The Summer Readin Festival Continues
Aug. 21st, 2008 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
opera142I've got to wait around on the comp to make my FF draft pick. Ted Ginn, in case you're wondering. In the meantime, I will serve up more spam.
Charlie and The Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl.
A re-read. I'm working on better conveying joy and happy stuff and this book is crammed with that. I forgot there are creatures called Hornswoggles! Fun trip down memory lane, though some of the Oompah's songs read a little clunky.
Steel Chair to the Head by Various
Academic essays on pro-wrestling. READ IT. The slash chapter is especially good-- even if the only author mentioned who I recognized was Kai. Of all people. Well, I recognized Hellfire's too. But I only *know* her by name. It's a little dated, written circa 2000. So Xpac is all over the place (bleeh).
The discussion on the ways wrestling tries to hide teh_seemingly gay was funny and thinky-thinky. The way the camera quick cuts on faces' hugs to make them seem barely there, but will linger on heels' embraces.
Another chapter talked about the marginlization of latino wrestlers, and it was good read on the history of those men. The only thing I didn't like about it was the discussion of the Filthy Animals. For the most part I was shaking my head, nodding yesyes. But the author left off mention of Kidman's participation. Normally, I'm all for forgetting Kidman, but in this case, it felt like the author left out Kidman because he didn't fit with this theory rather than because Kidman is unimportant.
There really wasn't a clunker chapter. Some got sludgy with academic style writing, and the chapter titled S/M was more about economic factors than Taker non-conning M. Hardy. Luckily, econ had been my original major so I was appeased. Barely.
The chapter on Lucha and Mexican Politics will change your views on SuperCrazy. READ THIS BOOK.
Those Prussian Girls by P.N Devear-something-uex
Porn. A little too brutal for my taste, and I never need to read the adjective-noun combo of "tawny turd" again.
Jpod by Douglas Coupland.
Awesome in spots, ruttiness that's beginning to date in others. It's sorta a next gen Microserfs. The cleverness and batshittery was still there. But, there's a disconect with reading Gen Yers talking and behaving just like Gen Xers. Why do they have memories of early 70's stuff if they weren't born yet?
I suppose Doug was sort of caught. If he wrote GenXers having low entry jobs, they'd look like losers. But in writing younger characters, he messed up on their cultural view of the world.
Twin Cities Noir by Various.
Short crime fic set in Minneapolis/St. Paul. One story was snarky and great. The rest varied from obvious to Not Obvious Because The Appropriate Clues Were Not Mentioned Until The Last Paragraph Well After Your Marty Stu Protag Solved the Case. Seriously, your crime/mystery novel should not reveal fact like "I knew the chick was lying about her and Nick's relationship because in WW1 Nick took a bullet for me which rendered him impotent" in the last damn sentence.
Charlie and The Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl.
A re-read. I'm working on better conveying joy and happy stuff and this book is crammed with that. I forgot there are creatures called Hornswoggles! Fun trip down memory lane, though some of the Oompah's songs read a little clunky.
Steel Chair to the Head by Various
Academic essays on pro-wrestling. READ IT. The slash chapter is especially good-- even if the only author mentioned who I recognized was Kai. Of all people. Well, I recognized Hellfire's too. But I only *know* her by name. It's a little dated, written circa 2000. So Xpac is all over the place (bleeh).
The discussion on the ways wrestling tries to hide teh_seemingly gay was funny and thinky-thinky. The way the camera quick cuts on faces' hugs to make them seem barely there, but will linger on heels' embraces.
Another chapter talked about the marginlization of latino wrestlers, and it was good read on the history of those men. The only thing I didn't like about it was the discussion of the Filthy Animals. For the most part I was shaking my head, nodding yesyes. But the author left off mention of Kidman's participation. Normally, I'm all for forgetting Kidman, but in this case, it felt like the author left out Kidman because he didn't fit with this theory rather than because Kidman is unimportant.
There really wasn't a clunker chapter. Some got sludgy with academic style writing, and the chapter titled S/M was more about economic factors than Taker non-conning M. Hardy. Luckily, econ had been my original major so I was appeased. Barely.
The chapter on Lucha and Mexican Politics will change your views on SuperCrazy. READ THIS BOOK.
Those Prussian Girls by P.N Devear-something-uex
Porn. A little too brutal for my taste, and I never need to read the adjective-noun combo of "tawny turd" again.
Jpod by Douglas Coupland.
Awesome in spots, ruttiness that's beginning to date in others. It's sorta a next gen Microserfs. The cleverness and batshittery was still there. But, there's a disconect with reading Gen Yers talking and behaving just like Gen Xers. Why do they have memories of early 70's stuff if they weren't born yet?
I suppose Doug was sort of caught. If he wrote GenXers having low entry jobs, they'd look like losers. But in writing younger characters, he messed up on their cultural view of the world.
Twin Cities Noir by Various.
Short crime fic set in Minneapolis/St. Paul. One story was snarky and great. The rest varied from obvious to Not Obvious Because The Appropriate Clues Were Not Mentioned Until The Last Paragraph Well After Your Marty Stu Protag Solved the Case. Seriously, your crime/mystery novel should not reveal fact like "I knew the chick was lying about her and Nick's relationship because in WW1 Nick took a bullet for me which rendered him impotent" in the last damn sentence.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-22 03:33 am (UTC)Oh, and I adore Roald Dahl's stuff, though I think Matilda is better than CatCF.
And academic essays on pro-wrestling? Sign me up for that!
*uses obligatory John Doe icon*
no subject
Date: 2008-08-22 04:51 am (UTC)Man, if I'd gone into gender studies or something similar, I could've made a career of this.
Tawny turd?
no subject
Date: 2008-08-22 05:12 am (UTC)I think my favorite of the essays has to be Jenkins the Third's essay on "Wrestling as Masculine Melodrama", mainly due to me writing one of my Fandom class papers on that very topic and not knowing Jenkins had done it better. Of course, this is Henry Jenkins we are talking about - he's big in the cultural studies world for "Textual Poachers".
Sharon Mazer has also written an entire book on "Real" Life/"Real" Wrestling, called "Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle". She doesn't quite get why the Monday Night Wars were important for wrestling, nor does she deal with much of anything past 1995, but she's a good writer. If you're looking for something else along the SCTTH lines, you may want to check it out.
Salmon and Clerc's slash chapter is decent, but again, too much X-Pac. I was in the fandom at that time, and I remember that most of the fans I knew tried to stay as far away from the XPac/Kane fans as possible. I remember Christina Ortega - probably from the Cypress universe - and the ShMARTASS site (the dear, departed ShMARTASS site). The fic they quoted in that chapter is cringingly bad, though. Worse than I remember.
The Lucha chapter is fantastic, yes. Definitely a must-read.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 08:30 am (UTC)Gad, the Kane/X-Pac days. I'd forgot how huge that movement was.