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squabble, books
Dec. 7th, 2008 01:01 pmIf you're wondering how to hasten your marriage into divorce court, here's a simple trick: spend a couple of hours putting up that plastic window-insulator stuff. Wow.
Winter reading thus far:
The Hypocrisy of Disco by Clane Hayward.
The short: A tweener deals with hippies parents, creepy caregivers, a troubled brother and puberty.
The long: Clane recounts her tweener years, first living with her whacked-out hippie mom. They squat in abandoned houses, they live in open fields and the forest. Hippie Mom doesn't like them going to school; she doesn't like them eating anything but brown rice. If the kids try to wear clean clothes she yells at them for being square.
Starvation, another kids' death, pure filth is all over this book. Like most memoirs of this kind, it gets a little repetitive. In some parts, it feels like chapters were cobbled together from a journal and timelines suffer. For the most part though, Clane did an excellent job of letting the horror be the horror. She didn't swamp it with melodramatic writing or mini-lectures.
Cowboys edited by Tom Graham.
The short: Porn featuring cowboys.
The long: I had super-duper high hopes for this. The first story A Heart Full of Scars by Hank Edwards is absolutely gorgeous. It's an Old West love story between a town's sheriff and the new doctor. It's touching, a little curtain-y but without mush or sappiness or needless angst.
Unfortunately, the rest of the stories ran from ok to terrible. The only reason I can't believe for any of "Bearmuffin"'s stories to have included were that BM must be a friend or mortgage holder of the editor.
The Sound on the Page by Ben Yagoda
The short: Meta discussion on style (writing).
The long: Very sludgy. Took me forever to get through it. Worth it though. It was less how-to, and more why. It explained why groups of three (usually) sound harmonious. It explained why you want to encourage or dodge that harmony.
It debated the merits of blending in versus standing out. It snickered at bad writer. It featured interviews with a variety of writers. If the writing itself had been a bit more lively, this would have been one of my favorite books on writing.
The Catch Trap by Marion Zimmer Bradley.
The short: a gay "romance" between flying trapeze artists.
The long: Repellent. Whenever a book features a character thinking I should have let him hit me. If that's what he needed. I can not, will not, call their love romantic. And it wasn't just one scene or one emotional moment. It happened throughout the book. In another scene, Mario (the hitter) pinned down Tommy (the hittee) and threatened to break his arm unless he said "I'm a cocksucker."
Replusive. It's abuse, pure and simple. Present it as non-con, as awful, as abusive and I'm in. Present it as omigod, he's hurting, his psyche is so fragile, and I want to scream.
Also, the writting was about as crappy as it gets. On one page the word "ragged" was used 3 times. Now, I'm all for repeating a word is there isn't a suitable alternative. Finger and wine are always better than digit or drink of the vine. But the repeated use of ragged just came off as lazy.
The slow-clap speeches about tolerance and the ok-ness of gay love and the beauty of trapeze flying were artless and made an already over-long story all the more tedious.
Winter reading thus far:
The Hypocrisy of Disco by Clane Hayward.
The short: A tweener deals with hippies parents, creepy caregivers, a troubled brother and puberty.
The long: Clane recounts her tweener years, first living with her whacked-out hippie mom. They squat in abandoned houses, they live in open fields and the forest. Hippie Mom doesn't like them going to school; she doesn't like them eating anything but brown rice. If the kids try to wear clean clothes she yells at them for being square.
Starvation, another kids' death, pure filth is all over this book. Like most memoirs of this kind, it gets a little repetitive. In some parts, it feels like chapters were cobbled together from a journal and timelines suffer. For the most part though, Clane did an excellent job of letting the horror be the horror. She didn't swamp it with melodramatic writing or mini-lectures.
Cowboys edited by Tom Graham.
The short: Porn featuring cowboys.
The long: I had super-duper high hopes for this. The first story A Heart Full of Scars by Hank Edwards is absolutely gorgeous. It's an Old West love story between a town's sheriff and the new doctor. It's touching, a little curtain-y but without mush or sappiness or needless angst.
Unfortunately, the rest of the stories ran from ok to terrible. The only reason I can't believe for any of "Bearmuffin"'s stories to have included were that BM must be a friend or mortgage holder of the editor.
The Sound on the Page by Ben Yagoda
The short: Meta discussion on style (writing).
The long: Very sludgy. Took me forever to get through it. Worth it though. It was less how-to, and more why. It explained why groups of three (usually) sound harmonious. It explained why you want to encourage or dodge that harmony.
It debated the merits of blending in versus standing out. It snickered at bad writer. It featured interviews with a variety of writers. If the writing itself had been a bit more lively, this would have been one of my favorite books on writing.
The Catch Trap by Marion Zimmer Bradley.
The short: a gay "romance" between flying trapeze artists.
The long: Repellent. Whenever a book features a character thinking I should have let him hit me. If that's what he needed. I can not, will not, call their love romantic. And it wasn't just one scene or one emotional moment. It happened throughout the book. In another scene, Mario (the hitter) pinned down Tommy (the hittee) and threatened to break his arm unless he said "I'm a cocksucker."
Replusive. It's abuse, pure and simple. Present it as non-con, as awful, as abusive and I'm in. Present it as omigod, he's hurting, his psyche is so fragile, and I want to scream.
Also, the writting was about as crappy as it gets. On one page the word "ragged" was used 3 times. Now, I'm all for repeating a word is there isn't a suitable alternative. Finger and wine are always better than digit or drink of the vine. But the repeated use of ragged just came off as lazy.
The slow-clap speeches about tolerance and the ok-ness of gay love and the beauty of trapeze flying were artless and made an already over-long story all the more tedious.
