The litany against fear from Dune, adapted to fit my situation

litany against fear

I must not online-shop.

Online shopping is the mind-killer.

Online shopping is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my compulsion to online-shop.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the compulsion to online-shop has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Book Review: The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Summary from Barnes & Noble for a different version than my copy:

A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery and Sofia and their experience. The Color Purple broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery. Deeply compassionate and beautifully imagined, Alice Walker's epic carries readers on a spirit-affirming journey towards redemption and love.

 I'd picked up The Color Purple from the thrift store. I'd of course heard of it before as it's a classic, but it was (unsurprisingly) the queer relationship plot line that piqued my interest. Also, purple is my favorite color. As is usual when reading when reading Black/African American stories from before the 1980s, I steeled myself for a super sad story, and was right to do so. Celie goes through so much abuse from her father and husband, as well as the systemic racism and misogynoir of her time. Major, major trigger warnings for rape and abuse (the full list is of course at the end of this post). I felt for her and was so glad that she got to be in a loving relationship and eventually became a respected member of her married-into family. Even her relationship with her husband Albert developed from abuser/abusee to friends, which was nice to read, although I would have been fine with reading that he died in a fire or something. The scene where Celie stands up for herself and calls Albert well-deserved names made me cheer! Almost all of the men suck in this book, unsurprisingly, but it is clearly due to the sexist, misogynistic culture they live in and the way they are brought up. Even the one character (Sofia, Celie's step-daughter in law) who seemingly is unaffected by and does not buy into misogynoir and racism is severely punished for it. There are so many heartbreaking family estrangements in this book: Celie and Nettie, Celie and her children, Sofia and her family, etc. Nettie has her own story that is fascinating to read. I did find it interesting how the family included mistresses and everyone helped raise everyone else's babies.

It's Shug Avery who first gives Celie the ability to dream. Celie finds her photograph (Shug is a famous singer and "bad girl") and falls in love with her immediately. They meet because Shug and Albert were in love and have an on-again, off-again thing, and he brings her home because she is very sick, making Celie take care of her. Celie and Shug become friends and then more, and Celie is inspired by Shug's openness about sexuality and spirituality. I think it's pretty clear that Celie is a lesbian and Shug is bisexual, although of course those terms aren't used. Surprisingly little to no homophobia; heteronormativity is of course there but everyone just accepts Celie and Shug's relationship. That they are able to make a home together in Celie's abusive 'father's' house after he dies is beautifully symbolic. I'm so glad Celie got to have the love she deserved.

This book was so sad and hard to read but so necessary, and Celie gets her happy ending. This is a very important book that I think most people should read, but if you cannot read about rape or abuse or incest, do not read this. 

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: February 9
From: thrift store
Status: giving away

Trigger warnings: rape, rape of a child/teen, parental rape, spousal rape, parental abuse, spousal abuse, domestic abuse, physical abuse, incest, misogyny, misogynoir, racism, hate crimes, off-page lynching in the past, murder, death, a character is beaten severely for being "uppity" to whites and fighting back, verbal abuse, teen forced into marriage/slavery, character's children from rape taken away from her without her consent, a character is imprisoned, prison, a jail-connected official rapes a character as payment for getting the imprisoned character out of jail, said jailed character is forced to work for free for a white family (slavery again), adult man forcibly kisses and pursues/stalks a teen girl, imperialism, colonialism, Christian missionaries, xenophobia, non-Western customs and culture looked down on and tried to change by missionaries, African tribe forcibly displaced by English colonizers, religious abuse via promoting white supremacy, slut-shaming, and ignoring domestic violence; physical fights, sex/slut-shaming, illness

Book review: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

I think most people have heard of this book, as it is a classic. Zora Neale Hurston was one of the Harlem Renaissance artists. This book has been sitting on my shelf for a long time, because I knew it would be sad. I think I originally got it from a thrift store.

Amazon summary:
One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. Out of print for almost thirty years—due largely to initial audiences’ rejection of its strong black female protagonist—Hurston’s classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature.

I was right, of course; this book is sad. Any book about any slice of the African American experience, especially during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is going to be sad. Janie's family stories and first two marriages are very sad. But the writing! The writing is just lovely. This book has sentences like pearls. Even in describing things that may seem mundane, Hurston give them a glow. I could quote you like half the book, but I won't. Here are a few single lines from several different parts of the book.

