Court

I love the concept of spine poems but not the execution.

My relationship with poetry can be kinda iffy. I don't feel like two lines is a poem, feels like a fragment. Some of the quotes and factoids were fascinating, others were seemingly random —although it's entirely possible that I just missed the connection — while others still just weren't interesting and come off as ‘filler'.

A delight. This fed my inner child and entertained my hungry brain.

It captures a certain kind of magical, childhood essence; a timelessness.


An epic in its own right, pared-down from the saga that is Beowulf.

It gets the tone/attitude/atmosphere right, its own kind of magical realism or cohesive conceptualization.

The art is amazing. The book author won a Nobel prize in literature 2018, the book was awarded the Fiction Bologna Ragazzi Prize the same year.

I guess I struggle with Tokarczuk's portrayal of souls; I don't like the idea that ‘they were born at the dawn of time', that they're seemingly easily separated from bodies, and that the soul that is reunited looks like a(n arbitrary?) child.

But I like that it made me slow down, enjoy fantastic art, and have a think.

Loved the author's note in the back.

Read at: https://americanliterature.com/author/o-henry/short-story/hearts-and-hands/

O. Henry continues to delight, even more than 100 years later.

It started to lag a little and I was going to give it four stars, but I really liked it towards the end when he went on the meditation retreat for 3 days, talked about MSF pulling out (and why), heroin use and treatment.

I related to some of Delisle's experiences as I visited Thailand around 2013 and I saw some similar cultural quirks such as locals bundling up when it got below like 75 degrees, motorbikes, monks, interesting shops, haggling and favorable exchange rates.

2.5

This was a miss for me. I kept waiting for something to happen.
I don't mind subtlety and I love nuance but also I need substance for it to work and I missed the substance of this.

What did Frank (I struggled to remember his name because he was such a sad, forgettable character) gain? Not money, not friendship, maybe a fashionable bag, a black eye, maybe perspective and maybe some material for his stand up.

The best part of the book for me is the female side characters and for that Healy is getting the side eye from me. And yay you had two female characters briefly talk to each other, twice.

Frank wasn't sympathetic he was pitiable, like I wanted to heave a large sigh or a small slap at him and tell him ‘you know better, grow a spine and set some boundaries and there's a difference between enabling and helping.'

the difference between love and time is nothing. Nothing. There is no difference. The love we give to each other is the time we give to each other, and the time we spend together is the whole of love. Things will get better, sweetheart. Someday. Sometime. I promise. I love you so much. My darling baby. I love you. Don't forget. No matter what happens. The answer is nothing

So we'll written. Something I could read again and again

er, this attempts to do so much with so little :/

I do like the slow breath in and out page, mostly because I have to add the word slow when I come across materials. I think that this would have been much more improved by adding a visual for helping one time or shape their breath, for example “trace the star/flower/box/cute animal as you inhale slowly through your nose...“

Mmmkay, some grounding, not bad but a bit odd to have the taste one. I practice grounding with some middle schoolers and we skip the taste one because when you're having a bad time, anxiety, sensory overload, etc. generally you don't have a taste in your mouth. Instead of ‘naming one thing you taste' we name at least one feeling we have, it helps to name the feeling(s) one is experiencing. We usually practice while we're calm so we usually say happy, tired, excited, quiet, or calm but in the moment one can say scared, angry, worried, etc and it might help, eg if you're angry you might need space, if you're worried you might need reassurance, etc. If it's not helpful it can be skipped.

I don't like “put on a peaceful playlist” I'd much prefer to but on music I like.

“take a long, hot bath” I thought that this was for kids? I dunno about others but it took me a while to develop an appreciation for long, hot baths and now I don't have a tub. This could have been something like “Water helps. Water can contain us. You can take a bath or a shower. Listen to your body adjust the temperature as needed.”

Love the idea “talk out loud to yourself” hate the example about salt shakers

I also wish that Ramm had included ‘ask for help' I know that they include resources and say ‘call a friend' but that's not the same as asking a person for help.

I have been waiting for this gem for years. The art is exceptional.

I also loved seeing familiar names: Chip Kidd, Paul Dini, Bruce Timm, Darwyn Cooke

I shelved this as ‘Merica' because in addition to the Uncle Sam segment, Superheroes (and I feel especially some of these DC heroes) are a part of the American mythos, Americana, and zeitgeists of certain American eras.

