Reading Wedne– Thursday
Apr. 30th, 2015 09:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
The Trouble with Post-Blackness, edited by Houston A. Baker and K. Merinda Simmons. A collection of academic essays focusing on the problems with the idea of "post-black" or "post-racial". There's a lot of nice essays in here, though there's few really new ideas, at least if you're at all familiar with this conversation. I thought Bayo Holsey's article, "Embodying Africa: Roots-Seekers and the Politics of Blackness" (about tourism in Africa), and Emily Raboteau's poem, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Post-Blackness", were stand-outs, but all of the articles were worth reading. The book certainly has good timing coming out now, but unfortunately all of the essays were clearly written before the police brutality conversation heated up. There's a few mentions of Travyon Martin in some of the essays, but nothing about Michael Brown or Eric Garner or, obviously, Freddie Gray.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
A Visitation of Spirits by Randall Kenan. Horace is a young black man in rural North Carolina: brilliant, the hope of his family and school. But Horace is so distraught with himself (exactly why he feels this way takes a while for the book to reveal) that he attempts a magic spell to transform into a bird, so that he won't have to live a human life. Unfortunately, he instead summons a demon which takes him over and forces him to do various weird and terrible things. Or maybe he has a mental break that he interprets as a demon; the book balances right on the edge where either interpretation is possible. Scenes from the night in 1984 when this happened are interspersed with scenes from a single day slightly more than a year later, when three of Horace's relatives go to visit a sick man in the hospital. The POV jumps around between Horace and his relatives, each of them from a different generation and with a different perspective on the family, faith, relationships, money, racism, the city vs the countryside, and other important topics.
I really liked this book, though magic realism usually doesn't work for me. I picked this up because years ago I read Kenan's short story collection, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, and absolutely adored it. Unfortunately though, I see Kenan has written almost nothing new since the early 90s; I wonder what happened to him.
What are you currently reading?
Summoned to Tourney by Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon. A sequel to the ridiculous elf/bard/witch threesome book I read last week. It continues to be both ridiculous:
There were two elves — Eric could see their pointed ears if he looked really closely, the way he did if he suspected illusion — already in the hot tub. They waved indolently at Eric and Kory as they passed, but didn’t move. By the stature and the fact that they looked like adolescents, Eric guessed that they were Low Court elves, the kind that were tied to specific oak groves and couldn’t leave them without a lot of magical help from their High Court relatives. The Low Court kids — he always thought of them as kids, even though they were usually hundreds of years old, since that was what they looked like and often acted like — tended to hang out in shopping malls a lot. They’d use their magics to copy or snitch whatever hot fashion items took their fancy, replicate just enough cash to buy themselves endless meals of junk food, sneak into the movie theaters, and play video games that lasted for days. No one ever noticed them, since they looked just like all the other kids in the malls.
and full of adorable OT3-ness:
Beth was already out of her clothes and into the shower; they joined her. It was a tight squeeze for three, but they’d done it before. There wasn’t as much horseplay as they usually indulged in, but they were still breathless with laughter when they tumbled out, now clean, to scramble into clothes.
And now there are evil government scientists kidnapping magical people! These books need a Yuletide fandom.
Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch. I've read this before, but felt like rereading it recently. I was a little disappointed the first time I read it – I liked it, but didn't feel it was as good as the first book in the series – but I'm really enjoying it this time.
The Trouble with Post-Blackness, edited by Houston A. Baker and K. Merinda Simmons. A collection of academic essays focusing on the problems with the idea of "post-black" or "post-racial". There's a lot of nice essays in here, though there's few really new ideas, at least if you're at all familiar with this conversation. I thought Bayo Holsey's article, "Embodying Africa: Roots-Seekers and the Politics of Blackness" (about tourism in Africa), and Emily Raboteau's poem, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Post-Blackness", were stand-outs, but all of the articles were worth reading. The book certainly has good timing coming out now, but unfortunately all of the essays were clearly written before the police brutality conversation heated up. There's a few mentions of Travyon Martin in some of the essays, but nothing about Michael Brown or Eric Garner or, obviously, Freddie Gray.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
A Visitation of Spirits by Randall Kenan. Horace is a young black man in rural North Carolina: brilliant, the hope of his family and school. But Horace is so distraught with himself (exactly why he feels this way takes a while for the book to reveal) that he attempts a magic spell to transform into a bird, so that he won't have to live a human life. Unfortunately, he instead summons a demon which takes him over and forces him to do various weird and terrible things. Or maybe he has a mental break that he interprets as a demon; the book balances right on the edge where either interpretation is possible. Scenes from the night in 1984 when this happened are interspersed with scenes from a single day slightly more than a year later, when three of Horace's relatives go to visit a sick man in the hospital. The POV jumps around between Horace and his relatives, each of them from a different generation and with a different perspective on the family, faith, relationships, money, racism, the city vs the countryside, and other important topics.
I really liked this book, though magic realism usually doesn't work for me. I picked this up because years ago I read Kenan's short story collection, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, and absolutely adored it. Unfortunately though, I see Kenan has written almost nothing new since the early 90s; I wonder what happened to him.
What are you currently reading?
Summoned to Tourney by Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon. A sequel to the ridiculous elf/bard/witch threesome book I read last week. It continues to be both ridiculous:
There were two elves — Eric could see their pointed ears if he looked really closely, the way he did if he suspected illusion — already in the hot tub. They waved indolently at Eric and Kory as they passed, but didn’t move. By the stature and the fact that they looked like adolescents, Eric guessed that they were Low Court elves, the kind that were tied to specific oak groves and couldn’t leave them without a lot of magical help from their High Court relatives. The Low Court kids — he always thought of them as kids, even though they were usually hundreds of years old, since that was what they looked like and often acted like — tended to hang out in shopping malls a lot. They’d use their magics to copy or snitch whatever hot fashion items took their fancy, replicate just enough cash to buy themselves endless meals of junk food, sneak into the movie theaters, and play video games that lasted for days. No one ever noticed them, since they looked just like all the other kids in the malls.
and full of adorable OT3-ness:
Beth was already out of her clothes and into the shower; they joined her. It was a tight squeeze for three, but they’d done it before. There wasn’t as much horseplay as they usually indulged in, but they were still breathless with laughter when they tumbled out, now clean, to scramble into clothes.
And now there are evil government scientists kidnapping magical people! These books need a Yuletide fandom.
Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch. I've read this before, but felt like rereading it recently. I was a little disappointed the first time I read it – I liked it, but didn't feel it was as good as the first book in the series – but I'm really enjoying it this time.
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Date: 2015-05-01 03:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-01 03:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-03 02:00 am (UTC)The person who recommended them to suggested I stop after the second book; apparently the author changes and the others aren't as good? Would you agree?
no subject
Date: 2015-05-03 02:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-03 04:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-04 01:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-09 02:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-09 11:01 pm (UTC)