There are years that ask questions and years that answer. 

Somebody near about making summertime out of lonesomeness.

He drifted off to sleep and Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.

Anyway, a lot of sad, bad stuff happens to Janie, but she is able to retain her sense of self and what she wants out of life. And she gets the soul-affirming relationship she deserves. I really like books that deal with the interior lives of women and what they think, feel, and want. I highly recommend this book for teens and up. Halle Berry played Janie in the movie adaptation, and that sounds like a good choice. 

Cover notes: My cover, above, is fine, although not accurate as to Janie's skin tone (she is at least a quarter white and is described as being light-skinned). I like most of the other options better. My least favorite options are the ones where Janie's turning into a tree, and this one, because it looks too much like a fun middle-grade novel which it decidedly is not. 

 

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: February 19
From: thrift store?
Format: paperback
Status: giving away

Trigger warnings I'd apply to this book: rape mentions, period-typical racism, domestic violence, domestic abuse, period-typical and constant N-word usage, controlling relationships, a narrative about being enslaved and escaping slavery,  a minor is made to marry an older adult, period-typical sexism, period-typical misogynoir, physical violence, internalized racism, verbal abuse, colorism/shadeism, guns, a character dies by shooting, death, disease (especially rabies), descriptions of dead bodies, natural disasters/floods, period-typical racism towards Native Americans, alcohol mentions, tobacco use, animal deaths, gambling mentions, elder abuse of very minor character

Classic literature books reimagined as eyeshadow palettes: The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan

This is a very silly idea but I love makeup and books and anyway I haven't finished a book in a while so

The Pilgrim's Progress eyeshadow palette

Christian - matte neutral tan
The Great Burden - matte medium brown
The Slough of Despond - matte black
Hellfire - glittery/shimmery bright orangey red
New Garments - matte pure white
The Armor of God - metallic silver
Vanity Fair - glittery hot pink
The Delectable Mountains - satin grass green
The River of Death - shimmery deep blue
Mercy - satin pale pink
Great Heart - metallic royal purple
The Celestial City - shimmery white with gold microglitter

4 mattes, 4 glitters/shimmers, 2 metallics, 2 satins, a lot of Christianity

The palette itself would look like the original book (see above-right image) on the outside, and when you open it, it looks like a map of the story, with the shade names in the corresponding places. How cool would that be??

Hey Storybook Cosmetics, call me!

Book review: Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

I decided to reread Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw after I saw that one of my friends was reading it on Instagram, and she has the same copy as me. This is a play, which was so successful that it was turned into a musical and then one of the favorite movies of my childhood, starring Audrey Hepburn. The play is called Pygmalion instead of My Fair Lady because it references the ancient Greek myth, about a sculptor named Pygmalion who carved a statue of his dream woman, which was brought to life by Aphrodite because she was moved he fell in love with the statue? IDK. Obligatory Amazon summary, because I am lazy:

Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British class system of the day and a commentary on women's independence. 

The play is very much like My Fair Lady, except that there are no songs and Eliza marries Freddy at the end and they run a struggling flower shop. Freddy's family and Henry Higgins' mother play a greater role: a sort of parlor party? at Mrs. Higgins' house is where Eliza first tries out her high-class lady act and ends up just saying colorful/shocking language in a posh accent. In the movie, they go to Ascot so Audrey Hepburn can wear an (admittedly iconic) enormous hat and a tight dress. Also, the big to-do where Eliza has to prove her Lady-ness to Professor Higgins' former student is a garden party in the play and a ball in the movie. In the rambling epilogue, we also learn about Freddy's sister and how she learns socialism or something. I didn't really care.

I found the play very quick, despite its various ramblings about class (understandable) and H.G. Wells for some reason. Obviously besides the makeover aspect, my favorite thing about this play is the linguistics. I think My Fair Lady set me up to love linguistics, which I have found fascinating ever since I took a linguistics class in college. I will say that Henry Higgins is very classist and does not recognize that all British English dialects are valid and there is no right one that is 'correct'. This is a good book for English and linguistics students to read in order to see the racist attitudes behind diction classes and linguistic imperialism, etc. Despite all this, I did kind of find Eliza's Cockney rather hard to read, as it's written down phonetically. If you hate dialects in books, I would skip this.

