![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Reading Wednesday
Dec. 20th, 2023 06:58 amJust finished: Sacrifice: Themes, Theories, and Controversies by Margo Kitts. This was good and useful. I was hoping it'd go more into the parallels between historical/mythological human sacrifice and contemporary warfare, but that is more of a me problem and not really within the scope of the book.
Currently reading: Ammonite by Nicola Griffith. I don't remember who recommended this to me, but it's really good. It's a gendercide novel by someone I think is a cis woman, so I wouldn't normally seek it out, but it's in space and the mechanism that kills off all the men seems messy enough that it doesn't feel gender essentialist. It makes for a cool setting: a remote planet colonized by humans several centuries before the story takes place, but a virus has killed off all the male colonists and many of the female ones, and they've been out of contact with the rest of humanity. The planet, Jeep, is now under quarantine and no one who goes there is allowed to leave. Marghe, an anthropologist, is sent there to study the "natives" and test out a vaccine to the virus, while being acutely aware that the company she works for wants to recolonize or exploit the planet. It's very well-written and the look into cultures that have diverged, because of distance and minimal resources, from known human cultures, is cool.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Two chapters this week! The first was just harrowing—I knew what was coming, and ended up reading it while doing the equivalent of watching a scary movie while holding my hands over my eyes. The Pequod finds a pod of whales, including calves, and murders and maims its way through it, including a mother whale and her nursing calf. It is incredibly upsetting—the bonds of love and play in the pod are deftly depicted. These are intelligent beings who care for each other, and the crew even pet the calves, who don't know what the boat is here to do, like dogs. But they're ultimately resources to be exploited. It's horrific.
The other chapter is a weirdly racist aside about whale harems and slutty male whales, which would be kind of funny if I wasn't still reeling from the previous one.
Currently reading: Ammonite by Nicola Griffith. I don't remember who recommended this to me, but it's really good. It's a gendercide novel by someone I think is a cis woman, so I wouldn't normally seek it out, but it's in space and the mechanism that kills off all the men seems messy enough that it doesn't feel gender essentialist. It makes for a cool setting: a remote planet colonized by humans several centuries before the story takes place, but a virus has killed off all the male colonists and many of the female ones, and they've been out of contact with the rest of humanity. The planet, Jeep, is now under quarantine and no one who goes there is allowed to leave. Marghe, an anthropologist, is sent there to study the "natives" and test out a vaccine to the virus, while being acutely aware that the company she works for wants to recolonize or exploit the planet. It's very well-written and the look into cultures that have diverged, because of distance and minimal resources, from known human cultures, is cool.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Two chapters this week! The first was just harrowing—I knew what was coming, and ended up reading it while doing the equivalent of watching a scary movie while holding my hands over my eyes. The Pequod finds a pod of whales, including calves, and murders and maims its way through it, including a mother whale and her nursing calf. It is incredibly upsetting—the bonds of love and play in the pod are deftly depicted. These are intelligent beings who care for each other, and the crew even pet the calves, who don't know what the boat is here to do, like dogs. But they're ultimately resources to be exploited. It's horrific.
The other chapter is a weirdly racist aside about whale harems and slutty male whales, which would be kind of funny if I wasn't still reeling from the previous one.
