Reading Wednesday

[sabotabby]

Just finished: And the Stars Will Sing and The Stolen by Michelle Patricia Browne. Did you know that when you read the omnibus edition of something, you can break it up into its composite books to not only give the author more reviews, but up your book count on Goodreads? Not that I'm doing that. :)

Anyway, the first one is great; the second one levels up in both quality and weirdness. The last story in the book is a tribute to Orwell, about an English grad who can only get a job bowlderizing Shakespeare into compliance with a new dominant religious movement that prioritizes harmony and placidity over conflict. Not that this feels familiar or anything like that. I'm excited to see where this series goes (there are two more books) but I'm taking a break because I got a paper hold come in from the library.

Currently reading: Crow Winter by Karen McBride. This is an odd one in that while it's quite good, I'm not sure who it's for. The pace and storyline is feels litfic—while, halfway through, there is a mystery and conflict of sorts, a leisurely amount of time is spent on slice of life and exploring the quiet melancholy of the main character and her mother dealing with her father's death a year on. But the writing feels almost YA. I'm enjoying it, but it's impossible for me to tell what kind of book it is.

Red Enlightenment by Graham Jones. I guess I'm on a theme this year, which is questioning my own atheism??? in a political and cultural sense, at least, not a theological sense. I'm still theologically an atheist, which doesn't mean that I don't think religion is useful sometimes. Jones agrees. This is a strange book, heavy on building up the philosophical concepts that allow him to marry Marx to spirituality to the Enlightenment. I will admit that anything to do with metaphysics vs. process goes right over my head (I am just barely able to grasp materialism vs. idealism as a debate that affects my life in any way at all). But I do find it compelling in a sense that if you're talking about mass movements, you have to reconcile with the idea that for most of said masses, spirituality plays some role in their lives. And Jones is one of a very few number of Marxists I've read to actually interrogate the implications of that.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Nothing this week. We are adrift in a heartless ocean and I've had to resort to shitposting whale pictures on Tumblr.

Comments

[blogcutter]

Wow, that first story you describe (last one in omnibus edition by Michelle Patricia Browne) is so topical for Freedom to Read Week. As it happens, John Ibbitson in his talk last night spoke of that very thing: bowdlerization of well-known works deemed inflammatory or otherwise unsuitable for a particular readership. He posed the following hypothetical question: If the bowdlerized version of a classic were the ONLY one available to us, is that better than nothing or is it making a bad situation even worse? I think my answer in most cases would be it's worse, because the bowdlerized version is simply NOT the same work. That said, I'll admit to having resorted to Coles Notes when studying for high school English exams, though only in combination with reading the original right through at least once and usually more. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if the high school editions were in fact the original text or whether it was already bowdlerized!

[sabotabby]

Mine were the original text (I know because I learned about bowlderizing in high school, likely from an English teacher). Definitely in this world it's worse as they're not just removing things like "country matters" but the very core of the stories and their conflicts.

But then you get into, say, the reissues of Roald Dahl where the Oompa Loompas aren't quite the same level of racist caricature, and then the hamfisted recent attempt at censorship, and it gets a bit more nuanced. I'm of the "don't change things that weren't changed in the author's lifetime, and add historical context if you need to" school, personally.

One of the things I loved about this story was that it wasn't just a straightforward "the evil government wants us to censor the sex"—which, granted, is timely, but it spoke to things that are liberal and even left preoccupations, especially amongst younger tenderqueer types. The religion in the story is not as straightforwardly evil as it first appears and there's just a lot of messy layers, really. It's very good.

[blogcutter]

I always enjoy your Reading Wednesday columns. And I've been meaning to ask you: How do you decide what to read next? Do you have specific criteria for the mix of old classics versus books that just came out, fiction versus nonfiction and so forth? How many books do you usually have on the go at any one time?

[sabotabby]

AHHH I am so excited to be asked. :)

I generally have a long list of holds in the library, based on what I hear about, and whenever those holds come in, they bump anything else. So while I try to prioritize certain things (BIPOC and particularly Indigenous authors, fiction, recent), I am to some degree at the whims of when other people finish reading stuff. I very seldom buy books unless they're either by someone I know or the library doesn't have them.

In terms of how many books: There is usually one thing that I read before going to bed (which is when most of my reading happens), and when I teach English, one thing that I'm reading in school during our silent reading breaks. Then I am also reading Moby Dick through Whale Weekly, which sends chapters in real time, so I read that when it comes in. Ideally I'd focus on one book at a time but my life isn't like that right now.

[rydra_wong]

Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Nothing this week. We are adrift in a heartless ocean and I've had to resort to shitposting whale pictures on Tumblr.

Whale Day, Whale Day!!!

[sabotabby]

IT'S A WHALE DAY!!!

[rydra_wong]

Also, from Festivids:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/53053879

(Major spoilers.)

[sabotabby]

Oooo!

[rydra_wong]

And https://archiveofourown.org/works/53434966 and more! Apparently Festivids 2023 was very good for Moby Dick vidding.

[sabotabby]

I hope the Whale Weekly person knows what a public service they did for the fandom.

[radiantfracture]

I think K. taught Crow Winter one term in lit. I feel like she had similar thoughts about it.

I'm theologically an atheist who essentially experiences the world as a mystic. The question of spirituality comes up much more often in the last few years because it's a big part of Indigenous education as it's practiced at the college.

[sabotabby]

I think K. taught Crow Winter one term in lit. I feel like she had similar thoughts about it.

I'm glad I'm not alone. I'm enjoying it but I do find it strange in that regard.

I'm theologically an atheist who essentially experiences the world as a mystic. The question of spirituality comes up much more often in the last few years because it's a big part of Indigenous education as it's practiced at the college.

Huh, yeah that makes a lot of sense. For me it's similar, with the added bonus of there are times when I have to be really Jewish, even though I'm the Worst Jew, and when people are doing a genocide in the name of all Jews, it's one of those times where I have to get really Jewish. If that makes any sense.