6 for Saturday
Feb. 17th, 2018 10:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lunabee341. I am weirdly optimistic (I know, I know, I know; we watched twenty something primary school kids mowed down by guns and nothing changed; I know) that maybe some gun control laws will go forward in the wake of this latest school shooting. The students and teachers are being vocal in a way that I haven't seen before, particularly on social media. Student after student is saying stuff like, "Screw your thoughts and prayers; you need to protect us." Fox News is the only TV at the gym, and I watched a teacher give an interview in which she went on and on about gun control and President Trump being an idiot and the anchor couldn't even interrupt her or get a word in edgewise because she'd just watched her students die and it'd been less than 24 hours. I saw that happen multiple times. Maybe this time it will be different.
I just know I was weary of the whole, "People will just break the gun laws. So having them is dumb," after Columbine when I was a teen. And these same people never think murder should be legal or child abuse or stealing people's money. It's just gun control laws which are rendered useless by someone potentially breaking them. I always want to say to these people (who are invariably coming from a conservative, often evangelical background), "Yeah, wasn't God so stupid when he made the Ten Commandments? I mean, c'mon. People break those laws all the time. And Jesus. What a ding ding when he laid out those rules for ethical and moral behavior in the Gospels. Nobody lives up to that shit. So out of touch with the reality of how I need to commit my crimes."
I grew up in a household in which my parents saved a lot of money via my dad's hunting, so I am sympathetic to the idea that some people legitimately want to use guns to feed their families, but a very very very small percentage of gun owners are using their guns as a primary resource to feed their families.
I am in favor of nobody having guns. I think we should full on take them away from everybody. I don't think having a gun is more important than any person's life (whether that's a kid who kills herself while accidentally playing with a gun, a woman who dies because her husband shoots her in a domestic dispute, a person who commits suicide because a gun is there, children at school, or people in mass gatherings). No one's desire to own a gun for any reason is more important than a person's life. If getting rid of guns could save even a single person's life, I think every Christian in the world should be on board for that. But then I don't think most American conservatives or evangelicals embody Christianity anyway. My dad has a shirt that says using a gun and the Bible should be taught in public schools, and it's so gross. It's like these people miss the part of the Bible where Jesus is totally not about killing people EVEN IN SELF-DEFENSE. He is totes not down with that.
I could go on and on here in a way that is enraging to myself and probably not productive at all. So, I'll stop. I'm not interested in anyone telling me how I'm wrong here and people do need to have guns or that Christianity is totally compatible with a culture in which school children are considered disposable, or that thoughtsandprayers are worth a fucking shit.
2.
The Ship of Brides by Jojo Moyes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
If I'm understanding correctly, the protagonists and exact circumstances of the novel are fictional but based on the real life transportation of Australian war brides to England after the end of World War II.
It follows four young brides who are being shipped on a decommissioned aircraft carrier; they each come from different walks of life and different life circumstances and have different relationships to their husbands, some more precarious than others. They are among more than 600 women also going to meet their husbands, some of whom they have not seen for more than two years.
This book touches on everything you think might happen on such a voyage: female friendship, sexual assault, class differences, an accident at sea, bigamous husbands, brides being told they aren't wanted by their new husbands and being removed from the ship, pregnancy, injuries, etc. I am really sad for a lot of these women; some of them are starting new and wonderful lives with men who love them, and others are headed to misery.
I was really, really pleased with the ending. The book is a frame tale; it begins with an elderly woman telling the story of this voyage but doesn't reveal her identity, and at the end, the reader figures out who she is and how her story ended. That part works wonderfully.
If you are interested in Australia, World War II, female friendship, or the constrained gender roles of the twentieth century, I think you would enjoy this book.
View all my reviews
Daughter of the Bright Moon by Lynn Abbey
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I read this book as a tween, and have been carrying it around with me for decades. I decided to do a reread of my own bookshelves since I haven't read some of the books at all or haven't read them in twenty years or more.
I have no idea why I hung on to this book. It is boring. Really, really boring. I have clear memories of the beginning from reading it as a child, and then as it progresses, my memories get hazier and hazier, leading me to wonder if I even finished it as a kid or if I did whether I liked it all that much.
It's not *bad* or anything. It's just boring. The protagonist has this inner monologue going all the time, and it's hard to differentiate between it and when she's actually speaking aloud to others. She also thinks/talks in a stilted way. Sometimes the transitions between scenes are abrupt. I mean, if you're stuck in the airport with only this book to read, you could do way way worse, but there's no spark there for me. I think I've just been reading really top tier fiction lately and this does not hold a candle to a writer like Leckie or Mieville.
View all my reviews
3. Does anyone have any strategies (or recs for books, sites) for working through displaced anger, stress management, etc.?
4. Emma, Fiona and I got our hair cut yesterday. Emma had only gone six weeks since her last haircut, but it had grown a tremendous amount; we're going to have to go 4 weeks between cuts. We got her a dress she really likes (black with pockets) that isn't too feminine and fits her well. We also found a killer pair of dark wash jeans. I'm planning to take her shopping in a few weeks to look for a button down shirt and a blazer.
5. I decided instead of buying more books, I'm going to go through my bookshelves and read the books I've never read before (not too many of these, but Josh has bought some books over the years that I never picked up) and the ones I read years ago and don't remember well. If I haven't read it in the past three or four years, I'm probably going to read it. Currently reading The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (courtesy of an undergrad Brit Lit 1 class).
