August 2015

I read:

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Thoughts:

Code Name: Verity by Elizabeth Wein: Such a YA novel. But, through this, I can see the allure of YA novels: one can do the soap opera bits and the genuine bits without that sort of detached irony that people expect if you were to do it for an adult book. Another book, like Beneath the Silence from last month, that sixth grade meghan would have loved.

The Book of Names by Royce Leville: Reviewed here.

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James: Almost perfect.

The Lotus and the Storm by Lan Cao: Reviewed here.

After Birth by Elisa Albert: I remember back in 2010 when I read The Breakwater House by Pascale Quiviger, realizing as I read it, that this was the first literary book that actually detailed giving birth, and not just the sitcom-y crushing-the-partner’s-hand wail, but in just a few sentences, in the middle of the book, the complete deconstruction of what it capital-M Means to give birth. After Birth is the spiritual continuation of that page of The Breakwater House with the after-effects of what it capital-M Means to give birth. It was like oysters down my throat, slippery but also nauseating. I wanted to retch but I kept stuffing myself with more.

The Monster and Other Stories by Stephen Crane: Reviewed here.

And the Birds Rained Down by Jocelyne Saucier: Back to spiritual successors, sort of like a spiritual successor to Bear (minus bestiality bits).

Outline by Rachel Cusk: Reviewed here .

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters: Sarah Waters’ books always feel pulp to me. There isn’t anything wrong with pulp and I do enjoy reading sort of smutty pulpy stories now-and-then, but I always feel sort of awful afterwards, like all I ate was candy for a week and my skin is now oozing oil.

1988: I Want to Talk with the World by Han Han: Reviewed here.

The Swallow by Charis Cotter: Reviewed here.

AsapSCIENCE: Answers to the World’s Weirdest Questions, Most Persistent Rumors, and Unexplained Phenomena by Mitchell Moffit and Greg Brown: Reviewed here.

Favourite book:

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It was a bit of a weird month. If you’d asked me at the beginning, I would have said A History of Seven Killings. If you’d asked me in the middle, I would have said After Birth. But now it’s the end (or the beginning of the next month, depending on whenever I get this finished and posted), so I’ll say All My Puny Sorrows, which took me by surprise since I loathed A Complicated Kindness and hadn’t read anything by Miriam Toews since more-or-less tossing ACK across the room in frustration near the end. Maybe because when I read ACK, I hadn’t stepped away from Christianity yet, so I couldn’t be the person who needed to read the book. Maybe now it’s different. I don’t know what it is since AMPS and ACK have so many of the same themes and ideas. So why did I hate one and really appreciate the other?

Except the last page and a half. Garbage. I got angry.

And Lydia, my blog-commenter extra-ordinaire: it has Mennonites in it!

Most promising wishlist book:

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Why does my library only have this book in French when I want to read it to Tesfa? How is that fair? Read the description:

Nine-lived cats have nothing on the “bluebear,” who, according to German author and illustrator Moers, has a whopping 27 lives. In this inventive, zany, fun-for-all ages odyssey (a bestseller in Europe), an intrepid “seagoing bear” offers his “demibiography.” A foundling floating in a nutshell on the Zamonian Sea, the azure-furred Bluebear is rescued by Minipirates, impish nautical geniuses, who raise him and then, after he gets too big, abandon him to live out 13 lifetimes of adventure populated by a dizzying array of eccentric characters. Among them, two argumentative waves known as the “Babbling Billows” teach Bluebear speech, sage dinosaur Mac (real name: Deus X. Machina) extends friendship and Professor Abdullah Nightingale at the Nocturnal Academy offers a particularly intense and wacky education.

I don’t want to have to translate it on the fly while reading it to Tesfa and her French is non-existent, so I guess I’m going to have to find myself an English copy and make the Leslie Knope unhappy face the next time I pass by the library at it.

I watched:

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Thoughts:

Odd Squad: Seriously. Stop. Get on US Netflix. Watch Odd Squad. Since this whole month has been about spiritual successors, IT IS THE SPIRITUAL SUCCESSOR TO SQUARE ONE PEOPLE! Go, what are you waiting for? Why are you still reading my silly thoughst?

Sponge Bob: Still not getting it. Maybe I need to be on drugs?

The Book of Life: It’s sad how progressive this film thinks it is when it really is not progressive even the tiniest bit. But it’s so beautifully animated. Why did it have to be so not beautifully done elsewhere?

Birdman: I guess writers write about writers and actors act about actors.

Odd Squad: Why are you still here and not watching Odd Squad?

I wrote:

Wolf children, Dellarae story, faeries. Wolf Children draft zero is done. Dellarae is out for submission. Faeries still languish.