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Title: A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies
Author: Alix E. Harrow
Published: Apex Magazine, 2018
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 15
Total Page Count: 314,890
Text Number: 1091
Read Because: fan of portal fantasy trope, available for free online
Review: There's a point where books (or, well, short stories) about books tip into self-congratulatory rhapsodizing, and a point where well-intended social justice slips into a white savoir complex, and this stands at the intersection of both. I love it in theory, and the increasing inclination in portal fantasy metanarratives to interrogate the ethics of escapism is hugely relevant to my interests. And in practice, it's sympathetic—but also sanctimonious and twee in ways that directly undermine the intended themes.
Title: A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories
Author: Flannery O'Connor
Narrator: Marguerite Gavin
Published: Blackstone Audio, 2010 (1949)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 250
Total Page Count: 315,300
Text Number: 1093
Read Because: personal enjoyment, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Ten stories. Flannery O'Connor is pinnacle southern gothic, entrenched in that setting and its social tension. There's an impressive ambiguity and grim intersectionality that, while dated, is surprisingly socially-conscious (read: this has aged well). Awfulness exists within, despite, and in concert with social prejudice. There's a trend of awful, privileged people getting their comeuppance, but a secondary thread runs through of undeserved suffering which targets vulnerable people. Uneasy and/or cathartic, both have a thundering tension—but dark humor modulates the tone, and there's a pervasive humanity—it's not quite hope, but the fact that everyone, no matter how awful, is a complete, complex person creates the potential of hope ... if there's someone there to shoot us every minute of our lives. What a fantastic collection—engaging, engaged; it holds up to my positive impression of O'Connor from high school lit courses.
(Ratings are a farce, 5 stars I reserve for life-changing books and it's hard for short story collections to earn them; anyway, this is like 4.5.)
Title: The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays
Author: Esmé Weijun Wang
Published: Graywolf Press, 2019
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 215
Total Page Count: 315,515
Text Number: 1094
Read Because: reviewed by Possibly Literate, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review:12 essays of the author's personal experience with schizoaffective disorder, institutionalization, chronic illness, and life within/around these experiences. ( This one got long. )
Author: Alix E. Harrow
Published: Apex Magazine, 2018
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 15
Total Page Count: 314,890
Text Number: 1091
Read Because: fan of portal fantasy trope, available for free online
Review: There's a point where books (or, well, short stories) about books tip into self-congratulatory rhapsodizing, and a point where well-intended social justice slips into a white savoir complex, and this stands at the intersection of both. I love it in theory, and the increasing inclination in portal fantasy metanarratives to interrogate the ethics of escapism is hugely relevant to my interests. And in practice, it's sympathetic—but also sanctimonious and twee in ways that directly undermine the intended themes.
Title: A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories
Author: Flannery O'Connor
Narrator: Marguerite Gavin
Published: Blackstone Audio, 2010 (1949)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 250
Total Page Count: 315,300
Text Number: 1093
Read Because: personal enjoyment, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Ten stories. Flannery O'Connor is pinnacle southern gothic, entrenched in that setting and its social tension. There's an impressive ambiguity and grim intersectionality that, while dated, is surprisingly socially-conscious (read: this has aged well). Awfulness exists within, despite, and in concert with social prejudice. There's a trend of awful, privileged people getting their comeuppance, but a secondary thread runs through of undeserved suffering which targets vulnerable people. Uneasy and/or cathartic, both have a thundering tension—but dark humor modulates the tone, and there's a pervasive humanity—it's not quite hope, but the fact that everyone, no matter how awful, is a complete, complex person creates the potential of hope ... if there's someone there to shoot us every minute of our lives. What a fantastic collection—engaging, engaged; it holds up to my positive impression of O'Connor from high school lit courses.
(Ratings are a farce, 5 stars I reserve for life-changing books and it's hard for short story collections to earn them; anyway, this is like 4.5.)
Title: The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays
Author: Esmé Weijun Wang
Published: Graywolf Press, 2019
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 215
Total Page Count: 315,515
Text Number: 1094
Read Because: reviewed by Possibly Literate, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review:12 essays of the author's personal experience with schizoaffective disorder, institutionalization, chronic illness, and life within/around these experiences. ( This one got long. )
