Reading This Week

I am back home and reading like my life depends on it! I'm going to start working through articles I have saved to my computer bookmarks and such

Abandoned:

Pregnant Butch by A.K. Summers i tried! i've been meaning to try reading this for ages! but i got turned off by goodreads reviews saying theres a transphobic screed in the middle, and then just not clicking with the storytelling style.... oh well...

Finished:

The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel (colored by Holly Rae Taylor) I kinda stayed up later than I technically meant to finish reading this. Bechdel really is a fantastic memoirist

Started & Finished:

As Yet Unsent by Tamsyn Muir tbh, kinda wish i'd read this before Nona so that I would have a tad more context for like the connections between the other House characters. but this was pretty great as a quick read, and really enlightening for the inner life of a character that I never really cared about before

"I wrote a story for a friend" by Julian Gough this is the personal essay by the guy that wrote the Minecraft End Poem about the trouble surrounding its creation and copyright. I find it kinda funny when he's like "the capitalism game makes me sad bc it gets in the way of the art game and the friendship game.... but there's nothing inherently wrong with the capitalism game!" he's got the spirit but ain't quite there yet yknow? anywho. one day I will actually beat Minecraft and read the story in its proper context!

What Did You Eat Yesterday? Vol. 1-5 by Fumi Yoshinaga, translated by Maya Rosewood (1-3) and Yoshito Hinton (4-5) now I did not intend for reading this manga to be a christmas season read, but somewhere in the beginning of vol 2 or 3 it was just christmas season within the manga itself!! anyway this is a pretty chill slice of life manga, half cooking/recipes, half daily life for a middle aged gay couple in 2000s Tokyo, and it's been a fun easy read

Nectar edited by Tab Kimpton & Harry-Anne Bentley most thoughts remain in my private journal for this one, but I can say that kinda like the last one only like 2 or 3 of the stories within actually like. worked for me on an artistic style level. still delighted that this exists

Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 2-3 by Bisco Hatori, translated by Kenichiro Yagi while i'm enjoying the nostalgia of reading the manga version of a childhood anime, i find the panels of this really difficult to read? also this is the last volume available through my library so i probably won't read more for a while

Decolonizing Queer Games and Play from First Person Scholar, edited by Khee Hoon Chan:

Editorial by Khee Hoon Chan A Boy is a Gun: Weaponizing Black Gender in Video Games by Oluwatayo Adewole Unmaking and Undoing: A Trans* Reading of Katamari Damacy by Julie Fukunaga Interviw with Caro Asercion by Olivia Popp

working my way through articles that i've saved to my bookmarks bar! i absolutely want to check out more stuff like this

Masters in this Hall by K.J. Charles now THIS is a deliberate Christmas read for me, as it's the surprise un-advertised Christmas novella from one of my favorite romance authors! it was fun and funnily enough, most of took place in the days following Christmas. it was fun to see Jerry again (this time as a side character), and kinda made me want to go reread Any Old Diamonds since it's been a couple years now

Started:

Secrets Typed in Blood by Stephen Spotswood YES YES YES i am only a few chapters in at time of writing, but i am so happy to be back with my delightful butch private detective duo. i've been waiting for this inpatiently ever since i finished the second book in the series and i'm so glad to be back to get my historical mystery fix

Hen Fever by Olivia Waite

this is another surprise christmas novella from a favorite histrom author and the cover is absolutely Delightful. i'm gonna try and savor it but i make no promises

Book of the Day, May 3rd -- Non-Fiction, Rated 5 stars

FREE exclusively through the Onlinebookclub.org Review Team! Get your copy below:

https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/shelves/book.php?id=671262

Who Will Accompany You? My Mother-Daughter Journeys Far From Home and Close to the Heart by Meg Stafford, with Kate Stafford, Gale Stafford

This book has earned a PERFECT 5-star rating from an Official Onlinebookclub.org Reviewer, and has 91 five-star ratings on Amazon!

