Reading... Thursday 3.14.19
Mar. 14th, 2019 05:18 pmI missed doing this on its proper date because I woke up yesterday morning with a super uncomfortable, red, swollen and weeping right eye, and I then had to spend most of the day either asleep, or with my face covered by lightly microwaved hot pads or a stylish eye patch. It was quite the party. It's basically recovered now, although it still feels a bit light-sensitive.
HOWEVER, I wanted to check in and note that I am slowly chipping away at my goal of actually finishing some things and reducing my number of in-progress projects. Accountability!
On Tuesday I finished The Air You Breathe, by Frances De Pontes Peebles, which I have previously written about here and here. Comparing my final takeaway to what I wrote in those two entries, it's interesting to me how my perception of Dores's sexuality shifted throughout the book. I'd say that, as the book evolves, she comes to read as much more clearly bisexual, although still with a preference for women over men. She spends her entire life passionately in love with one woman—even decades after Graça's death, both Dores and her writing partner Vinicius, whom she marries when she is in her 50s and he is in his 60s, remain in love with the dead woman's memory—and early in the novel, before Dores learns the trick of separating her sexual adventuring from her pining after Graça, that creates the impression that she's not sexually into men, something that doesn't prove true as the novel goes on. That effect of maturing into a sexuality ill-fittedly independent of one's yearning emotional attachment, is an interesting effect. A after some of the recent conversations around here about bisexuality in fiction, I think many folks might find it refreshing to encounter a bi character who loves one other person obsessively for her entire life... even if it might have been a healthier decision to let Graça go already, damn. If there's one thing you can't accuse Dores of being, it's flighty with her deep affections.
In any case I continued to really appreciate Peebles's depiction of the relationship between Dores and Vinicius, which is artistically passionate, incidentally sexual, and bound by their mutual frustration with and adoration of the same woman. Also, for me personally, the section set in WWII-era Hollywood was super fun to read, since I read quite a bit about LA history while I lived there. Overall, a bit soapy and nothing groundbreaking, but a solidly enjoyable queer historical read.
I also made progress on Anjali Arondekar's For the Record: On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India, which I excerpted here in a post whose comments section continues to be a laugh riot, and an informative one. (Seriously, y'all are amazing <3) Progress through this book is very slow because I keep wanting to pause and record passages here, and it's actually a bit difficult to excerpt because I'm five chapters into a nuanced theoretical argument about approaches to archival methodology that I'm usually trying to sort of cut around in the excerpts. However, I've finished with the dildo chapter and am now onto the last chapter, which concerns the gap in the Kipling archive shaped like the Mutiny of 1857. It continues to be totally fascinating & dense with thought-provoking material.
Reports have neither been confirmed nor denied, but I when was under the weather yesterday I... may have also started Indra Das's The Devourers, which was recced to me by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shadaras in the comments to my post about the poor treatment of imperialism in The Magicians. This was Bad of me as I'm not supposed to be starting new things, but I was down to one eye and I felt like something a little lighter than the history of trains in Nova Scotia or the Canadian volunteer nursing corps in World War I. Gay anti-imperialist Kolkata werewolves seemed like the ticket. So far it's a bit explain-y, but not bad; there are a lot of story-related trances and wandering around tents at nighttime, catching cabs and discoursing on the role of history. I'm only about a chapter in, so time will tell.
Oh! and I started reading Dira Sudis's Hawks and Hands, which is a Due South hockey AU recced bygreywash, because we are going to a hockey game on Saturday!! Which will be the first sporting event I have ever, in my entire life, attended in person! (Following close on the heels of the first sporting event I had ever, in my entire life, watched all the way through on TV, which was the game we watched on Tuesday night as a tutorial for me to learn about this "hockey" thing.) I am getting a kick out of how much better I understand the hockey parts of this story now than I would have on Monday; I now (sort of) understand what is meant by words and phrases like "line mate" and "offside" and "the crease," and every time I come across one I point and cackle. So luckily I haven't been reading this story anywhere but in the comfort of my own home.
