Performative reading?
Mar. 12th, 2019 06:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12Thirty Day Book Meme Day 12: I pretend to have read it
I don't have any books that fall into this category! What would be the point? I don't view reading as some kind of competition, where you must read the most, or the most widely, or the most 'classics', and what other reason would someone have for pretending to have read a book. I'm not reading to impress people, it's not a public performance.
That said, given my love of all things vampire, people are often surprised that I haven't read the nineteenth-century classics such as Dracula, Carmilla, and so on. At this point, they've been adapted, subverted, and turned into pastiche so many times that I basically feel as if I have read them. Some day I will probably get around to it.
13. Makes me laugh.
14. An old favorite.
15. Favorite fictional father.
16. Can't believe more people haven't read.
17. Future classic.
18. Bought on a recommendation.
19. Still can't stop talking about it.
20. Favorite cover.
21. Summer read.
22. Out of print.
23. Made to read at school.
24. Hooked me into reading.
25. Never finished it.
26. Should have sold more copies.
27. Want to be one of the characters.
28. Bought at my fave independent bookshop.
29. The one I have reread most often.
30. Would save if my house burned down.
I spent most of last night feeling profoundly despairing at the current state of affairs in Britain. Theresa May's 'legally binding assurances' are nothing of the sort, but they might be just enough for the hard Brexiteers to change their tune and vote for her deal. I didn't realise how much I had been counting on (and assuming) an extension to Article 50, and how upset it still makes me to sit here hopelessly, watching the days count down until rights are taken away from me without my consent.
I don't have any books that fall into this category! What would be the point? I don't view reading as some kind of competition, where you must read the most, or the most widely, or the most 'classics', and what other reason would someone have for pretending to have read a book. I'm not reading to impress people, it's not a public performance.
That said, given my love of all things vampire, people are often surprised that I haven't read the nineteenth-century classics such as Dracula, Carmilla, and so on. At this point, they've been adapted, subverted, and turned into pastiche so many times that I basically feel as if I have read them. Some day I will probably get around to it.
13. Makes me laugh.
14. An old favorite.
15. Favorite fictional father.
16. Can't believe more people haven't read.
17. Future classic.
18. Bought on a recommendation.
19. Still can't stop talking about it.
20. Favorite cover.
21. Summer read.
22. Out of print.
23. Made to read at school.
24. Hooked me into reading.
25. Never finished it.
26. Should have sold more copies.
27. Want to be one of the characters.
28. Bought at my fave independent bookshop.
29. The one I have reread most often.
30. Would save if my house burned down.
I spent most of last night feeling profoundly despairing at the current state of affairs in Britain. Theresa May's 'legally binding assurances' are nothing of the sort, but they might be just enough for the hard Brexiteers to change their tune and vote for her deal. I didn't realise how much I had been counting on (and assuming) an extension to Article 50, and how upset it still makes me to sit here hopelessly, watching the days count down until rights are taken away from me without my consent.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-14 07:22 am (UTC)As a non-EU migrant who became a British citizen in May 2016, and received my passport on the morning after the referendum (literally, I woke up, heard the result, and heard the noise of my passport being posted through the door), I'm finding the prospect of having my free movement rights taken away essentially on the day I received them (the past three years having been a kind of borrowed time), after I paid thousands of pounds to the Home Office, sent them various visa/citizenship applications, some of them totally more than 100 pages, one which was held — along with my passport and visa — for six months, profoundly upsetting. I can't bear the idea that something I wanted so badly, which to my non-EU migrant eyes is the most incredible gift and unearned privilege, is being thrown away like garbage by people who were never going to use it in the first place.