lunabee34

1. I absolutely adore my ridiculous children. Fiona is reading War and Peace. It's the book with the most AR points, and we kept telling her that she was probably not going to like it or understand it well, which just fueled her desire to read it more. Joke's on us, I guess, because she's moving through it a pretty fair clip, and while I'm certain that a significant amount of it is going over her head, she seems to be understanding the plot well enough (we debrief what everyone is reading over dinner every evening).

2.

A Century of Poems - TLS 100 by The Times Literary Supplement

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Well, this makes clear that I do not share taste in poetry with the editors of the Times Lierary Supplement, all however many of them served for the 20th century. Lol

So many war poems, which I get given the time period, but I am not a fan of most war poetry. Also so much rhyming, way more than I'd anticipated.

I did like some of the poems, but on the whole not for me.



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3.

( Scholomance by Naomi Novik--major spoilers )

4.

The Best Cook in the World by Rick Bragg

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I kept finding myself in the pages of this book as I read it. My people are not mountain Southern, but some things about being Southern are universal. The backstory of poverty and wringing a living out of the land with backbreaking work in Bragg's memoir could easily describe many aspects of the backstory on both side of my family. Most especially, though, reflected here is that truth that no matter how poor my grandparents were or how stingy my parents were when I was growing up to avoid poverty we still ate well. Like Bragg, my family was almost self-sustaining in eating what we grew, caught, and raised, and we ate like kings. Still do.



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5.

The Man Who Thought Himself a Woman and Other Queer Nineteenth-Century Short Stories by Christopher Looby

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This collection of short stories is divided into four sections: queer places, queer genders, queer attachments, and queer things. Most of the stories in the queer things section don't seem to be queer to me (especially the Melville one where the protagonist is obsessed with his chimney and the Hartman story where a little waif girl drowns herself in the sea). Many of these stories are sad and/or violent, but a few of them are happy and hopeful--notably the Walt Whitman and the Mary Wilkins Freeman. The titular story of the book is incredibly fascinating.



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I have a PDF copy of this book, so if you'd like to read me, PM me and I'll email it to you.

1. I got a card from talitha78. Thank you!

2. My 2024 in books from Goodreads

I read 72 books in 2024. Go, me!

3. And here's the first books of 2025:

The Best American Poetry 2002 by Robert Creeley

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Robert Creeley and I clearly do not share taste in poetry. LOL



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The New Yorker - The Fragrance Foundation Book of Cartoons by Luxe Pack New York

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


As with any set of New Yorker cartoons, I didn't get some of them, but on the whole, these are pretty funny.



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Witches Among Us: Understanding Contemporary Witchcraft and Wicca by Thorn Mooney

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is really informative and accessible, especially for people who know very little about witchcraft and Wicca. Mooney spends a lot of time contextualizing and defining terms. She also provides an excellent list of scholarly resources as well as resources from within the community for further understanding.



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1. Fiona is reading Gone with the Wind. I absolutely love the way she is savvy enough to pick up on the racism and the romanticization of the antebellum south. We talk about what she's read every day and unpack it; she is fascinated by how awful Scarlett is. LOL

2.
( Hawthorne, Denial, poetry )

( reviews of the three Botworld novellas )

Bot 9 is wee and mighty, and I am 100% requesting this for Yuletide!

Read the stories here: The Secret Life of Bots, Bots of the Lost Ark, and To Sail Beyond the Botnet.

Thanks to melagan for introducing me to Bot 9.


Seventeenth-Century English Poetry: Modern Essays in Criticism by William R. Keast

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


On the plus side, I didn't know much about 17th-century English poetry before reading this collection of essays, and now I know more than I did.

I enjoyed reading C. S. Lewis's essay about John Donne even if I don't agree with many of the conclusions he draws; Lewis has an engaging and entertaining critical voice that feels like it belongs to the 21st century. I also enjoyed the rebuttal essay that followed his by Joan Bennett whose conclusions I largely agree with.

