Though I've made this statement before and not followed through, I think today's post is going to be short. This is partly because I have to finish reading (and start formulating discussion questions for) a bookclub book. And this bookclub is this coming Wednesday (i.e., in three days). And I haven't finished the book yet.
Now, you may be thinking You have time, though or Three days, with one being a holiday? You can do that or Dang girl, why did you procrastinate? I don't know why I wrote "Dang girl." My only excuse is I've been re-watching some episodes of Parks and Recreation and Donna's voice was in my head as I wrote it out. Anyway. My response to all of the above statements/questions is this: I started reading this book two weeks ago, it is 538 pages long, and I'm only on page 356. Now, I've also been reading other books during this time. So there's been some procrastination going on. But this is also a super dense book that isn't reading easily for me, which brings us back to the title of this post. I like book clubs because they help get me out of my comfort zone when it comes to reading. I get to read new genres, authors, and styles, which is really awesome since my personality is very much "If it ain't broke don't fix it" when it comes to branching out of activities. Sometimes. Sometimes I'm adventurous. But usually I stick to what I know I like. So book clubs help me experience new things that I might come to enjoy I just didn't know it before. They also keep me reading even when it's a book I'd otherwise put down. Most of the time I finish books I otherwise wouldn't. Sometimes even the "deadline" and pressure of a book club can't get me through a book. Which brings me to this book. I'm less than 200 pages from the end and I have three days left. Thankfully, one is a holiday. Unfortunately, I also have afternoon/evening plans on said holiday, so it may not be as productive in terms of this book as I want it to be. On the bright side, an organization already created discussion questions for this book, which means I don't necessarily need to write my own. However, the book club itself is somewhat temporary and the reason it started was quite specific, which means I'll need to create at least some questions regarding that topic. All of which means I'll be using this evening and as much time as I can spare tomorrow reading, hopefully finishing, and then creating questions for Amos Oz's A Tale of Love and Darkness. And this finally brings me back to the title of this blog post. In some cases, this particular book might be a good book club book. But not for me. This particular book is incredibly dense and is not easy to read. Since I've got a pretty hefty amount of stress in my life at the moment already, this does not make for a good book club book. At least not a monthly book club. But hey, at least we're all reading it and can discuss something over snacks when we get together. Even if it's less about content and more about other things. Do you have books you wish you'd read in a book club because it would have forced you to finish? What about books you wish you'd never chosen for a book club (if you've ever been part of one)? Do you think your answers would change based on life events? Let me know in the comments. Happy Reading!
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I love Young Adult novels. Not all of them are good, but that can be said for any novel at any age level. What I like about YA novels though, is that the good ones often present a view of the universe that is very nuanced and help expose young adults (and all other readers) to ideas about what is, what should be, economic systems, social issues, etc., within a safe world. Readers are free to explore these topics without having to "worry" about whether the vast majority of their friends will agree with whatever political view the book takes, because it's just a book. I'm not saying this doesn't happen for adult books, but oftentimes adults take adult books too seriously and can get offended if they see someone reading a book they think contains ideas that are "wrong." Young Adult books don't necessarily carry this stigma (though you always have to be careful for those people worried about whether it is "appropriate" based on cursing, sexual activities, etc.). The point is! Young Adult novels are a great way for people to gain basic understanding of complex ideas without worrying that someone is going to slap a book out of their hands or dismiss its ideas because it's written by a "radical."
