Sunlight and stories

[dolorosa_12]

This weekend has been a calm one, full of books, and sunlight, and growing things. I spent most of Saturday in Ely with Matthias, where notasapleasure and her husband fed us a dinner comprised almost entirely of vegetables grown in their allotment. We were able to sit outside in their garden for about five minutes, at which point it began to rain, so we went indoors to eat in their conservatory, listening to the rain patter on the roof.

It's been a good week for catching up with female-centric TV: I finished watching the second seasons of both Killing Eve, and Harlots. The latter, in particular, is fantastic, although I'm finding it mildly amusing how many minor characters appear to have been named after current Conservative Party politicians — you would have to think that six characters named as such is deliberate, surely?

Last time I did a reading log post, I'd been a bit disappointed with the quality of the books most recently read, but I'm glad to say things have improved significantly since then. Like most of my corner of the internet, I was overwhelmed and awestruck by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's joint novella, This Is How You Lose the Time War, an epistolary love story between time-travelling spies on opposing sides in a vast, cosmic war. It's a gorgeous, intricate story in which both authors' voices interweave beautifully, and I reviewed it here.

I had been particularly disappointed by Jordanna Max Brodsky's novels about Greek gods solving supernatural crimes in modern-day New York, so I was doubtful going in to her novel The Wolf in the Whale, a historical fantasy about the medieval Norse journey to, and presence in, North America, told from the perspective of Inuit characters. But in actual fact I loved it a lot, although (and I might be wildly wrong here, given that I am cis) I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone who is trans, particularly if they were AFAB, as there were several characterisation elements in this regard that gave me pause.

Other than these books, I've been continuing to make my way through the Hugo finalists — I've now read all the Best Novel nominees (other than one book which is the final in a trilogy whose first book I didn't enjoy and doubt I will enjoy in its series' final installment), and just have a couple of Campbell finalists' works and YA novels to go. But I will leave my discussion of those to my final Hugos discussion post, which should go up at some point next week, depending on how fast I can read.

I hope everyone else has had equally restful weekends.

Comments

[auroracloud]

I was overwhelmed and awestruck by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's joint novella, This Is How You Lose the Time War

Oh, I envy people who've already read it! I really want to get my hands on it, but I can't really afford to buy much in the way of new books at the moment... I just saw the e-book is already available in our library's e-services, though, so I need to make a reservation.

[dolorosa_12]

It's a gorgeous book, but I can definitely understand wanting to save money by not buying books! Hopefully you can get it through the library and read it soon.

[auroracloud]

At the moment I try to mostly read everything from libraries the first time if I can; if I really like it and know I'm likely to reread it, I'll probably track down a copy eventually. But I basically don't really have any extra spending money at the moment or the foreseeable future, as in really not. (Er, except that 19 € history book I just bought from a museum. But it was for sale and I might need it for research later on and it's for that exhibition so it might not be around later, so it doesn't really count.)

[dolorosa_12]

That's generally my principle for book-buying as well, except that I give myself permission to buy a limited number of books throughout the year if I already know and love the authors and am certain that I'm going to enjoy their work.

[auroracloud]

Yeah, I do the same in the times when I have a salary!

But, I have a well-stocked public library, so I should manage even now. :-)

[dolorosa_12]

You're lucky! My public library is generally bad at getting SFF books quickly, especially if they're published in the US. It's not their fault — libraries in the UK have had their budgets completely gutted — but it does mean that I have to buy things myself, or wait at least a year for most things to arrive.

[auroracloud]

That sucks. :-( Libraries are among the best inventions humankind has made, in my opinion. The public libraries fortunately have a really strong standing in Finland, so although there have been some spending cuts in the recent years, they still get an impressive selection. In my case it helps I live in the biggest city of the country and therefore also the most extensive public library network. Especially after the libraries of the whole Helsinki metropolitan area combined so that I can also reserve books from the libraries of the adjacent cities; and Espoo happens to somehow have a huge concentration of SFF geeks among the libraries and they get sooooo much prime SFF content. Nearly all the time I reserve some recent SFF from the library, I get it from the libraries of Espoo. But we also have a good access to e-books via the library and can get many things from there which aren't available as hard copies. It was one of the reasons I invested in an e-reader last year, since I draw the line at reading books on the computer screen.

Anyway, I now paid off enough of my library fines (because I use it a lot and then I forget to return things on time...) that I could reserve books again, so I reserved This Is How You Lose the Time War. I've been waiting for it to come out for months, it sounded so interesting, and I'm glad that readers seem to be really into it!

[shadaras]

I need to get ahold of This Is How You Lose the Time War! I have been excited about it forever, but it hasn't yet come in from the library for me.

