#beaton 2022

[quotesfromall]

I am wary of the sensationalization of my narrative because it contains sexual violence. The sad fact is, however, that sexual assault of every kind is far too common everywhere to be sensational. That doesn't mean I am not deeply and negatively affected by it. I will always be affected by it. But I guarantee you that neither of the men who raped me consider what they did to be rape, if they consider it at all. I know the name of one of them; he is a father now with a woman who was his girlfriend when he raped me. I was nothing in his life but a short release from the boredom and loneliness endemic in camp life, but he was a major trauma in mine. I have seen many people quick to become defensive against the suggestion that gendered violence exists in places like the oil sands. They may either work there and are proud of the work they do and the livelihoods they support with it, or they know and love men there, and are insulted by the insinuation of being lumped in with anything to do with something as abhorrent as sexual assault.

Kate Beaton, Ducks

[blake-ritson-love]

Blake Ritson as Oscar Van Rhijn in season 2, episode 2 of The Gilded Age (Photos: HBO Max Nordic)

[devtschemark]

[gataxia]

bring it on: cheer or die (2022) dir. karen lam

[bogkeep]

this book is really, really good. it's a heavy read, but not just. i love comics

i've been reading ducks by kate beaton for less than a minute and it already has me staring at a wall. nova scotia 🤝 northern norway

[colleendoran]

Neil Gaiman's CHIVALRY makes 2022 American Library Association Best Graphic Novels of 2022 List

CHIVALRY makes the cut! Neil Gaiman's short story, published by Dark Horse Comics and adapted and illustrated by me has made the final list of 2022 BEST GRAPHIC NOVELS FOR ADULTS at the American Library Association!

Thrilled and grateful to make the cut (the field gets better every year, gotta say,) and happy to note my buddy Jeff Smith is on there with his work TUKI: FIGHT FOR FIRE, as well as DUCKS by Kate Beaton, which is superb. Great company to be in!

Thank you Neil and Dark Horse! I suppose CHIVALRY, a King Arthur tale, should be on the Graphic Novel List Round Table. Hardehar.

[adamsvanrhijn]

"Here's my other cousin, Mr. Oscar van Rhijn… May I introduce you to Miss Maud Beaton?"

2.02 ▹ Some Sort of Trick

THE GILDED AGE (2022–)

[dsudis]

My cross-stitch nemesis (in a very Kate Beaton sense of nemesis)

Scarlet Quince's rendition of the horse painting from Lascaux, which is fully stitched 208 by 142 stitches (a bit over 29,000 stitches total) on 18-count aida.

The beginning: March 6, 2021

June 23, 2021, approximately 11% complete by total stitch count.

One year on, March 2, 2022, approximately 18% complete.

March 28, 2022, the top twenty rows are complete all the way across and it's 22.5% complete by stitch count.

July 13, 2022, the top thirty rows are complete and it's 27.7% complete.

October 8, 2022, 40 rows complete and 35.6% complete by stitch count.

50 rows complete as of today, July 16, 2023! Very crumpled and no stitch count percentage because I last worked on it while I was on vacation and it was long enough ago that my phone browser lost all my pattern data and I have to rebuild it from the last backup, which I cannot face right now because UGH, NEMESIS.

(The lighting mostly does not represent how absolutely impossible it is to distinguish all those gray/beige/blue colors that are forming the background, and I was Very Clever and did this project on cream-colored fabric that doesn't show through gaps so obviously, which means it... blends together and is Worse, Actually.)

[costumeloverz71]

Maud Beaton (Nicole Brydon Bloom) Pink/green dress.. The Gilded Age (2022-).. Costume by Kasia Walicka Maimone.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

All the books I reviewed in 2023 (Graphic Novels)

Next Tuesday (December 5), I'm at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC, with my new solarpunk novel The Lost Cause, which 350.org's Bill McKibben called "The first great YIMBY novel: perceptive, scientifically sound, and extraordinarily hopeful."

It's that time of year again, when I round up all the books I reviewed for my newsletter in the previous year. I posted 21 reviews last year, covering 31 books (there are two series in there!). I also published three books of my own last year (two novels and one nonfiction). A busy year in books!

