Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book of at least 24 poems. #MeToo: Rallying Against Sexual Assault and Harassment, A Women's Poetry Anthology, edited by Deborah Alma. This is a stellar collection of mostly British poets, most of whom I wasn't familiar with . The poems are intense, relatable, well-crafted, moving, and infuriating. The book is loosely divided into sections, beginning with childhood experiences of flashers & creeps, and continuing with everyday harassment, domestic violence, sexual assault, being disbelieved and silenced, etc. A recurring theme is the way women learn to downplay and excuse their own experiences of abuse and harassment. (Roxane Gay's prose anthology Not That Bad also deals with this theme.) For instance, Amy Rainbow's poem "Enough" lists some of her experiences from age 14 on, with gropers, catcallers, peeping Toms, harassers following her on the street, and more, but nothing that was technically assault or rape. At age 46, she concludes: fortunate all my stories small but always wary and always wondering whether they are enough for me to say me too This theme is echoed in the final section, which is about rising up and speaking out. Sarah Doyle's poem "#MeToo" similarly describes the gauntlet from street harassment to date rape, and concludes: Enough tears. Enough silence. It was all of us but we never knew. Sisters, take my hands, we can say it together: me too me too me too.
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Hidden Villains: Betrayed includes my story "Manic Pixie Demon Girl." Can a straightlaced devil and a manic pixie demon girl just be fiends? Popsugar Writing Challenge category: A queer romance. Big Gay Wedding, by Byron Lane. The setup for this book sounded like a fluffy, over-the-top comedy. Barnett comes home to his family's farm in Louisiana, and his mother Chrissy is hopeful that he's going to stay and run the farm. Instead, Barnett tells her he's marrying his boyfriend Ezra, a teacher who talks in Californianisms about "vibes" and "being present." Chrissy is still having trouble accepting Barnett being gay, and she's looking for every possible fault in Ezra. Soon Ezra's family arrives: his overbearing alcoholic mother, his silent father, and his twin sister, who wants to throw the biggest, gayest wedding ever. There is a lot of comedy with these larger-than-life characters, and the wedding itself is a tour de force, but there's also a lot of serious drama. Chrissy has to get past her homophobia and her dreams for Barnett that he doesn't share. There's a lot of grace and forgiveness given, not only to Chrissy, but to others who treat Barnett homophobically, including one who tries to sabotage the wedding. And Barnett and Ezra have to face and overcome their doubts about each other before making this lifelong commitment. And there's quite a bit about grief. One of the side characters is terminally ill and had been keeping it secret. And there are two heartbreaking scenes of pet death. I should really know better than to read any book where an elderly pet in introduced early on. Popsugar Reading Challenge category: An author's 24th book The Fifth Elephant, by Terry Pratchett This category caused much rending of garments and gnashing of teeth on the Goodreads message boards; it's surprisingly hard to nail down the exact order of an author's books, figure out if all of them "count" (what about novellas, collaborations, translations?), and hope you know all their pen names. But as near as I can tell, this is Terry Pratchett's 24th book. I love the Discworld series, and the ones about the City Watch are particular favorites. The elephant itself is a bit of a red herring; it's a reference to a Dwarven myth. This book brings Commander Sam Vimes to the underground community where the Dwarfs are choosing a new Low King. Naturally, there are complications, including the possible theft of the Scone of Stone, which is needed for the coronation. The City Watch is a truly diverse organization, including two Dwarfs, Cheery Littlebottom and Captain Carrot. Technically, Carrot is a six-foot-tall human, but he was adopted by Dwarfs. Cheery is a biological Dwarf, but she finds less acceptance among traditional Dwarfs than Carrot does, because she uses female pronouns and sometimes wears dresses. Dwarven tradition requires that both men and women be called "he" and dress accordingly. The clash between tradition and change is at the heart of this book. Other City Watch members include a zombie, a vampire, a werewolf, a rather endearing troll, and...whatever Nobby Nobbs is. Favorite moment is when Nobby and a female colleague are doing a sting which requires Nobby to wear a dress. "...you know what people call men who wear wigs and gowns, don't you?" "Yes, miss." "You do?" "Lawyers, miss." Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book about women's sports, and/or by a woman athlete Women in Baseball: the Forgotten History, by Gai Ingham Berlage Most of us know the "League of Her Own" story of women's baseball during World War II. This book delves into less familiar territory, including baseball teams at elite women's colleges in the late 1800s. (Imagine sliding into home in those long dresses.) The schools emphasized socializing, and downplayed competitiveness, to make it seem more ladylike. In the early 1900s, there were a few women who played on men's teams, though some were mainly viewed as novelties. The first woman umpire escaped some of the abuse that umpires typically endured, as it was considered improper to curse in front of a woman in that era. More recent woman umpires have had to endure sexual harassment. The author profiles an interesting assortment of players, umpires, and a team owner. She also discusses the 1974 court decision that opened up Little League to girls, but she repeatedly bemoans girls being "shunted" into softball rather than baseball. The book came out in 1994, before women's softball had reached its current popularity, but even so I couldn't figure out why the author was so consistently negative toward softball. Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A self-published book. Lucky Stars, by H. Claire Taylor. For a moment I thought I'd stumbled across a parallel-universe version of The Cosmic Turkey: a space comedy with an accidental captain, a misfit crew with a deadly first officer, and even an alien matchmaking service. No real mystery to any of that, of course: accidental leader and misfit crew are popular tropes, and the comedy potential of dating services is limitless. Except of course that the Turkey books are G-rated, while The Alice Luck Space Adventures are hilariously naughty. (The fact that The Star-Crossed Pelican's dating service is called LuckyStar probably amuses me more than it should.) Alice Luck is a young Texas woman with no job, $80,000 in college debt, a mostly-useless degree in animal husbandry, and a boyfriend who's annoyingly perfect. She gets recruited by aliens to work for their matchmaking service, which helps endangered alien species to breed. Her misfit crew includes Susy "Vel Machiavelli (the aforementioned deadly first officer), Dan Zone (a sort of human-armadillo hybrid who's the genius every SF book needs) Caid (holographic therapist), and the ship' computer, Allura, which makes every comment sound like it's narrating a porn video. The stakes are high: Alice and crew will either get rich, or be banished to to a miserable faraway planet. There are deadly enemies that Alice's employer conveniently forgot to warn them about. The innuendoes fly fast & furious, though mercifully we don't get all the details of alien sex. The plot is delightfully ludicrous, with a satisfying resolution as Alice discovers strengths she didn't know she had. The book is well-written and well-edited, exactly the opposite of the stereotype of self-published books - and it's exactly the kind of story traditional publishers are hesitant to take a chance on. Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book whose title is a complete sentence. The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump's America, by Adam Serwer. This is a collection of Serwer's essays from The Atlantic during the Trump years, with a post-Trump introduction for each piece. Serwer pulls apart comforting myths, like the "kindly General Lee," the better class of immigrants who came "the right way," or the Civil War being about anything other than slavery. He repeatedly shows the parallels between the backlash against Reconstruction, and the place our country is now. It's always tempting to say cruelty isn't "who we are as a country," but it would be more accurate to say it isn't all of who we are. None of what we're seeing today is new. In many cases, cruel policies are actually counterproductive. It costs less to house homeless people than to install "hostile architecture" like spikes under bridges and have police push them from one block to the next. It costs less to treat addicts than to incarcerate them. And the anti-immigrant fervor has left the farming industry scrambling for labor, to the point where they're trying to roll back child labor laws. And, with many of the essays written around the time of the George Floyd killing and protests, Serwer notes the incalculable cost of having no checks or accountability for the people who are nominally supposed to protect the public. In the title essay, Serwer describes seeing lynching photos at the Museum of African-American History and Culture. What drew his eye was not the victims but the killers, proudly grinning for the camera. Cruelty - even to the point of murder - is a bonding experience for bullies. Think of the Steubenville rapists showing off photos, or the laughter, "indelible in the hippocampus," that Christine Blasey Ford described hearing from her assailants. Trump is instinctively good at making bullies feel good, making them feel like they belong, which is why he breezed through gaffes that would have been career-ending for most people, like mocking a disabled reporter. His following was never really about him; it's about a side of America that we don't like to acknowledge exists. It's an uncomfortable read, but with a lot of aha moments. Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A bildungsroman (coming-of-age story) World's End, by Upton Sinclair Last year I picked up Sinclair's A World to Win, not realizing it was number 7 in a series about a secret agent. This year I backed up to the first book, which covers Lanny Budd's life from ages 13 to 20. Sinclair clearly knew where he was going with this series, as the seeds are already planted for the man Lanny will become. Lanny grows up with his American socialite mother on the French Riviera, with occasional visits from his father, a wealthy American arms manufacturer. Lanny's uncle is a radical who takes him to see how impoverished people live, which forces the youth to rethink his view of the world. (Lanny, like Sinclair, will become a committed socialist.) As a teen, Lanny has two close friends, Rick (British) and Kurt (German). When World War 1 breaks out, both Rick and Kurt serve in their country's armies. Living in France, Lanny sees the devastation wrought on the country, and understands his French stepfather's desire to volunteer for the army. At the same time, Lanny believes Kurt is a good person, and carries on an illicit correspondence with him. A major piece of the story is the conference where the terms of the peace treaty were hammered out. Lanny, now nineteen or twenty, works as a secretary for one of the participants, and gets a close-up view of the power struggles and colonialism among the victor countries; none of the participants come off as the "good guys." There are other hints of where the later books will take Lanny. His stepfather is an artist; Lanny will someday be an art dealer. When one of his friends is in danger, Lanny has a vision of him; Lanny will have a lifelong fascination with spiritualism, though always with a touch of skepticism. And his involvement with socialists drops Lanny into a dangerous situation. Lanny has trouble lying his way out it, and ironically thinks that he could never be a successful spy. Which, of course, he will. Sinclair's writing style has a modern, unpretentious feel, and is always an easy read. While this book gives the setup for the series, it's also a satisfying read as a standalone. which is a good thing, because the books in this series run to 800-1000 pages, so who knows when I'll get to the next one. Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book that takes place in the snow Snowpiercer 1: The Escape, by Jacques Lob, illustrated by Jean-Marc Rochette This is the graphic novel that inspired the movie and TV show. All three have different plots, but the same premise: a worldwide catastrophe had plunged the planet into arctic conditions, and the survivors - possibly the last humans on earth - have stayed alive aboard a luxury train. The allegory isn't subtle: the front cars are occupied by the privileged few, the middle cars belong to working people, and the tail cars are are crowded with people living in starvation and filth, forbidden to enter the rest of the train. Proloff, a "tail rat" from the squalid tail cars, breaks into a middle car and is captured. Adeline, an idealistic middle-car dweller, tries to advocate for him. She's part of a movement that wants to integrate the cars, but Proloff isn't concerned with revolutions - he can't focus on anything except getting himself out. Adeline wants to change his mind about that. The story is as grim as you'd expect, but perfectly drawn, and affecting. Politics & Current Events:
Wayne Besen, Lies With a Straight Face: Exposing the Cranks & Cons Behind the “Ex-gay” Industry Shakirah Bourne & Dana Alison Levy, Eds., Allies: Real Talk About Showing Up, Screwing Up, and Trying Again Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism Philip S. Gorski & Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy Gabrielle Jackson, Pain and Prejudice: How the Medical System Ignores Women — And What We Can Do About It Lyz Lenz, Belabored: A Vindication of the Rights of Pregnant Women Ijeoma Olou, Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America Maureen Ryan, Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood Nancy Schwartzman & Nora Zelevansky, Roll Red Roll: Rape, Power & Football in the American Heartland Rebecca Solnit & Thelma Young Lutunatabua, Eds., Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story From Despair to Possibility Some powerful feminist books in there. Burn It Down is about #MeToo, and about the structural barriers that keep women and POC out of power in Hollywood. Roll Red Roll is about the infamous rape of a high school girl in Steubenville, and the complicity of school personnel and others in protecting the assailants. Pain and Prejudice is about the medical establishment’s tendency to discount women’s symptoms, exclude women from studies (this one’s changing, somewhat), and fail to research or treat issues that mostly affect women. Belabored was written too soon — it talks about the ways law and custom encroach on women’s freedom during pregnancy, but the book came out before the Dobbs decision that radically changed the landscape in the US. Allies