Holla fellow bibliophiles and b0ok sniffers! We are already halfway through August, and, as I've been struggling with a bad upper respiratory infection and bronchitis, its been a rough week for me to find the energy to read or even get out of bed. But I'm feeling better after some antibiotics, so I figured I would give it the old college try today. Please forgive me if the reviews are somewhat terse, I'm not at 100 percent yet.
I agree that this is total BS, and we, as a society, should be focused on irradicating the patriarchy and its toxic masculinity.
Spoiler:
It’s the Patriarchy
A
few things in life are guaranteed: death, taxes, and that every so
often, the Discourse decides to fuel itself by musing about why
men don’t read novels.
(And no, it’s not because book
cover design alienates men,
though I do have a 1,000-word essay in me about that for another
day.) This issue of men and fiction is not a new question, or even,
frankly, an interesting one. Since the 18th century, fiction
has been aimed at and increasingly ruled by leisured women,
and thanks to the magic of capitalist patriarchy in which men are
seen as most successfully male when they are most visibly productive,
men are incentivized to affirm their masculinity by distancing
themselves from any cultural product that is primarily associated
with women.
Men
receive a centuries-old message that if you want to be sigma
(greetings, fellow kids!), you better stay on the grindset, and that
means only reading nonfiction, if you read at all. And it’s a huge
bummer! Fiction is fun and edifying. Men should get to enjoy all of
its benefits, and the rest of us should get to enjoy a world in which
men aren’t so constrained by narrow definitions of masculinity.
It’s almost like patriarchy is bad for everyone! The next time
someone feels the urge to write a “Why don’t men read fiction?”
piece, I hope they’ll pick up Liz Plank’s For
the Love of Men instead
and redirect their time and energy to the real problem.
This looks fascinating. I hope to get the chance to watch it.
Movies:
Regretting You
Allison Williams will star in Regretting You
https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscVPZkLgI6a5idhtxGA~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6mUC5HwpoMLg-gVdw,
an adaptation of Colleen Hoover's 2019 novel, Deadline reported.
Directed by Josh Boone (The Fault in Our Stars), the project will be
written by Susan McMartin.
The news hit as Sony's theatrical
release of Hoover's It Ends With Us
adaptation, starring Blake Lively and
Justin Baldoni, was in the midst
of a big opening weekend, Deadline
noted. In addition, an adaptation of
her 2018 novel Verity, from writer
Hillary Seitz and producers Nick
Antosca and Alex Hedlund, is currently
in development.
I really enjoyed the first season of this YA book inspired TV show, so I'm excited for the second season to debut next year.
TV: Percy
Jackson & The Olympians, Season 2
Additional cast members have been
announced for season 2 of Percy
Jackson and the Olympians
https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/x/pjJscVPZw7gI6a5idkpzEg~k1yJoKXv-hs8x6mUC8LwpoMLg-gVdw,
based on Rick Riordan's bestselling YA book series, Deadline
reported.
Disney revealed who will be playing the
Gray Sisters: Sandra Bernhard as
Anger, Kristen Schaal as Tempest, and
Margaret Cho as Wasp. Production
on Season 2 just began in Vancouver.
The new season will follow Percy
Jackson (Walker Scobell), Annabeth
Chase (Leah Sava Jeffries), and Grover
Underwood (Aryan Simhadri) "as
they embark on a new adventure based on
The Sea of Monsters, the second
book of Riordan's series." The
cast also includes Daniel Diemer as Tyson
the Cyclops, Percy's paternal
half-brother.
I'm so very disappointed in JKR, not only for being a transphobic asshat, but also for using her fame to defame a female Olympic boxer who is, ironically, not a trans person. For SHAME JKR!
J.K.
Rowling Named in Olympic Boxer’s Cyberbullying Suit
J.K.
Rowling has a long,
ugly history of transphobic comments—the
reason Book Riot hasn’t promoted her books or products for several
years—and has now been named
in a criminal complaint filed by Algerian boxer Imane Khelif .
Rowling will be investigated for “acts of aggravated cyber
harassment” for messages she posted to her more than 14 million
followers on X (formerly Twitter) accusing Khelif, who won gold in
the women’s 66kg boxing competition, of being a man who was
“enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head.”
Khelif was assigned female at birth and does not identify as
transgender (not that any of this would behavior would be acceptable
if she did). Khelif, who should have been able to revel in her moment
as an Olympic athlete at the top of her game, instead spent much of
the Games fighting a bad-faith dispute over her eligibility that was
driven by misinformation and conspiracy theories. May her efforts
succeed.
