Lush and frothy, incisive and witty, Shola von Reinhold’s decadent queer literary debut immerses readers …
resistance through aesthetics
5 stars
It's about being black and queer, it's about aesthetics and adornment as a kind of spirituality, it's about escape and creation/reinvention of oneself, it's about reclaiming history, it's weird and hard to describe.
Felt nearly perfect. The only thing I can find to fault is not having nearly enough descriptions of Mathilda's outfits. Mathilda must have a fabulous fashion sense and there's a part of me with a burning need to know what she is wearing at all times.
The playful and poignant novel LITTLE BLUE ENCYCLOPEDIA (FOR VIVIAN) sifts through a queer trans …
so good!
5 stars
What writing! How can a book about grieving so be so much fun? How can the author make passages about buttplugs feel so poignant?
The book is not just about coping with grief. The book also beautifully paints a portrait of trans femme friendships and relationships.
The book is full of references to other media, many of them real and many of them fictional. It's worthwhile to follow the real references, the author has good taste.
A note on how to read the book. It's written in the form of an encyclopedia about a fictional TV show. Everyone I've talked to read the book in order. I didn't. I tried to go linearly at first, but only got as far as "B" and then chose a chaotic journey through the encyclopedia following references or just reading what looked good to me. I still saved "Z" for the end. I have …
What writing! How can a book about grieving so be so much fun? How can the author make passages about buttplugs feel so poignant?
The book is not just about coping with grief. The book also beautifully paints a portrait of trans femme friendships and relationships.
The book is full of references to other media, many of them real and many of them fictional. It's worthwhile to follow the real references, the author has good taste.
A note on how to read the book. It's written in the form of an encyclopedia about a fictional TV show. Everyone I've talked to read the book in order. I didn't. I tried to go linearly at first, but only got as far as "B" and then chose a chaotic journey through the encyclopedia following references or just reading what looked good to me. I still saved "Z" for the end. I have no regrets about my choice, but I am told the book is also good to read in ABC order if that's your thing.
It's a long novel but it didn't feel like it was wasting words. It's a few stories told at once about different people living in different places at different times. One thing that links the stories is none of the main characters are satisfied with the hand they were dealt in life, and the stories explore how they deal with that. Some threads (Constantinople) engaged me sooner than others (Argos), but by the end I was interested in everything, and it all came together in a satisfying way.
There also was some queer representation in the novel, and I like that sort of thing.
Catch-22 is like no other novel. It has its own rationale, its own extraordinary character. …
Disappointing
2 stars
I decided it was finally time to read Catch-22 so I could get the cultural references that come up from time to time. I couldn't finish it.
In each chapter, we meet some odd characters with odd names that are probably supposed to make the reader laugh. We encounter some kind of circular logic. We have an absurd situation. And nothing really changes, and then we move onto the next chapter with new odd-named characters, new circular logic, new absurdities. 8 chapters into the book I skimmed through the chapter titles, which are nearly all odd character names, and realized it was likely going to be the same pattern again and again. The problem is that I wasn't entertained, and so in the middle of my 8th mission I decided that it just wasn't worth it and deserted. I won't make it to 42 missions.
Repetition to drive home a …
I decided it was finally time to read Catch-22 so I could get the cultural references that come up from time to time. I couldn't finish it.
In each chapter, we meet some odd characters with odd names that are probably supposed to make the reader laugh. We encounter some kind of circular logic. We have an absurd situation. And nothing really changes, and then we move onto the next chapter with new odd-named characters, new circular logic, new absurdities. 8 chapters into the book I skimmed through the chapter titles, which are nearly all odd character names, and realized it was likely going to be the same pattern again and again. The problem is that I wasn't entertained, and so in the middle of my 8th mission I decided that it just wasn't worth it and deserted. I won't make it to 42 missions.
Repetition to drive home a point can be very effective. It seems that a lot of people have been entertained by Heller's writing. I wasn't, so I couldn't deal with the monotony. Heller, I think, wanted to show us the absurdity of the military in a time when we were still feeling good about the military after WWII. It was a bold thing to do, and the success of the novel shows it was effective for a lot of people. I appreciate the idea behind the novel, the execution just didn't work for me at all.
The nine stories in Morgan Thomas's shimmering debut collection witness Southern queer and genderqueer characters …
A queer/trans/genderqueer short story collection
4 stars
Things that author Morgan Thomas does well: their prose is wonderful, they challenge us with flawed characters, and they color their stories with the history and character of the US South.
It's difficult for me to review an entire story collection so I'll focus on one of my favorites, "Bump". Louie, a trans woman, is so delighted to be asked if she's expecting a child by a coworker that she plays along, with the aid of the titular mail-order pregnancy bump. Louie, like all Morgan's flawed characters, makes choices I can't agree with but I still find her so relatable and love her so much. The author's painting of the intense yearning for something the body isn't capable of is so moving, and it's such a trans experience.
