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Books I read in April 2023
Total: 17 books
— Every Day by David Levithan;
— The Mad Scientist's Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke;
— Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks;
— Insane: America's Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness;
— Naruto Vol. 1-9 by Masashi Kishimoto;
— Naruto Vol. 27 by Masashi Kishimoto;
— Star Trek The Next Generation: First Year Sourcebook by Blaine Pardo;
— Titan: Taking Wing by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels;
— Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin's Gulag by Golfo Alexopoulos.
Non-books: 9 texts
— Skeptical Inquirer (May/June 2023);
— Worse Than Guards: Political Prisoners and Ordinary Criminals in the GULAG (1918-1950) by Elizabeth T. Klements;
— Voice of Silence: Women Inmates' Perspective on Sexual Violence in the Soviet Gulag, 1936-1956 by Louisa Jane Fulkerson;
— Star Trek TNG: The Modala Imperative 1-4;
— Star Trek DS9 (two issues about Thomas Riker, not sure what number);
— Gargoyles #4;
— Gargoyles (Marvel) #1;
— Make It So #7 (TNG fanzine);
— Theodore Poussin #1
Books I read significant portions of but haven't finished (yet!)
— Making Faces, Playing God: Identity and the Art of Transformational Makeup by Thomas Morawetz;
— T.E. Lawrence: Biography of a Broken Hero by Harold Orlans;
— Bowie on Bowie: Interviews and Encounters with David Bowie by Sean Egan;
— Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
Thoughts:
My favorite reads for this month are all the books I haven't finished yet ... I wasn't very impressed with "Illness and Inhumanity", which had a distant, removed aspect and a tendency to repeat itself. "Insane: America's Criminal Treatment..." was excellent for the first 60% or so, and I'm not sure what went wrong in the final 40. It's possible that I've just read too many books on this topic, or even more relevant, much of the final 40% is just your typical social justice, anti-prison conversation, so the more basic overview here came across as tedious and easy to skip. If you've ever discussed criminal mistreatment of the mentally ill in America's prisons, then the final 40% of this book will bore you -- it features your everyday everyman's uncertain musings about "what can we do?" without any of the Action Plan or educated hypothesizing that would make it interesting.
Musicophilia was excellent, but it was my second or third time reading it, so it got trumped by the "still reading" books too XD I was thoroughly unimpressed by Levithan's "Every Day", which is a YA romance featuring a genderless body-jumping protagonist who falls in love with an ordinary, somewhat unlikable teenage girl and makes an effort to have a relationship with her while changing appearance and gender daily. Very shallow story, extremely weak, disinterested worldbuilding... "Mad Scientist's Daughter" was much better, with excellent prose, but too much of a YA romance vs. adult sci-fi to be to my taste.
Naruto is Naruto! I sheepishly eyed the other two manga I bought this month, Satoshi Kon's Opus and a BL about Catholic sex abuse, while I was reading these instead. The Star Trek sourcebook was funny in the same way the TNG Writer/Director's Guide is funny -- it's interesting to see the early development of these characters, and cringeworthy but weirdly entertaining to see the chauvinism baked in.
"Taking Wing" was my fictional highlight -- a real treat of a Star Trek novel, right up my alley. Gay/trans characters, diverse species, and a decent amount of real science fiction (when it comes to the design of the Titan and exploration of all the alien species aboard it), plus the Riker/Troi moments had all the gentleness I love from their TNG interactions and all the humor I liked from Insurrection. I wasn't fond of the whole "Riker doesn't like Klingons" thing, but without rewatching some episodes, I have to begrudgingly admit that it's just as valid an interpretation as my personal preference, "Riker is a Klingon enthusiast."
Ah, I already posted my opinions on the two gulag papers so I'll skip those. The Gargoyles comic remains a treat but privately I prefer the 90s run, and I'm glad they're re-releasing those. "The Modala Imperative" was goofy fun with some great McCoy/Spock moments. The Thomas Riker comics were fun too! I didn't know that canon (or "canon") ever addressed Thomas' time in the labor camps, so that was a treat to read. Make It So was lots of fun, and Theodore Poussin is a really fun Franco-Belgian comic about a young man who goes sailing from Dunkirk in the 1920s -- I actually went to my comic site for something else entirely, saw this on the front page, and got sucked into it instead. Love the art style!
And for the stuff I'm currently reading, the three nonfiction books come together for a singular theme -- identity. Which is really fun! The Bowie interviews of course give a great chronological view of Bowie's shifting chameleonic personas, and especially showcases the way he benignly agrees with whatever his current interviewer says, and conforms to whatever his current interviewer thinks of him. The Lawrence book, "Biography of a Broken Hero", is a psychological profile similar to "Prince of Our Disorder", but largely skipping the military details of the Arab Revolt, since they've been covered so thoroughly elsewhere. Lawrence's constant soul-searching and efforts to define his identity before, during, and after the war...
Then "Making Faces, Playing God" is a fun but ultimately pretty shallow examination of creature makeup -- it purports to be about identity and transformational makeup, but it's more like an engaging, constantly-changing conversation with a friend who's really passionate about makeup, folklore, Greek mythology, and philosophy -- not a focused theme, but fun anyway!