At some point Henry Higgins calls himself and the Colonel "a couple of confirmed bachelors" and that makes the play make more sense. Of course two gay guys would give a girl a makeover and judge everything about her harshly and just kind of... not super care about her future. I feel like most straight men of that era would have been like, "well, if you can't figure out what to do with your life I'll have to marry you since I'm responsible for you." There's a whole song in My Fair Lady where Henry Higgins basically says he'd rather slit his throat than get married to a woman. That's gay proof for you.

I like this play but have decided to give it away since I just have way too many books and some of them have got to go. I would recommend this book if you like My Fair Lady or linguistics or late 19th/early 20th century English class dynamics, etc.

This has nothing to do with the book, but in My Fair Lady Freddy is played by an absolute dreamboat who I have just learned last night was actually young Jeremy Brett, the most iconic Sherlock Holmes!!!!! I was SHOOK.

The above image is the cover that my copy has, and it shows Eliza as a flower girl in the beginning of the book. It's ok. I think maybe the small woman floating above the title is Eliza as a Lady maybe? idk. The only bad Pygmalion covers are the ones who depict her as a flapper or some other anachronism, or who use a Klimt painting as the cover.

Score: 3.9 out of 5 stars
Read in: end of May
From: the thrift store
Format: paperback
Status: giving away

Book review: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

I picked up The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro because some blogger I read said it was good. It won the Man Booker Prize in 1989, and Mr. Ishiguro, who is Japanese-English, has won the Nobel Prize in literature. I thought it sounded interesting, and thought I'd give it a try. Here is the Amazon summary:

...Kazuo Ishiguro's profoundly compelling portrait of Stevens, the perfect butler, and of his fading, insular world in post-World War II England. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the "great gentleman," Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington's "greatness," and much graver doubts about the nature of his own life.

TRotD is very well written, and it's clear Mr. Ishiguro is a master of his craft. I thought the prose quite dense, however. Unless you've read a ton of 19th and 20th century British literature and/or are very familiar with the Downton Abbey or Jeeves and Wooster miniseries, a lot of this book will be hard to read and not make a lot of sense to you. You really need to have that early modern English class-obsessed culture and servitude knowledge.

[SPOILERS, I guess] One sub?plot of the book not touched upon in the Amazon blurb is Stevens' relationship with Miss Kenton, the housekeeper. The butler and housekeeper were the heads of the service staff, and as such generally had a closer working and possibly friendly relationship. While Stevens is the narrator and we see everything through his uptight and uber-professional viewpoint, it's clear that Miss Kenton has a crush on Stevens, what with bringing him flowers "to cheer up his room" and arguing with him in a flouncy Austen-heroine manner. Nothing happens between them as Stevens is so emotionally constipated because he thinks that's what a butler should be like, to the extent that he's too afraid of neglecting his duties to properly say goodbye to his dying father. Miss Kenton got engaged in an attempt to awaken jealousy in Stevens, and when it didn't work, she married the dude anyway even though she didn't love him. Stevens and Mrs. Benn meet up many years later and reminisce about the past. Stevens made the trip in hopes that she'll leave her husband (since she sounded unhappy in her letters to him) and they can work together again at Darlington Hall. However, this doesn't happen, making disappointment one of the major themes of the book (besides emotional constipation and love of class separateness). In one of the saddest lines of the book, Stevens says that he gave so much of himself to Lord Darlington that he doesn't think he has anything more to give to his current employer, a rich American Anglophile. [end spoilers]

Plot-wise, most of the action is emotional and philosophical. Nothing much really happens, so this book is recommended only for people who care more about feelings and history than action. This book was really sad but worth reading, probably. If it sounds like you'll be into it, give it a try.

The cover art above is really for the movie, which starred Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. My copy had the same cover as a movie tie-in. Most of the covers for TRotD seem to have clocks, sundials, and hourglasses, due to the theme of time lost/gone by. A lot of covers have old fancy cars and show parts of headless butlers standing at attention.

Score: 3.9 out of 5 stars
Read in: mid May
From: the library booksale
Format: paperback
Status: giving away

July-September 2016 books

I reread Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer. Classic.

My bookclub read Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling for July. It was a reread for me (I bought it from Barnes & Noble when it came out). Love her.