6. I am actually kinda sad that TV is about to come back. Gotham will be airing again soon and Walking Dead and the new season of Westworld. Right now, the only TV I'm watching is Lucifer and a rewatch of season 1 Westworld, and it's so freeing not to have every night scheduled with TV. Emma is also watching RuPaul's Drag Race All-Stars which I watch a bit of with her, but I can't take much of that show. I find it super cringeworthy a lot of the time (like Chi Chi misspelling Maya Angelou's name this last week and clearly having no idea what she'd written). Ben De La is my favorite, though. If the show was just her + Shangela, I could watch it no prob. LOL
I just know I was weary of the whole, "People will just break the gun laws. So having them is dumb," after Columbine when I was a teen. And these same people never think murder should be legal or child abuse or stealing people's money. It's just gun control laws which are rendered useless by someone potentially breaking them. I always want to say to these people (who are invariably coming from a conservative, often evangelical background), "Yeah, wasn't God so stupid when he made the Ten Commandments? I mean, c'mon. People break those laws all the time. And Jesus. What a ding ding when he laid out those rules for ethical and moral behavior in the Gospels. Nobody lives up to that shit. So out of touch with the reality of how I need to commit my crimes."
I grew up in a household in which my parents saved a lot of money via my dad's hunting, so I am sympathetic to the idea that some people legitimately want to use guns to feed their families, but a very very very small percentage of gun owners are using their guns as a primary resource to feed their families.
I am in favor of nobody having guns. I think we should full on take them away from everybody. I don't think having a gun is more important than any person's life (whether that's a kid who kills herself while accidentally playing with a gun, a woman who dies because her husband shoots her in a domestic dispute, a person who commits suicide because a gun is there, children at school, or people in mass gatherings). No one's desire to own a gun for any reason is more important than a person's life. If getting rid of guns could save even a single person's life, I think every Christian in the world should be on board for that. But then I don't think most American conservatives or evangelicals embody Christianity anyway. My dad has a shirt that says using a gun and the Bible should be taught in public schools, and it's so gross. It's like these people miss the part of the Bible where Jesus is totally not about killing people EVEN IN SELF-DEFENSE. He is totes not down with that.
I could go on and on here in a way that is enraging to myself and probably not productive at all. So, I'll stop. I'm not interested in anyone telling me how I'm wrong here and people do need to have guns or that Christianity is totally compatible with a culture in which school children are considered disposable, or that thoughtsandprayers are worth a fucking shit.
2.
The Ship of Brides by Jojo MoyesMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
If I'm understanding correctly, the protagonists and exact circumstances of the novel are fictional but based on the real life transportation of Australian war brides to England after the end of World War II.
It follows four young brides who are being shipped on a decommissioned aircraft carrier; they each come from different walks of life and different life circumstances and have different relationships to their husbands, some more precarious than others. They are among more than 600 women also going to meet their husbands, some of whom they have not seen for more than two years.
This book touches on everything you think might happen on such a voyage: female friendship, sexual assault, class differences, an accident at sea, bigamous husbands, brides being told they aren't wanted by their new husbands and being removed from the ship, pregnancy, injuries, etc. I am really sad for a lot of these women; some of them are starting new and wonderful lives with men who love them, and others are headed to misery.
I was really, really pleased with the ending. The book is a frame tale; it begins with an elderly woman telling the story of this voyage but doesn't reveal her identity, and at the end, the reader figures out who she is and how her story ended. That part works wonderfully.
If you are interested in Australia, World War II, female friendship, or the constrained gender roles of the twentieth century, I think you would enjoy this book.
View all my reviews
Daughter of the Bright Moon by Lynn AbbeyMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
I read this book as a tween, and have been carrying it around with me for decades. I decided to do a reread of my own bookshelves since I haven't read some of the books at all or haven't read them in twenty years or more.
I have no idea why I hung on to this book. It is boring. Really, really boring. I have clear memories of the beginning from reading it as a child, and then as it progresses, my memories get hazier and hazier, leading me to wonder if I even finished it as a kid or if I did whether I liked it all that much.
It's not *bad* or anything. It's just boring. The protagonist has this inner monologue going all the time, and it's hard to differentiate between it and when she's actually speaking aloud to others. She also thinks/talks in a stilted way. Sometimes the transitions between scenes are abrupt. I mean, if you're stuck in the airport with only this book to read, you could do way way worse, but there's no spark there for me. I think I've just been reading really top tier fiction lately and this does not hold a candle to a writer like Leckie or Mieville.
View all my reviews
3. Does anyone have any strategies (or recs for books, sites) for working through displaced anger, stress management, etc.?
4. Emma, Fiona and I got our hair cut yesterday. Emma had only gone six weeks since her last haircut, but it had grown a tremendous amount; we're going to have to go 4 weeks between cuts. We got her a dress she really likes (black with pockets) that isn't too feminine and fits her well. We also found a killer pair of dark wash jeans. I'm planning to take her shopping in a few weeks to look for a button down shirt and a blazer.
5. I decided instead of buying more books, I'm going to go through my bookshelves and read the books I've never read before (not too many of these, but Josh has bought some books over the years that I never picked up) and the ones I read years ago and don't remember well. If I haven't read it in the past three or four years, I'm probably going to read it. Currently reading The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (courtesy of an undergrad Brit Lit 1 class).
6. I am actually kinda sad that TV is about to come back. Gotham will be airing again soon and Walking Dead and the new season of Westworld. Right now, the only TV I'm watching is Lucifer and a rewatch of season 1 Westworld, and it's so freeing not to have every night scheduled with TV. Emma is also watching RuPaul's Drag Race All-Stars which I watch a bit of with her, but I can't take much of that show. I find it super cringeworthy a lot of the time (like Chi Chi misspelling Maya Angelou's name this last week and clearly having no idea what she'd written). Ben De La is my favorite, though. If the show was just her + Shangela, I could watch it no prob. LOL