On the negative side, OMG is early 20th-century literary criticism just bad. An utter slog to read. And half the time, I don't have any idea what they're going on about; these articles are especially mysterious in the poems they praise for being good and those they criticize for failing in some way. They basically all sound one and the same to me. At least most of these essays cite their sources unlike a lot of lit crit from that era.



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Ambergris by Jeff VanderMeer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is an omnibus of the three books VanderMeer sets in the world of Ambergris.

The first story--"Dradin in Love"--of the first book--a collection of short stories--is completely missable. In fact, I would advise skipping it. I am a huge fan of VanderMeer's work, have enjoyed all this novels I've read to this point, and this story is Not Good in my opinion. Fortunately everything else in this omnibus is absolutely wonderful, each story and novel building on those which came before in clever and delightful ways.

In this trilogy, VanderMeer explores ideas that will be familiar to readers of his more recent work: body horror, ecological strangeness and disaster, and a couple other tropes I don't want to mention because they spoil part of the plot.

After I got past the first story, I had a hard time putting this down (even though I had to from time to time because 800 pages gets heavy LOL).

Highly recommended.



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Charles Portis: Collected Works (LOA #369): Norwood / True Grit / The Dog of the South / Masters of Atlantis / Gringos / Stories & Other Writings by Charles Portis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This was a gift, and I expected that I wouldn't enjoy it very much. I don't have much patience for a lot of twentieth-century, white, male, American authors; I'm deeply disinterested in the kind of masculinity Hemingway is peddling, for example. As a Southerner, I'm also really weary of nostalgia/apologia for a South I don't miss at all, and I expected Portis to deliver on both those scores.

I'm happy to say that I was very wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed this collection, and Portis has become one of my favorite novelists. Contrary to my expectations, one of Portis's main projects over his body of work is to subvert stereotypical ideas of masculinity in really surprising ways. For example, in Norwood, the protagonist is this sweetly goofy guy who bumbles cluelessly through life being kind and generous to everyone around him and being taken in by con men but who manages to come out all right in the end. In True Grit, the character with true grit is a 14 year old girl, and the two men in the book are a drunken sad sack and a braggart. Dog of the South features a protagonist who makes confident pronouncements that are stupidly, obviously wrong and who gets hung up on irrelevant minutiae but who is confidently assured of his intellectual superiority.

Portis is also incredibly funny, just laugh-out-loud funny. Masters of Atlantis is a satire about a guy who inadvertently starts a cult. The whole thing is a con, but he's a total believer. It's very funny, but also very prescient commentary about the way conspiracy theories work.

I think my favorite is Gringos. This novel is the most realistic of the bunch and the darkest. It's still funny, but not in a satirical or absurdist way like the others (well, True Grit is not very funny). I don't want to spoil the plot, but I will say it involves debunking ancient astronaut theorists.



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Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is violent and gory, which I don't mind but may not be everyone's cup of tea. No one is raped on page, but rape is a constant threat, which gets a bit tedious after awhile. I also get weary of the focus on lust and sexual perversion (while understanding that it makes sense for the plot and themes of the book).

Those caveats aside, this was a quick and entertaining read for me. I especially enjoyed the ending--and I do mean the very, very end, like the last handful of paragraphs--which are a lovely moment of grace in a novel that does not contain many moments I would call lovely given that it is set during an epidemic of the Black Death.



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Revelator by Daryl Gregory

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I really, really like this book.

Explaining why without spoiling plot details of the novel is impossible. What I can say is that the sense of place is incredible, the characters are deftly drawn (even those who only briefly appear), and the story blends genres in really interesting and unexpected ways. This is a novel about family and religion and belonging and choices, and it tells the story of those things with the old, familiar songs but also a fresh melody that made this a page turner for me.



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Bid the Vassal Soar: Interpretive Essays on the Life and Poetry of Phillis Wheatley by Merle A. Richmond

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


I get why Richmond pairs Wheatley and Horton; she's the first African American female poet and he the first African American male poet published in the US and they were once published together in a single collection.