I read an online ebook called The Dark Wife by Sarah Diemer. It's available for free online and is a retelling of the Hades & Persephone myth. Kind of creepy, scary, violent, and really good. Trigger warning for rape. 4/5

I read all of the Wonder Woman comics series by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang: Blood, Guts, Iron, War, Flesh, and Bones. The premise is, what if Wonder Woman's father was Zeus? Zeus disappears and the other gods and goddesses fight for his throne, and WW must band together with all of Zeus' other illegitimate offspring to save the last of Zeus' line. I love WW and I love Greek mythology, so I loved this series. The art is amazing and the storytelling is fascinating.  4/5

Guardians, Inc.: The Cypher by Julian Rosado Machain is a Kindle book I got for free from Amazon. It's about a teenage orphan boy who is drafted into a mysterious and shadowy organization then gets pulled into a fantastical conspiracy, finds out he is Special and has to save the world. You get it. Anyway this sounded like it had promise, but the writing quality was just not there, and the main character was very Gary Stu-ish. The characters were pretty flat (Grandpa and the principal were the most interesting and well-developed), and I just didn't feel invested in them or the story. It raced along at a too-fast pace and spent too much time on the boring and fake romance when I wanted to learn more about Guardians, Inc. and its Library. My least favorite thing was that this teenage boy who hasn't even finished high school is hired by this company to be an Assistant Librarian, which entails getting and checking out books to the Library's mysterious patrons. You have to have an MLIS/MLS degree to be a full-fledged librarian, and in order to be an assistant librarian, you'd have to have at least some college coursework in library science and a good amount of library experience under your belt, none of which the protagonist has. There are monsters and fauns (hoo boy, the dumbest, least accurate fauns I've ever heard of) and living gargoyles, but I could not believe or forgive this falsehood. There are sequels (OF COURSE, God forbid anyone ever write a standalone fantasy book for kids anymore) but I won't read them unless they end up being free on Amazon as well. Could have used a better editor, too. 3/5

My hands-down favorite books that I've read these last few months are Seraphina and Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman, which are set in your typical fantasy medieval world and have dragons and a love interest prince, but are otherwise refreshingly and fascinatingly unique. Seraphina is a musician with a secret, one that she does everything to protect. I don't want to describe the books more because spoilers, but they are SO GOOD and you should definitely read them. Seraphina was on sale for like $1.99 on Nook (and I bought it in paperback from Barnes & Noble because I loved it so much), and I borrowed Shadow Scale from the library. 4.9/5

I started this free ebook called Courtlight Series 1-3: Sword to Raise, Sword to Transfer, Sworn to Conflict by Terah Edun (I was on vacation in August, which is why I had so much time to read). I say started because I could not bring myself to finish it. The story had some promise (an orphan girl with mysterious origins is inducted into an academy for training to be a magical courtesan/bodyguard type thing), but it was just ridiculous. Extremely Mary Sue-ish, flatter than pancakes characters, weird "off" writing, etc.

I started another free Kindle book (romance novel meets ecosystem/small town drama?) and just could not finish it either. The heroine almost gets raped by her ex-husband, and her new love interest who saves her like demands she "repay" him, UGH. Why do women write and read this nonsense????

Milk and Honey is a book of poetry by Rupi Kaur that covers topics like abuse, love, relationships, sex, breaking up, pain, self-love, and feminism. I borrowed it from my sister. I'd seen quotes and poems from it on Tumblr but had not read the whole thing. I really liked this. There were many poems that resonated with me. Recommended if you can handle the aforementioned topics. 4/5

Continuing my terrible free ebooks trend, I read this historical romance called Hart's Desire by Chloe Flowers (*chanting* pen name, pen name, pen name). This was pretty formulaic (protagonists hate each other but are soooo attracted to each other, lust to love etc.), and I could not really tell what era it was in. There was a mention of a possible future war against the British, but America was used to describe the country? The War of 1812, maybe? It felt more 1700s but it's difficult to tell. Also, there was that cringy Nice White People thing where the plantation the girl lives on has slaves, but she and her love interest are nice to them while other white people are mean to them. I won't be reading the others unless they also become free and I'm really bored or something. 3/5

In case you're wondering why I'm reading so many romance novels lately, it's because I am always tired and don't want too much of a commitment when reading (the Seraphina books excepted). I never really care about romance novels or their characters or how they end. Junk food for the brain.