Though this is unsurprising, it fills me with shame for publishing companies...come on, it's the 21st century, for crying out loud! WTF?!
Publishing
Stays Racist
If
you thought publishing turned a new leaf after Black Lives Matter
protests generated a reckoning with systemic racism across
industries, think again. Professional artists and writers are talking
about how racism and stereotyping continue
to find their way onto the covers of books authored by BIPOC writers
,
and how debut writers in particular are discouraged to push back and
advocate for themselves in publishing spaces where they’re told
their books won’t succeed without certain visual stereotypes and
signaling. Think of the countless color blob covers you’ve seen on
shelves, or covers featuring happy people of different hues
metaphorically or even literally embracing. Artistic choices like
these might seem harmless on their face, but they often belie a
mentality that books by these writers are not marketable unless they
scream BIPOC CONTENT INSIDE, no matter the actual content of the
book, and a default to marketing to a very particular demographic
(read, white).
Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell is a YA-ish romance novel about a woman who isn't identified as such, though all her actions scream AUTISTIC, and her best friend/first love from high school, and how they meet up years later and finally give their love a chance. Here's the blurb:
Back in high school, everybody thought Shiloh and Cary would end up together . . . everybody but Shiloh and Cary.
They were just friends.Best friends.
Allies. They spent entire summers sitting on Shiloh’s porch steps,
dreaming about the future. They were both going to get out of north
Omaha—Shiloh would go to go to college and become an actress, and Cary
would join the Navy. They promised each other that their friendship
would never change.
Well, Shiloh did go to college, and Cary did join the Navy. And yet, somehow, everything changed.
Now
Shiloh’s thirty-three, and it’s been fourteen years since she talked to
Cary. She’s been married and divorced. She has two kids. And she’s back
living in the same house she grew up in. Her life is nothing like she
planned.
When she’s invited to an old friend’s wedding, all Shiloh can think about is whether Cary will be there—and whether she hopes he will be. Would Cary even want to talk to her? After everything?
The answer is yes. And yes. And yes.
Slow Dance
is the story of two kids who fell in love before they knew enough about
love to recognize it. Two friends who lost everything. Two adults who
just feel lost.
It’s the story of Shiloh and Cary, who everyone thought would end up together, trying to find their way back to the start.
Though I've read two other books by Rowell, each complete with quirky characters, I wasn't prepared for how much I disliked the female protagonist, Shiloh. She was mean and weird and seemed to connect pain with sexuality/love. For example, instead of wanting to just kiss Cary, she wanted (and did) to bite him (like an aggressive toddler) hard enough to bruise. Her pride in not seeming to understand his feelings for her was also bizarre. I'm not quite sure why he found her so attractive, considering the number of times she rejected him or made him feel like there was something wrong with him for wanting to be with her, (and not trusting him to know his own heart/feelings), but he consistently mooned over Shy, as he called her, throughout the book. I felt that there were a number of redundancies in their love story as well, which slowed the plot down considerably. The prose was as awkward as Shy and Cary's encounters, and I felt the sex scenes were too odd to be enjoyable. I'd give this book a B, and recommend it to those who still carry a torch for their high school crushes.Maude Horton's Glorious Revenge by Lizzie Pook is a historical mystery/adventure about a woman who seeks to find out the reason behind her sister's death at sea. Here's the blurb: A young woman searches for the truth about her
sister, who boarded a ship headed to the frozen Arctic and never
returned in this “engrossing historical mystery” (The Washington Post).
Twenty-year-old Constance Horton has run away from her life in Victorian London, disguising herself as a boy to board the Makepeace, an expedition vessel bound for the icy and unexplored Northwest Passage of the Arctic. She struggles to keep her real identity a secret on the ship, a feat that only grows more difficult when facing the constant dangers of the icy North.
Even more dangerous than the cold, the storms, and the hunger, are some of the men aboard—including the ship’s scientist Edison Stowe. He’s watching Constance, and she knows that his attention could be fatal.
In London two years later: Maude Horton is searching for the truth. After being told by the British Admiralty that her sister’s death onboard the Makepeace was nothing more than a tragic accident, she receives a diary revealing that Edison Stowe had more of a hand in Constance’s death than the returning crew acknowledged.
