#it was so much more lyrical than i expected from a travel memoir that every sentence overwhelmed me with thoughts and feelings

[fictionadventurer]

I remained so happily provincial I was unable to discuss the boredom of being alive with any intelligence until I had gone to London and lived there a year.

-Beryl Markham, West With the Night

[mymurderbooks]

Five Books for Eid

It's the Eid pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

Eid is this weekend, so I decided to suggest five books by and/or about women in the ‘Muslim world’. I tried to choose books with women as the main focus (one is a YA book about a little girl), that didn’t victimise women or demonise men in Muslim cultures. Although several revolve around war and revolutions, I tried to choose books that covered women with different experiences and opinions. Many of these books are more or less ‘real world’ accounts and although many of them are difficult to read and not all of them are ‘literary’, I would recommend them to everyone, if for nothing but the ideal that through reading we can build empathy and understanding of different peoples and experiences, and these are voices rarely heard in mainstream Western literature.

"Against the tyranny of time and politics, imagine us the way we sometimes didn’t dare to imagine ourselves: in our most private and secret moments, in the most extraordinarily ordinary instances of life, listening to music, falling in love, walking down the shady streets or reading Lolita in Tehran. And then imagine us again with all this confiscated, driven underground, taken away from us." - Lolita in Tehran

I’ll start with the easiest to read:

1. Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa al-Sanea

A casual, light book about women from the KSA. It takes the form of gossipy anonymous e-mails about the lives of a group of four college-age women who were high school friends in Riyadh - mostly their adventures in the world of love and relationships in a country where they have limited contact with men.

If I were to file this under a genre it would be chick lit. It’s fun and easy to read. The women are clearly privileged: they’re wealthy, they travel, they get nose jobs, they wear Elie Saab. The writer wrote this in Arabic for an Arab audience and didn’t expect it to be translated and disseminated in the English speaking world. The characters aren’t meant to represent all Saudi women, and though this was controversial and was immediately banned when it came out in the KSA, this isn’t meant to be a political polemic. It’s a rare pop culture peek into the lives of ‘regular’ women in a country that seldom reveals itself in this way.

2. Our Women on the Ground, edited by Zahra Hankir

This is a compilation of essays by Arab women journalists reporting from the Arab world. The journalists include not just those working for familiar media agencies like the BBC, New York Times and Al Jazeera, but also freelancers and citizen journalists.

These essays are personal and many deal with the realities of living and working in war zones. It's not the easiest book to read, but I think it's an important book. If you had to choose only one book in this list, I suggest this one. Every essay is eloquent. The book presents not just the perspectives of Arab woman journalists about the conflicts they cover, they also share their lives and work conditions honestly and openly. In societies which are gender segregated, Arab women journalists can access places that would otherwise be closed off to Western, and male, journalists, and in this book we hear from people who we would otherwise find difficult to reach.

3. Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga

This lyrical free verse YA book is about a Syrian girl named Jude. Syria is on the cusp of revolution. After her house is raided, she and her mother go to Cincinnati to live with relatives. There she adjusts to living in a new country, speaking a language she isn't completely comfortable with yet, and becoming American. She faces some Islamphobia, but also meets lovely and welcoming people in her school and community, and by the end she has made friends and is beginning to feel more settled into her new home.

I found the writing to be particularly beautiful. The targeted age group is middle grade. I think some issues would have to be explained or researched by children as they'd be too young to have been politically aware and following the news coverage of the Arab Spring as it occurred, and some background guidance on revolutions and the political situation in the Middle East would be helpful for them to contextualize the story. However the latter half about Jude's new life in America is I think helpful for helping young readers (and adults!) empathise with the day to day struggles of refugee or immigrant children. There are also many children who will identify with Jude's story of immigration and/or escaping conflict, and who don't often see their story represented in children's literature.

More generally, this is a book about home and belonging. The loss of home, the desire for home, and the struggle to build a new home. Although the ending is uplifting, I think it's ultimately a sad book, because the Syria Jude had to leave behind can never be reclaimed, and this loss will always exist for her.

4. Reading Lolita in Tehran

I realise this book is a little controversial. It's been accused of being New Orientalist and neoconservative by Hamid Dabashi (he writes the forward for Dreaming of Baghdad, my last book recommendation below).