The Red Rising trilogy (which is the opening salvo of a larger series) is an example of a YA series where there's a lot that can be unpacked if you want. Or there's the option of just enjoying the story. Overall it help tells a message about the dangers of white-supremacy (or any sort of supremacy but in our current world it's white-supremacy), capitalism, technology, and societal norms. It does not go the way of Dune and the Butlerian Jihad (i.e., robots/AI taking control of everything and humans fighting back), but in some ways is much more insidious. It's biological science technology involving genetics, the reproductive system, and micro-chipping. Things that seem hugely science fiction right now, but which aren't actually that far away. The basic premise of of the series is that humanity has been separated into different colors, each color holding a place in the hierarchy of society. Reds at the bottom, Golds at the top. Through genetic engineering Golds are superior in size, strength, and supposedly everything else. Reds and other colors (Grays, Obsidians, Pinks, Violets, Blues, Oranges, etc.) are useful but inferior. Society has rules, Golds enforce those rules, and everyone is happy. Except, obviously to the reader, they aren't. Darrow, a Red hell-diver, is called upon by the Sons of Ares to infiltrate the Golds and help bring about the revolution. He is remade as a Gold and pushed into what amounts to a military academy. And let me tell you, it's way worse than the Hunger Games. The series is violent, disturbing, and heart-rending. I've cried and yelled and almost thrown the book (yes, I stopped myself in time but did end up slamming it against my table). It is not a story that has a happy ending, though I suppose Pierce Brown may pull something out of his hat in this last book, but it is a very important story to read. Even if you don't read it as a commentary on capitalism, white-supremacy, social norms, technology, and/or the human condition it is a series worth reading. Because as much as I love happy endings, it's important to be reminded that sometimes things don't turn out well. There are wars, traumas, and horrors in our world, but that doesn't mean we give up. That is, in my opinion, the most important message of this series (though there are a whole lot more if you read deeply). So read those happy books like I do, but maybe pick these up too. Because it never hurts to be reminded that we can always get back up again and there is always something worth rising for. Happy Reading! Today's post should be a short one (though I've said that before and that doesn't happen, so who knows). This post will, however, be dedicated to one of my creative outlets: drawing. I'm not an amazing artist when it comes to drawing. I can make something that looks good, but I never took the time to study and make myself great. It takes a lot of time, lots of erasing, and often does not match what I wanted it to look like in my head. This does not mean it looks bad, but there are things I notice like shading, or how the body is posed, or the hands/feet of a person, that just look off. That being said, when I draw something it doesn't look horrible, and I realize this. But I've seen other people draw much better pictures than me, so when I say I'm not a "good" artist, it's because I don't think I could make a living off of my art as it stands right now. With that explanation out of the way...One of the authors I follow on Facebook (shout-out to Aidy Award and all her lovely romance novels!!! If you like romance, try her books, they're awesome), posted something that I found really awesome. Apparently, May is the month a portion of the internet dedicates to drawing mermaids. It is termed #MerMay, and it is amazing!!! Follow that hashtag (or the more specific #MerMay2019) on Twitter or Instagram if you love mermaids (which I do) because there is some lovely art out there! And what's even better is the diversity you see in the art. These aren't all Disney mermaids that are super thin with heteronormative relationships and are not all that dangerous to humans. You get some of those. There's a really cute piece of art that has Pudge from Lilo and Stitch as a mermaid hanging out with Lilo and Stitch. There are mermen, mermaids of pretty much every type of aquatic creature, every type of skin color, and every weight. I got so inspired that I decided to draw my own mermaid for #MerMay, so I thought I'd share my picture and the process it took to get me to the final product. So first steps, sketch things out. Below you can see my first "this is essentially what I want it to look like" sketch. This is after multiple erasures and dangits. I say sketch, but I don't actually know how, so I just draw lightly until I get an approximation of what I want, which is when I start drawing darker. As you can see, I don't have the face mapped out, and most of the lines are light enough that I could easily erase them without leaving too many marks on the paper. Step 2, once I'm satisfied with my sketches, is inking it out. If I'm scanning my drawings or taking a picture, sometimes pencil doesn't show up dark enough, so I tend to ink in the outlines of things. This also means that if I want to go back and make a line cleaner I can do so without worrying about erasing everything around that line too. I only ink after I'm sure of what details I want included. It's a prelude to the last step. The picture above isn't just the ink, I'd already started to color some of it in when I took the picture. At some point in my life I want to learn the art of ink drawing, but I'm not confident enough in my skills to create an entire piece of art with only pens. I like to be able to erase, or at least just make the whole thing a darker shade if I mess something up. Step 3 is coloring. As you see in the above picture, I already started. I use colored pencils mostly because if you start light enough it's relatively easy to hide any mistakes. But they're also pretty cheap and easy to find. I don't need to go to a craft store to get good ones. Below is my finished product. I've been thinking about lionfish mermaids for quite a few years, and so that's what I decided to draw. I chose brown colors because I wanted it to be somewhat realistic. I had a hard time with the hair (I was running out of browns but I also wanted everything but the dark brown streaks to be a noticeable different color) and the eyes. I had the 24-pack of Crayola colored pencils, so in some ways my color choices were limited by that. Overall, it would have been nice to have the hair and eyes blend in a bit more with the rest of the look but I'm very happy with how it turned out.