But OMG, this is the most obnoxious book of criticism I've read in a good long while, and it brings absolutely nothing of value to our understanding of Wheatley.

In Richmond's estimation, Wheatley has no genuine selfhood as opposed to Horton's genuine, black selfhood; Wheatley's experiences aren't authentic, black experiences as opposed to Horton's genuine, black experiences; Wheatley's poetry is no good as opposed to Horton's; and Wheatley's education and accomplishments are somehow meaningless compared to Horton's because they were facilitated by her white enslavers rather than being self-taught. Richmond writes about Wheatley as if she has zero interiority at all. It's really, really gross.



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Folle-Farine by Ouida

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book is so kinky, and I wish we could go back in time and ask Ouida to what degree the novel is a deliberate, conscious exploration of kinkiness and what exactly she's intending to argue with that exploration if so.

I reread this in preparation for my presentation on Ouida's treatment of birds in her nonfiction essays because it's probably the novel in which the protagonist is most closely identified with birds and the novel which has the most protracted scenes that deal with birds (just in case someone asked me to elaborate on the way in which her arguments manifest in the fiction).

Additional themes include: principles and aesthetics of Romanticism, sadomasochism, the eroticism of self-sacrifice and self-abnegation, silence (both self- and externally-imposed), scathing critiques of Christianity (with some very startling passages in which the female protagonist allies herself with the devil), commentary on art and the role of the artist, sexuality and asexuality, morality.

This is an astonishing and interesting book and nothing at all like what anyone imagines when they hear the phrase Victorian novel.



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1. I have been extremely busy with grading and course creation which has curtailed my participation, but I didn't want to let the time period for End OTW Racism's protest action to end without making a public post about it. (To be clear, this particular protest action is ending today, not the movement to create a less racist environment for users of AO3 and volunteers at OTW.)

I believe strongly that harassment policies should be updated and clearly articulated and that if possible, tools in addition to muting and blocking should be made available. I believe strongly that the OTW should be more transparent to users and the public at large about its decision making, and I believe it should hire a Diversity Consultant.

chestnut_pod's Be More Democratic, Be More Autocratic, OTW is a fantastic post that offers many suggestions for ways the OTW might accomplish the goal of becoming less racist. In the comments to this post (and in other places like fail_fandomanon), what gradually emerges is a picture of an organization that is dysfunctional in many ways and at many levels and to a horrifying degree. I worry that some people might think the conversation in those places is straying from the very important topic of making the OTW less racist, but I don't think it is. I think that when an organization cannot uphold its duty of care to its volunteers at extremely basic levels that it certainly cannot uphold a duty of care to its users; when so much is broken within, of course, no steps have been take to repair what is broken without.

I hope that End OTW Racism will prove to be the reckoning that makes OTW/AO3 less racist and also improves working conditions for volunteers and all the other issues that have been coming to light as a result of this protest.

2. Y'all, this wavy hair is wild. I had noticed early in the spring that my hair seemed to be frizzier than ever, and when I mentioned it to my hairdresser, she was all, "Oh, yeah. Your hair is getting curly." And I was all, "WHAT?!" And she was all, "Any hormonal change can change the curliness or straightness or your hair, and menopause is changing yours." So naturally, I researched this, and she's right!

MIND BLOWN

I only wash my hair every three or four days (while bathing daily!), but when I do wash it, I blow dry it straight, and this was masking the waves. I just could not figure out why a blow dry only lasts me a single day now when it used to last me at least two, sometimes three. Now, I know!

My only problem is I have no fucking idea what to do with wavy hair. Last time I was at the hairdressers, it had not progressed to this degree of waviness. I am definitely getting tips when I go back next, but for now I've been reading online and trying to figure out stuff for myself. I can still just blow dry it straight for a day, and that's fine, but I'm trying to figure out how to lean into the waves. I'm pretty sure I've got 2A waves right now (except that counter to the description, I do have more curliness at the crown on the sides in the front rather than it all being flat at the crown). After doing some reading online, I think I put the air dry styler in when my hair was a bit too wet, so today I let it dry a bit more, then put it in and scrunched my hair until it was mostly dry and wow, that upped the waviness a lot, especially in the back (which didn't get wavy at all when I just put the stuff in my hair and let it dry without doing anything to it).