I am curious about why exactly you found The Wolf in the Whale offputting, because your description is, ah, the kind of thing where my immediate instinct is to want to read it and find out for myself what might be bad about it? Because that plot concept sounds really cool! But also, as an AFAB trans person, I am the person you're thinking might not like it for those reasons.

[dolorosa_12]

Let's hope you can get your library copy of This Is How You Lose the Time War soon, as it really is just wonderful.

Are you happy with spoilers for The Wolf in the Whale? That's the only way I'm going to be able to talk about what I found concerning in terms of trans representation, so if you say you don't mind spoilers, I can go into more detail.

[shadaras]

:)

I am fine with spoilers!

[dolorosa_12]

Okay, I should probably also state at this point that I'm not Inuit, and apparently what the author (who is herself not Inuit) is doing with gender is drawn from certain Inuit traditions about third gender people. I'm also a bit worried about what pronouns to use for the protagonist — the novel begins at first by deliberately using no pronouns at all, and then later switches to using 'she' pronouns, which the character also uses.

So the protagonist would have been assigned female at birth in most twenty-first-century Western cultures, but due to the fact that this character's father died prior to the birth, is believed by the community to have been born with his spirit, and is therefore raised as male throughout childhood (while knowing that they have different genitalia to the other boys in the community). However, when they hit puberty, a series of events lead to their community treating them as a woman, which the character finds traumatic and disorienting. (This is apparently based on a particular historic instance which the author encountered during her research on Inuit history and culture.) The protagonist eventually comes to identify as female and uses 'she' pronouns and seems ultimately happy to identify as a cis woman, but goes through a huge amount of trauma (including rape) beforehand.

As I say, I really loved the book, and this wasn't a enough of a narrative dealbreaker to ruin my enjoyment, but it was glaring enough to be noticeable to me, even though I'm cis, and for this reason I felt it was worth flagging up so that no trans people reading my Dreamwidth post would jump into the book without prior warning.

[shadaras]

Huh!

The part about Inuit gender practices sounds really interesting, but I do not think I would like that particular way of using them. Especially with rape involved, that's... not an enjoyable use of other cultures' gender, especially since it sounds like it ends up with someone many people operating on Western/American values would see as a cis woman-- despite how she sounds like she would be a trans woman, or something more akin to that.

[dolorosa_12]

Yeah, that was my concern. To be honest I'm not sure a white American woman was the best person to be tackling this kind of story. I like stories that are about clashing cultures, and in which mythology is real, and in which characters survive trauma to find joy, strength and power, and regarding these elements The Wolf in the Whale does really well. But I think Brodsky should have left Indigenous cultures' understanding of gender well alone — I think she thinks of the main character as having been a cis woman all along, deceived in childhood about their 'real' gender. Given that's the case, I think Brodsky should have written the character as a cis girl to begin with, because I don't think she was qualified to tackle gender in the way she did, certainly in a culture not her own. (I'm not of the opinion that no one should ever write outside their experience, but I am of the opinion that they need to be cautious when doing so.)

[shadaras]

Yeah, your feelings on that align well with mine, from what I know. :) It's a shame, because Indigenous cultures getting to celebrate their mythologies and ways of being is great! But that only works if they're doing it -- or have, at least, given their blessing to the portrayal someone else did.

[trepkos]

"minor characters appear to have been named after current Conservative Party politicians — you would have to think that six characters named as such is deliberate, surely?"

If they were evil characters, I should think so - good for the writer!
And if they were good characters, definitely, given the rampant media bias these days.

[dolorosa_12]

They're all dreadful characters - mainly sleazy brothel patrons, although there's also a hapless judge, and an evil brothel madam called Mrs May - so I'm assuming they're deliberate, snarky choices on behalf of the writers.

[merit]

From what I've seen of Harlots, probably deliberate. That show definitely does not hold back on some punches!

This Is How You Lose the Time War is currently priced $11.99AUD here which ouch. That's the same, if not more, than newly released novel ebooks. Generally I've found novellas to be under $10 except for the Murderbot and Rivers of London novellas. I'll probably add it to the books I request from my library each month (I'm very diligent once I found out about that feature) but alas, they don't approve in a very timely fashion. Glad you enjoyed it though!!

[dolorosa_12]

They're all dreadful characters - mainly sleazy brothel patrons, although there's also a hapless judge, and an evil brothel madam called Mrs May - so I'm assuming they're deliberate, snarky choices on behalf of the writers.

That's really expensive for an ebook, although I think if I recall correctly all ebooks from that particular press are really expensive. It was over £5 in the UK, which is normally the upper limit of what I'd pay for a novel, not a novella.

[merit]

Appropriate, then.

It does seem more in line with novels. I'm currently reading another novel by the publisher and they're listed at the same price. So interesting pricing! Though I haven't worked out the reason behind some ebook pricing.