having complicated feelings about how my current read approaches disability and it's very tied up in my own feelings as someone with chronic pain who would take a cure in a heartbeat but also doesn't see my recent wheelchair acquisition as a tragedy

i am neither in camp "disability is purely social and I'm proud to be disabled" nor in camp "disability is purely medical and is a tragedy to be cured" because let's be real. "disability" is too many things to put neatly in a box like that. the fact is that an accessible world wouldn't make being in pain all the time fun, even if it might make it easier to cope with that. we should make the world better and continue working on medical research that might make my fucking body actually work one day

so now we're on the same page you can see why i have complicated feelings about a story in which a former dancer sees an outcome that might leave them unable to walk and therefore "in a wheelchair" (a turn of phrase not quite as grating as "wheelchair-bound" but with a similar lack of agency) as the worst possible scenario. because i was a dancer and not dancing is pretty fucking tragic for me actually and knowing I was losing dance made the whole experience of injury-turning-into-disability much worse. and also the chair is not the problem, stop making the chair the problem, it's not a symptom, it's not a condition in and of itself, it's a tool ahhhh——

like. becoming disabled has been pretty fucking traumatic for me over the last eleven years actually! i get it! and also at the same time there's something uniquely unpleasant about your life – your actual human existence, your everyday reality – being somebody else's worst case scenario, essentially torture, possibly worse than death kind of situation

especially when the bit they focus on is the bit that signifies you accepting your body's limitations and finding a way to do stuff another way, and not the part where you wake up with your hip literally not in its socket, or whatever. my wheels are a pain in the arse sometimes but they are the improvise/adapt/overcome part of this situation (not in an inspo porn kind of way). they are not the symptom or the condition to be feared

oooh is feidir liom a bheith ag bitcháil faoi leabhair anseo 👀 oibrím i bhfoilsitheoireacht agus tá go leor údair agam mar chairde, mar sin ní féidir liom AON RUD a rá ar an mhéan sóisialta de gnáth. agus tá mo figín "néide has opinions about books" agam ach níl sé an rud cheana mar tá imni orm gur gheobhaid an údar ar mo phost agus níl sé chomh cinéalta a bheith ag bitcháil. tá sé deacair, leabhar a scríobh, tá mé eolach faoi sin. ach anois... níl gaeilge ag an cuid is mó, agus níl lucht féachana agam anseo, mar má bheadh mothúhaín nó smaointe agam ar leabhair, is feidir liom iad a chur anseo.

i guess the tension for me is that disability has been traumatic for me so i can't be like "stop treating disability as traumatic, this is inaccurate" when in fact it is deeply accurate sometimes. but also at the same time... lots of things are traumatic? and you live. and you find new ways of living. and i guess it is frustrating when the outcome people fear is the new way of living (mobility aids, medical equipment, medication), rather than the loss itself. bc that's not the trauma, that's the healing. you're fearing the wrong thing

i don't think "enemies to lovers" really works in most contemporary settings because nobody is ever actually enemies unless we're talking like "minority" and "person who wants that minority dead" and that's not the kind of enmity that you can overcome with hotness yunno? but i would believe it in academia. people in academia have enemies

having a chat with an author friend about unexamined tropes and power structures in fantasy novels and also about the misuse of celtic languages and it got me thinking about how fucking funny it is when a book wants you to believe that a few sentences of modern irish are inherently mysterious and otherworldly when you literally see people making memes and instagram reels in the language every day. like really. embarrassing for them tbh

contrary to my entire vibes i do actually enjoy anachronistic media sometimes. a knight's tale is one of my favourite films. the thing is, the anachronisms in AKT are done deliberately to achieve specific effects. singing queen during a joust is a choice to establish knights as the rockstars of their age and this moment as the popular culture/entertaiment of its time. that is a decision made for artistic effect and to convey a specific mood.

what would have pissed me off is if, instead of using queen, they had decided to use, like, baroque string ensembles, because all history's history and who cares that it's three or four hundred years off, it's the past, ain't it? or if they had treated lances as if they were made of metal and interacted with them as if they were made of metal and all it would take is one google search to confirm that no they don't work like that and they didn't do it -- and at the same time had put a ton of research into another aspect of material culture, like making all the heraldry spot-on...

when you aim for historical plausibility in some areas of your story and then completely miss the mark with everything you didn't care about enough to even google it, that is when i get pissed off, and i am also pissed off that no editor, copyeditor, proofreader etc so much as went "hey, does parchment work like that?" because they SHOULD have done

there is no moral value in reading fast and there's also no moral value in reading slowly. people who read slowly aren't automatically/necessarily reading more thoroughly and thoughtfully than people who read quickly, and at the same time reading is not a race. some people read fast because that's how their brains work; some people read slowly because that's how THEIR brains work. some fast readers are getting deep into analysis and close reading and some slow readers are just along for the ride and not thinking too hard. these are both equally valid and valuable ways of engaging with books

