juushika

Title: Hooves or Hands?
Author: Rosie Haine
Published: Tate, 2022
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 538,760
Text Number: 1974
Read Because: subject is relevant to my interests, hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review:
Plotless, this is purely an exploration of imagination—what if your body looked this way, what if you did these things?—with the conclusion: it's good to play at being or to be anything you want. I can't fault that! It's a wholesome theme for a picture book. The naive and messy art is grating, but it too is playful, and I appreciate there's such a diversity in the children depicted.

It's as a therianthrope but I'm really taken by how picture books judge animal play. Equal respect is conferred to make-believe and identification, and the idea that a child could just be a horse is fully voiced. Is it meant that way? Probably not! Don't care; still appreciate it.

You know those dreams about never-quite-eating, about the preparation of or lead up to food that end with contrived waffling instead of eating the damn thing? I've been thinking about those a lot because my cold boys mention food dreams constantly on sledging trips, which is fair, when you're operating at a generous 30% of your required caloric intake and docking rations as your performance degrades. But I've always had them, too, which I chocked up to the ubiquity of Food Issues™️I have as an AFAB person.

Anyway, that's only tangentially relevant. A month ago I had the most remarkable dream about [in the midst of a much larger and less coherent dream plot I barely remember and no one cares about] going to an amorphous café/library/bookstore and browsing while waiting [for aforementioned plot events] a central display of gothic picture books. The one that most caught my eye had a cheerfully unhinged looking blonde princess in three-quarters view on the cover and was titled, delightfully: Please Be Polite to the Rats Who Are Gnawing the Princess. Presumably but not necessarily one of those picture books actually meant for adults, borrowing an aesthetic veil from Slay the Princess, natch. I picked it up, went, this one for sure, and then woke before checkout/purchase/reading the damn thing.

So it's not just food! But in the case of a perfect picture book the frustration of denial also carries this intriguing sense of wonder. Would have had to dream a whole picture book, to read it; would it actually have been any good, or is all that potential in the glimpse of it, in a title? And, yeah, food dreams are also food anxiety, the boys who are cold evidence that abundantly; also, though, it's grounding to realize it's just in the way of the subconscious to clearly imagine "I want" but to get stuck on realizing "I have."

So I've been reading some spoop/gothicky picture books, in search of gnawing rats. This one wasn't especially good, but I stand by the effort.


Title: The Witch's Walking Stick
Author: Susan Meddaugh
Published: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 538,700
Text Number: 1972
Read Because: as above, hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: What a mean-spirited little thing! I wouldn't have been surprised to find this was based on folklore; it has that kind of contrived comeuppance. Funny, a little whimsical, and there's pleasure in the neat logic of it, everyone taught a lesson; I just don't find it the least convincing, one pivotal punishment to change everyone's behavior. The thick lines and blotchy watercolors are inoffensive but forgettable.

Title: The Voyage of the Discovery, Vol I-II
Author: Robert Falcon Scott
Published: 1905
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 875 (455+420)
Total Page Count: 538,670
Text Number: 1970-1
Read Because: boys: the coldening, borrowed from the Internet Archive
Review: Polar exploration narratives perforce have a slow start, and Scott is particularly boring when trying to politely thank everyone for the excruciating committee-based construction of the Discovery expedition. As expected, things improve once the Discovery reaches Antarctica; the more Scott quotes from his diary, the better the text, as Scott is less self-aware and over-explanatory in his direct account; that said, there's remarkable retrospective sections about the experience of (springtime) sledging in particular.

I'm struck by the fact that both of Scott's major sledging trips on this expedition were haunted by the same issues that would eventually kill him, re: fuel and food shortages, vitamin deficiencies, overwork, and weather. Not because they're surprising--they're endemic to the work. Rather, because he did learn and did improve and it was still, memorably!, unprepared: the risk I took was calculated.jpg. Scott also gives insight into his disinclination to use dogs in his subsequent attempt at the Pole; it's sympathetic without remotely vindicating the Terra Nova's use of either ponies or dogs: further inadequate improvement. While doomed to pale in comparison to Scott's final journals, I'm glad I plowed through this hefty memoir. Scott gets in his own way, and the Discovery is interesting largely in context rather than its own right, but it is interesting in that context, and Scott, at his best, is evocative, honest, and revealing.

Title: Who Goes There?
Author: John W. Campbell Jr.
Published: Wildside Press, 2022 (1938)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 40
Total Page Count: 537,090
Text Number: 1967
Read Because: these boys are cold but it's fiction now (pop culture depictions of the Antarctic came up in "Placing Women in the Antarctic Literary Landscape" by Elizabeth Leane), ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: This make the adaptation look like a masterwork, scaling back the technobabble, landing on iconic images, preserving the important thrust of the plot. But I still enjoyed this! Campbell's prose is delightfully overwritten, for better ("No thing made by intelligent beings can tangle with the dead immensity of a planet’s natural forces and survive.") and worse (the flamethrower scene); dialog is no exception. And yet, the premise endures, and the bombast suits the Antarctic, the social tensions, the terror of the unknown, of contagion. Unique to the original story is that until threatened with harm, the thing passes as, it entirely is whatever it's shaped itself to be; scarier than the uncanny is the total conviction of a man the moment before he turns out to be a monster. Let Golden Age SF try too hard, okay? It's more fun than obnoxious.