This book is the memoir of an English literature professor teaching in Tehran during the revolution. When she's fired from her job for refusing to wear the hijab, she starts a book club/reading group for some of her female students in her living room.

I enjoyed this book, it's very readable. Much of the book are her discussions with her students about literature and their lives, and she directly correlates the books they read to their political experiences in Iran (c.f. the title: Reading Lolita in Tehran). I recommend reading it at least for her funny story of putting The Great Gatsby on trial in her classroom, and other amusing anecdotes, like her student life protests and when her drug dealer neighbour hid in their garden.

This isn't a book that's meant to encompass the experiences of all Iranian women, or a literary critique on Lolita, or a broad political analysis on Iran-US relations. It's a memoir of a woman, who's upper class, educated in the US, and decidedly secular. She seems to like Marx, dislike the hijab, and that is entirely fair and her right to do so and write about in her memoir.

I personally feel that some of the criticisms of her book are a little unfair, and people are reading too much into the book, and expecting too much out of it, but I say this with the caveat that I read this years after its publication, so I read this removed from any expectations the initial marketing/advertising would have inspired. I'll probably write a separate post on how I feel about this book. However I would be remiss if I didn't also I also suggest you read a balancing piece, Jasmine and Stars (Reading more than Lolita in Tehran) by Fatemah Keshavarz.

I recommend Reading Lolita in Tehran to you with the assumption that you are a politically aware, rational adult who doesn't assume that one writer's opinions and experiences are representative of an entire country, and doesn't look to a single book to give you an overview of 'the condition of women's lives in Iran'. Look at it as a literature professor's anecdotes about her life in books, and proceed from there.

5. Dreaming of Baghdad by Haifa Zangana

I left this till the end because this is the hardest book in the list.

Haifa Zangana was an Iraqi Communist Party activist who was imprisoned during Saddam Hussein's regime. She was initially tortured and imprisoned in a political prison, then transferred to Abu Ghraib, then to a prostitute's prison. This is essentially her recollections.

It's not a torture narrative, instead it takes on a dreamlike quality, and switches from the first to third person, letters to herself, disjointed dreams and nightmares, scenes from her childhood, her present, and her time as an activist and in prison.

This is a book I really want you to read. It will haunt you forever. Reading about imprisonment, torture and executions is always difficult, but I felt reading this was like bearing witness to her testimony.

[4dorks-1windmage-1shadow]

Vio for the headcanons meme?

Oooo! My son!

What they smell like:

The most typical answer would be that he smells like books, and I do actually headcanon that so…. Vio smells like books when you first buy them and open them and start reading, but I also think he would smell like fresh rain and woodsmoke, and given a modern au, cherry shampoo.

How they sleep (sleeping position, schedule, etc):

Vio is a night owl and a late riser- he has a tendency to stay up late because he’s hyper-focused on a research project or a really good book or videogame or movie, what-have-you for whatever universe he resides in. As a result, the earliest he’ll rise without plotting to commit murder or with a few cups of coffee is about 9.

What music they enjoy:

Given manga settings it would be lots of classical-anything with violins and pianos, slow soothing ballads. Anything he could be listening to that wouldn’t disturb his reading or research.Given any sort of modern au I think he’d like music with hidden meanings behind the lyrics- songs whose purposes are to challenge stereotypes and social stigmas and such. I don’t think he’d care much about what genre he was listening to so much as the message behind the songs, but for studying/focusing purposes he’d still default to classical.

How much time they spend getting ready every morning:

It depends on if he’s going anywhere early in the morning- he’ll take about five minutes to actually get dressed and spend the rest of the time doing miscellaneous self-care things (i.e. brushing hair and teeth, stretching) before eating some breakfast. If he’s not doing anything that day, especially in a modern setting, don’t expect him to get out of his pajamas lmao.

Their favorite thing to collect:

I really like the idea of Vio collecting  trinkets, like buttons and flowers and rocks from the riverbed-he keeps them in a small oak box that he bought from a merchant while resting in a town. To anyone else they’re meaningless, but to him they’re memoirs of his travels. Perhaps those flowers are to remind him of Zelda, maybe those rocks are from the river that he and the others mistakenly thought went towards Death Mountain (and the memory was too absurd to not collect a trinket or two for). Maybe there’s even a shard of a mirror somewhere in his collection *shrugs*And for a modern verse I like the idea of Vio collecting geodes! because crystals are fucking cool yo

Left or right-handed:

Left-handed!