This also makes me appreciate Superman more. I usually get irritated with certain portrayals of Superman — not everyone gets the balance right of power and humanity, but Ross delivers.

Ross is brilliant at showcasing the individual heroes and when they are a team they are still distinctly represented.

I'm not sure I agree with Paige's take on identity v person first language and high support needs v low functioning, I should listen to those parts again. I need to examine my biases and possibly unlearn or reassess.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, around the end the book takes a turn from the memoir genre to that of self-help. In the self-help section there was too much use of the word ‘perfect' for my taste. Not everything is for me.

And speaking of ‘not everything is for me', I don't think I'm the intended audience for this book. I want to hear from ‘actually Autistic' voices, but I'm also picky about craft. Paige's writing style and choices sometimes threw me. I really appreciate that at some point Paige talks about contradictions because there feels like there's a lot in here, but she has a point, life is messy and complicated and contains contradictions. Normally, I love exploring the contradictory nature of life (I used to say ‘life is simply complex and complexly simple) but they don't feel explored and at times I felt annoyance, doubt, disbelief, and defensive, at times thinking ‘but you said x earlier' or ‘but you're capable of y'.
Sigh I did feel sympathy and a sense of injustice for Paige, for example when she didn't realize that she could have had accommodations for university until already more than 1 or 2 years in, ugh didn't her high school support system teach her to self-advocate, to ask for help or to tell her to talk to student services.

Read at: https://www.tor.com/2020/06/11/undine-love-kathleen-jennings/


This was excellent. I thought the calls with the family were well done.

Like most collections there were a few selections that I didn't love but most of them I did and the book is so cleverly designed.

So glad I was able to read a physical copy through an inter-library loan.

These aren't bad – it's just that it's not new to me; nothing surprised me or felt like it held insight, so it feels boring, which is a sin. A lot of it also felt predictable and I was uninterested in the characters which frequently felt like they were all the same character, even Marina Keegan herself.

I think it's also that my lens is warped and also that this is not Keegan's best representation. It's very much: here's a young woman who was going to shine so bright, but she didn't get a chance so we cobbled together everything she wrote that we could assemble. I graduated from college the same year as Keegan so it was very hard not to make comparisons.

I hate the whole, ‘well the sun is going to explode so everything is pointless'. We've got about five billion years before the sun become unstable, don't use that for an excuse if what you really want to say you think things are pointless or that humanity sucks, there are much more imminent and pressing things.

I was really disappointed in the essay – I dunno it read like a student paper article– about Yalies becoming consultants. Googled it, it's called “Even Artichokes Have Doubts”. It lacked heart, it didn't seem like she knew enough about her subject. I recently watched John Oliver's episode on McKinsey and oof, it's bad.

I refuse to give this less than two stars. I don't think it's fair that she wasn't able to give this the polish it deserved. I think that this collection really suffered a tone problem and the way it was organized. If Keegan herself were to have put published a collection herself, she would have done a better job of sorting, ordering, and introducing the fiction and non-fiction. I also went into this expecting a lot more non-fiction and I had a hard time caring about her fictional characters that seemed to have insecurity as their main character trait.

She had potential

This hurts to say but I think the art hindered the story. Sometimes the words would refer to a visual that wasn't there, like the bronze ring Chioma says is still on her dismembered left hand but is never drawn. The scene would have been a lot more powerful had words and images matched, instead I was looking for the ring that wasn't there and that was never drawn. Shortly after the part about the ring it talks about a woman with red orange beads in her braids but the artist draws the girl with red orange hair. Again this would have been a much more powerful scene had images and words matched but instead of being in the scene I'm taken out of the narrative flow wondering if the artist looked at the words.
Some aspects of the art was good in that I felt the urgency of some scenes. Some pages were hard to look at and now as I flip back to check on something I realize that Chioma's hair style has been drawn inconsistently.

‘History,' the judge said, ‘means inquiry, Jonathan. A knowledge acquired by investigation. Without writing there is no history, for it is in the act of writing that history is created. Books are the foundation stones of civilization, the dams we build against the dark. . .' He brooded. Jonathan did not like it when the judge brooded.