Now I'm contemplating whether I want to cut my hair to top-of-shoulder length to maximize waviness; it's several inches longer than that now and will be a bit longer at my next hair appointment the last week of July. My plan had been to just let it grow until it gets so long that it looks stupid, which is what I did last time, but now I'm rethinking. LOL Hmmmmmmm.

3.

They Don't Kill You Because They're Hungry, They Kill You Because They're Full by Mark Bibbins

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This book is special to me because the oldest kiddo gave it to me for a gift and spent a lot of time thinking about what I'd like. Unfortunately, I bounced off most these poems pretty hard (they're largely what I call the nonsensical genre LOL).



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I did, however, enjoy these lines from "Look Who Came Dressed as the Sun" enough to genuinely LOL:

If you write "ironic detachment"
in your orange notebook again
I'm going to throw it into a fire
even if I have to make a fire.

1. I got the cutest cat mug with some lovely tea to brew in it from amejisuto! <3 <3

And a postcard from oracne! <3 <3


2. I finally signed the contract with MLA for that book chapter they accepted on teaching Harriet Jacobs literally years ago before the pandemic, so looks like that is actually coming out this year. I'll believe it when I hold it in my hot little hands. LOL


3. We spent a great day searching out a new cologne for Josh since his beloved Fresh Cannabis Santal has been discontinued. I think he has settled on Atkinsons 41 Burlington Arcade. It has some of the same notes as his beloved scent (patchouli, musk, vetiver), but introduces some new notes that he really likes (me, too LOL).

I'm digging the new perfume lines that Dillards is carrying; the flagship in Atlanta has even more brands that I wanted to smell. I was disappointed that Jo Malone and Van Cleef and Arpels, for example, are only stocked there.



4.

Quarterly Review of Literature by T. Weiss

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


So, apparently the Quarterly Review of Literature once held an international poetry book competition, and they would publish the winners (4-6) in one volume; I can't tell how often the competition ran (yearly?) or if it still runs, but the winners got a chapbook of poetry published, a thousand dollar prize, and a hundred books, which is a pretty sweet deal.

This volume contains Dissolving Borders by Lynne Knight, Moondog by Jean Hollander, The Weight of the Heart by David Citino, Is This the Way to Athens? by Barbara D. Holender, and Across Bucharest after Rain by Maria 'Banus in translation by Diana Der-Hovanessian and Mary Mattfield.

Really enjoy Knight's collection (although the preponderance of seed for semen gets tedious), Citino's collection, and Holender's collection. Do not care for Hollander's collection at all and am mostly neutral to 'Banus's collection.



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Aubade by Philip Larkin

This poem perfectly encapsulates my fear of death. Clearly I need to read one of his collections; surely the man who wrote a poem like this + the definitive poem on parenting is going to provide a more enjoyable read than William Carlos "Interminable" Williams or Allen "I Just Threw Up a Poem on the Floor" Ginsberg.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Anti-Hero by Taylor Swift

This song really resonates with me--not the particular scenarios, not the exact things Swift worries about, but the concept at large, the idea of being your own worst enemy. Those scenes in the video where she's hanging out with herself fucking up are just *chef's kiss*--yes! The idea that you're screwing it up and you know you're screwing it up, and you just keep doing it anyway: It's me. Hi! I'm the problem. Yeah.

1. Josh turned 44. We had a house full of people. Josh's cousin and his wife who currently live in DC came to visit, his sister came to visit, Emma came for the weekend, and our Atlanta friends (D & J & kids) came, too. It was wonderful!

His cousin's wife has worked for NPR off-and-on for twenty years, and I very much enjoyed all the name dropping and peeks behind the curtain.

Josh's favorite gift was a personalized video message from the announcer of BattleBots. Emma and D conspired on this one. A+++ work

2. ( books what I have read )