Religion (if any):

I suppose he’d be religious? Any of them would believe in the goddesses on principle I suppose-given that he has the Triforce of Courage and Zelda has Wisdom it’d be a bit hard for any of them to argue that the goddesses weren’t/aren’t real beings- that said, he’s more likely to refer to science/logic for an answer to something that happened than to chalk it up to divine intervention.

Favorite sport:

Given either a manga/close to canon setting or a modern setting I’d say archery, but I also think he might enjoy parkour? 

Favorite touristy thing to do when traveling (museums, local food, sightseeing, etc):

Sightseeing and museums! Local history plus a chance to use the latest pictobox model? Count him in.

Favorite kind of weather:

Either partly cloudy, about 78ªF (that’s 25ªC for you weirdo metric system users), with a slight breeze, or thunder storming as far as the eye can see, there is no in-between.

A weird/obscure fear they have:

I don’t really have a solid headcanon for this one, but as a general thing perhaps he has a fear of being bound against his will? I can’t imagine he wouldn’t have been at least somewhat freaked out by being tied to a stone pillar and suspended over lava, even if he wasn’t physically showing signs of distress.

The carnival/arcade game they always win without fail:

Darts or first person shooters- while archery has nothing to do with either of those things, the sense of aim does give him an advantage.Thanks for these! @lilypupart

[plantrock]

Hi Internet!

It’s that time of year again. I’m pleased to report that even with moving, traveling, and starting school again, I still managed to read 53 books in 2017. Not as many as last year, but given the chaos my life has been through in the last 12 months I am not in the least upset. 50 books is a good goal for me, as it’s roughly one book a week–though in reality I read in jumps and spurts. Sometimes a book will take two weeks, whereas, in weeks like this one, I’ll read three books in one week.

For this year’s recap I am going to separate the books I read into categories by my ratings, as well as give a one-sentence (ish) review. Want more info? Message me or look up the book!

FIVE STAR

THE POWER, Naomi Alderman

   Women around the world spontaneously obtain the ability to generate and control electricity and the chaos that ensues left me shaken in the best way. (WORLD WAR Z meets THE HANDMAID’S TALE.)

GLAMOUR ADDICTION, Juliet McMains

A very readable academic analysis of the socioeconomic landscape of competitive Ballroom dance that had me excitedly annotating from page one.

HAMILTON: THE REVOLUTION, Lin-Manual Miranda & Jeremy McCarter

I mean do I really have to explain this–there’s a million things I haven’t done, but just you wait.

THE END OF THE DAY, Claire North

A slow-but-emotional travelogue of the adventures of the Harbinger of Death–not my favorite of North’s novels, but contains her characteristically beautiful prose.

THE COLLAPSING EMPIRE, John Scalzi

The first installment in a cinematic space opera series by sci-fi giant Scalzi, EMPIRE is tightly plotted, has fascinating characters, and the far-future world feels familiar without exactly copying others in the genre.

REJECTED PRINCESSES, Jason Porath

Tired of the Grimm and Disney versions? This collection of women from myth, legend, and history around the world explores less convenient and less kid-friendly tales of women who stuck to their guns and caused a ruckus.

SO YOU’VE BEEN PUBLICLY SHAMED, Jon Ronson

Though slightly dated in our modern light-speed internet world, this exploration of the power of social media is required reading for anyone participating in the Feed.

PANDEMIC, Sonia Shah

Yes, I’m a sucker for the world-wide-plague book, but this non-fiction depiction of how epidemics begin, spread, and shape the world we know today is excellent.

SPINNING MAMBO INTO SALSA, Juliet McMains

An ethnographic and historical comparison of the three US cities that spawned Salsa and Mambo, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in social dance and the phenomenon that is Salsa.

EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU, Celeste Ng

A deft and moving family drama about immigration, middle-class America, and the secrets we keep from those closest to us.

FOUR STAR

SAILING TO SARANTIUM & LORD OF EMPERORS, Guy Gavriel Kay

A lyrical and occasionally violent duology that walks the line between alt-history and fantasy based on the Byzantine empire.

THE REFRIGERATOR MONOLOGUES, Catherynne Valente

THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES meets every superhero story ever–this short-story collection is piercing look at (loosely) veiled comic book tales and the women they have wronged.

