Archive for the 'bookmaggot' Category
Friday, June 29th, 2018
- 77 books so far (5 down from this time last year)
- 58 women, 15 POC, 13 queer and 5 trans authors
- Best memoir of an addict recovering on the island of Orkney: Amy Liptrot’s gorgeous The Outrun
- Best lightly fictionalized memoir of an addict living between Oakland and Mexico City: Lucia Berlin’s stunning A Manual for Cleaning Women
- Thirteen more that I truly loved:
…so yeah. Lots of escapism, some memoir, a little unflinching political realism. And Michelle McNamara’s extraordinary book, unbearably unfinished, filled with righteous anger, and an instrument, in the end, of justice.
Posted in bookmaggot | Comments Off on five things make another midyear reading update
Wednesday, June 13th, 2018
The world is on fire, and everything seems to be about death right now, but some things have dealt with death in a way that makes me feel less terrible.
Nights are endless because you wake at the softest cough or sob, then lie awake listening to her breathe so softly, like a child. – A Manual for Cleaning Women
This book encouraged me to go back to the stories I’ve already told that still haunt me.
I took the kids to see an all-woman production of Jesus Christ Superstar. It was fabulous, all Resistance and bisexual lighting. Jesus was so good she almost upstaged Judas. Between my parents loving the Sydney production and the Spiral Oasis staging at Burning Man in 99, I have such an odd relationship with this play. It’s puzzling that Lloyd Webber could have written this one decent thing, in a career otherwise so very full of crap. Maybe Judas is his Mary Sue, as Doctor Horrible is Whedon’s.
He rubs his fingers over old scars. – I’ll Be Gone in the Dark
Michelle McNamara and death fought one another to a draw.
Posted in bookmaggot, grief, little gorgeous things, sanity, the empty space | Comments Off on self-medicating with art
Sunday, April 22nd, 2018
Against its nature, the terrified prey animal is turned into an incarnation of terror which drives the predator, man, to flee
The horse was born not in Troy, but in Alexandria: it is a phantom of the library
The connections forged between humans and horses nowadays are relationships based on love, communities of interest and sporting camaraderie.
the native language of equine history is Arabic.
Nobody would have noticed the waif-like boy who hung around the Paris horse market for days on end, in 1851 and the following year. Confident that he was unobserved, he scribbled away on the notepad he took everywhere with him, like a painter on his travels. Nobody recognized him as a young woman dressed as a man, pursuing her ambitious plan.
girls and horses are islands in the flowing river of time.
Somewhat like a precursor to cybernetics, only more direct: a neuro-navigation between interrelated natures. Two moving, loosely coupled systems, circumnavigating the lengthy route of thought, exchanging information directly via the short cut of touching nerves and tendons, thermal and metabolic systems. The act of riding means that command data is transferred in the form of physical data, in a direct exchange of sensory messages. Riding is the connection of two warm, breathing, pulsating bodies, mediated only by a saddle, a blanket or mere bare skin. Humans enter into similar informational connections when they dance together, wrestle or embrace.
Posted in bookmaggot, history, horses are pretty, mindfulness, women are human | Comments Off on farewell to the horse: a cultural history, by ulrich raulff
Sunday, April 8th, 2018
It was one of Kami’s earliest memories, the look of fear on her mother’s face as she watched Kami. “I’ve been scared all my life,” Kami said slowly. “I’ve thought I might be crazy all my life, and you did it to me.”
Posted in bookmaggot | Comments Off on unspoken, by sarah rees brennan
Saturday, April 7th, 2018
I am beginning to think that there are some events that simply cannot be “processed,” some things one never gets “over” or “through.”
Posted in bookmaggot | Comments Off on the red parts, by maggie nelson
Thursday, April 5th, 2018
The more I take the time to look at things, the more rewards and complexity I find.
Posted in bookmaggot | Comments Off on the outrun, by amy liptrot
Saturday, March 24th, 2018
Aminat has her own story; she is not a supporting character of yours.
Posted in bookmaggot | Comments Off on rosewater, by tade thompson
Friday, March 16th, 2018
I am heartbroken but at peace. Last night, before getting some sleep, I came in to see if he needed anything. I tucked him in and kissed his forehead. “Do you know how much I love you?” I said. “No.” His eyes were closed. He was smiling, as if seeing beautiful things. “A lot.” “Good,” O said, “very good.” “Sweet dreams.”
