Author Archives: Kate

Review: The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf by Molly Harper

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First, I have to start with review by saying that these are fun books. They’re ridiculous books, but they are fun books. This is the second book in a series about a wolf pack in Alaska. Instead of centering on a woman who marries into the pack, it focuses on a woman in the pack, the love interest from the first book’s sister. There is a little drama. There is a little mystery. There’s an unbelievably hot scientist. There’s a happy ending. You know the drill. Amanda Ronconi who narrates the audiobook does a nice job. So, if you’re into fluffy, paranormal romance or if you’re looking for something light, I recommend you give this a go.

 

Potential Spoilers Ahead.

 

And now that I’ve said that, I need to talk about something that bothered me so much in this book. The werewolves are infertile with anyone but the partner they’ve bonded with. I can’t imagine that there is any evolutionary benefit to this. At all. It seems like the stupidest design feature of a creature ever invented and it also perfectly explains why werewolves as a species are dying out. I’d get it if werewolves were monogamous and pretty devoted (possibly to the point of being creepy) to their partners. I mean, I wouldn’t want it, but I’d get it. And, there’s evidence in the animal kingdom of some animals mating monogamously and/or for life (easier done when life is only a few months or years, I’d venture to guess.) But, being fertile with only one partner forever? Whu?? What kind of testing apparatus would the body have to have internally to be able to tell one partner from another? And, what about close genetic matches? I couldn’t stop either questioning how that worked or feeling completely flabbergasted that it happened at all.

 

Anyway, this featured heavily in the plot and it took me right out of the narrative because it was ridiculous. So, if you like fluffy paranormal romance but you also like at least a modicum of believable scientific accuracy, this book is not for you.

 

 

This book is my audio book selection for the Diverse Stacks, Diverse Lives Challenge.

Review: Bitch Planet by Kelly Sue DeConnick

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In this dystopian future, Non-compliant women are shipped off to a prison planet where they are kept out of the population and away from the compliant women. They are separated so that they do not destroy society. And, so that they do not infect other women with their non-compliance.
The prison is awful. Women are beaten. They are spied on. They are occasionally murdered by the guards (sometimes on the request of someone in the prison’s administration. Sometimes to protect compliant women from being confused with non-compliant women. Like, if your new husband’s ex-wife is non-compliant and a warrant is issued for her arrest but they get confused and arrest the wrong Mrs….well, what’s a girl to do?)
The women of the prison planet (colloquially known as Bitch Planet) are given the opportunity to play in a competition of a sport some people call dua mille and some people call Megaton. The sport seems to be a no-holds-barred life or death kind of rugby. You can have as many players as you like as long as the total weight of your entire team is 2,000 pounds. (Hence the name of the game). The women could win their freedom but the cards are stacked against them. Even in their practices they are not safe from an unholy level of violence, scheming and trickery. But, they have a few secret weapons.  But, no spoilers so this is where this description stops.
Oh my god. This comic. This comic is soooo good. The art is great. The colors are muted but still there. Especially in the prison. The places where they are the most vibrant are on TV broadcasts. We see compliant women and bright, pastel colors and it really seems forced, which was perfect. The characters, at least the prisoners, are sympathetic. I so want them to win. At everything. Forever. There are a few characters on the outside as well who are sympathetic. And, it ended on a huge cliffhanger. Huge enough that, even though I waited for the first collected volume to come out, I’ve since picked up the individual issues to catch up. (Of course, there was no wisdom in that since I haven’t had time to catch up. But, such is life.)
This counts as my non-super hero comic in the Diverse Stacks, Diverse Lives challenge.

 

Review: Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

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Oof. I’ve been letting the team down. And, it hasn’t been because I haven’t been reading (as anyone who follows me on goodreads knows). It also hasn’t been because I haven’t been writing. This review has been in draft for a month. But, this review has been a long time coming for the following reason: I can’t believe I’m going to review this amazing book with a narrative that centers on the experiences of an African-American woman talking about a white male character. But, I am.

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler is the story of a woman named Dana who is sent back in time to the antebellum South. She is pulled there by an ancestor who is, to put it mildly, not very good at taking care of himself. Over the course of the narrative, we are introduced over and over again to the horrors of slavery in an intimate and heartbreaking way. This book was amazing for it’s tension and suspense. I loved Dana and I wanted to know what happened to her. I was scared for her and I wanted there to be a happy ending. But, it is also uncomfortable. If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “but there were good slave owners”, this fictional story might be a good way into interrogating those feelings because, even when an overseer or owner was fair, any outcome that involves owning another person is horrific.

Spoilers behind the cut.

Continue reading →

What I’m Listening to Now: The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

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I have also been listening to a lot of classic Tupac because I keep waking up with the following 2pac lyric in my head, “Instead of a war on poverty, they’ve got a war on drugs so police can bother me.” I feel like it has been bad for a long time and some of us are just now seeing it.

Diverse Stacks, Diverse Lives Challenge Update

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Sooooo…. I thought, since it is now June, that it might be a good idea to check and see how I’m doing on our book challenge for the year.

 

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So far this year I have read a book with characters from various socioeconomic classes (The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater), A book by an Asian author (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo), A book by a woman author (Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes), A book by a small press (Sad Girl Poems by Christopher Soto) , an audiobook (The feminist Mystique by Betty Friedan), and a graphic novel (with a superhero character.) (Y’all, I’ve read so much Captain America it ain’t even funny anymore.)  That’s six out of thirty.