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This book has won numerous awards, including the following:

2023 Nautilus Book Awards Silver Medalist in Focused Topic: Travel Memoir

2022 Global Book Awards Silver in Biographical/Travel

2022 Global Book Awards Gold in Parenting and Relationships

2022 Global Book Awards Gold in Travel/Guidebooks

2022 Reader Views Silver Medal in Parenting and Relationships

2022 Reader Views Bronze Medal in Body, Mind, & Spirit

2022 INDIES Book of the Year Finalist by Foreword Reviews for Travel

2022 International Book Award Winner in Cross-Genre Nonfiction

2022 International Book Award Finalist in Parenting & Family

2022 International Book Award Finalist in Travel Guides and Essays

Award-winning memoirist Meg Stafford has an adventurous spirit, and this time she takes us along for the ride. Generous, insightful, and deeply funny, Stafford is the ideal tour guide for a journey as big as the world and as intimate as the human heart.

"Who Will Accompany You? deserves no less than a full five out of five-star rating. With an excellent style of writing, a conversant retelling of events, and multiple perspectives showing how each woman was affected by each place she visited, the positives of the book are varied and numerous." ~ OBC reviewer

https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/shelves/book.php?id=671262

Film Review - Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Having started our reviews of 2023 films in the realm of home-release animation, it’s now time to begin checking out cinema releases from that year, as well as to return to the MCU, which began its fifth phase with the somewhat ill-received Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania…

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

Following the Avengers' battle against Thanos, Scott Lang has become a successful memoirist and has been living happily with his girlfriend, Hope van Dyne. Scott's now-teenage daughter Cassie has become an activist, helping people displaced by the Blip, resulting in her having a strained relationship with her father. While visiting Hope's parents, Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne, Cassie reveals that she has been working on a device that can establish contact with the Quantum Realm. Upon learning of this, Janet panics and forcefully shuts off the device, but the message is received, resulting in a portal that opens and sucks the five of them into the Quantum Realm. Scott and Cassie are found by natives who are rebelling against their ruler, while Hope, Janet, and Hank explore a sprawling city to get answers.

Hope, Janet, and Hank meet with Lord Krylar, a former ally of Janet's, who reveals that things have changed since she left, and that he is now working for Kang, the Quantum Realm's new ruler. The three are forced to flee and steal Krylar's ship. The Langs, meanwhile, are told by rebel leader Jentorra that Janet's involvement with Kang is indirectly responsible for his rise to power. The rebels soon come under attack by Kang's forces led by M.O.D.O.K., who is revealed to be Darren Cross, having survived his apparent death at the hands of Scott, and who previously received Cassie's message. Aboard Krylar's ship, Janet confesses to Hope and Hank that she met Kang when she was previously in the Quantum Realm. He claimed that he and Janet could both escape from the Quantum Realm if she helped him rebuild his multiversal power core. After they managed to repair it, Janet touched the machine and saw a vision of Kang conquering and destroying entire timelines. Kang revealed he was exiled by his variants out of fear, which drove Janet to turn against him. Outmatched, Janet used her Pym Particles to enlarge the power core beyond use. Kang, having regained his powers, eventually conquered the Quantum Realm afterward.

The Langs are taken to Kang, who demands that Scott help get his power core back or else he will kill Cassie. Scott is then taken to the core's location and shrinks down. In the core, he encounters a probability storm, which causes him to split into multiple copies of himself nearly overwhelming him, but Hope arrives and helps him acquire the power core. However, Kang reneges on the deal, capturing Janet with M.O.D.O.K. destroying her ship with Hank on it. After being rescued by his ants, who rapidly evolved and became hyper-intelligent after being pulled into the Quantum Realm, Hank helps Scott and Hope as they make their way to Kang. Cassie escapes and rescues Jentorra, and they commence an uprising against Kang and his army. During the fight, Cassie convinces Cross to switch sides and fight Kang, with him eventually sacrificing his life.