Posted in bookmaggot | Comments Off on insomniac city, by bill hayes
Monday, March 5th, 2018
Nearly all the queers Michelle knew were fuckups in one way or another. Being cast out of society early on made you see civilization for the farce it was, a theater of cruelty you were free to drop out of.
Posted in bookmaggot | Comments Off on black wave, by michelle tea
Saturday, March 3rd, 2018
How to explain, in a culture frantic for resolution, that sometimes the shit stays messy? I do not want the female gender that has been assigned to me at birth. Neither do I want the male gender that transsexual medicine can furnish and that the state will award me if I behave in the right way. I don’t want any of it.
Posted in bookmaggot, women are human | Comments Off on the argonauts, by maggie nelson
Thursday, March 1st, 2018
“Do you think anything will really be different after the war?” Rachel asked. She felt afraid even to voice the idea. Did one wilderness only give way to another, on and on into eternity?
Posted in bookmaggot, the end of all things | Comments Off on promised land, by rose lerner
Tuesday, February 20th, 2018
For those of us raised by mothers and fathers who experienced such trauma firsthand, it is impossible not to continue this remembering.
Posted in bookmaggot | Comments Off on without you there is no us, by suki kim
Saturday, February 17th, 2018
“It will all be terrible,” said Cuerva Lachance, patting her on the shoulder, “but let’s pretend it won’t.”
Posted in bookmaggot | Comments Off on weave a circle round, by kari maaren
Tuesday, February 6th, 2018
Evidently, I should’ve read this years ago.
“Modern machinery is an irreverent upstart god… Our best machines are made of sunshine… They are floating signifiers moving in pickup trucks across Europe, blocked more effectively by the witch-weavings of the displaced and so unnatural Greenham women, who read the cyborg webs of power so very well, than by the militant labour of older masculinist politics, whose natural constituency needs defence jobs.”
Or maybe it’s fine that I waited. The extent to which it speaks to me right now is a little uncanny.
Posted in bookmaggot, the end of all things, women are human | Comments Off on a cyborg manifesto, by donna haraway
Thursday, January 25th, 2018
Some parts of our past, Avery Gordon said in her book about haunting and the social imagination, are lost so completely that only ghosts remain. In that way, we are linked to a past we don’t or can’t remember.
Posted in bookmaggot, grief | Comments Off on documenting light, by ee ottoman
Saturday, January 20th, 2018
Remember the way people would look at you blankly and say, “Um, okaaay,” after you finished talking? Everyone just had to make it so clear that, whatever you were thinking or feeling, you were totally alone. The worst part, of course, was that I did the same thing to other people. It makes me a little nauseated just remembering that.
Posted in bookmaggot | Comments Off on simon vs. the homo sapiens agenda, by becky albertelli
Saturday, January 20th, 2018
currawongs are intelligent, resourceful, adaptable and utterly loveable (affectionate, patient and accommodating – those who have raised one or two will know what I mean)
Posted in australia, bookmaggot | Comments Off on bird minds, by gisela kaplan
Saturday, January 6th, 2018
It’s bewildering to me when female friendships are depicted in movies or on TV as catty or undermining. I’m sure there are relationships like that, but in my experience, they’re not the norm. Friendships between women provide solace and understanding in a world that can be really hard on us.
Posted in bookmaggot | Comments Off on what happened, by hillary rodham clinton
Sunday, December 31st, 2017
Being in the death cult of money and status marked you. They bore the marks.
Posted in bookmaggot | Comments Off on walkaway, by cory doctorow
Thursday, December 28th, 2017
By the numbers: I read 156 books this year, of which 105 were by women, 73 by queer folk, 54 by writers of color, and 8 by trans people. I reviewed 30 of the books by POC as part of this Dreamwidth community, and they included some of the best books I have ever read: notably Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and The Color Purple.
My discovery of the year is Alexis Hall, who is essentially Georgette Heyer reborn as a fannish, kinky queer, and thus very much to my taste. In a similar vein I also read everything by KJ Charles and Roan Parrish. A book I keep coming back to and reading a page or two at a time is Marion Milner’s meditative, lovely A Life of One’s Own. A book I picked up again after a long hiatus is Gisela Kaplan’s fascinating Bird Minds: Cognition and Behaviour of Australian Native Birds. But if I could persuade you to read a single book I read this year, I would ask that it be The New Jim Crow.
Posted in bookmaggot | Comments Off on bookish
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