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What Are You Reading Weekend
Feb. 11th, 2018 01:30 pmCurrently Reading: Zora Neale Hurston, 'Their Eyes Were Watching God', and Best Australian Poems 2016. I think that's actually it, everything else is me poking in and out of academic reference books I've already read.
Recently DNF'd: Gave up on David Lodge's Therapy. Life is too short to pretend to be amused by heteronormative characters having bad sex and calling it comedy.
Also culled a couple of books from my hard copy to-read shelf: Murakami and GK Chesterton are going back to the work free shelf from whence they came.
Recently Finished:
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Slightly to my surprise - after liking Orlando and DNF'ing 'The Waves' about three pages in - I liked this! I found it readable, often very funny, and quite frankly a lot gayer than I expected. The moral I took away from this story is that heterosexual pairings are no good for anyone.
I'm looking forward to teaching it: I don't know yet what the lecturer will do with it, but I can already tell it will be a lot easier to teach narrative techniques like focalisation with than the Scarlet Letter in every way.
Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales by Stephen Knight
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Cherry-picking from this for teaching this semester. I've made a recording of Robin Hood and the Monk if that interests anyone.
What Love Is: And What It Could Be by Carrie S.I. Jenkins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The 'academic' tags I've given this are misleading - Jenkins is an academic, but this is absolutely pop-philosophy. Only minimally useful for my work purposes, and although readable, actually rather too simplistic for my personal-interests reading purposes. I mean, possibly if you haven't spent the last six years of your life being a. non-monogamous and b. weird in the romantic feelings department, AND spent the last year or so having to ask stupid questions like 'whateven IS romance anyway?' for academic points, it might be excitingly insightful? Possibly I needed it five or six years ago, but I don't really now.
We're Just Good Friends: Women and Men in Nonromantic Relationships by Kathy J. Werking
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Quite dated but I'm pleased to have found it - FINALLY. Problem turns out to have been taking my reading list on friendship from a 90s book on women's friendship that declares 'there's nothing on opposite-sex friendship' - this book points out how WRONG that was.
View all my reviews
Also had a read or re-read of: Krueger, 'Women Readers'; Bolens, 'Logique du corps articulaire'; various others sifted through without consistently reading.
Up Next: I've an issue of Meanjin to tackle; I need to read Benz St John's 'Three Medieval Queens' with more care; Halberstam's 'Trans'..
Music notes: Bought Lindsay Stirling's 'Brave Enough', which is... pop violin? It's good, I like it. I think I might have just bought this last time I posted one of these updates, but ftr I've been enjoying it.
Also Gary Moore, 'Back to the Blues': Keiji Tanaka has been skating to 'The Prophet' this season, although it's in the ISU database as 'Memories'. I eventually installed shazaam to identify it and find the relevant album. The album's interesting - it varies from very country-ish blues (he's had enough of the blues but the blues aint had enough of him!) to electric blues-rock like The Prophet.
Most recently, Cinematic Pop, 'Prologue', which is covers of assorted pop-rock tracks with a symphony orchestra. Figure Skating's fault, again - Stellato/Bartholomay are skating to the Cinematic Pop version of U2's One, and I tracked down the artist. One actually isn't on the album I bought, because I fixated 'Smells like teen spirit' and 'rolling in the deep' instead.
Adventures with the habit tracker: as you can tell by the amount of new music, I've been meeting targets, but I've also been... very anxious / obsessive about it. I'm trying to dial down the intensity, but the ratio of 'makes me stressed' to 'means my life is in order' is starting to even out.
Recently DNF'd: Gave up on David Lodge's Therapy. Life is too short to pretend to be amused by heteronormative characters having bad sex and calling it comedy.
Also culled a couple of books from my hard copy to-read shelf: Murakami and GK Chesterton are going back to the work free shelf from whence they came.
Recently Finished:
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia WoolfMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Slightly to my surprise - after liking Orlando and DNF'ing 'The Waves' about three pages in - I liked this! I found it readable, often very funny, and quite frankly a lot gayer than I expected. The moral I took away from this story is that heterosexual pairings are no good for anyone.
I'm looking forward to teaching it: I don't know yet what the lecturer will do with it, but I can already tell it will be a lot easier to teach narrative techniques like focalisation with than the Scarlet Letter in every way.
Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales by Stephen KnightMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Cherry-picking from this for teaching this semester. I've made a recording of Robin Hood and the Monk if that interests anyone.
What Love Is: And What It Could Be by Carrie S.I. JenkinsMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
The 'academic' tags I've given this are misleading - Jenkins is an academic, but this is absolutely pop-philosophy. Only minimally useful for my work purposes, and although readable, actually rather too simplistic for my personal-interests reading purposes. I mean, possibly if you haven't spent the last six years of your life being a. non-monogamous and b. weird in the romantic feelings department, AND spent the last year or so having to ask stupid questions like 'whateven IS romance anyway?' for academic points, it might be excitingly insightful? Possibly I needed it five or six years ago, but I don't really now.
We're Just Good Friends: Women and Men in Nonromantic Relationships by Kathy J. WerkingMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Quite dated but I'm pleased to have found it - FINALLY. Problem turns out to have been taking my reading list on friendship from a 90s book on women's friendship that declares 'there's nothing on opposite-sex friendship' - this book points out how WRONG that was.
View all my reviews
Also had a read or re-read of: Krueger, 'Women Readers'; Bolens, 'Logique du corps articulaire'; various others sifted through without consistently reading.
Up Next: I've an issue of Meanjin to tackle; I need to read Benz St John's 'Three Medieval Queens' with more care; Halberstam's 'Trans'..
Music notes: Bought Lindsay Stirling's 'Brave Enough', which is... pop violin? It's good, I like it. I think I might have just bought this last time I posted one of these updates, but ftr I've been enjoying it.
Also Gary Moore, 'Back to the Blues': Keiji Tanaka has been skating to 'The Prophet' this season, although it's in the ISU database as 'Memories'. I eventually installed shazaam to identify it and find the relevant album. The album's interesting - it varies from very country-ish blues (he's had enough of the blues but the blues aint had enough of him!) to electric blues-rock like The Prophet.
Most recently, Cinematic Pop, 'Prologue', which is covers of assorted pop-rock tracks with a symphony orchestra. Figure Skating's fault, again - Stellato/Bartholomay are skating to the Cinematic Pop version of U2's One, and I tracked down the artist. One actually isn't on the album I bought, because I fixated 'Smells like teen spirit' and 'rolling in the deep' instead.
Adventures with the habit tracker: as you can tell by the amount of new music, I've been meeting targets, but I've also been... very anxious / obsessive about it. I'm trying to dial down the intensity, but the ratio of 'makes me stressed' to 'means my life is in order' is starting to even out.