Seven day writing challenge: day five!
Mar. 1st, 2019 01:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doctornerdingtonToday I have a spare hour at work (YAY for a miraculously crisis-free Friday afternoon!), so my writing for the day will be this: a round-up of things I've read recently. My reading brain has been almost as slow as my writing brain, but I'm managing to gradually engage with a few books again. I definitely start more than I finish. But that's okay (look at me, all yogic, noticing without judgement).
- White Fragility by Robin Diangelo. Working my way through this very slowly, section by section. It takes work and thought and energy, which is in short supply right now, and I want to do it right. I'm obviously not the first to say this, but it's an incredibly valuable and important book, and also very readable.
- Motherhood, by Sheila Heti. Ooooof, this is brilliant, Heti is brilliant. I'll probably return to it when my brain's in better shape, but I did get something out of it, even now. My favourite thing about Heti is how she takes her own intellectual engagement with the world so deadly seriously. It's shocking how audacious that feels. Her project (in everything she writes) is epistemological, but her methods of tackling unanswerable questions are so frank and so anchored to practical considerations (specifically, practical considerations of women's lives, which she almost... universalizes? Or places in the center of intellectual discourse, at any rate?) that she forces you to confront tensions in your own life that you might prefer to leave unexamined. Which is challenging!
- Band Sinister, by KJ Charles. Queer/poly historical romance. With smut! And feels! And discussions of relationship ethics! Not challenging at all, and I wholeheartedly loved it. It came along at the exact perfect time for me. I mean, if a comfort read had been written exactly to my specifications, this would be it. I've just started another one of hers, the first in her Society of Gentlemen series.
- Healing from Hidden Abuse, by Shannon Thomas. HEY! As it turns out, just because your spouse has several illnesses? Doesn't mean they get a free pass to abuse you! Yeah, it was news to me, too. Anyway, this book is really helping me put a name to abusive behaviour, which previously I did not recognize as such (or perhaps was not brave enough to name as such). It's difficult, but I'm getting a little bit better at it.
- Criminal Intent, Michael Van Rooy. I used to work with Michael, and he was impossible not to love, basically. An enormous teddy bear of a man, and the first real life poly person I'd ever spoken with. He was gentle and kind when I was young and idiotic. He died 8 years ago on a book tour, and it was very shocking and unexpected. Also unexpected was discovering this "new" chapbook of his last month at my local book shop. Reading it was like hearing his voice again. Such a delight.
- Moon of the Crusted Snow, by Waubgeshig Rice. I'm super digging the Indigenous post-apocalyptic spec fic genre that seems to be exploding right now. This one isn't, to my mind, the best of the bunch (that would be The Marrow Thieves) -- it's exposition heavy, for one thing -- but it's a solid read all the same. I even forgive it for beating out my book in the sales lists last month. Ha.
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Date: 2019-03-01 08:50 pm (UTC)Thank you!
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Date: 2019-03-01 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-02 09:42 am (UTC)