THE NURSES, Alexandra Robbins

A non-fiction account of lives of those in the medical field who often seem to play second-fiddle to doctors. (Honestly I don’t remember much about this one, but I must have enjoyed it.)

STORIES OF YOUR LIFE, AND OTHERS, Ted Chiang

A mind-bending collection of science fiction short stories, including the one that inspired the 2016 movie ARRIVAL.

VAMPIRE GOD, Mary Hallub

The most comprehensive academic analysis of vampire media in the 19th through 21st centuries I have ever read.

IT DEVOURS!, Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor

This second book in the Night Vale world tackles science vs religion, and though they miss the mark a little, I will always love their prose and the universe they have built.

DANCE WRITINGS AND POETRY, Edwin Denby

This collection of original poetry and arts reviews contains gems from mid-20th-century dance critic Edwin Denby, including a fascinating interview regarding classicism with George Balanchine himself.

THE CITY AND THE CITY, China Mieville

  Is it science fiction? Is it artfully written detective fiction? I don’t think I’ve read a book so able to walk that line between fantasy and reality–as the characters walk the lines between their inexplicably separated cities.

BEAUTIFUL FLESH: A BODY OF ESSAYS, edited by Stephanie G’Schwind

 A collection of essays from a variety of authors, each focusing on a particular body part and their relationship to it. My personal favorite was a musing on the heart and humans’ relationship to electricity from an author with an implanted defibrillator.

WHAT IS LIFE? HOW CHEMISTRY BECOMES BIOLOGY, Addy Pross

A systems chemists attempt to re-frame how we think about life and its origins on our planet. This book is short but technically dense–good for the trained scientist, less so for the layperson.

THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, Jen Campbell

A quietly creepy collection of fairy tale and folk-lore-influenced short stories. My favorite was the first story, about a man who buys his girlfriend a new heart to ensure that she won’t leave him.

THE QUEEN OF BLOOD, Sarah Beth Durst

A bit of a guilty pleasure read, this fantasy series opener explores a world where the ruler of the realm must fight back malevolent natural forces.

AMBERLOUGH, Lara Donnelly

 CABARET the musical in novel form–this darkly beautiful story details the rise of facism in a fantasy world and how it impacts a colorful cast of miscreants.

THE ESSEX SERPENT, Sarah Perry

A beautiful and suspenseful tale of romance and loss in Victorian England, set again the backdrop of a hunt for a fantasy creature.

HILLBILLY ELEGY, J. D. Vance

  Both an autobiography and an attempt to explain the socioeconomic situation of Appalachian folks–but I’m conflicted on how much to buy into his arguments. Worth a read, though.

THE DIABOLIC, S. J. Kincaid

This story of a test-tube-grown bodyguard finding her humanity in a crumbling, corrupt space empire is the first YA sci-fi in a while that I didn’t hate!

BALLROOM DANCING IS NOT FOR SISSIES, Elizabeth & Arthur Seagull

Despite the sub-title, there is nothing R-rated about this how-to guide in balancing relationships and ballroom dancing.

DANCE WITH ME: BALLROOM DANCING AND THE PROMISE OF INSTANT INTIMACY, Julia Erickson

Despite the author’s obvious disdain for GLAMOUR ADDICTION (see Five Stars), this sociological analysis of studio ballroom culture lands on many of the same points as that other title, in addition to a hilariously accurate layout of the different performances of gender roles seen on the social dance floor.

THREE STAR

FOSSE, Sam Wasson

High on the drama and the page count, this biography of choreography legend Bob Fosse wastes no opportunity to dip into his sordid history and the seedy side of Broadway.

FUTURE HOME OF THE LIVING GOD, Lousie Erdrich

Despite its lovely prose, this novel doesn’t rise above the fact that it’s basically a less-good retelling of THE HANDMAID’S TALE.

MINDSET, Carol S. Dweck

My boss at my old job ‘suggested’ I read this. I remember nothing about it.

 THE MAD SCIENTIST’S GUIDE TO WORLD DOMINATION, Edited by John Joseph Adams

This collection of mad-science-themed short stories was sadly a mixed bag of quality–I loved one or two, barely finished others.

THE AERONAUT’S WINDLASS, Jim Butcher

A rollicking romp through a steampunk fantasy world, though I found the characters stock and the world forgettable. (The cat, though, is worth the price of admission alone.)