What creative pursuits do you explore sometimes? Do you have a dedicated activity? Or is it more of a "when I get the urge I do this..." type of thing for you? Let me know in the comments. Happy Reading! It doesn't always happen but sometimes when I review a book on Goodreads.com I give it less than three stars. I don't like to do this. I know how much work goes into writing/publishing/marketing/selling a book, and I'm still on the writing portion of mine. But sometimes I need to rate a book just "ok", which is a two-star rating on Goodreads. And the thing is, this book, and others in the series, have storylines which are worth a three-star rating at least. I'm on the third book in the Parasol Protectorate series now. I started reading the series last week. Obviously I like these books right? And I do. I just do not like the writing style.
The story itself takes place in a steampunk rendition of Victorian England. The aether (a common entity in steampunk literature) sort of takes the place of electric and magnetic advances. In addition to this classical steampunk trope, supernatural creatures, vampires and werewolves, join the cast, and the main character herself, a Miss Alexia Tarabotti, is a preternatural. Preturnaturals aren't a common paranormal creature. In this world, vampires and werewolves are created out of mortals that had extra "soul." Similar to scientific understanding in our current world, the book's world doesn't really have a good explanation of what the "soul" is. But they know that mortals who have an excess survive the change to vampires or werewolves. In contrast, a preternatural has no "soul." They live, they have consciences, they reproduce exactly the same as humans would. But they have no souls, and their touch renders supernatural creatures mortal again. So, in essence, they're the opposite of a supernatural. Hence the term preternatural. I won't get into the actual plot of the book, but just reading that short description of the type of world the book contains is amazing. It's exactly my type of book. But the characters, who I mostly like, and the intricacies of the world itself weren't able to make up for the writing style. It was written in third person, which as an author I like because it gives me some freedom to switch perspectives without having to indicate in a chapter or section heading which characters is speaking. It can, however, be difficult for a reader if viewpoint changes too often without an indication or pattern (as often happens in the Parasol Protectorate series). In this series' case, I think the possible issues with third-person are compounded because the author doesn't always refer to the same characters in the same way. For example, sometimes she'll call the protagonist Alexia but other times she'll call the protagonist Miss Tarabotti. And there isn't a pattern I've been able to detect that indicates why she's using a different moniker. This was jarring for me in the first book, and has been in the second book as well. I'm not far enough into the third book to make a judgement on that yet. Long story short (though it isn't if you consider the length of this post), I've given the first two books of the Parasol Protectorate series two-star ratings because the writing style is so jarring, but they are at least three-star worthy in terms of characters and storyline keeping me interested. If you like steampunk and paranormal reads (yes there is romance thrown in too) feel free to read the book(s) and give me your opinion on them. Maybe you'll catch a pattern I missed and I can go back and up my rating. Or we can just gab about the book itself. Happy Reading! Today, May 2, 2019, is Yom HaShoah. In English, that's Holocaust Memorial Day. For Jews such as myself, it is an important day because millions of Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and people with disabilities were systematically destroyed by Nazis. Jews were not the only group that were targeted by the Nazis, but as a people we make sure to remember the Holocaust and all the lives lost to hatred, xenophobia, and white supremacy. I am writing this blog post in part because even as we remember the lives lost in the Holocaust today, we also are dealing with rising levels of antisemitism, racism, and xenophobia throughout the world. A piece of evidence supporting this is the shooting at the Poway Chabad in California on Saturday, April 27. While this shooting did not result in as many fatalities as another recent synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, life was still lost. One of the underlying reasons for the shooting was antisemitism. Another was white-supremacy. These were also two reasons the Jews were targeted during the Holocaust.
