Reading Wednesday

[sabotabby]

Just finished: New Moon Magic: 13 Anti-Capitalist Tools for Resistance and Re-Enchantment by Risa Dickens and Amy Torok. Really fun, weirdly synchronous with some of the things going on in my life right now. What else can I say?

Read and Then Burn This by Ryszard Merey, This is a dark, strange little novella that is part of Rysz's Seasons series (it follows a + e 4ever, but each of them are standalones). It's about a young twink dancer, Ly, who's at a crossroads in his career after an on-stage accident; he's recovered, but he has a job teaching and a constellation of weird hangups that prevent him from moving on. He meets Colin, the far-too-perfect uncle of one of his students, and the two strike up a romance, but it's complicated by his roommate, Valerie. Valerie is an awkward, uncomfortable woman, unappealing to him at both a personal and physical level, but he's drawn into a strange relationship with her anyway that challenges his ideas around sex and gender. It is beautifully and intensely written and lacks catharsis or easy answers. 

Enkidu Is Dead and Not Dead / Enkidu está muerto y no lo está: An Origin Myth of Grief / Un mito de origen de la pesadumbre by Tucker Lieberman. My friend wrote a book of poems about the Epic of Gilgamesh and like. Didn't tell me??? for several years??? It's really good—a drawn out exploration of loss and grief in poems that echo at least the translations I read of the original. Plus it's bilingual so I could practice my Spanish. 

Currently reading: Doppelgänger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein. Finally. It's only a 7-day hold so hopefully I can read it in time. Naomi Klein is the No Logo and Shock Doctrine author and activist, who is really cool. Naomi Wolf wrote The Beauty Myth and hangs out with Steve Bannon and shrieks about vaccines. The Good Naomi often gets mistaken for the Other Naomi, kind of famously so, and she uses this as a jumping off point to discuss how the far-right is a dark funhouse mirror version of reality, with often many of the same concerns that get weaponized to further degrade democracy. It's so good. It's like 600 pages but I'm devouring it.

The Trail of Nenaboozhoo: and Other Creation Stories by Bomgiizhik Isaac Murdoch. This is a very cool book that I got for free because sometimes people give me cool things. It's a gorgeously (colour!) illustrated adaptation of Nenaboozhoo stories, some of which are written in Ojibwe next to the English translations. The rhythm and structure of the storytelling is vastly different than settler stories and based in the oral tradition, making for a fascinating and often surreal experience, and the modern translation includes a fair bit of cheeky humour.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville. A little bit more about whale oil, and the Pequod is off again in search of more whales. Goddamn we're nearing the end of this thing, aren't we?

Comments

[frandroid]

> 7-day hold

*37-day hold, unless there are special fines for 7-day holds, and that they can track what is what... :P

[sabotabby]

Nah it's an ebook. They disappear after 7 days :( :( :( I had that happen with David Graeber's Debt.

(I guess unless I disconnect my iPad from the internet so it doesn't narc on me to the scary librarians at TPL?)

[frandroid]

Ohhh I see. It's possible that the expiry date is pre-set, in which case you'd have to disable automatic time synchronization, and then change your time to the past... If the ebook reader app was smart it would refuse to acknowledge the "new" date if it was suddenly in the past, but there's only one way to see if it's actually that smart...

[sabotabby]

Oof. That's a lot of work. I'm just gonna read fast.

[ioplokon]

Excited to finally see your full thoughts on Doppelganger! Read fast!!

[sabotabby]

As fast as I can!

I feel weirdly called out? Like it draws attention to how no one is immune from conspiratorial, paranoid, and unnuanced thinking. Her bit about how we who mask feel like we're better than people who don't—which like, might be true, but it's not helpful in terms of getting more people to mask.

[ioplokon]

Yeah, I think of this a lot about the complaints that some laws are 'government overreach' - which usually isn't false but also, possibly gives up too much ground to people who want to deregulate everything and have no compunctions about letting the private sector do whatever it wishes. It's basically a cheat to avoid making the arguments on the specific case. But it's often pretty strategic to use it, so...

[sabotabby]

Yeah. And I am terrible with strategy, especially when I know I'm right and/or am personally affected by it. I just can't shut myself off. The closest I managed was feeling like the Emergencies Act was a bad idea, and that's due more to my strong opinions on the Emergencies Act always being a bad idea.

[ioplokon]

Yeah, I tend to focus more on like care ethics and taking care of obvious & immediate needs... which otoh is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff but otoh, I do think convincing ppl that others care about them and will help them in times of trouble is a pretty big building block towards creating the conditions where we can enact progressive policies?

Then again, not like it's helped much :(

[greylock]

It's so good. It's like 600 pages but I'm devouring it.

Her books are like that! I ripped through mine in four days, so I reckon you can too!
I mean, it's a 300-page book without the spacing and gumph at the back.

she uses this as a jumping off point to discuss how the far-right is a dark funhouse mirror version of reality,</>

OMG. Twitter is PEAK this right now. More than usual. (Tucker related obviously).

[sabotabby]

Hopefully. I mostly just don't have that many hours in the day.

I'm so glad I'm off Twitter.

[greylock]

My physical copy is about 350 pages. You got this!

I'm so glad I'm off Twitter.

In all seriousness, you would be ALL FURIOSA ALL THE TIME these days.

[radiantfracture]

I'm really interested in the spiritual thread, not least because I have such an incoherent, semi-hostile and yet persistently fruitful relationship to spirituality.

[sabotabby]

Mood.

[radiantfracture]

The Trail of Nenaboozhoo: and Other Creation Stories by Bomgiizhik Isaac Murdoch.

I would like this y/n?

[sabotabby]

Oh fuck yes you would.

Also I think a good thing to use in your epic class, given that Nenaboozhoo stories are absolutely an epic but they don't work like Western epics.

[radiantfracture]

There's a W̱SÁNEĆ flood story I might read with the Gilgamesh and Biblical ones. The version I have seems to have a strong Biblical influence, though, and I don't want to create false parallels.

[sabotabby]

This has—not surprisingly—a flood story as well.

[radiantfracture]

The flood, ironically, seems to be a place we have all agreed to find common ground.

Maybe because it's the one orally recorded historical event you can convince Christians actually happened?

That and the earthquake out here I guess.