really have much connection with Furo. They do track down his family, who are understandably worried about their missing son.

Gif rating:

Word to the wise, if you want to Google this book, make sure to include the word "novel" or something similar with it. Or else your results will not be book related. Which yeah, I get that should be obvious but sometimes you're just looking up a ton of book covers and don't think of that.

Title quote from page 261

Barrett, A. Igoni. Blackass. Graywolf Press, 2016. Kindle