Every year, these roundups remind me that I did actually manager to get a lot of reading done, even if the list of extremely good books that I didn't read is much longer than the list of books I did read. I read many of these books while doing physiotherapy for my chronic pain, specifically as audiobooks I listened to on my underwater MP3 player while doing my daily laps at the public pool across the street from my house.

After many years of using generic Chinese waterproof MP3s players – whose quality steadily declined over a decade – I gave up and bought a brand-name player, a Shokz Openswim. So far, I have no complaints. Thanks to reader Abbas Halai for recommending this!

https://shokz.com/products/openswim

I load up this gadget with audiobook MP3s bought from Libro.fm, a fantastic, DRM-free alternative to Audible, which is both a monopolist and a prolific wage-thief with a documented history of stealing from writers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

All right, enough with the process notes, on to the reviews!

GRAPHIC NOVELS

I. Shubiek Lubiek by Deena Mohamed

An intricate alternate history in which wishes are real, and must be refined from a kind of raw wish-stuff that has to be dug out of the earth. Naturally, this has been an important element of geopolitics and colonization, especially since the wish-stuff is concentrated in the global south, particularly Egypt, the setting for our tale. The framing device for the trilogy is the tale of three "first class" wishes: these are the most powerful wishes that civilians are allowed to use, the kind of thing you might use to cure cancer or reverse a crop-failure.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/11/your-wish/#is-my-command

II. Ducks by Kate Beaton

In 2005, Beaton was a newly minted art-school grad facing a crushing load of student debt, a debt she would never be able to manage in the crumbling, post-boom economy of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Like so many Maritimers, she left the home that meant everything for her to travel to Alberta, where the tar sands oil boom promised unmatched riches for anyone willing to take them. Beaton's memoir describes the following four years, as she works her way into a series of oil industry jobs in isolated company towns where men outnumber women 50:1 and where whole communities marinate in a literally toxic brew of carcinogens, misogyny, economic desperation and environmental degradation. The story that follows is – naturally – wrenching, but it is also subtle and ambivalent. Beaton finds camaraderie with – and empathy for – the people she works alongside, even amidst unimaginable, grinding workplace harassment that manifests in both obvious and glancing ways.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/14/hark-an-oilpatch/#kate-beaton

III. Justice Warriors by Matt Bors

Justice Warriors is what you'd get if you put Judge Dredd in a blender with Transmetropolitan and set it to chunky. The setup: the elites of a wasted, tormented world have retreated into Bubble City, beneath a hermetically sealed zone. Within Bubble City, everything is run according to the priorities of the descendants of the most internet-poisoned freaks of the modern internet, click- and clout-chasing mushminds full of corporate-washed platitudes about self-care, diversity and equity, wrapped around come-ons for sugary drinks and dubious dropshipper crapola. It's a cop buddy-story dreamed up by Very Online, very angry creators who live in a present-day world where reality is consistently stupider than satire.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/22/libras-assemble/#the-uz

IV. Roaming by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki

The story of three young Canadian women meeting up for a getaway to New York City. Zoe and Dani are high-school best friends who haven't seen each other since they graduated and decamped for universities in different cities. Fiona is Dani's art-school classmate, a glamorous and cantankerous artist with an affected air of sophistication. It's a dizzying, beautifully wrought three-body problem as the three protagonists struggle with resentments and love, sex and insecurity. The relationships between Zoe, Dani and Fiona careen wildly from scene to scene and even panel to panel, propelled by sly graphic cues and fantastically understated dialog.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/11/as-canadian-as/#possible-under-the-circumstances

Like I said, this has been a good year in books for me, and it included three books of my own:

I. Red Team Blues (novel, Tor Books US, Head of Zeus UK)

Martin Hench is 67 years old, single, and successful in a career stretching back to the beginnings of Silicon Valley. He lives and roams California in a very comfortable fully-furnished touring bus, The Unsalted Hash, that he bought years ago from a fading rock star. He knows his way around good food and fine drink. He likes intelligent women, and they like him back often enough. Martin is a—contain your excitement—self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He knows computer hardware and software alike, including the ins and outs of high-end databases and the kinds of spreadsheets that are designed to conceal rather than reveal. He’s as comfortable with social media as people a quarter his age, and he’s a world-level expert on the kind of international money-laundering and shell-company chicanery used by Fortune 500 companies, mid-divorce billionaires, and international drug gangs alike. He also knows the Valley like the back of his hand, all the secret histories of charismatic company founders and Sand Hill Road VCs. Because he was there at all the beginnings. Now he’s been roped into a job that’s more dangerous than anything he’s ever agreed to before—and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/red-team-blues

II. The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (nonfiction, Verso)

We can – we must – dismantle the tech platforms. We must to seize the means of computation by forcing Silicon Valley to do the thing it fears most: interoperate. Interoperability will tear down the walls between technologies, allowing users to leave platforms, remix their media, and reconfigure their devices without corporate permission. Interoperability is the only route to the rapid and enduring annihilation of the platforms. The Internet Con is the disassembly manual we need to take back our internet.

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

III. The Lost Cause (novel, Tor Books US, Head of Zeus UK)

For young Americans a generation from now, climate change isn't controversial. It's just an overwhelming fact of life. And so are the great efforts to contain and mitigate it. Entire cities are being moved inland from the rising seas. Vast clean-energy projects are springing up everywhere. Disaster relief, the mitigation of floods and superstorms, has become a skill for which tens of millions of people are trained every year. The effort is global. It employs everyone who wants to work. Even when national politics oscillates back to right-wing leaders, the momentum is too great; these vast programs cannot be stopped in their tracks.

But there are still those Americans, mostly elderly, who cling to their red baseball caps, their grievances, their huge vehicles, their anger. To their "alternative" news sources that reassure them that their resentment is right and pure and that "climate change" is just a giant scam. And they're your grandfather, your uncle, your great-aunt. And they're not going anywhere. And they’re armed to the teeth. The Lost Cause asks: What do we do about people who cling to the belief that their own children are the enemy? When, in fact, they're often the elders that we love?

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

I wrote nine books during lockdown, and there's plenty more to come. The next one is The Bezzle, a followup to Red Team Blues, which comes out in February:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

While you're waiting for that one, I hope the reviews above will help you connect with some excellent books. If you want more of my reviews, here's my annual roundup from 2022:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/01/bookishness/#2022-in-review

Here's my book reviews from 2021:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/08/required-ish-reading/#bibliography

And here's my book reviews from 2020:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/08/required-reading/#recommended-reading

It's EFF's Power Up Your Donation Week: this week, donations to the Electronic Frontier Foundation are matched 1:1, meaning your money goes twice as far. I've worked with EFF for 22 years now and I have always been - and remain - a major donor, because I've seen firsthand how effective, responsible and brilliant this organization is. Please join me in helping EFF continue its work!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/01/bookmaker/#2023-in-review

[blake-ritson-love]

BTS of The Gilded Age season 2, episode 6 - Posted by Harry Richardson on Instagram

[crownedlegend]

The Queen Elizabeth II 1926-2022

Photo credits – © Cecil Beaton – Victoria and Albert Museum, London

[gataxia]

bring it on: cheer or die (2022) dir. karen lam

[uovoc]

2024 media consumption

God tier

The Husbands by Holly Gramazio - Lauren's attic creates an infinite supply of husbands. Deceptively simple exploration of commitment, indecision, and becoming whatever you choose.

Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card (reread)

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (reread)

《仙王的日常生活》 (Daily Life of the Immortal King) - donghua, seasons 1-4. The most powerful cultivator in the universe just wants to get through high school as an ordinary teenager. An objectively average show. Yet its solid humor and heart of gold compelled me.

Season 5 of Scissor Seven (刺客伍六七), plus rewatch of seasons 1-4.

Welcome to Hell & Welcome to Hell 2 - indie shorts. Sock's first assignment as a new demon is to convince the world's most apathetic teenager to kill himself. Except that Sock is, like, really bad at his job. Cannot vouch for general crowd appeal but performs superbly as blorbo delivery vehicle.

