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.
Finally getting around to reading a book club pick from earlier this year.
Since Kate posted her update, I figured I should do mine. I’m doing much better on the Meduim/Genre/Industry Sub-Challenge then the other 2. So far I have read Captain Marvel for my Graphic Novel with a superhero, Nimona for Graphic Novel without a superhero. The Hidden Oracle for a book meant for Children and Cravings a cookbook by Chrissy Teigen for a book from a genre I’ve never read. Half Lost, a book with a Queer Character. To All The Boys I’ve Loved, a book with an Asian American Character. And finally Endure by Sara b Larson for a book by a Woman author. To be honest, I could have picked almost any book I’ve read this year for that last one because so far I have only read 3 books written by a man.
So that brings my total up to 7 out of 30. Yikes, that’s not great but it’s 1 better then Kate. ;-).
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.
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?
Sometimes, you just need some fluff. Fluff about a super nerdy PhD-holding dude and Alpha werewolf lady. I think this one is going to have similar amounts of interpersonal drama as the last one.
This is book 7 in a wildly entertaining series. Nick is fantastic as always with his wit and charm (he thinks he’s charming). He can annoy even the most demonic of demons. I love him. If you haven’t read any of these books, check out my Series You Should Read from last year because you really should read! It’s one of those books that I can’t help but laugh out loud while reading. It’s funny. It’s insane. The situations that Nick and his friends get into are pretty insane. And as sassy as Nick is he’s not alone in his sassiness. Caleb, Kody, Acheron, Kyrian can give it right back to him and it’s awesome but no one can compare to my favorite barbecue-toting demon eater Simi. No one tops Simi in hilarity.
Anyway, Nick has got a glimpse of his possible futures and no matter what he tries to do to stop himself from the fulfilling his destiny of destroying the world,it happens anyways. So he chooses to drown his sorrows in beignets. It sounds like a good idea to me too. When word gets out that his once thought dead friend Zavid might not be dead, it breaks Nick out of his funk. Nick has many virtues and one is how loyal he is to his friends but of course going after Zavid is not the best plan since he is being held by Noir, one of his many enemies. Plans to rescue Zavid on hold, when Nick starts to lose his powers. The only way that Malachai can lose his powers is when his sons starts to gain his. Nick doesn’t have a son. He hasn’t even had sex! How can he losing his powers! As the team try to figure out what’s going on. Battle more demons. Do a little time traveling. They make it through the day but not without sacrifices. All of the books are fast paced and action packed. It literally goes from one crisis to another. It makes it very hard to stop reading because you are at your train stop and you have to go to work. Work. It just gets in the way. You would think after seven books that it would start to get stale or repetitive but no. Maybe that’s because they are not particularly long books so there isn’t a lot of filler. Yet each character has a backstory. They all have a role to play in the story. Nothing is wasted. It’s just plain fun. Seriously, you all should read them.
In an effort to get out of my house and interact with something that isn’t my dissertation or my cats I have joined a book club. This is our pick for June. We meet tomorrow. Guess what I’m doing after I finish another hour of dissertation work?
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.
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.
So this is the final book in the series. I think. I thought the same thing about the The One but I think this is really it. I am grateful that this was only a duology and not a trilogy because while it was entertaining I feel it also ran it’s course. I liked that it flipped the original plot on it’s head by having the Princess being the one to choose instead of being one of the choices. Eadlyn, the Princess of Iliea is faced with many challenges for one being unliked by her people. She is thought of as being cold and standoffish and inexperienced and she is a little bit of all of that but what stuck me is that this is the same criticism that many women in power have faced. What I didn’t like about this book is that despite all of the self affirming moments in this book. She finds that she is stronger then she thought. She gains new perspective on not just her life but that of her peoples but in the end, it’s about who she is going to marry. That is the whole point of the Selection. To find the Princess a husband. In the first book, the selection was supposed to be a distraction and by the King more time to figure out how to handle the unrest but as the selection went on, it became more about making her more likable and then how to secure her crown when an outside threat emerges. Sort of Spoilerish but not really, I think we all knew she was going to find her true love but I really wished that by end she would realize that she didn’t have to actually get engaged. That she could find her soul mate and say this is man I am going to marry some day but right now, I’m still a teenager and I want to live a little before I settle down. That would have been a kick ass ending but this is a sort of fairy tale so you know. I don’t want you all to think I didn’t enjoy this book or the series as a whole because I did but I think it could have been so much more. And for what’s it’s worth, the guy she picked was my pick too so there is that. I’ll be interested to read what Kiera Cass does to follow this one up.
2 Women, So Many Books 