EDIT:
I completely forgot that I finished this Kindle book I started way back in April, The Dead Key by D.M. Pulley, in July. This was a decent mystery that alternatingly focused on Beatrice, a 17 year old secretary at a big bank in the 1970s, and Iris, a 22 year old architect (?) who is assigned to draft the layout of the abandoned bank building  in the 1990s. The mystery was pretty interesting and kept you in suspense. I felt that while Beatrice was written pretty well and sympathetically, Iris was an immature, naive girl who seemed more like a teenager than a college graduate. All that stuff about her crush/love interest was unnecessary and went nowhere. What I disliked most about this book was that there was no clean ending. We found out why the bank was closed, but the bad guys did not get their comeuppance and we found out that poor Beatrice is still in hiding, twentysome years later. 3.5 stars

ALSO, for some reason in April I completely forgot to review Dodger by Terry Pratchett (RIP). This was a fantastic book about The Artful Dodger, told pretty much from his point of view and redeeming Fagin as a wise and clever philosopher and grifter. He runs into some interesting people from literature (Sweeney Todd, anyone?) and history. 4.9/5 stars, highly recommended.

Science Fiction & Fantasy class essays: A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

While reading A Princess of Mars I kept thinking, is John Carter a Gary Stu? A Gary Stu (or Marty Stu) is "an annoyingly 'perfect' male fanfiction character"[1] who is unbelievably great at everything and loved by everyone in the story. Wikipedia links this trope to that of the competent man, "a stock character who can do anything perfectly, or at least exhibits a very wide range of abilities and knowledge"[2].

John Carter already has fighting and wilderness survival skills as a Civil War veteran and prospector, but once he inexplicably finds himself on Mars, he becomes almost a superhero. Mars' lesser gravity means he can leap huge distances in a single bound, and his strength is also magnified to this extreme, enabling him to overpower and even kill at one blow huge Martians three times his height and weight. He rises up in the Thark ranks ridiculously fast. He's also a genius; it takes him less than a week to learn the Martian language, and while he can read everyone's thoughts telepathically, they cannot read his.  Obviously he and the titular princess fall in love and marry. Most interestingly, John claims not to remember anything before the age of thirty, and that he is ageless as well as immortal.

What keeps John from fully being a 'competent man' trope is that there are explanations given for most of his skills. One could argue that the term Gary Stu doesn't apply to John either since there is no evidence that Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote him as a self-insert character, but the Barsoom series are based on the writings of the astronomer Percival Lowell [3], so in a sense those (and all science fiction) are fanfiction about science. Such perfect characters seem to speak to a universal longing to be better than we are, to have the strength and skills to face an obstacle-filled life and come out on top.

1. nscangal. (June 27, 2005). "Marty-Stu." The Urban Dictionary. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Marty-Stu

2. "Competent man." (last modified April 30, 2015). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competent_man

3. "A Princess of Mars." (last modified May 1, 2015). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Princess_of_Mars

Science Fiction & Fantasy class essays: H.G. Wells

Science as the Enabler of Evil

It is interesting to read the stories from when science was new and unknown. These authors during the early modern era seem to have seen science as a marvel, a new magic, something fearful and fascinating. The level of new discoveries and scientific possibilities was the highest since the Enlightenment, and because it was so new it was feared due to uncertainty and unfamiliarity.

Since the dawn of time, stories have been filled with people who had some fatal flaw that brought about their destruction, but science and advanced knowledge drive the stakes higher. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. There is more to lose, and more evil to be wrought due to this increased knowledge.

In The Island of Doctor Moreau and The Invisible Man, as in Frankenstein and some of Hawthorne and Poe's stories, science is a medium by which men who wish to further their and the world's knowledge and make a difference end up becoming obsessed. This obsession corrupts them and leads to their downfall, and they end up unleashing some new horror into the world instead of improving it. Science is then seen as a medium by which man's hubris may more fantastically, horribly and more speedily lead to their ruination.

We saw this first from Shelley's Frankenstein, but Wells especially seems to suggest that science can do away with our empathy and compassion. Dr. Moreau cares only for the advancement of knowledge that his vivisection experiments bring him; he doesn't care one whit about the pain he inflicts upon the poor animals and the ethical questions raised by his experiments. Likewise, Gibson's invisibility from his experiments gives him an advantage over others, and thus he becomes more and more violent and selfish as his story goes on. Wells et al. seem to suggest that science accelerates our natural selfishness and willingness to hurt others.