Janet fixes the power core, enabling her, Hank, Hope, and Cassie to jump through a portal home. However, Kang attacks Scott at the last minute. Before Kang can beat Scott into submission, Hope returns, and she and Scott throw Kang and the Pym Particles into the power core, destroying both. Cassie reopens the portal for Scott and Hope to return home. As Scott happily resumes his life, he begins to rethink what he was told about Kang's death being the start of something terrible happening, but brushes it off. In a mid-credits scene, numerous variants of Kang, led by Immortus, commiserate Kang's death and plan their multiversal uprising. In a post-credits scene, Loki and Mobius M. Mobius encounter another Kang variant, Victor Timely, at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

Review:

The Ant-Man trilogy is one that started out well on its first instalment, but over time it seems to have deteriorated to some extent with each sequel, making it an example of that age-old concept known as the law of diminishing returns.  Why is this?  Well, to be honest, there are a few reasons.  First is an issue that also affects the likes of Deadpool, Guardians of the Galaxy, and even non-superhero films of the comedy genre like Police Academy, namely a failure to keep the humour fresh on each instalment.  There are only so many times you can play something for comedy before the jokes gets worn out, and I think a lot of the humour from the original Ant-Man film has been returned to a bit too often.  This might seem strange to say because some of the humour tied into Scott’s fellow ex-cons, but the reality is there was a fair bit of humour around Scott himself and the characters he came to know by becoming Ant-Man, and now it’s over-used.

Humour in this film also seems to be misplaced given the gravity of the adversary being introduced, and I think that Ant-Man and the Wasp alone going up against Kang feels like a major mis-match.  Kang, or rather the Council of Kangs, is meant to be the overall villain of the multiverse saga in the same way Thanos was the ultimate foe in the infinity saga.  This character is a major, Avengers-level threat, and to start him out, you have him directly face Ant-Man?  Really?  In effect, we have a serious villain that so far out-strips the title heroes for power and threat, and that character is then wiped out by people who should have been lucky to get out alive.  Combined with a bit of a mis-lead towards the end that sees the film buck the MCU trend of third film resulting in loss, I honestly think this film was a victim of Marvel’s quantity over quality methods that have resulted in a reduced quality of post-Endgame MCU productions.

The film also has ties back into the Loki series, but doesn’t rely on audiences knowing that series to understand the film, which is a step in the right direction.  Having non-film and therefore non-cinematic elements in the MCU is, as I’ve noted before, something that either shouldn’t happen or that should be an optional bit of extra viewing instead of required core material.  For me, though, it feels like we should have done something else on this film.  The Quantum Realm should either not have been done, or should have been reduced in scope.  In addition, as I’ve noted before, this film didn’t include some key characters from the past two Ant-Man films; no Luis and crew, no sign of Maggie (Cassie’s mother) and no Paxton, which given the scenes with the police early in the film made little sense.  If Cassie is getting in trouble with the law, why are we not seeing the cop that was dating Cassie’s mum pre-blip?

Also, we get a line from Cassie early in the film that opens up another can of worms.  She makes a retort to her dad about having grown used to looking after herself, doubtless referring to Scott being missing for five years of her life.  However, given that Cassie has a mother and said mother had a boyfriend, looking after herself would seem to imply that when Scott was trapped in the Quantum Realm, Maggie and Paxton both blipped.  It would then be logical to suggest that Cassie not only grew into a teenager during the blip years, but that she was growing up without any parents to look out for her.  Much like Luis and his associates, this question of Cassie’s experience during those years seems to be brushed aside in favour of bringing in Kang and spending a lot of time down in the Quantum Realm.

