I read:

Thoughts:

• The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber: Reviewed earlier this month.
• Katamari Volume 1 by Alex Culang and Raynato Castro: Reviewed earlier this month.
• Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin: I found the personal essays far more affecting than theory ones, but the theory essays on race are definitely not at a 101 level, which is where I am at. Thus a good reminder to me not to expect people to only be writing for me as an audience. I am not the most important person, nor the audience for everything.
• Turn Us Again by Charlotte R. Mendel: One time I read an article about fake book awards (it’s not this article, but similar). Turn Us Again had an award sticker on the front, and I know this is going to sound so mean, but after reading the book, I couldn’t help wondering if the award was some sort of vanity book award. The main character ends up being a repugnant apologist for domestic violence and the whole thing sours.
• Siberiak by Jenny Jaeckel: Reviewed earlier this month.
• Bang Crunch by Neil Smith: Sometimes (like let’s say two bullet points above), I get angry with bad books and I think Why am I not getting published and I get all ggrrrrrrr. Then I read books that are much better than my writing and think “Ohhhhh, so this is why I don’t get published.” This book is of the second category.
• Double Trouble by Jenny Dale: Ugggg, one of those kid books where girls like pink and boys like blue and everyone is always helpful and pleasant and possibly this book is a shill for the veterinary industry with such riveting discussion as:

  [regarding the missing dogs]

  “If only they’d been identi-chipped.”

  “What’s that?” asked Chris.

  “It’s a way of keeping track of your dog,” Neil explained.

  “You can insert a tiny microchip, about the size of a grain of rice, under their skin,” his father added. “If the dog is found by anyone, a scanner can be run over the chip and it will identify the dog.”

  Plus the book was relocalised for the US, even though they are in the UK, so all these British kids using American words (soccer rather than football, cell phone rather than mobile), everything spelled the American way. I hated every second of it.

  Tesfa, however, was enthralled.

• 20 000 Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne: If I ever need a book that in no way whatsoever passes the Bechdel test, here I am. I don’t even think there are any women, let alone named ones in the entire book.
• History of Loneliness by John Boyne: Reviewed earlier this month.
• Cosmo by Spencer Gordon: Some of the stories were from a female point of view! I’m always chuffed (to steal a word ridiculed in one of Spencer’s stories) when a man writes stories from a female’s perspective and doesn’t just barricade to the white twenties upper-middle class male cave. Plus, I am going to call him Spencer because I have exchanged a few emails with him (he is the editor of The Puritan which published my story Darién Gap) so I am going to take it that we are on a first name basis. He also wrote a story about adult entertainment in the book, and one of my emails to him, I talked about there is an adult entertainer with the same first and last name as me. I have no idea when Spencer wrote the adult entertainment story, but I’m going to take credit for the inspiration anyway.
• The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell: Good then not so good (psychosteric chapter), then all right again, but not as good as the beginning was. I had been hoping I would fall into the story and wrap it around me like a blanket, but I didn’t. I read it and returned it to the library and now I’ll forget about it.
• A Spy Among Friends by Ben MacIntyre: Dull until Elliott is going to visit Philby to get him to confess, although the dullness might be because I already knew a lot of the information before that point. I would have liked more about the actual debriefing of Philby by Elliott.
• Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoët: Creepy, in a good way and not a good way. Uncomfortable. I think I would have liked it more had I known going in that it was supposed to be awful. For some reason, I thought it was a kids’ book. It is most definitely NOT a kids’ book.
• The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani: Tesfa loves this book so much and I just loathe it, with its muddled story and lessons. For a story that wants to break open the good/evil dichotomy, it sure relies on a lot of nasty tropes (pretty = good, ugly = evil, etc.). I also hate things where they use “fat” as a pejorative term, which this book does in spades. I want to take the setting and rewrite my own, feminist, good vs evil tale for Tesfa instead.
• Women of Karantina by Nael Eltoukhy: Reviewed earlier this month.

Favourite book of the month:

It’s sad. I didn’t have one five out of five book this month. I did have two four and a half’s, this and Cosmo, but this makes me worry that either I am picking lousy books or I have lost the ability to enjoy life.

Most promising book I put on my wishlist:

I mean, how could I not?

I watched:

Bletchley Circle: This show is so unintentionally silly. I would never have watched it if it were American, but somehow I can handle it when they all have UK accents. I’m sure that’s some sort of ingrained classist colonial brainwashery.
• Bojack Horseman Christmas Special: Only took me until January to watch the Christmas special.
• Pitch Perfect: I’m glad that when they had two black women in the Bellas, right away they got rid of one because two black women, that’s just too confusing. Also, I loved that they won after they abandoned the idea of singing only songs by women and switched to straight up songs by men. The message there, ahhh, inspiring.

  End sarcasm.

  I did, however, actually love Fat Amy’s reasoning for her name though.

• Wet Hot American Summer: Totally don’t get the love for this movie.
• The Slap: It’s like Heartbreak High, but all grown up! Still as vitriolic as the book, but somehow more palpatable as a TV show. Of course, since this is TV, they were very rude about extended breastfeeding, and the whole plot about Connie’s dad being bisexual seems to have vanished. But, the show did teach me that everything in Australia seems so close to the road, like with no sidewalks. Every time a character opened a door to go outside, I worried they were going to get hit by a car. Also Australians seem to have very dirty doors and busy wallpaper if this show is anything to go by; I’m going to assume saltwater ruins paint jobs and the ugly wallpaper thing is just a difference in taste?
• The Fall: There’s a part in the second season when Spector says what sort of sicko are you for watching this and Stella later denigrates people who get their thrills from watching violent shows (like The Fall) and I was like joke’s on you, I’m only half watching while I do other work, so take that critique of violence in media! Less sexualized violence than in Season One due to Season Two’s plotline.
• Steins;Gate: I watch in background while I sew or clean dishes and don’t really pay attention, but I’m thinking it isn’t a show you have to pay that much attention to. Just because it’s about time travel, it isn’t Primer-intricate or anything.

I wrote:

Nothing. Tesfa didn’t go back to school until January 7th and there were three snow days this month. Plus, I gave up writing for January to do all the things I’d been procrastinating from doing:

• replace all the garage and outdoor lights,
• get new toilet seat,
• take off the broken screen door,
• sew tea towels,
• make soap,
• redesign this website here,
• find a sports bra that fit properly (trying to find bras in 30FF is not a fun experience),
• sew a Snuggie (it’s white! I look like a member of a doomsday cult!), and
• I did a lot of miscellaneous baking and cleaning.

So that was January writing. February writing: get a collection of short stories ready to send out (i.e. put them in one file, print them out, proofread them, then send them out and wait for the crickets of not-even-worth-a-rejection-letter coming in). Ditto faerie story.