... That's technically a positive balance of books started versus books finished, BUT. I don't count fanfic in my tallies because there are a bunch of stats I can't know about it (e.g. author nationality, race, & gender). So as far as recordkeeping is concerned, I am breaking even. /o\
HOWEVER, I wanted to check in and note that I am slowly chipping away at my goal of actually finishing some things and reducing my number of in-progress projects. Accountability!
On Tuesday I finished The Air You Breathe, by Frances De Pontes Peebles, which I have previously written about here and here. Comparing my final takeaway to what I wrote in those two entries, it's interesting to me how my perception of Dores's sexuality shifted throughout the book. I'd say that, as the book evolves, she comes to read as much more clearly bisexual, although still with a preference for women over men. She spends her entire life passionately in love with one woman—even decades after Graça's death, both Dores and her writing partner Vinicius, whom she marries when she is in her 50s and he is in his 60s, remain in love with the dead woman's memory—and early in the novel, before Dores learns the trick of separating her sexual adventuring from her pining after Graça, that creates the impression that she's not sexually into men, something that doesn't prove true as the novel goes on. That effect of maturing into a sexuality ill-fittedly independent of one's yearning emotional attachment, is an interesting effect. A after some of the recent conversations around here about bisexuality in fiction, I think many folks might find it refreshing to encounter a bi character who loves one other person obsessively for her entire life... even if it might have been a healthier decision to let Graça go already, damn. If there's one thing you can't accuse Dores of being, it's flighty with her deep affections.
In any case I continued to really appreciate Peebles's depiction of the relationship between Dores and Vinicius, which is artistically passionate, incidentally sexual, and bound by their mutual frustration with and adoration of the same woman. Also, for me personally, the section set in WWII-era Hollywood was super fun to read, since I read quite a bit about LA history while I lived there. Overall, a bit soapy and nothing groundbreaking, but a solidly enjoyable queer historical read.
I also made progress on Anjali Arondekar's For the Record: On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India, which I excerpted here in a post whose comments section continues to be a laugh riot, and an informative one. (Seriously, y'all are amazing <3) Progress through this book is very slow because I keep wanting to pause and record passages here, and it's actually a bit difficult to excerpt because I'm five chapters into a nuanced theoretical argument about approaches to archival methodology that I'm usually trying to sort of cut around in the excerpts. However, I've finished with the dildo chapter and am now onto the last chapter, which concerns the gap in the Kipling archive shaped like the Mutiny of 1857. It continues to be totally fascinating & dense with thought-provoking material.
Reports have neither been confirmed nor denied, but I when was under the weather yesterday I... may have also started Indra Das's The Devourers, which was recced to me by
shadaras in the comments to my post about the poor treatment of imperialism in The Magicians. This was Bad of me as I'm not supposed to be starting new things, but I was down to one eye and I felt like something a little lighter than the history of trains in Nova Scotia or the Canadian volunteer nursing corps in World War I. Gay anti-imperialist Kolkata werewolves seemed like the ticket. So far it's a bit explain-y, but not bad; there are a lot of story-related trances and wandering around tents at nighttime, catching cabs and discoursing on the role of history. I'm only about a chapter in, so time will tell. Oh! and I started reading Dira Sudis's Hawks and Hands, which is a Due South hockey AU recced by
greywash, because we are going to a hockey game on Saturday!! Which will be the first sporting event I have ever, in my entire life, attended in person! (Following close on the heels of the first sporting event I had ever, in my entire life, watched all the way through on TV, which was the game we watched on Tuesday night as a tutorial for me to learn about this "hockey" thing.) I am getting a kick out of how much better I understand the hockey parts of this story now than I would have on Monday; I now (sort of) understand what is meant by words and phrases like "line mate" and "offside" and "the crease," and every time I come across one I point and cackle. So luckily I haven't been reading this story anywhere but in the comfort of my own home. ... That's technically a positive balance of books started versus books finished, BUT. I don't count fanfic in my tallies because there are a bunch of stats I can't know about it (e.g. author nationality, race, & gender). So as far as recordkeeping is concerned, I am breaking even. /o\