So good

Oops back in June I selected the single issue rather than the book.
______

There were lots of things that I liked about this, but also some things that I felt really snagged and weakened it.

This book is tagged as a graphic memoir and I don't know if that fits. It's the couple's coming out story, Sara comes out as (whispers) demisexual & (shouts) bisexual and Diana comes out as a transwoman. We learn somethings about their childhoods and families, but only as it pertains to their gender and Sara's sexuality (Diana's sexuality is never discussed).

I appreciate the use of a scapegoat, I thought that was clever and, in a way, kind. I liked Sara's transparency of saying that somethings were going to be exaggerated. However, I hated the scene where Diana gets an ear piercing and the person doing the piercing slaps Diana because she faints(?) and then Sara says “That's how we discovered she doesn't do well with needles.” Uhhh you've been drawing Diana with a tattoo the entire time so were those needles not problematic? I assume that the slap might have been an exaggeration, but I don't think it's funny, it's cringe.
I don't know if it was exaggerated or not but I found Diana's lack of knowledge about women's experiences to be sadly ignorant, it reached a level to where it broke suspension of disbelief for me because Diana has been dating Sara for years and it makes me wonder ‘Does Diana not have any sisters or close female friends?' Diana knows nothing of feminine clothing (lack of pockets, odd sizing.), make up (she touches her face after make up is applied and is surprised that it smeared), street harassment, how women are treated on the internet, or that men will mansplain. I've had cismen complain to me about a fellow engineer mainsplaining to them, so even those presenting as male experience it. Gamers know how women are treated on the internet.

I really dislike the way Sara draws her eyes.

I wonder if Sara would have gotten less backlash had she instead gone with the term pansexual rather than bisexual, it's doubtful but it's something I wonder. I almost dated a man in college who wanted to use the term pansexual but his friends(?) made a lot of jokes about being attracted to pans so he usually defaulted to labeling himself as bi. I also wonder if Sara would have experienced less biphobia, ignorance, or stigma had she also come out as demisexual to her community, or including it as part of her sexuality. Maybe she did but what she showed was only conversations with others discussing her being bi, not anything else.

One of the roommate acts like Diana coming out as trans is not special (he says ‘is that it? is that what all the drama was for? You didn't have to call a meeting') and Sara and Diana are unhappy and annoyed, turning the roommate into an awful egotistical, virtual signaling asshole. But when Sara's dad says ‘Who cares what she is? We're all born from the same hole.' Sara and her parents laugh at the dad's casual acceptance. Yes, I agree that the roommate is problematic, but how is the dad's reaction not either?

Points for telling the young niece and the grandparents. Yay for reiterating that there are numerous ways to be trans and to come out.

I'm trying to figure it out but it really made me cringe when Sara says “If there's anything that I've learned over the years, it's that trans people are the toughest folks on the planet”. I think I dislike this because it makes me think of the brand of ableism that disabled people are ‘inspiration porn'. I believe that it is difficult to be trans, the patriarchy does not make things easy, and the book discusses Diana experiencing dysphoria, taking hormones, and navigating government bureaucracy to change her ID card. However Sara's comment about trans folks being the toughest comes right after Diana dealing with being ‘a girl on the internet' so it doesn't have the same impact had it come after the other things I listed.

Things that were left out that I think were kind of detractors:
did not discuss Diana's sexuality, being trans is a gender identity not a sexual orientation
why she chose the name Diana
if the couple was interested in getting married

They can set the scope of what they want to share but for the trans people I have known choosing/changing their name was an important part of their identity and had meaning behind it. I knew someone who went by Storm, they felt that their name explained who they were, another chose Khrysalis (with a nick name of Khrys) because she felt that she had under gone a metamorphosis, and another chose Coralie because it was cute and feminine. Not that they have to definitively decide about marriage but it would have been an opportunity to provide information about their identity and human rights. By the way Spain legalized same sex marriage in 2005, this book did not tell me that, but it prompted me to look it up.

As a structural note, I did not know that this took place in Spain until through most of the book. Early on it talks about how Spanish has gendered adjectives (doesn't it also have gendered nouns?!) so I knew that it was a Spanish-speaking country but that's a lot of countries and LBGT+ rights (and therefore experiences) vary a lot by country. And it also confused me because I thought that most of Europe's sizes (clothing and shoes) were stated in centimeters, guess not.

