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juushikaTitle: The Feather Pillow / El Almohadón de Pluma
Author: Horacio Quiroga
Translator: Margaret Sayers Peden
Published: 1909
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 10
Total Page Count: 391,505
Text Number: 1483
Read Because: mentioned in Moreno-Garcia's afterwords to Mexican Gothic, can be read here
Review: This is pretty great. It has an absolute embarrassment of atmosphere; I love the way it navigates the is-it-or-isn't-it metaphorical elements of illness as a symptom of a marriage. Punchy ending.
Title: Annie on My Mind
Author: Nancy Garden
Published: Open Road Media, 2017 (1982)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 235
Total Page Count: 391,740
Text Number: 1484
Read Because: reread, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Teenage girls from different schools meet at a museum, and their sudden friendship will blossom into a romance. The summary is nothing special; what matters about Annie on My Mind is that it was a YA novel published in 1982, that it was for many readers—including me!—their first lesbian novel. I'd read other queer books, but mostly of the Last Herald Mage sympathetic/tragic queer male protagonist variety; this is distinctly about women and about female desire, about sex, about navigating homophobia and building queer communities in the real world. And rereading lives up to that memory: the small school exploration of homophobia is claustrophobically on the money, but the romance, it's humanity and miscommunications and desire, and particularly the queer mentorship of adult lesbians and the still-enchanting fantasy of inhabiting their home and family life, remains precious. It's no Patience and Sarah! But it did similar work for teen-me, and I love it for that.
Title: Toledot (Post-Self Book 2)
Author: Madison Scott-Clary
Published: 2022
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 570
Total Page Count: 392,695
Text Number: 1486
Read Because: continuing the series, available free in browser
Review: The Bălan clade chronicles the mythology of Launch, which sends copies of the System into deep space, and its similarities to Succession, which made the System an independent nation-state two centuries prior. This largely takes place system-side, and I love the opportunity to elaborate on that setting, to render it weirder and more completely, particularly to inhabit the reality of forking, merging, and resultant questions of identity. I also appreciate how it conceptualizes grief. But this lost me as it went on: I'm not enamored of plots wherea secret society is successfully manipulating the general public —not, I promise, as Problematic™ as it seems in summary, but still not something I find convincing or compelling in this form. Dig the high concept worldbuilding, dig the characters and themes, will definitely continue the series, but I'm a little ambivalent about this book.
Author: Horacio Quiroga
Translator: Margaret Sayers Peden
Published: 1909
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 10
Total Page Count: 391,505
Text Number: 1483
Read Because: mentioned in Moreno-Garcia's afterwords to Mexican Gothic, can be read here
Review: This is pretty great. It has an absolute embarrassment of atmosphere; I love the way it navigates the is-it-or-isn't-it metaphorical elements of illness as a symptom of a marriage. Punchy ending.
Title: Annie on My Mind
Author: Nancy Garden
Published: Open Road Media, 2017 (1982)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 235
Total Page Count: 391,740
Text Number: 1484
Read Because: reread, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Teenage girls from different schools meet at a museum, and their sudden friendship will blossom into a romance. The summary is nothing special; what matters about Annie on My Mind is that it was a YA novel published in 1982, that it was for many readers—including me!—their first lesbian novel. I'd read other queer books, but mostly of the Last Herald Mage sympathetic/tragic queer male protagonist variety; this is distinctly about women and about female desire, about sex, about navigating homophobia and building queer communities in the real world. And rereading lives up to that memory: the small school exploration of homophobia is claustrophobically on the money, but the romance, it's humanity and miscommunications and desire, and particularly the queer mentorship of adult lesbians and the still-enchanting fantasy of inhabiting their home and family life, remains precious. It's no Patience and Sarah! But it did similar work for teen-me, and I love it for that.
Title: Toledot (Post-Self Book 2)
Author: Madison Scott-Clary
Published: 2022
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 570
Total Page Count: 392,695
Text Number: 1486
Read Because: continuing the series, available free in browser
Review: The Bălan clade chronicles the mythology of Launch, which sends copies of the System into deep space, and its similarities to Succession, which made the System an independent nation-state two centuries prior. This largely takes place system-side, and I love the opportunity to elaborate on that setting, to render it weirder and more completely, particularly to inhabit the reality of forking, merging, and resultant questions of identity. I also appreciate how it conceptualizes grief. But this lost me as it went on: I'm not enamored of plots where
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Date: 2022-06-29 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-30 12:13 am (UTC)