Now this all being said, the actors of the film all bring their A-game, and the visual effects are spectacular, and the various parts of the film that are Kang-centric are very good indeed.  Unfortunately, as a whole the film is inconsistent in its tone and perhaps misuses its screentime to over-explore the Quantum Realm while under-exploring the worlds of Scott, Cassie and so on.  Personally, I’d have preferred something that spent more time up in our world dealing with Scott, Cassie, etc. and that perhaps brought back Ghost, now acting as an agent for Kang in our world somehow.  The Langs and Hope could have beaten Ghost, learned about Kang and then gone to face up to him, only to suffer a major set-back, such as Scott being trapped in the Quantum Realm as Kang’s prisoner, and this setting up for the upcoming Avengers: Kang Dynasty and Secret War that are coming up.  As it is, we can only hope that as Marvel begins to replan its upcoming films and direction that they at least stick with Kang being a major villain and recast the role following actor Jonathan Majors’ criminal conviction.  After all, they’ve recast the likes of Hulk and War Machine, among others, for less.

This brings me to my final point, which is my disappointment in the recasting of the teenage Cassie following Avengers: Endgame.  If what Wikipedia indicates is true, there was no scheduling issue requiring Cassie to be recast, and Emma Fuhrmann, who played the role in Endgame, was looking forward to coming back to reprise the role.  Apparently, the reasoning seems to be about having a more established actress in the role to help ensure a box office draw, as well as considerations of athletic ability and ability to act well alongside Paul Rudd, who of course plays Scott Lang.  While I can respect the last two decisions, assuming that major actors will always equal a good box office return is a flawed strategy.

First, not every big-name can act well, or can do every role justice, with the likes of Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham and Will Smith all being examples of actors that just act like themselves under different names when appearing in any film.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it requires that the role be created entirely by and for that actor, which only works on original stories going straight into film.  If the film is adaptational, then the actors have to play the role as the source material defines it, so if you can’t shift gears to play someone who isn’t you, you’re not right for that role.

Second, actors who want to become established are more likely to make a serious effort while those who are already established might not make as much effort.  I honestly believe that some of the best films I’ve seen were so good because they were made by great actors that were committed to the film at hand, and who then got major careers from those roles.  Picking the right actors is more important than whether or not people already know them, because the right actors will bring a performance that makes them known for good reason.  In this film, Corey Stoll’s iteration of MODOK was someone making themselves known for no good reason, and I wish they’d left that part out of the film.  Overall, I give this film 6 out of 10, largely due to the performances from the people in the size-changing suits and Majors as Kang.  Bill Murray was also cool to see, but again, big-name star and yet this film failed to technically break even, so in the words of Stan Lee, ‘nuff said.

[11] Chapter 16 Review Syndicate: Kin

Welcome to the tenth Throwback Thursday post highlighting my past reviews for Chapter 16‘s website. I love whenever I get the opportunity to read nonfiction work from southern writers, and this time I got to read Shawna Kay Rodenberg’s memoir Kin. Cover of Kin by Shawna Kay Rodenberg What I loved most about Rodenberg’s book is how she does not feature her experience like most memoirists.…

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The Pianist's Only Daughter by Kathryn Betts Adams - Chick Lit Book Cafe Review

The Pianist’s Only Daughter: A Memoir by Kathryn Betts Adams The Pianist’s Only Daughter is a sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking memoir that follows two creative academics—a pianist and a poet—from their youth, in love and full of vigor and artistic self-expression, to their poignant efforts to hold on to their unique gifts and maintain their humanity in old age. First-time memoirist…

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The poet’s kaleidoscopic essay collection asks ‘How do we make sense of what we see?’ – from photographs and sculptures to weather and human faces“Exploded essays”, the poet, novelist and memoirist Lavinia Greenlaw calls the 17 pieces of almost-art-critical...

