Sophinisba Solis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophinisba) wrote2020-07-16 07:54 pm
sophinisba) wrote2020-07-16 07:54 pm
Entry tags:
books
I made a post about reading and TV about two weeks ago so this is sort of an update to the books part, and maybe I'll write more about TV and movies another time.
I kept reading Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward until I was done with it. I never connected with the characters or had strong feelings about the book.
Then I read The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, a book about a Black teenage boy who gets sent to a reform school in the 1960s. This was terrific! I had a similar experience as to when I read his book The Underground Railroad a few years ago. That is, I read the first few pages, thought, oh damn, this book is going to be too intense for me with its unrelenting racist violence, so put the book down for a couple months, and then came back and tore through the whole thing in a few days. It does have, you know, a lot of racism and racist violence in it, but I found the characters to be so appealing that I kept with it and it was very engrossing and also moving.
[I had some thoughts about whump and racism in fandom so if anyone wants to talk about that in comments or privately let me know! I'm finding them too hard to articulate at the moment though.]
Meanwhile I continued to listen to the audiobook of Becoming by Michelle Obama –– as planned, I listened to all of part 2, which goes from around the time she and Barack Obama got together up through the 2008 election, and then "returned" it to the library, so I will listen to part 3 another time. This book continues to be so so so great. I loved learning more about her personal and professional trajectory, how for a long time she'd moved along a kind of track for upwardly mobile Black folks and it was partly through her relationship with Barack that she started questioning that, figuring out whether another kind of career would be more meaningful even if it meant a pay cut, figuring out how to negotiate a different path for herself, wow. And of course learning to weigh all of those ambitions and desires of her own against his, which she also believed in. I had known she was a very accomplished person and a Harvard Law grad but not that she was the vice president of a major university hospital when he started running for president. Obviously as First Lady she's been an amazing inspiration to millions of people but you also think about all the work she was doing before and the other work she might have done if she hadn't left that path in order to follow him.
And then after I finished The Nickel Boys I started digging in to Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld. Like I mentioned before, this is a novel that imagines an alternate history where Hillary Rodham didn't marry Bill Clinton. I found it a little frustrating at first because so much of the first half of it is still about her falling in love and being in a relationship with him, during law school and the first year or two after. Since I knew the premise was going to be that she didn't marry him I found this kind of tiresome, especially because, unlike Barack/Michelle, Hillary/Bill isn't a great romance! Sittenfeld understands this! But she writes a lot about how smitten Hillary was and how she tried to imagine and create a life with him before realizing (as we all know) that he would never be faithful to her. It works I guess because it sets up the stakes for things that come later, but meh.
I really really enjoyed like the middle third of the book that's about Hillary developing her own career, first as a law professor and then going into politics. Now I'm getting toward the end and it's about the 2016 election and feels both a little farfetched and a little too real, what with us all still being traumatized from 2016 and newly harmed by the consequences of election on a daily basis. Fuck.
The book is told from Hillary's POV and that feels really true to me with everything I know about her, having admired her for a long time while also being frustrated with her at times. There's a thread in it about racism that I think is handled pretty well, in that it doesn't let her off the hook for a wrong thing she does, though I also wish that bit were developed a little more.
I am in suspense as to what will happen! I'll probably finish reading it in the next couple days and then will get to read other people's thoughts, which is a fun thing about reading a brand new book.
Here are some other books I might read soon:
-The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom, a recent memoir about a Black family in New Orleans that I've had out from the library (as an ebook) for a few days.
-Devil in a Blue Dress, a detective novel by Walter Mosley that I've been meaning to read for like 15 years. I bought the paperback maybe five years ago. /o\
-An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon, a sci-fi novel that was recommended by a fandom friend.
-The Overstory by Richard Powers, a novel I don't really know anything about, recommended by a work friend who is planning to bring me her copy as a get-well-better gift this weekend.