and nobody should shame anybody else for reading slowly but also if i see one more post that suggests people who read quickly only read meaningless garbage (your elitism is showing btw) and lack reading comprehension, i will start blocking people. it's just bullshit, and it's weird judgy bullshit at that. some people have jobs in books where reading hundreds of books a year is part of it. some people are academics. some people are bedridden or isolated and trust me you get through a lot of books when you're stuck in your room alone for days. and some people love the books you consider garbage and they're just having fun passing the time with light fiction that isn't too brain intensive and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that either, because reading can be a form of relaxation and doesn't always have to be an ~intellectual challenge~ to be worth doing, actually

okay there was a medieval-set book I read last year that really pissed me off bc of its attitude to its historical setting and i was so disappointed bc a bunch of authors I respected had blurbed it or posted about it BUT I've decided to give the author a second chance and i just borrowed their latest book from the library

if this one also pisses me off then that'll be the end though. nemeses for life after that. i'll keep you posted (minus identifying details)

let's be more positive about books for a while! here are some queer historical romance novels that i've been rereading recently that i think do something interesting with making characters feel historical in their mindset and worldview, but are also fairly progressive, diverse queer books that are, frankly, a delight to read

this is by no means exhaustive and to be honest i could put almost anything by cat sebastian or kj charles on a list like this so this is purely the highlights of what i've reread in the past week to take my mind off work, and why i think they're interesting from this specific angle

cat sebastian, the ruin of a rake (turners #3)

this is technically the third in a trilogy but they're only very loosely connected, so you don't need to have read the others if you don't care about knowing who all the background characters are. the others are also good though

why it's interesting: features a character who has had to painstakingly study and learn the rules of polite society in order to claw his way up to respectability, and is now deploying those skills to help another man repair his reputation. shows the complexity of those rules, the social purposes they serve, and the work that goes into living by them, as well as the consequences of breaking them. also explores some of the financial side of aristocracy, and features a character with chronic illness (recurring malaria following repeated infections as a child in india) whose feelings about his illness are very relatable without feeling overly modern.

kj charles, society of gentlemen series.

this trilogy is closely related plot-wise and best read in order. all three explore cross-class romances and characters struggling to reconcile their political views and personal ethics with their desires, in the aftermath of the peterloo massacre, with a strong focus on the political role of the written word. first book is long-lost gentleman raised by seditionists / fashion-minded dandy teaching him to behave in society; second book is tory nobleman submissive / seditious pamphleteer dominant who've been fucking for a year without knowing the other's identity; third book is lord / valet and all the complicated dynamics of consent there with a generous side-helping of crime.

why they're interesting: close attention to the history of political printing and the impact of government censorship and repressive taxes on the freedom of the press; complex ideological disagreements that aren't handwaved as unimportant; examination of trust, consent, and social responsibility across class differences and in situations with problematic power dynamics; most of the characters are progressive for their time without feeling like they have modern attitudes. the second book, a seditious affair, deals most strongly with the revolutionary politics side of things, but all tackle it to some extent.

kj charles, band sinister.

look i'm probably biased because this might be my favourite KJC. it's a standalone about a pair of siblings: the sister wrote a gothic novel heavily inspired by their mysterious and scandalous neighbour whose older brother had an affair with their mum (causing scandal); the brother is a classics nerd. the sister breaks her leg on a ride through their neighbour's estate and can't be moved until she heals so they both have to stay at the house and find out if the neighbour is really as scandalous as he seems.

why it's interesting: discussion of atheism and new ideas about science and creation (very shocking to the brother, who is the viewpoint character); details of agriculture and estate management via main LI's attempt to grow sugar beet, as well as the economics of sugar (including references to slavery); "unexpurgated" latin and greek classics as queer reference points for a character who nevertheless hasn't quite figured out he's queer; material consequences of society scandal

bonus: wonderful sibling dynamic and a diverse cast including a portugese jewish character, which i don't think i've seen in a book before

i will add to this list as i continue to reread both of their backlists! (bc i have read them all enough times and in close enough succession that they blur together in my head unless i've read them very recently)

it's so infuriating that i can't unlearn the dates of the first phds in england so that when i'm rereading an otherwise enjoyable book i'm not constantly distracted by the main character supposedly having had a doctorate from oxford before wwi

nothing turns me into a grouchy bitch like a bad book and unfortunately. so many books are bad

love getting like 20% into a book and going "oh so his mum's a selkie then" only to later realise the book didn't want me to figure that out until much closer to the 80% mark

reading a YA book where the character is perfectly able to read handwritten letters and documents from 1485 and I'm just there like "wow you must have such good palaeography skills"

OH GOD not only is the author whose book i was bitching about active on tumblr, and not only do they follow some of my mutuals, but we also have MUTUAL ACQUAINTANCES IN REAL LIFE and they are DOING AN EVENT WITH SOMEONE I KNOW later this week

FML this is why I should never post about books (and this is precisely why this is the only place I post about books rather than anywhere with my wallet name attached!!!!)

it's weird reading a book where the eccentric old woman doddering around is in her early sixties. like. my mum is in her early sixties and not particularly sporty or fit but she's still perfectly capable of hefting furniture up and down flights of stairs, plus she works full time and has social hobbies (and doesn't knit or play bingo lol), she's not an Old Lady even if she is technically an older woman