A Few Gentle But Twisted Ideas for 2024

This week I’ve been reading an interview with nobel literature laureate Louis Glück in The Paris Review’s Winter 2023. It’s a great dialog conducted by esteemed poet, memoirist, (and more) Henri Cole. Two poets talking, with one of them a recent nobel winner, is always interesting. For those of you who think this kind of thing snooty, high-falootin’, and/or elitist, sorry, but all the interviews…

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Last, Current, Next Read - thank u for the tag @djarindykes ! love ur blog

Last: Through the Groves by Anne Hull--super engrossing memoir about growing the citrus days of rural FL; the fraught relationship with the author's dad is the heart of it. negatives: the pacing was off (once you reach the middle you're like. why are we still here) and I wasn't thrilled with how she talked about segregation

Current: Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time by Sheila Liming --reading this for a review! it's growing on me as I get through it, but I expected something more like emergent strategy (adrienne brown). also a little memoiristic which I wasn't expecting

Next: possibly The Idiot by Elif Batuman but I have about a million things on my shelf so! it's anybody's guess !! also certainly more dinluke fic--I'm loving What You Missed by hawkayjax !

tags: @calamitysong , @folkheroine , @fawns

'Quantumania' --A Review

I enjoyed this film. That seems weird to say because it's a Marvel movie and they're everywhere these days, but this movie is one of the few MCU movies that didn't manage to break even during its theatrical run.

The MCU lately seems like a bit of a head-scratcher to me, because it just feels a bit off. Whether it's franchise fatigue or just the sheer amount of content that you have to get through I can't quite put my finger on it because I watched this movie and I... enjoyed it. It felt like it should have been a far bigger deal than it actually turns out to be. I wonder if it's because everything in the MCU is about building long narrative arcs that lead up to big, bombastic movies. Everything is a journey towards a destination, so instead of feeling like a big, fun romp through the Quantum Realm going up against Kang, this movie felt like an episode of a television show and not a big, gigantic 'event' movie that you would expect the MCU to throw down.

Do you know what I think it might be? I think it's because it moved away from the pattern set up by the previous Ant-Man movies, where Scott Lang's (Paul Rudd) criminal past is never too far from the surface. He's a good guy who (on occasion, reluctantly) does bad things, usually to help his daughter, Cassie (Kathryn Newton.) What this should have been was Ocean's 11 in the Quantum Realm. That would have been a kick-ass movie to watch and would have actually felt like an Ant-Man movie.

What we got was enjoyable, but it was just... a movie.

The movie opens with a flashback to when Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) was trapped in the Quantum Realm and she encounters an exiled traveler named Kang (Jonathan Majors). We then flash forward to the present where Scott Lang has become a successful memoirist is living happily with his girlfriend Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly). His relationship with Cassie is somewhat strained because she has become a political activist helping people displaced by the Blip.

When they visit Hope's parents, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Janet, Cassie reveals that she has been working on a device that can contact the Quantum Realm, but when she demonstrates it, Janet panics and tries to shut it down but too late- a portal opens up and drags them all into the Quantum Realm.

Scott and Cassie are found by natives that are rebelling against their ruler-- while Hope, Janet, and Pym have to explore a sprawling city, looking for clues, but eventually get pointed in the direction of Janet's old friend, Lord Krylar (Bill Murray) but when he reveals that the new ruler of the Quantum Realm is Kang and he's working for Kang now and they're forced to flee.

Eventually, all the forces come together to take on Kang and eventually Kang is defeated and killed, but before he dies, he warns Scott that his death is going to be the start of something terrible. Hank, Janet, Hope, Cassie, and Scott portal home, and Scott happily resumes his life he begins to think about the warning Kang gave him but brushes it off and keeps on smiling.

