Strong Verbs Are Just Better

One thing I'm NOT adding to my read list is this week's zoom playreading text, because I've been stuck with only two bars of mobile reception all day (when I moved in here I had 5? It's been around 4, dropping to 3 in storms, for a while, but today is a new low), and was unable to sustain even voice-to-voice call with Shiny this morning.

Currently Reading: Pretty much the same as usual. The things I have finished I finished within the fortnight, and haven't started their replacements yet.

Recently Finished:

Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives: Violence and Violation by Sorcha Gunne

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Only read the intro and forward, but: YES. EXTREMELY USEFUL YES GOOD THANK YOU


Orientalism by Edward W. Said

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Mea culpa I should have read this fifteen years ago. The *content* did not surprise me, because I got a good summary in undergrad and have read things that build on Said. The style did: unlike several other key theorists I have fudged knowledge of in my time, Said is BEAUTIFULLY LUCID. And the nuance: Said achieves something Foucault tries and fails at: identifying a historic but modern catalyst moment (for Said, it's Napoleon's Eygptian campaigns; for Foucault it's 19th c sexology) that fundamentally determined the shape of a phenomenon that dictates a lot of contemporary norms, WHILE ALSO recognising that it didn't come out of nowhere, and premodern roots and contributing factors. Putting on syllabus, and also putting on list of 'how to do this shit we call history/cultural studies' examples.


The Afterlives of Rape in Medieval English Literature by Suzanne M. Edwards

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Huh. Interesting, but not key relevant to my interests right now. Deals with the way that figures of rape survivors trouble the victim/slut binary.


The Canterbury Tales by Mike Poulton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Well, I didn't see this live, so I can't speak with absolute authority, but I ... have my doubts about whether it's possible to stage this in a socially responsible way. All the rape jokes aside, the Prioress' Tale is left in and unproblematised.


Prejudice and Christian Beginnings: Investigating Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in Early Christianity by Laura Nasrallah

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Useful intro, and brilliant essay from Shelley P. Haley.


The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was extremely silly and fun.


Online Fiction: Odie Lindsey (Electric Lit), The Run Up To The Next Release.
Marie-Helene Bertino (Electric Lit), Exerpt from 'Parakeet'

Up Next: LITERALLY ANYTHING. I had to move my currently-reading and to-be-annotated piles off the TBR trolley to make room for all the library/bookmail incoming, it's getting dire.

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More links:

Sam Dylan Finch (Healthline), Unlearn Your Fawn Response. 'Fawn' isn't my biggest problem in 'human relations while a bit traumatised', but I really liked point 5 here, where Sam talks about *hyperemotionality* and emotional *numbness* being inter-related states.

Paisley Currah (Boston Review), How a conservative legal perspective just saved LGBT rights. On the Bostock ruling. TL;DR ruling good, but the pedantically textualist approach may not be good in the long run - in particular, Gorsuch may be setting a standard he intends to hold to when gun control comes up.

Scott Horsley (NPR), The latest pandemic shortage: coins.

S. Bear Bergman (Vice), How to make more LGBTQ friends. Absolutely zero new news, but all delivered reassuringly.

seems to be anon or I can't find author name (Indigenousaction.org), Accomplices not allies: abolishing the ally industrial complex. Not a comfortable read but a worthwhile one.

Marc E Fitch (Crimereads), Literature is built on a foundation of horror. I'm really enjoying essays on the value of literature that unsettles, provokes, alarms and... does anything other than Validate, right now.