Just ok

The Guncle by Steven Rowley

《我开动物园的那些年》 (Those Years I Opened a Zoo) - donghua, season 1

《长安三万里》 (30,000 Miles From Chang'an) - donghua

《小绿和小蓝》 (Beryl and Sapphire) - donghua. Fave: robo-Beryl arc.

Go For It, Nakamura! by Syundei - manga

Percy Jackson and the Olympians miniseries

Natsume's Book of Friends light novel

A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland

The 2022 xxxHolic movie

Boy by Blake Nelson

The List of Things that Will Not Change by Rebecca Stead

The Prince of Venice Beach by Blake Nelson

Danny Phantom: A Glitch in Time by Gabriela Epstein - comic

Hazbin Hotel - 2024 cartoon

They Came From Below by Blake Nelson (reread)

Girl by Blake Nelson

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton

《汉化日记》 (God Troubles Me) - donghua, season 4

Danny Phantom - cartoon (rewatch)

Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card (reread) - at first I was disappointed because it wasn't Ender's Game and it wasn't Speaker for the Dead. But I gradually came to enjoy dumb teenage Ender with post-saving-the-world depression.

Ah! My Goddess by Fujishima Kosuke - manga (reread)

Shadow of the Hegemon by Orson Scott Card

2023 Gobelins senior thesis films. Fave: Childeric: Les Nerfs de la Guerre

Mon Ami Robot - movie

The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss (reread)

《深海》 (Deep Sea) - donghua movie

Invisible Planets tr. Ken Liu (anthology)

《大护法》(Dahufa, also called The Guardian) - donghua movie

《大雨》 (The Storm) - donghua movie

The MDZS audiodrama

The Boy and the Heron - movie

Disliked and DNF

《嗜谎之神》 (God of Deception) - donghua

Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson (reread)

Barbie - 2023 movie

Rosewater by Tade Thompson

My Name is Mina by David Almond

Gender Blender by Blake Nelson

Dungeon Meshi by Ryoko Kui - manga

Phoebe Will Destroy You by Blake Nelson

《大理寺日志：少卿游》 - White Cat Legend cdrama

Scavengers Reign - cartoon

Lily and the Octopus by Steven Rowley

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland

The Celebrants by Steven Rowley

The Gospel of Loki by Joanne Harris

Xenocide by Orson Scott Card (reread)

The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec

Assorted nonfiction

Weird by Olga Khazan

Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

Conflict is not Abuse by Sarah Schulman - DNF.

Strong Female Character by Fern Brady

Feeling Good Together by David Burns

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson

Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages by Frances and Joseph Gies (reread). European and Asian medieval technologies and the social context driving their development. Good stuff on textile production.

Counselling Children, Adults, and Families: A Strengths-Based Approach by John Sharry. Therapy textbook: It's free therapy.

The New Structural Social Work by Bob Mullaly. DNF.

The Cloud Collector's Handbook by Gavin Pretor-Pinney

[aliveandfullofjoy]

tagged by @bill-blake-fans-anonymous to share nine books i read in 2024 (and as luck would have it, these were the ~only~ books i read in 2024 🥰🤪)

loved (or at least really liked) all of them!! happy to share longer thoughts on any in particular.

alphabetically:

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet (John Green, 2021)

Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road (Kyle Buchanan, 2022)

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Robin Wall Kimmerer, 2013)

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands (Kate Beaton, 2022)

Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way (Caseen Gaines, 2021)

Hamnet (Maggie O’Farrell, 2020)

Stay True (Hua Hsu, 2022)

This is How You Lose the Time War (Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, 2019)

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder (David Grann, 2023)

in 2025, i want more reading in general: more fiction, even more non-fiction, more plays (which i don’t track with books), more books written from before five years ago, etc.

[adamsvanrhijn]

"And you continue to inspire me, Miss Beaton." "...I wish I knew what to make of your cousin." "Well, I've never seen him like this with anyone. You bring out the best in him, and I'm glad."

2.04 ▹ His Grace The Duke

THE GILDED AGE (2022-)