week_in_readings (1/nov13-20.2020)

[fwcu]

yesss i know going by fridays is kind of a weird system, but for some reason [my mom sat me down on a friday and asked me to deliver her a week_in_advance plan] i will be going by fridays. if i keep this up. i actually read some stuff this week so i did want to document it - not that this is strictly about reviewing my readings, but maybe more about the 'experience' of them, whether or not that had anything to do with the actual content of the pages. in no particular order:

< drive your plow over the bones of the dead > olga tokarczuk, trans. antonia lloyd jones
this was recommended to someone i follow on tumblr (grendelsmilf, iirc) and the premise looked really interesting and i needed like, legitimate reading so i put it on hold. and now it's due ... tomorrow. aha. honestly i haven't read too far in, but other than just the suspected-attention deficit, it was because i got to a passage that reminded me of ammu. i don't enjoy feet, i have complained many times to my friends about how i think it is so disgusting that people enjoy feet, and once my mom laying on the same bed as me (this was in bangladesh i think), said that she thought feet were the most beautiful part of the body. - because they're connected to the earth, because they allow us to walk - and i got 20 pages into this book, and the author had written in the same thing. at that moment, i really wanted to finish this book so i could give it to ammu to read - and i still want to finish this book to give my mom to read. i think she'd enjoy it, because it's about an eccentric old lady, and my mom loves eccentrics (recently telling us about bobby fischer), and she really loves and respects the elderly because they have so much experience and wisdom to share. she talks about it much more beautifully than i summarize it, and about a day after i read that passage, she talked to me again about growing old. i would impart what she said to me, but i feel like if i talk about her anymore it will be like Girl, You have a Mom Complex. which..... you never know! 

on the day of though - here's the thing, my mom was a voracious reader (would still be, if she did not also have undiagnosed adhd), she's read so many classics - but there's also a difference in knowing <my mom read mostly bangla translations> and Applying the Knowledge Of <my mom read mostly bangla translations> ... so i asked her if she read novels in english, and she'd said she struggles through them but has done so twice (the foundation series....and.....uhmm.....uhhhmmmm......i can't remember if she told me or got so distracted by a tangent that she never ended up saying, might've been huckleberry finn though). anyway the whole point is that i think it is so fucked up that she may never understand why i think she would like this book. but also that....isn't that so strange? she's so well-read but to some people it wouldn't count. and also further fucked up, because TO ME, my mom is good at english. and i'm realizing just because i understand her, and she understands her endless stream of youtube autoplay, doesn't mean that she's fluent the way i'm fluent. but also, it could just as easily be that we talk so much in bangla, that i think she's automatically eloquent in english as well, because really - she speaks and writes bangla so beautifully. so there's that.

and then i read...

< The Gender of Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes > Don Kulick (x)
this is a paper....i'm pretty surprised that i got through it! it was pretty easy on the language, so that was definitely a factor....and also it was both really interesting and a lot more personal than you'd expect from something academic. i thought it proposed a lot of interesting takes on gender/sexuality interactions and how we *could* view them, but it also humanized the population it spoke on and treated them as people as opposed to subjects on which research was conducted upon. which is nice, because well, it's academia LOL. i passed this on to someone (Teeks) because i'm stupid, and i was thinking of the implications wrt their Vampire Gender 4.0 thesis (which, fic coming soon hopefully?!) ... to be fair we didn't come up with anything conclusive, but again it is bc i am stupid. hopefully though i get to explore some dynamics in this promised, mythical fic. TC actually mentioned that not liking some of the language and proposals, which when i read i didn't really pick up on or register, but again i think that's due to me being stupid, and hopefully once i consume More of this stuff, i'll be able to read more critically! anyway just be wary ... which is a weird warning since i don't knowwww what i'm warning you of. 

and then i read.

< perfect girl revolution > yoonbot (x)

i think this fic is perfect...which we are ALL aware of. to be honest though, when i read this again, and i read it twice, and both times i missed my favourite line which is, as we ALL know, is -

"And that’s how it is. There’s a read notification next to the last message Nayeon sent thirteen days ago and what feels like a hundred times in between that of her thumb hovering over the call button, only to remember the time Jeongyeon looked at her seriously as they sat half-drunk in the backseat of a taxi not long after they’d both graduated, and asked, “If I moved across the world from you, what would you do?” And when Nayeon simply swore that she’d follow her there, Jeongyeon turned her gaze out the tinted window, the occasional street light they passed by illuminating half her face in a muted yellow, as if that were precisely the wrong answer."