I don't think I mentioned this before, but these class essays were written in one go the night before the due date (as I'm sure you can tell). They could have benefited from some editing and reflection, but self-editing has never been my strong point and I was always too tired from work. After uploading her or his essay to Coursera, each student then had to grade three or four other students' essays. I had the harshest criticism of probably my entire academic career from this essay. One of the students who graded my essay hated it, reviled my writing and actually accused me of not having done ANY of the readings for the class. It was like the written equivalent of Donald Duck's tantrums. It was so irate and over the top that I went straight past hurt and offended and landed squarely on amused. Coursera lamely won't let me see anything I've done in that class since it ended, otherwise I would share the original feedback with you. 

Science Fiction & Fantasy class essays: Dracula by Bram Stoker

That Dracula has heavy religious, especially Christian, influences throughout the story is obvious. The crucifixes, Holy Wafers, funeral prayers for the dead, etc., all act as weapons against the vampire and his powers of evil. The life-giving blood the men selflessly give Lucy in order to try to save her is the opposite of the awful “baptism of blood” Count Dracula forces upon Mina in order to damn her. Dracula and the vampire wives are four, an unlucky number associated with death in Chinese culture, while our group of heroes number seven, a holy and/or lucky number in Western culture. Even some of the characters’ names are significant: “YAHWEH has given” (Jonathan), “will/desire to protect” (Wilhelmina), “light” (Lucy), “YAHWEH is gracious” (John), while Arthur and Abraham are important literary and biblical heroes, respectively. The group fights Dracula not just because of the suffering of the women they love, but because they feel a moral obligation to stop him. To be a vampire or to succumb to one means that one will be damned and cut off from salvation. Dracula is a deeply religious book, which seems strange since it is also a horror and fantasy book, but such contradictions are common in Christianity: one must die to live, Jesus is both man and God, etc. Van Helsing’s discouraged words after their protections for Lucy keep being thwarted echo 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 (“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”). Suffering and helplessness in the face of the enemy are common themes in Christianity, but since the protagonists trust in God and do all they can to do what’s right, they succeed.

More flash book reviews--science fiction & fantasy class

The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells (July 8)
A mad doctor moves to an island where he can practice turning animals as human as possible through vivisection without society's censure/interference. This was pretty bananas. I felt bad for the animals and didn't like the narrator either. 3.5/5
I also read most of The Invisible Man but didn't finish it (I've read it before). The theme of Victorian sci fi seems to be "science men are the worst".

A Princess of Mars by Edward Rice Burroughs (July 18)
A sci fi action movie adaptation was made of this a while back, John Carter, and it did not do well. I didn't watch it, but I read a review/article about it where the person (was it Roger Ebert?) said that that was because it felt too "done", too same old same old. A hero ends up in a new land, fights the natives and comes out on top, is lauded as their leader and gets the native princess. Last of the Mohicans, Dances with Wolves, Avatar, etc. But, the writer pointed out, this is because A Princess of Mars was first and influenced all these stories that came after it. It is the first story in this vein, and we are too used to it now. So I read this for my class, and it was entertaining. I can see why it was so popular; ERB knew how to spin a tale (he wrote Tarzan too). John Carter is hilariously perfect at everything, a total Gary Stu. 3.9/5

Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (July 18)
A trio of male dumdums with varying levels of sexism (benevolent, most dissuadable by reason, and Trump Status) find a country that has been populated entirely by women for centuries. The women reproduce asexually and have bred and engineered everything to be as perfect and useful as possible. The main thought I had while reading this book is I WANT TO GO TO THERE. That, and SEXISM RUINS EVERYTHING. Herland is such a utopia and I firmly believe that it reflects how a country run and populated entirely by women would be. I cannot believe I'd never heard of this book before this class! The story ends abruptly with one dude staying in Herland with his wife (benevolent sexism dude) and the others going back to America (reasonable dude with his wife and Trump Status dude because he was exiled forever for Trumping his now-ex wife). There are sequels and I must read them. 4.9/5

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (July 24)
Myth and frontier exploration/colonization wrapped up in a Martian sci fi veneer. Lovely but sad and angry-making due to the colonization of Mars by humans. Wonderful book. This was my first Bradbury (shocking, I know). 4.5/5