THE PALACE THIEF, Ethan Canin

Four not-particularly-memorable short stories concerning isolation and mid-century masculinity.

THREE DARK CROWNS, Kendare Blake

You’d think I’d have learned by now that YA fantasy does not float my boat, but, alas, I went into this tale of warring island factions and powerful queens-to-be expecting more than it delivered.

HOW TO BUILD A GIRL, Caitlin Moran

Sadly the details of this book have also faded, though I recall not understanding the nuances of British classism.

HEADS IN BEDS, Jacob Tomsky

A bit memoir, a bit how-to on cheating the hotel system of years gone by, a bit forgettable.

YOU’RE NEVER WEIRD ON THE INTERNET (ALMOST), Felicia Day

I’ve been a fan of Day since the Guild years, but this memoir suffers from the same problem as most of its internet-personality cohort–her story isn’t over, and the book feels unfinished.

JEROME ROBBINS: HIS LIFE, HIS THEATER, HIS DANCE, Deborah Jowitt

An interesting but dense biography of Broadway legend and second-fiddle-to-Balanchine Robbins. I was glad of the information, but am wary of glorifying a man who had a reputation as a tyrannical director.

DANCING OUT OF LINE: BALLROOMS, BALLETS, AND MOBILITY IN VICTORIAN FICTION AND CULTURE, Molly Engelhardt

Some interesting comparisons between Regency era and Victorian era social dance norms, but this book’s focus on dance depictions in time-period fiction did not hold my interest.

THE HOUSE OF GOD, Samuel Shem

A bizarre and polarizing account of the lives of medical residents in the 1970s that reads like a fever dream.

THEN WE CAME TO THE END, Joshua Ferris

I think this fictionalized account of office life was supposed to be equal parts pathos and satire, but I found it just vaguely sad and forgettable.

FROM BALLROOM TO DANCESPORT: AESTHETICS, ATHLETICS, AND BODY CULTURE, Caroline Picart

The author makes some interesting points about changes necessary to the DanceSport world in order for the sport’s inclusion in the Olympics, but the rest of the book is superseded by GLAMOUR ADDICTION (see Five Star).

AN EMBER IN THE ASHES, Sabaa Tahir

Again with the I-apparently-don’t-like-YA-Fantasy, and this one had the added bonus of being way too violent for my tastes.

THINKING WITH THE DANCING BRAIN, Sandra Minton

Neuroscience 101 for dancers–a nice refresher for me, but not much beyond that.

THE CROWN’S GAME, Evelyn Skye

Romance! Czarist Russia! Romance! Magic! Sadly I didn’t get into the relationship of the main characters.

TANGO AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PASSION, Marta E. Savigliano

This academic analysis of the history of tango and the socioeconomic forces at work during the dance’s creation had some interesting tid-bits, but I found it difficult to read and some stylistic choices hard to decipher.

TWO STAR

ZONE ONE, Colson Whitehead

I love zombie novels, but this one tries to be ‘litrary’ and cerebral and I just found it dull,  forgettable, and overly wordy.

THE ANUBIS GATES, Tim Powers

The cover of this absurdist time-traveling fantasy promises way more Ancient Egypt than I actually got. Crazy premise, idiotic characters, and only enough rollicking fun to laugh at.

YOU ARE A BADASS, Jen Sincero

For all its bluster and wanna-be subversiveness, BADASS is a pretty standard self-help book. Sadly I am one of the most self-motivated people I know, so the get-up-and-go was lost on me.

THE BLACK PRISM, Brent Weeks

The fascinating magic system was the only thing carrying me through this mess of unlikable characters and fantasy tropes.

ONE STAR

BALLROOM! OBSESSION AND PASSION INSIDE THE WORLD OF COMPETITIVE DANCE, Sharon Savoy

Never have I disagreed so completely with advice given and conclusions drawn as I did from those of professional-ballet-dancer-turned-cabaret-division-star Savoy. Want a rant? Ask me more.

  And that’s a wrap! If you made it all the way down here, thank you for reading, and may you have a wonderful New Year!

A Reading Re-cap: 2017 Hi Internet! It's that time of year again. I'm pleased to report that even with moving, traveling, and starting school again, I still managed to read 53 books in 2017.