 

I’m not even a quarter of the way done with the challenge. But, I have some things I’ve picked up that are in the pipeline that should fill out some of these categories. I hope. I just started Kindred by Octavia Butler, so that counts as a book with an African American character.

 

Are you doing a book challenge this year? How are you doing on it? What have you read on the challenge that you loved but wouldn’t have read otherwise?

The Past Couple of Months in Reality: I listened to a Feminist Classic

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So, I had a moment earlier this year where someone referenced the feminist classic the Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan and I realized that I hadn’t read it. It seems like something I should have read. So, I used one of my audible credits and I picked it up. And, then I spent hours cooking, cleaning and walking on the tread mill while Parker Posey read it to me.

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Isn’t that the creeepiest image?

Anyway, this classic was originally published in 1963 and it addressed a problem that women who bought (and a society that sold) the fantasy that the most fulfilling thing a woman could do with her life was get married and have children and how that not only affected those women but also had ripple effects within society. I can see, looking back, how this was a revolutionary book. It is important to know and remember that women are people and that women, all women, have capacities and interests and being stuck in and reduced to one or two roles for any person is potentially trapping.

But, this book was definitely written in a different time and was focused on different issues than the feminism is now. For one, every time Friedan wrote “women”, I found it was almost always easier to take if I added “Middle Class White” before “women”. While Friedan was probably trying to write about an ideal (and, a societal image of what a “woman” should be is certainly something everyone woman-identifying person has to contend with much like the idea of what a “man” should be is something all men-identifying people have to contend with.) most of the data she presented was about a very particular kind of woman. As already mentioned, middle class white women. And, that’s fine, but the problems that middle class white women face are not always the same as the problems that working class white women face. Or, Middle class African American women. Or, working class African American women. Or, Trans women. Or, Asian American women. Or, Native American women. I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

I am glad that I read it, though. It is nice to be able to look back and think about how much we have accomplished and to note how much work we still have to do.

Review: Sad Girl Poems by Christopher Soto

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I never know what to say about poetry. I feel like, when you talk about poetry, you should say things about the poem’s anatomy. Its structure, the word choice, how those things contributed to the overall effect of what the author has presented. But, I never feel like I can do this. Or, maybe it’s that I don’t feel like I have the authority to do this. This is especially true with this chapbook. The author presents a series of poems that feature recurring references to a number of different people (Mother, Father, Rory, the cops). If you’ll excuse a little word play here, this book provides an arresting picture of how we are here for each other, how we fail to be here for each other and how the people who we love are the people who hurt us the most. And, I feel like I don’t have authority to tell you about the anatomy or word choice or structure of these poems because I feel like I was presented a snapshot of a time, some insight into someone else’s life, and the view was so radically different from my own life that the only thing I can do with it is listen and observe and feel grateful that this book was shared with the world.
This was a really intense read that had me in tears more than once. And, more than once I found myself shocked with the reality that with which I was being presented. For example, in the poem “Home [Chaos Theory]”, the author presents us with an image of a homeless woman and dialogue from colleagues and we are left with the disconnect between what someone has experienced and what we know about them. How many people in our lives carry invisible wounds? How often do we separate people from their experiences or help to build and support the idea of “other” in their lives. (“Oh, X is just like that. I mean, you’re X but  I’m not talking about you. You’re not like that.”) And, I was left wondering how often am I complicit in creating the realities that put queer people, people of color, queer people of color out of their homes? Out of jobs? In these situations where the prison complex then sweeps them up and punishes them for doing what they have to do in order to survive?
I really enjoyed this book. I really liked how the words seemed to wander across the page in some poems. I liked the use of parentheses. I loved how that made it feel sometimes like you were reading dialogue and other times like you were being given secret insight into what was said or what someone was thinking. These poems were heartbreaking and beautiful and I am so, so glad that I got the chance to read this book.
This is my Diverse Stacks, Diverse Lives book for a book from a small press.

Captain America. So much Captain America

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Tomorrow a movie that Beth and I (and a lot of the world) has been anticipating comes out and I have been preparing for it in typical Book Blogger fashion. I binged on some of the source material.

I started with Civil War (which Beth also read.)  This is a heartbreaking title in which Captain America stands up for what he believes in and Tony Stark is kind of a dick about something that’s probably a terrible idea. But, that’s not what is heartbreaking about it. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone interested in reading the interesting title, but Cap’s arch in this comic is pretty sad.

 

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And, then I read The Death of Captain America. I feel like that title should come with a spoiler alert? Except, I don’t. This is the post-registration world and so no one can take up the shield without registering first. And, Bucky Barnes, who once again remembers who he is or was, isn’t going to let just anyone take up the shield. I liked how this story developed and went into some of the implications of the registration act. There are still fugitive unregistered heroes. There are registered heroes who regret that choice. It was a good read.

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And, then I read Captain America: Road to Reborn. Steve Rogers has been gone a year. How is everyone holding up? How are they living with what happened and the part they played in it?  This was also an interesting title that unsurprisingly has left me wanting to read more.

So, a friend lent me Marvel 1602 and now that’s what I’m reading.

The good news is Comixology has got a girl’s back and they’ve helpfully had a number of sales that have let me keep reading. (Even if it meant I had to buy single issues.)

 

How do you prepare for a movie based on a book to come out? Do you read the book? Do you watch the interviews of cast members? Do you avoid everything and hope to be pleasantly surprised? Let us know it the comics!