Thank you Robin Eller for lending your voice to Lorde's finely crafted words.

I might have benefited more had I read this in a class but it was still so meaningful.

Billy Porter, thank you for being an ally to women. I also love him for his relationship with his mother; how he loves her fiercely and acknowledge where she came from.

I think he's amazing and in listening to his memoir I also heard him sing and sigh.

Picked this up to read with a client who loved the word cool. I think this is a great book for young readers.

The copyright says 1996 and I cringed at the sentence ‘Mr. Rich groomed the boys for stardom.' But I read it aloud as ‘Mr. Rich got the boys ready for stardom.'

Learner liked it.

People complain that this is all over the place but Asuka tells the audience that it's going to be this string of chapters about topics that she finds interesting and their anecdotal take on it. This style is a little different from their first volume because they cannot go out in person (due to COVID) to mine for content. So whereas I kind of liked the ‘visual essays', I found Asuka to be whiny and they come off as somewhat transactional in their friendships/interactions with others. It seemed that they were very insistent about it being in person interactions even though they mention social media, long phone calls, and emails as other ways they have enjoyed communication and interaction. It rankles me as it is inconsistent, illogical, annoying, rigid, controlling, and reminds me of the ‘immaturity' that annoyed me in the first volume. Ugh I feel like I'm being too tough on them. Especially since they talk about their mental health (anxiety and trauma for sure, I forget if they mentioned by name/specifics).

I appreciate Asuka for talking about subjects that are often considered morbid and/or pessimistic. I thought the topic of euthanasia was interesting. The one about lookism* was simplistic but maybe that's because it's a simple message: be kind, or at least don't be cruel.
*Asuka used the term lookism — I mentally replaced it with the concept of ‘body positivity', they're similar terms, but lookism is its own concept. Well it'll be good for me to read more about both of them.

Other sections are lighter, like looking for mascara, cute things, and clothes. I don't like makeup but I liked that these and other moments spoke to gender euphoria.

I also want to recognize Asuka's growth in that they apologized at the end of the volume for their stark or extreme language in the first volume. I'm impressed.

But there was also a part early on that felt like Asuka was policing women's bodies, and that was an ick for me. They drew themself on the train looking at a woman's modest cleavage (or at least it was nowhere near ‘scandalous') with the thought bubble I wish she would cover up with an expression that read as mad.

Love this fierce mama loving her son, wholly.

I have some experience with littles that use AAC (Augmentative and alternative communication)

I was super excited hearing that Bill Waterson — yes Bill Waterson of Calvin & Hobbes fame— had a new graphic novel out. Later, I was told that it wasn't that good, so I tamped down my excitement and my expectations. I found it at the library so it didn't cost me anything.

Had I not adjusted my expectations I'd probably be in the two star camp.

I don't love the art style and the story is kinda vague that you can make it what you want.
I scored it a four because I liked the theme, possible message(s), and what I perceived as tongue in cheek humor. It didn't take itself too seriously.

Been wanting to read this one for a bit and thanks to interlibrary loans was able to do so for free.

This made me laugh and call my nerdy cousin to share the laugh with him.

Oh Nujood, you and all girls deserve to have a childhood.

Child marriage is heartbreaking to me.

I was curious about the Prophet Muhammad having such a young wife, so if course I turn to Wiki:

“The majority of traditional sources state that Aisha was betrothed to Muhammad at the age of six or seven, but she stayed in her parents' home until the age of nine, or ten according to Ibn Hisham, when the marriage was consummated with Muhammad, then 53, in Medina. Aisha's age at marriage has been a source of controversy and debate, and many non-Muslim historians, Islamic scholars, and Muslim writers have challenged the previously accepted timeline of her life by claiming that Aisha was in fact 18-19 years old when she consummated her marriage to Muhammad according to historical reviews. Both Aisha and Sawda, his two wives, were given apartments adjoined to the Al-Masjid al-Nabawi mosque.”

As of June 2015, Ali, now sixteen, has unofficially changed her name from Nujood, which means “hidden,” to Nojoom, which means “stars in the sky.”

sigh