— Every Day by David Levithan;
— The Mad Scientist's Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke;
— Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks;
— Insane: America's Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness;
— Naruto Vol. 1-9 by Masashi Kishimoto;
— Naruto Vol. 27 by Masashi Kishimoto;
— Star Trek The Next Generation: First Year Sourcebook by Blaine Pardo;
— Titan: Taking Wing by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels;
— Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin's Gulag by Golfo Alexopoulos.
Non-books: 9 texts
— Skeptical Inquirer (May/June 2023);
— Worse Than Guards: Political Prisoners and Ordinary Criminals in the GULAG (1918-1950) by Elizabeth T. Klements;
— Voice of Silence: Women Inmates' Perspective on Sexual Violence in the Soviet Gulag, 1936-1956 by Louisa Jane Fulkerson;
— Star Trek TNG: The Modala Imperative 1-4;
— Star Trek DS9 (two issues about Thomas Riker, not sure what number);
— Gargoyles #4;
— Gargoyles (Marvel) #1;
— Make It So #7 (TNG fanzine);
— Theodore Poussin #1
Books I read significant portions of but haven't finished (yet!)
— Making Faces, Playing God: Identity and the Art of Transformational Makeup by Thomas Morawetz;
— T.E. Lawrence: Biography of a Broken Hero by Harold Orlans;
— Bowie on Bowie: Interviews and Encounters with David Bowie by Sean Egan;
— Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
Thoughts:
My favorite reads for this month are all the books I haven't finished yet ... I wasn't very impressed with "Illness and Inhumanity", which had a distant, removed aspect and a tendency to repeat itself. "Insane: America's Criminal Treatment..." was excellent for the first 60% or so, and I'm not sure what went wrong in the final 40. It's possible that I've just read too many books on this topic, or even more relevant, much of the final 40% is just your typical social justice, anti-prison conversation, so the more basic overview here came across as tedious and easy to skip. If you've ever discussed criminal mistreatment of the mentally ill in America's prisons, then the final 40% of this book will bore you -- it features your everyday everyman's uncertain musings about "what can we do?" without any of the Action Plan or educated hypothesizing that would make it interesting.
Musicophilia was excellent, but it was my second or third time reading it, so it got trumped by the "still reading" books too XD I was thoroughly unimpressed by Levithan's "Every Day", which is a YA romance featuring a genderless body-jumping protagonist who falls in love with an ordinary, somewhat unlikable teenage girl and makes an effort to have a relationship with her while changing appearance and gender daily. Very shallow story, extremely weak, disinterested worldbuilding... "Mad Scientist's Daughter" was much better, with excellent prose, but too much of a YA romance vs. adult sci-fi to be to my taste.
Naruto is Naruto! I sheepishly eyed the other two manga I bought this month, Satoshi Kon's Opus and a BL about Catholic sex abuse, while I was reading these instead. The Star Trek sourcebook was funny in the same way the TNG Writer/Director's Guide is funny -- it's interesting to see the early development of these characters, and cringeworthy but weirdly entertaining to see the chauvinism baked in.
"Taking Wing" was my fictional highlight -- a real treat of a Star Trek novel, right up my alley. Gay/trans characters, diverse species, and a decent amount of real science fiction (when it comes to the design of the Titan and exploration of all the alien species aboard it), plus the Riker/Troi moments had all the gentleness I love from their TNG interactions and all the humor I liked from Insurrection. I wasn't fond of the whole "Riker doesn't like Klingons" thing, but without rewatching some episodes, I have to begrudgingly admit that it's just as valid an interpretation as my personal preference, "Riker is a Klingon enthusiast."
Ah, I already posted my opinions on the two gulag papers so I'll skip those. The Gargoyles comic remains a treat but privately I prefer the 90s run, and I'm glad they're re-releasing those. "The Modala Imperative" was goofy fun with some great McCoy/Spock moments. The Thomas Riker comics were fun too! I didn't know that canon (or "canon") ever addressed Thomas' time in the labor camps, so that was a treat to read. Make It So was lots of fun, and Theodore Poussin is a really fun Franco-Belgian comic about a young man who goes sailing from Dunkirk in the 1920s -- I actually went to my comic site for something else entirely, saw this on the front page, and got sucked into it instead. Love the art style!
And for the stuff I'm currently reading, the three nonfiction books come together for a singular theme -- identity. Which is really fun! The Bowie interviews of course give a great chronological view of Bowie's shifting chameleonic personas, and especially showcases the way he benignly agrees with whatever his current interviewer says, and conforms to whatever his current interviewer thinks of him. The Lawrence book, "Biography of a Broken Hero", is a psychological profile similar to "Prince of Our Disorder", but largely skipping the military details of the Arab Revolt, since they've been covered so thoroughly elsewhere. Lawrence's constant soul-searching and efforts to define his identity before, during, and after the war...
Then "Making Faces, Playing God" is a fun but ultimately pretty shallow examination of creature makeup -- it purports to be about identity and transformational makeup, but it's more like an engaging, constantly-changing conversation with a friend who's really passionate about makeup, folklore, Greek mythology, and philosophy -- not a focused theme, but fun anyway!