is aimed at white people, straight people, etc., who want to fight systems of oppression. White Fragility discusses why it’s so hard to make any progress with this; changing the world is more appealing than changing yourself. The Flag and the Cross zeroes in on the intersection of far-right Evangelical Christianity and fascism. I have a weird, inexplicable fascination with the “ex-gay” movement. So does Wayne Besen, who wrote Anything But Straight in the movement’s heyday in the early 2000’s. Lies With a Straight Face traces the movement’s decline, an assortment of scandals, and the exporting of extremism to places like Uganda which now has a “kill the gays” law. Not Too Late is a collection of essays about choosing hope and action in the struggle with climate change. The contributing authors include Pacific Islanders who have seen the effects up close. Memoir: Rita Mae Brown, Rita Will: Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser Shirin Ebadi, Iran Awakening Primo Levi, Moments of Reprieve: A Memoir of Auschwitz Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad Richard Wills, Bloody Social Worker I tend to prefer memoirs that are about bigger issues. Shirin Ebadi was a judge before the Iranian revolution stripped most rights away from women. She saw signs of hope when the book was written in 2007, but I’m afraid she was overly optimistic. Primo Levi’s Moments of Reprieve captures the rare moments of humanity behind the walls of a concentration camp. (Still a grim read, to be clear.) Bloody Social Worker is about bigger issues, but it’s definitely a from-the-trenches view. I usually love Twain, but The Innocents Abroad didn’t do much for me. I did enjoy Twain’s sly commentary on the way the same saint relics showed up in every cathedral they visited. Rita Will dishes on being an out lesbian author in the 1970s, and Brown’s affairs and breakups with famous women. She mined her unique family history for a lot of the material in her early books. Poetry: Margaret Atwood, Dearly June Bates, The Lavender Haze Bryan Borland, Ed., If You Can Hear This: Poems in Protest of an American Inauguration Jericho Brown, Please Jeffrey Lamar Coleman, Ed., Words of Protest, Words of Freedom: Poetry of the American Civil Rights Movement and Era Rita Dove, Selected Poems Nikki Giovanni, Bicycles: Love Poems and Make Me Rain Hattie Gossett, The Immigrant Suite: Hey Xenophobe! Who You Calling a Foreigner? Alvin Greenberg, Why We Live With Animals Marilyn Hacker, Names Honor Moore, Red Shoes Pablo Neruda, Five Decades: Poems 1925-1970 Sapphire, Black Wings & Blind Angels Katharine Washburn, John S. Major, & Clifton Fadiman, Eds., World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse From Antiquity to Our Time I have two preferences for poetry; I like it (1) comprehensible, and (2) actually about something. A couple of really good books of political poetry are on this list: If You Can Hear This and Words of Protest, Words of Freedom. I’ve reached the age where a lot of my early favorites, like Atwood and Hacker, are writing a lot about mortality and aging. Nikki Giovanni still writes love poems, and they have the feel of poems written in maturity, with a lot of life experience behind them. Jericho Brown is a recent favorite of mine. Please is his first book, and while I think he blossomed in the later volumes, I definitely see the roots in this one. World Poetry is one of those giant tomes with poems from ancient Sumer and China, progressing though the millennia to the late 20th century. (While I finished it in 2023, I’m not sure what year I started it.) There’s something oddly consoling about seeing that people in a very different place & time still wrote about love, grief, and the corruption of politicians. Plays: Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House A Doll’s House was very ahead of its time. I knew the general premise of Waiting for Godot, but reading the whole thing just had me saying “huh?” Maybe I’d get it if I saw it performed. Misc Nonfiction: Judy Batalion, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos Jon Butler & Bruno Vincent, Do Ants Have Assholes? And 106 of the World’s Other Most Important Questions Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger Rebecca Hall (Hugo Martinez, Illustrator), Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts (graphic novel) Erik Loomis, The History of America in 10 Strikes Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, On Repentance & Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World Wake and The Light of Days are different styles but a similar theme: women rising up against oppression when victory wasn’t possible but resistance still mattered. The History of America in 10 Strikes actually talks about a lot more than 10 strikes; it’s a pretty thorough history of the strike as a weapon of labor in America. Rage Becomes Her is about anger as the forbidden emotion for women, the one we’re always supposed to keep under control. And if all that’s too much heavy stuff for you, Do Ants Have Assholes? is a very silly parody of “Ask Dr. Science” books. |