- which, to me was so so romantic the first time I read and is romantic everytime i think of it, and on every subsequent readthrough. honestly i still don't think 2yeon in this fic are romantic so much as they are just....friends. but that's what i like about it, as your resident inherent_romance_of_friendship_fucker ... i think there's so much care within their friendship, that's not at all motivated by romantic love, that makes the resolution of them hovering towards a relationship very satisfying, because their precedence is not romance, but friendship. that nayeon will call and call and call on nayeon again and again and again, and nayeon will pick up every single time - and that's not the same romance-romance nayeon liked with brian, but it's so steady and ever-present that it would work. inherently in a different way or so, but still. it really strikes me dead every single time, strikes me with love and all. i can't describe how it feels to always read the expensive wallet gift-giving sequence, and then the hit right after where nayeon keeps it safely tucked in her purse. it's all so...like okay the simple logic and truth of the statement "Aren't all presents supposed to be a little bit useless? That's why you don't buy them yourself." and then the stab to the heart that gift-giving and receiving and carefully caring for the gift .... to me .... it is all so much ... i can't explain the state my heart is in. one day i'll leave yoonbot the 8 page comment they deserve on this fic but seriously it's been so close to my heart since the ggjukebox release t-t. i know like, it's not the *best* yoonbot fic....bc like, yoonbot is so good in general.... but to me it's my favourite yoonbot fic. ;-; i felt that that distinction was important haha

< why birds do what they do > jenny odell (x)

i've had this open in a tab on my phone for like. a couple months now. and i finally read it this week! maybe i was more satisfied with finally getting around to it than the article, but i also did enjoy the article for what it was. i personally just like to know animal facts and this tied in with one of my other favourite topics - which is, how we lack such a wide spectrum of senses - this is something that touches upon that. i really don't have too many concrete thoughts on this, just that, i like animals :-)

i'm not sure i want to spectale and review the drarry fic i read to finish off my week, but like. let's just do it! 

< stately homes of wiltshire > waspabi (x)
i tried to reread a while back when i reread Hogwart's Crammer, but i couldn't get past the first chapter because it felt so boring. so this time i just started reading from the third chapter and midway through i liked the third chapter so much, i went back to read the second chapter. and then i finished the fic and it was good! i liked it! to me, it is Not perfect girl revolution (very few fics are), but it's good and i liked the drarry dynamicisms of it :3

and then i read.

< unhook the stars > jad (x)
which is fucking disgusting btw. like it's nasty in an enjoyable way. but also just nasty nasty. i have like so many bones to pick with this fic. one personal, one critical (and valid), and one preferential.

1. maybe this is like, me just being too prudish....but i haaaate it when people make their sex like Very Public. like a whole thing about this fic is that harry wears his bdsm slave collar all the time and so many people Know. and there's like a lot of discussion of their sex life with like people who are not just intensely personal close friends ..... and it's so .... offputting TO ME. time and place and also WHAT IF PEOPLE JUST DON'T WANNA KNOW. i disliked that so much. 
2. this fic so badly explains why drarry are together. like...how they get together is so convoluted and weird and so like....lazy..... like the author goes >yeah they both wanted to fuck the other during hogwarts and that's still relevant 6 years later, so harry, because he still wants to fuck draco, hits up his extreme bdsm sex service in an attempt to date him; and draco is super weird about it but goes along< it's SO weird it's So So So weird... it's so bad .... i wish they fell in love more organically or like.....it was just built up better and not so immediate insta-love-obsession-attraction......
3. this fic is so draco-centric it pissed me off so bad after i read. like....this is from draco's pov so reader is automatically more sympathetic but like .... it's so annoying because ... like just canonically draco has it so much easier than harry, and then in fanon to just make it so draco has it Harder is the one who's suffered More etc etc ... like that's one thing, but then also like not give harry and any of Harry's problems narrative weight was so ... i think it was just a shitty decision on the author's part (ESPECIALLY WHEN HARRY IS A POC!!! and DRACO IS WHITE!!!!) .... especially since like draco is seriously such a hard person to be in a relationship with and harry is just Putting up with it. Accepting it. etc. harry is just sexified, sluttier m. mary sue in this..... it'd be one-thing if he got an arc or like... any depth or whatever..... HE JUST DIDN'T. there were a couple mentions of how his childhood sucked but near the end you get this one monologue from draco about how harry is basically perfect and has all his shit together and has no issues etc etc etc... which just felt so lazy because it's like 'harry has No shit that's why he can deal with MY shit' .... fuck this fic so much. (cuz like. harry WAS legitimately brown in this also. so like i didn't even lie about the poc card).

but like, the sex was nasty in a good way but nothing topped the first scene for me where harry like, begs, so draco does the thing, and then draco Doesn't do the thing and he starts a litany of hate you hate you hate you.... truly one of the sexiest dialogue exchanges i've ever read in fic. but .... i'm stupid. just saying. if u want a horny fic to read just for the sex it's pretty good. lots of bdsm as promised. some sex toys. an instance of lingerie. i don't knowwwww it really was a lot of shit i found sexy + 1 instance of draco bottoming to show his Recovery and Trust in harry ... which i don't know how to feel about that as a trope but surely it doesn't have to be a trope.

anyway, so that was my week in reading materials. so here's a wrap-up list of what i'd like to get read next week: 

- what it is like to be a bat? (thomas nagel)
- the straight mind (monique wittig)
- drive your plow over the bones of the dead (olga tokarczuk)
- the housekeeper and the professor (yoko ogawa) (sorry lin ;;)
 

and that's kind of it! <333 

Comments

+1

[fwcu]

but also, i lied because i did not mention that i have been particularly excited to read this fic https://archiveofourown.org/works/967095. i don't know something about them being old men is nice, not sure i want to think about the e rating lololol. ANYWAY, reading this now <3 anticipating very hard hopefully it's as epic as i would want.