In order to get the answers she needs, Maude shadows Edison. She joins him on a new venture he’s started to capitalize on the murder mania that has all of London in a frenzy—a travel company that takes guests around the country via train to witness public hangings—to extract the truth from him in any way possible.
Twenty-year-old Constance Horton has run away from her life in Victorian London, disguising herself as a boy to board the Makepeace, an expedition vessel bound for the icy and unexplored Northwest Passage of the Arctic. She struggles to keep her real identity a secret on the ship, a feat that only grows more difficult when facing the constant dangers of the icy North.
Even more dangerous than the cold, the storms, and the hunger, are some of the men aboard—including the ship’s scientist Edison Stowe. He’s watching Constance, and she knows that his attention could be fatal.
In London two years later: Maude Horton is searching for the truth. After being told by the British Admiralty that her sister’s death onboard the Makepeace was nothing more than a tragic accident, she receives a diary revealing that Edison Stowe had more of a hand in Constance’s death than the returning crew acknowledged.
In order to get the answers she needs, Maude shadows Edison. She joins him on a new venture he’s started to capitalize on the murder mania that has all of London in a frenzy—a travel company that takes guests around the country via train to witness public hangings—to extract the truth from him in any way possible.
The fact that Edison Stowe is a psychopathic murderer isn't actually spelled out, though the chapters from his POV show him to be a narcissist and racist/classist scam artist whose only interest in life is making money and gaining glory for himself. People are only to be used for whatever they can give him, be it a place to stay or money to extract. Between his evil and Maude's lack of backbone, I found myself being frustrated with this sad tale, and wishing that Maude would put the pieces together and get revenge on Stowe sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, it doesn't work out that way, and Stowe is killed by a scumbag moneylender, not by Maude herself. So I'm not sure why the author called the book a "glorious revenge" when it wasn't glorious at all. I'd give this sad and grim tale about what can happen to women who step outside of their traditional roles, a B-, and recommend it to anyone who likes tales of women who dressed as men historically and met bad ends.
The Darkness Within Us by Tricia Levenseller is the sequel to the Shadows Between Us, both historical romantasy that's brimming with amazing costumes and sets, somewhat like a fantasy version of Bridgerton. This book is also beautifully made, with stamped edges and gorgeous cover art. Here's the blurb: The prose was deliciously fun and the plot slipped along like skates on ice, swift and elegant. I loved the enemies to lovers trope here, and though I found Chrysantha's mean-spirited attitude towards everyone somewhat off-putting, it was good to see her grab hold of the olive branch with her sister and try to mend their relationship. I also liked that C cared deeply about her servants and how they were treated. I felt that it humanized her and took some of her sharp edges off. I also respected her quest to have a home and money of her own, so that she could be independent and run her life as she saw fit, especially after the death of the lewd and crude old man she was married to in the beginning of the novel. It was a tightly written novel, which is becoming more and more rare these days, and I would give this story an A, and recommend it to anyone who enjoys enemies to lovers stories.
Best Served Hot by Amanda Elliot is a breezy romantic comedy ebook that I picked up for a song on Amazon. I expected an enemies to lovers story, but I didn't expect a One percenter Nepo baby with a trust fund who is also a jackass vs a poor working freelance food blogger who has had to work and scrape for everything she has suddenly falling in love over expensive plates of food in NYC. Here's the blurb: Elliot's prose is lush and descriptive, as Julie discovers each new bite of flavorful food at restaurants all over NYC. But just as she's getting somewhere with her vlog, along comes Bennett the snob to be stuffy and classist and ruin all her chances at having a steady job reviewing restaurants. Worse, he got the job because he's an upper class (read: rich) white guy who the old white guys think will bring in new viewers/readers to the stodgy newspaper food section by ripping off Julie's style and wit. UGH. Misogyny strikes again. But, as usual, since this is a romance, Julie suddenly goes from being righteously outraged to being putty in the hands of Bennett, because he's just so *dreamy* (insert eye roll here). Apparently all it takes to get a smart, savvy woman under rich white guy's control is nice pecs and a fine layer of body hair. I was glad, however, that Julie quit her assistant job and went to work for her best techie friend, and built her vlog up so that she could do what she loved full time. However, I don't think any of her new life would have been possible had she not moved into Bennett's fancy apartment. But whatever. I'd give this fun book a B+, and recommend it to anyone who has had to overcome a lot of hurdles on the way to fulfilling their dreams.
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