Title: First on the Antarctic Continent: Being an Account of the British Antarctic Expedition, 1898–1900
Author: C.E. Borchgrevink
Published: George Newnes, 1901
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 400
Total Page Count: 536,670
Text Number: 1965
Read Because: these boys are just so cold, borrowed from Open Library
Review: The first "British"(-funded) Antarctic expedition, and the first to overwinter on land, among other accomplishments, as told by the commander. This is imminently skippable and, yet like most polar memoirs, fascinating, albeit rarely for intended reasons. This expedition is remarkable for being poorly planned, and the location poorly chosen, which makes other expeditions look more successful by contrast. Given the inimical setting, Borchgrevink's slipshod focus on research and slew of manufactured adventures feel almost comically blithe, although his tone isn't as insufferable as I was lead to believe; it's only in contemporary context (the Southern Cross expedition was considered a competitor to the upcoming Discovery expedition) and in the differences of opinion in Bernacchi's memoir that "insufferable" makes sense. Do skip this one unless reading also Bernacchi, mostly because Bernacchi is funnier with this as a counterpoint.

Title: Through the First Antarctic Night, 1898-1899
Author: Frederick A. Cook
Published: 1900
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 520
Total Page Count: 536,025
Text Number: 1963
Read Because: I have Problems; Project Gutenberg has this one
Review: This is the first primary source that I feel like has not appreciably added to my understanding of Antarctic exploration, in that, between Sancton's Madhouse at the End of the Earth and Guly's papers, particularly "'Polar anaemia': cardiac failure during the heroic age of Antarctic exploration", I'd already read the good bits, and better contextualized than in Cook's direct account. What's left is a fairly uninspired narration with repetitious but, worse, often ineffective meditations on the Antarctic atmosphere. There's not much insight into the human factor even as regards Cook himself, the fascinating period medical understandings are better analyzed elsewhere, and while it's a glimpse into Cook's narrative style, that style is scattershot and unreliable. Eminently skippable, but given that accessible Belgica resources are thin on the ground, I'm not mad I read it.

(FWIW, Arçtowski's narratives are more spread out and obviously weighted towards science, but I still liked them more: that bias and brevity makes the peeks of a distinctive sarcastic voice, the foibles of the expedition, and the polar atmosphere all feel better chosen and more valuable.)

Title: Real Hero Shit
Author: Kendra Wells
Published: Iron Circus Comics, 2022
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 120
Total Page Count: 535,150
Text Number: 1961
Read Because: personal enjoyment, paperback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: A prince inserts himself into a wandering party about to hit the road. Not-DnD narratives feel best primed to grab me when they deviate from expected worldbuilding or do the weirdest possible things with the available magical conventions. There's not none of this here; particularly, secular vs faith-based magic is engaging worldbuilding. But this is pretty straightfoward. Action/adventure, queer and a little sexy, I like the rogue, quite readable—but, forgettable.

Title: The Complete Brambly Hedge
Author: Jill Barklem
Published: HarperCollins Children, 2011 (1980-1994)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 255
Total Page Count: 534,960
Text Number: 1959-6
Read Because: personal enjoyment, hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: The lavishly illustrated domestic lives of the mice of Brambly Hedge. With one exception, I've already forgotten every plot; it's mice going through the motions of a conservative ideal of British country living, who cares. The exception is The Secret Staircase, which is The Secret Garden: Indoor Mouse edition, private and mysterious and immensely transporting. But plots be damned; the vibes are off the charts. The art is deliciously detailed, with clutter that overwhelms the border of each image and captivating cutaway interiors that are simultaneously vast and minute. I Spy meets Huygen and Poortvliet's Gnomes. I want to crawl into the pages and live there forever, which is the intent, of course, but succeeds even without the gloss of nostalgia, as I never knew these as a kid.

Title: A Shining Affliction: A Story of Harm and Healing in Psychotherapy
Author: Annie G. Rogers
Published: Penguin, 2008 (1996)
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 335
Total Page Count: 534,505
Text Number: 1957
Read Because: mentioned by chthonic_cassandra, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: While treating a troubled child during her PhD internship, the author becomes mired in memories of her own traumatic childhood. Therapy is a chain of interconnections, patient to therapist to therapist's therapist, and Rogers insists that these relationships must be two-way in order to be effective and sincere, despite that they're intentionally stymied or curtailed in most therapeutic practice. But this is more experiential than didactic: it sits within events as they unfold, proactively interpreting them in a way which is intimate, evocative, and surprisingly concise. I liked this, I found it compelling and nuanced and compassionate; it also gave me uneasy, hopeless feelings about why I don't do therapy—maybe that's inevitable.

Title: Diary of the "Terra Nova" Expedition to the Antarctic, 1910-1912
Author: Edward Adrian Wilson
Published: Humanities Press, 1972
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 280
Total Page Count: 534,000
Text Number: 1955
Read Because: rabbithole; borrowed from OpenLibrary and Interlibrary Loan (I really thought I wouldn't finish it before my ILL arrived, and yet...; still, ILL helps for looking at the pictures)
Review: Unlike Scott's, this diary is edited to include relevant pre-expedition content, which means: Wilson out in the world, being racist. It's a productive reminder of the culture framing these particular men, especially as racism and exploration are entwined; indeed, racism (via a lack of furs and dogs) helped get Wilson dead.

Wilson wrote primarily for family, and that audience feels present and limiting: this is anecdotes and birds, but the anecdotes are active and chock full of social dynamics from Wilson's frustrated and bemused position as science team lead. Insofar as a certain kind of restrained suffering was both holy and masculine, Wilson got top marks; both understated and honest, profoundly self-abnegating, and unexpectedly funny, this more than anything that I've read about the Terra Nova expedition thus far makes me want to reach for a biography, because the man is almost absent his own narrative, which is fascinating and frustrating and insightful.