Overall: I still don't know what to think about this movie. I loved the Quantum Realm. I loved the big epic fight scenes taking down Kang. I loved seeing Janet Van Dyne's character. I enjoyed this movie, but... it felt off somehow. It felt like something was missing and still, even now, I can't quite put my finger on what it is. Enjoyable enough, but kind of a 'meh'. I wouldn't consider it appointment viewing in a theater but if you're looking for something stream, it's a good time. My Grade: *** out of ****

Movie Review: A Portuguese Adventurer/Explorer tells his tale, and tries to get the World to Believe Him -- "Pilgrimage"

Fernão Mendes Pinto was a 16th century Portuguese explorer, adventurer, memoirist and fabulist whose life reads like a conflation of the quests of Cabeza de Vaca or Marco Polo and the picaresque invented misadventures of Baron Munchausen or Harry Flashman. He sailed from Portugal to become one of the first Europeans to experience Japan, with colorful stops at kingdoms, islands and royal courts…

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Review: Year of No Garbage by Eve O. Schaub

☆☆➹⁀☆ 4.5 stars ☆➹⁀☆☆ Year of No Garbage by Eve O. Schaub Guest Reviewer: @Frances_Larose #ComingSoon April 22nd #preorder #EarthDay #culture #nonfiction #plasticsucks #justask #PlasticPollutes @eveschaub @gailparenteau

☆☆➹⁀☆ 4.5 stars ☆➹⁀☆☆ About the Book: In this book, Eve O. Schaub, humorist and stunt memoirist extraordinaire, tackles her most difficult challenge to date: garbage. Convincing her husband and two daughters to go along with her, Schaub attempts the seemingly impossible: living in the modern world without creating any trash at all—for an entire year and, as it turns out, during a pandemic. In…

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Review | As Saigon fell, a young banker went on a desperate mission

Comment on this story Comment The history of America’s war in Vietnam offers a laboratory for the study of dysfunction. For half a century, historians, memoirists and journalists have chronicled no end of misunderstanding, ineptitude and even outright malfeasance on the part of Americans who led a war effort synonymous with failure. Ralph White’s captivating memoir, “Getting Out of Saigon,”…

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Book Review: Memoirist Hugh Bonneville charms and tickles, “Playing Under the Piano: From Downton to Darkest Peru”

The role that changed Hugh Bonneville’s life didn’t arrive in a “Eureka!” moment, and he doesn’t treat it that way in his charming memoir, “Playing Under the Piano.” “Downton Abbey” made itself known to him as a make-conversation chat with his director, Julian Fellowes, on the set of an earlier movie they made called “From Time to Time.” “You writing anything else at the moment?” As recounted in…

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Sharing - What happens after you tell your story? That’s a story in itself

New Post has been published on https://www.childabusesurvivor.net/reviews/2023/02/20/sharing-what-happens-after-you-tell-your-story-thats-a-story-in-itself/

Sharing - What happens after you tell your story? That’s a story in itself

Eva makes a valid point here:

“This is where we are all memoirists, encouraged to speak up, speak loudly, go deep, own our shame, post our tears on Instagram, ask for help. And then, what? Sometimes it is liberating. Sometimes it’s necessary. But sometimes it leaves a person feeling worse and less heard than before they spoke, whether that’s because they then get lost in the waiting lists and crumbling infrastructure of modern healthcare, or because the people they talked to didn’t react in a way that was helpful. Those writing memoirs or being interviewed on TV don’t have a choice about who hears their story, but the rest of us do. And while showing vulnerability can be important, it’s crucial to be cautious and sensible about who we are vulnerable to. This bit gets lost sometimes I think, in the modern rush to share our feelings.”

This is something I’ve talked about before as well. When sharing our stories as abuse survivors, we need to think about what happens afterward. I’ve told people to share when they are ready, and they are ready when they can handle any response that the person they are sharing with might give them. Be careful selecting who you share with, and be thoughtful about how much you want to share and give them space to react the way they need to.

And if you feel strongly that you want to write a book, start a site like this, and hit social media and tell the world, make sure you are prepared for all of it. Because once it’s out, you don’t control it any longer.

Once you’re sure though, tell your story for all the people who aren’t ready yet.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/feb/19/what-happens-after-you-tell-your-story-thats-a-story-in-itself

#Book, #SocialMedia, #Survivors, #Writing