-The Witch Elm by Tana French, one of my favorite books from last year. I was hoping to get to listen to the audiobook while feeling bad this week, but I timed my borrowing from the library wrong, so I'm still waiting.
I kept reading Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward until I was done with it. I never connected with the characters or had strong feelings about the book.
Then I read The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, a book about a Black teenage boy who gets sent to a reform school in the 1960s. This was terrific! I had a similar experience as to when I read his book The Underground Railroad a few years ago. That is, I read the first few pages, thought, oh damn, this book is going to be too intense for me with its unrelenting racist violence, so put the book down for a couple months, and then came back and tore through the whole thing in a few days. It does have, you know, a lot of racism and racist violence in it, but I found the characters to be so appealing that I kept with it and it was very engrossing and also moving.
[I had some thoughts about whump and racism in fandom so if anyone wants to talk about that in comments or privately let me know! I'm finding them too hard to articulate at the moment though.]
Meanwhile I continued to listen to the audiobook of Becoming by Michelle Obama –– as planned, I listened to all of part 2, which goes from around the time she and Barack Obama got together up through the 2008 election, and then "returned" it to the library, so I will listen to part 3 another time. This book continues to be so so so great. I loved learning more about her personal and professional trajectory, how for a long time she'd moved along a kind of track for upwardly mobile Black folks and it was partly through her relationship with Barack that she started questioning that, figuring out whether another kind of career would be more meaningful even if it meant a pay cut, figuring out how to negotiate a different path for herself, wow. And of course learning to weigh all of those ambitions and desires of her own against his, which she also believed in. I had known she was a very accomplished person and a Harvard Law grad but not that she was the vice president of a major university hospital when he started running for president. Obviously as First Lady she's been an amazing inspiration to millions of people but you also think about all the work she was doing before and the other work she might have done if she hadn't left that path in order to follow him.
And then after I finished The Nickel Boys I started digging in to Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld. Like I mentioned before, this is a novel that imagines an alternate history where Hillary Rodham didn't marry Bill Clinton. I found it a little frustrating at first because so much of the first half of it is still about her falling in love and being in a relationship with him, during law school and the first year or two after. Since I knew the premise was going to be that she didn't marry him I found this kind of tiresome, especially because, unlike Barack/Michelle, Hillary/Bill isn't a great romance! Sittenfeld understands this! But she writes a lot about how smitten Hillary was and how she tried to imagine and create a life with him before realizing (as we all know) that he would never be faithful to her. It works I guess because it sets up the stakes for things that come later, but meh.
I really really enjoyed like the middle third of the book that's about Hillary developing her own career, first as a law professor and then going into politics. Now I'm getting toward the end and it's about the 2016 election and feels both a little farfetched and a little too real, what with us all still being traumatized from 2016 and newly harmed by the consequences of election on a daily basis. Fuck.
The book is told from Hillary's POV and that feels really true to me with everything I know about her, having admired her for a long time while also being frustrated with her at times. There's a thread in it about racism that I think is handled pretty well, in that it doesn't let her off the hook for a wrong thing she does, though I also wish that bit were developed a little more.
I am in suspense as to what will happen! I'll probably finish reading it in the next couple days and then will get to read other people's thoughts, which is a fun thing about reading a brand new book.
Here are some other books I might read soon:
-The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom, a recent memoir about a Black family in New Orleans that I've had out from the library (as an ebook) for a few days.
-Devil in a Blue Dress, a detective novel by Walter Mosley that I've been meaning to read for like 15 years. I bought the paperback maybe five years ago. /o\
-An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon, a sci-fi novel that was recommended by a fandom friend.
-The Overstory by Richard Powers, a novel I don't really know anything about, recommended by a work friend who is planning to bring me her copy as a get-well-better gift this weekend.
-The Witch Elm by Tana French, one of my favorite books from last year. I was hoping to get to listen to the audiobook while feeling bad this week, but I timed my borrowing from the library wrong, so I'm still waiting.
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