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin (late July-early August)
You know how Herland was so great because it showed how good a women-only country would be where men couldn't mess things up? Well, TLHOD approaches the male problem by doing away with gender altogether. No one on the planet of Winter has a sex or gender, only during their mating seasons (they can take either male or female form). An Earth man is on Winter to try to convince the planet to join the space federation of other planets, but there's a lot of cultural barriers to overcome. It honestly made me wish we didn't have genders on this planet either, since we're so liable to exploit and mistreat them and see one as better or more worthy than the other. Lots of fascinating Tao influence as well. I have to read her other books too. Can you believe this is the first LeGuin I've read? 4.8/5

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (August 9)
Continuing a theme, my first Doctorow. This is actually free on his website as a PDF, which I did not know when I borrowed it from my library. Supersmart hacking teens, terrorism on American soil and the subsequent national fear and stripping away of liberties, government surveillance and oppression, protests and rebellion in response. Good but hit too close to home, as someone who was old enough to remember 9/11 and the period following. 4/5

I wrote short essays for these for my classes and will share them, one by one.

Flash book reviews because I am super behind

Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge (May 10)
Til We Have Faces meets Pandora's Box meets Howl's Moving Castle meets Rose Daughter. I LOVED THIS WOW. 4/5

The Distant Hours by Kate Morton (May 31-June 6)
Thrift store purchase because it had a pretty cover. Gothic novel told through flashbacks, journal entries, letters, etc. set in WWII and present day (1990s). Well-written, atmospheric mystery. Initially sucked me in but in the end I sort of hated it due to the difficult, controlling, messed up family situation and unnecessary deaths. No one in this book gets to have nice things. 3.9/5

Dracula by Bram Stoker (mid June)
I read this for the fantasy & science fiction class I enrolled in from Coursera. I know it's a classic, and upon reading it I can see why, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It's surprisingly religious and Mina is pretty awesome, despite how Perfect Victorian Woman she is. 4/5

Nimona by Noelle Stevenson (June 17)
I've been following Noelle Stevenson on Tumblr for years now. This was originally a webcomic, and I had read all but the last chapter or so since I got busy with school and work. It's a sort of steampunk (not Victorian or much steam, just knights who fight with mechanical lances and mad scientists researching magic) graphic novel about a "villain" and his mysterious sidekick trying to overthrow an oppressive government. This was wonderful and I enjoyed it. The feels. 4/5

Here There Be Unicorns by Jane Yolen (June)
This was such a favorite of mine growing up. I used to read it from our public library all the time. I had some credit in my Amazon account so I bought this. It's such a weird experience rereading a book you loved as a child and haven't read since then. It's always much shorter and less impactful, less substantial, in a way. You're a different person who has learned and grown a lot since then so it doesn't affect you like it used to. Still, I have a lot of love for this book. I was kind of amazed that  I loved it that much as a kid, since the stories/poems are pretty advanced and open-ended/vague rather than having happy, tidy endings, and I was a lot less used to sad, philosophical stories back than than I am now. 4/5

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (late June)
I guess I see why this is a classic, as this is the first science fiction novel (written by a teenage girl, so take that, sexist nerd bros who think SF is only for guys), but I kind of hated this. Victor is an idiot, tons of unnecessary deaths, and no one is allowed to have nice things. Just misery. Also, I downloaded a random free ebook from the Nook store because I was feeling too lazy to connect my Nook ereader to my laptop in order to download the version supplied by the instructor of my SF/F class and it had the worst formatting I'd ever seen. Whole paragraphs, pages, were jumbles of letters with symbols. Terrible. 3.5/5

Women in nineteenth-century literature

How good how kind how pure how lovely
How dead how very very dead

Book Reviews

Yes Please by Amy Poehler (early March)
Loved this. Loved that she put old pictures in this. Love her. 4/5

Texts From Jane Eyre by Mallory Ortberg (late March)
Mallory is a genius and her website is one of my favorites on all the Internet. These are hilarious. 5/5

Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton (early April)
I'd seen most of the comics since I follow her blog religiously. Love them and her. 5/5

Lunatics by Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel (mid April)
I grew up reading Dave Barry and he shaped my sense of humor. This book (definitely for adults) was pretty funny but not the most memorable or recommended. If you like either of those authors and stories where every mistake and happenstance builds and intersects and the stakes keep getting higher and higher, then you will enjoy this. I found this at the dollar store and don't regret buying it, but I'm going to give it away since I just have so many books and limited shelf space. 3/5