Reading Wednesday

[sabotabby]

Didn't quite get through: Antisocial by Andrew Marantz. ARRRGH the short-term hold expired as I was almost done. Now I'm back on the regular hold list. On the plus side, I know how it ends. :( :( :(

Currently reading: The Testaments by Margaret Atwood. Another short-term hold but I'm binging it so hard that I'll be done in time. I know Atwood is Problematic (and I have only a 50% enjoyment rate with her novels—poetry is a different story) and I didn't think that the Handmaid's Tale really needed a sequel but apparently it did and I kinda sorta like the sequel better o no. The different viewpoints, especially Aunt Lydia's, expand the world of Gilead in some truly fascinating ways, and the insight into how people are coopted into fascist beliefs and movements, and how they resist them, is to me a stronger story than the original (which does fall into the 50% of Atwood novels that I loved). 

I couldn't watch the show past the first season, by the way. It's the kind of thing that hits too close to home to be actually something I want to watch, even though I think it's excellent. I'm better reading a book about it, though tbh I've already had nightmares reading this.

Comments

[kore]

The teenaged girls were okay (I didn't think Atwood got their voices right) but AUNT LYDIA, AUNT LYDIA, AUNT LYDIA, holy fucking shit what an anti-heroine. Someone said she was like a John le Carre spymaster general character, and I loved that. She's so conflicted and flawed and fucked up and I just loved her. I understand the actress from the show does the audiobook! O M G. I also love stories where the perfect soldier is burning with hate for the system and determined to bring it all down and if that includes their death, okay GREAT. And all the worldbuilding details!

....the show....I thought it was fantastic for S1 and have that on DVD, and then I thought "They're gonna fuck up going beyond the book," and lo and behold, they did. It is pretty much actual torture porn. oh well.

[lizbee]

YES, AGREED. The teenagers read like YA cliches executed by someone who is too snobbish about YA to realise they're even cliche, but Aunt Lydia's scenes were AMAZING.

[kore]

I thought the Gilead teen almost nearly came off, but the other one really, really didn't.

BUT AUNT LYDIA!!! <3333 Just having the Tale and the Testaments in conversation with each other, "June" and Aunt Lydia, HFS. Yes.

[sabotabby]

I don't mind the teenage voices; I liked the Gilead one because she was just off-putting enough; the other one a bit less so as she was more of a blank slate.

I am biased because Part 3 of the novel I'm writing is a teenage girl living under a dictatorship and being young enough when it happened to not quite know if it's normal or not, and I'm scared to write her POV, and it needs to be above YA quality at the very least.

But anyway, Aunt Lydia is phenomenal.

[kore]

LOL, the YA plot had all these twists! and turns! and then got action!packed! and I was just like, HELL WITH THIS, PEGGY, GET ME BACK TO AUNT LYDIA SCHEMING AND VAGUELY THREATENING PEOPLE SHE'S HAVING TEA WITH.

[mistersmearcase]

After S1 it kind of slowly morphs from genuinely dread-inspiring show about what we could very easily wake up to, to "we need to keep making more seasons so this is going to be more of a cliffhanger-filled adventure thing." I mean it's still hard to watch but in a way, less hard to watch. I sort of can't imagine what they're doing to squeeze another season out of it and wonder if there's any chance they'll do the adult thing and say "this has been good but this is the last season."

[sabotabby]

That's in a sense worse? Because then it's water cooler TV but about rape.

[mistersmearcase]

Yep, pretty much that, I think. I mean there's still cathartic outrage in there, but the balance somehow shifts toward "prime time soap."