On Monday I was having a conversation with a few other young Jews in my community about how this shooting and antisemitism affected us. One of the topics revolved around how we as Jews can communicate to our friends how an event like Poway affects us even when it's "small." After all, "only" one person died and a few others were injured. It wasn't like Pittsburgh when 11 people died, or the shooting at the Mosque in Christchurch New Zealand when 51 people died, or the bombs at Catholic churches in Sri Lanka where hundreds died. So Poway, in some ways, is not as big a tragedy and does not get as much media coverage and so people who are not in a Jewish community may not be speaking of it. But it is still very important to our lives. Every shooting or violent act against us is. So how can we communicate this to others without seeming whiny. Because it may not be a big deal to them, but it is very important to us. I suggested writing a blog where you don't just post about tragedies but use the blog to share your truth. Which is what I am trying to do with this blog. I am trying to share my truth through the books I read, the days I live, and the research/writing that I do. And since I gave such a lovely suggestion to a friend, I decided to take my own advice and write a blog. Especially since what happened at Poway is actually relevant to Yom HaShoah. The second topic that stuck with me from my conversation with other young Jews about Poway is the following question: do you feel safe or scared? And my answer for this question was, do I ever feel safe? I didn't go through the Holocaust. None of my immediate family did. All my grandparents, and even great grandparents were safely in the U.S. when the Holocaust happened. I have no personal stories (removed by a few generations) about the antisemitism, the ghettos, the concentration camps, the underground, the death. But I've read books, I've attended classes, I've met others whose grandparents lived through the Holocaust, or maybe didn't. And I grew up in a place where there were very few Jews in a town that was not necessarily Jew friendly. A few of the other people I was speaking with on Friday mentioned that they don't necessarily feel unsafe except when they go to synagogue and see the armed guards there. That's when they're reminded of the shootings. Or sometimes there's a phrase people say that's antisemitic and they're triggered. They don't really notice feeling unsafe. When I grew up, every high holiday there was a cop car at our synagogue. My parents taught me that I don't mention my Judaism unless its with friends. Friends who are established. As I grew older, this changed somewhat. But I almost always laughed off the antisemitic comments people made. It's safer that way. And when people start throwing up "Heil Hitlers" you just keep walking. I don't want you to think it was dangerous back then. It really wasn't. Incidents were very few and very far between. But while sometimes a small thing will trigger me now (it may not have meant anything, but if I see a shirt with a stormtrooper helmet on it saying "Support Our Troops" I'm going to walk in the other direction, maybe jog if it won't be conspicuous), I don't feel any more unsafe being a Jew, and happy to be a Jew, than I ever did. And after thinking about it, it is partly because I have always been afraid. Jews are white, and therefore don't have it as badly as other minorities in the U.S. We are still a minority and still victims of white-supremacy, but because many of us also have white skin (no, not all of us, and internal prejudice is still a major problem unfortunately) many of us also don't worry as much about being shot by the police. Right now. We don't necessarily fear that gentrification will push us out of our homes. We don't usually fear that someone will call the cops on us only because of the color of our skin. We still fear that someone is going to get it into their head that Jews have too much money. That Jews run the state through a grand conspiracy. That "if only the Jews were gone things would be better for us." Antisemitism is an interesting form of prejudice because it relies on the victims not looking like victims. If the Jews look like scapegoats, a people who are privileged but not quite privileged enough, then we can take the blame of everyone's problems. It has been like this since medieval times. It was key to the Pittsburgh shooting. And so we are still afraid. Balanced between privilege and prejudice we never know when the scales will tip. And so we are always afraid. Violence is on the rise. Terrorism based on white supremacy is becoming more blatant (it's always been high, we just didn't want to recognize it). And the overt trends in the U.S. are looking more and more like Nazi Germany. The U.S. has always had issues. The country was built on the attempted genocide of indigenous peoples and the slavery of African nations. It has benefited from the exploitation of non-whites at every point in its history and we sweep that fact under the rug. But now the U.S. is letting those actions become acceptable, even celebrated, with no attempt to cushion the blows. Now, the U.S. is scapegoating immigrants and asylum seekers. The Latinx communities are bearing the brunt of this now. Soon it may change. Scapegoats might once again be Jews. Or Muslims. Or Blacks. Or Indigenous Nations. Or Asians. Or Pacific Islanders. Or homosexuals. Anyone that doesn't fit with white-supremacy. It happened before. It seems to be happening again. And so we are always afraid. These have been my thoughts this week. And I hope that my truth has made you uncomfortable. Because discomfort inspires action. Think about what you see and hear around you. Be kind. Stand up to authority to take care of your neighbors. Do not be complacent. And maybe we will be able to be less afraid. |
AuthorThe author is a librarian who reads "too much" (is there such a thing?) and talks just as much. As an aspiring author she gets bogged down by grammar rules when she just wants to forget them to make a sentence flow, but never seems to be able to. She appreciates thoughtful comments and constructive criticism, but internet trolls beware, she's read enough fantasy novels to know how to defeat the monsters. Archives
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