This Is Beautiful: Yes Graduate Soon

 Hey look at this one two punch of posts, I do have a date to defend in February! I wanted to do nothing else that day I got the news. It's beautiful and we are going to get through this!

“Down Among the Sticks and Bones” by Seanan McGuire

This is another book in the series that to Every Heart a Doorway is in, which I read and absolutely loved, so I was really excited to pick up another book in the series. This book is very different, it is more of a prequel to the other book, and it follows Jack and Jill and their experiences within the Moors.

It starts with Jacqueline and Jillian as kids and describes how their parents wanted them to be perfect kids, and set them against each other. When a stairway appears in their attic, they head down together and run into the castle of the Master. Jill stays with him to be a pretty princess, and Jack heads off with the local mad scientist to learn science. Jack gets close to people in the village, gets a girlfriend, while Jill dreams of becoming a vampire herself. They are forced to leave when Jill kills Jack’s girlfriend before becoming a vampire and the mad scientist sends them back to their world to escape an angry mob. It ends with them reappearing in their parents’ house.

This was a very different book from the first one. The narration style is similar of course, but it is more an in depth look at these specific two characters and what makes them tick, while I liked the color of all the different worlds in the first book. I do think the book does a lot to help make you understand the events of the previous book, but I didn’t enjoy the experience as much as the first one.

So it was a good read if you are like me and are invested in this universe already, but wouldn’t say that it added much beyond my understanding of these characters. I hope that the mad scientist’s tech with the doors comes back later, but I’m hoping for a more expansive look in the next novel I pick up in the series.

This Is Beautiful: I Might Graduate Soon?

 Well I had my most recent committee meeting a week ago, and it looks like it's finally going to happen? They said I could actually graduate next semester and get this thing done. I just have to find a date that works for everyone and make it happen! It's surreal, and maybe it'll feel more real once I know the date for sure, but I almost don't quite believe that it's happening. Idk, I hope it goes smoothly and I get some clarity so that I can calm down a bit and relax a little.

“Females” by Andrea Long Chu

This is a short book that I again, have no idea how it ended up on my reading list. But I am glad that I picked it up. It’s based on a play by Valerie Solanas, the author of SCUM Manifesto who later on shot Andy Warhol. This was actually good timing, my partner had just read SCUM Manifesto and could explain some of those references to me.

The idea behind this work is that being female is a state of mind, with nothing to do with gender or sex. Being female means repressing your wants in order to make room for someone else’s wants. And damn if that doesn’t resonate with me watching myself and other femmes make ourselves smaller so that someone else can take up space. Anyways, everyone is female and also everyone hates it. We all can’t stand that we do this to ourselves, but we do it anyways. And sometimes, we even seek it out.

Long Chu’s perspective as a trans women I think is really key here, she talks a lot about her process of transitioning and what she was thinking about and the art she was creating. I thought it was fascinating to hear about her experiences, and how she loops that into Solanas’ work. I’m not super familiar with the play or anything, but it is explained pretty sufficiently in the text. She also pulls in other works like the movie “Don Jon” featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and such. Everything just revolves around this idea of demonstrating that we are all, in fact, female even if we may identify as male.

I thought this was really thought-provoking and interesting to read. I’m not sure if I agree with all of it, sometimes it seems as though people like being female, but it is a really interesting look at gender dynamics. I love anything that separates gendered terms from gender/sex so it was up my alley. Anyways, it’s short and sweet so pick it up if you haven’t yet!

This Is Beautiful: Snow!

 We had our first snow here! It was so pretty, I unfortunately didn't have time to make a snowman but there's a few that have popped up around town. I'm not fully ready for it to be freezing, but I do love the snow! (Plus seems like it's going to get warm again later so...)

“Quichotte” by Salman Rushdie

This is another book that has been on my list for a while but I cannot remember how it got on there. I almost enjoy that more though, as a result I start off not super excited to read it and partway through realize “oh, this is why I was interested!” and get very invested in the story.

Quichotte is essentially an Indian-American Don Quixote, he has watched too much TV and wants to win the hand of Miss Salma, a celebrity TV actress and host. He invents himself a son named Sancho, who then talks to an Italian cricket and comes to life. They travel across America to win Miss Salma’s heart while Sancho realizes that the world isn’t a welcoming place for immigrants/non-White folks. They also start to have hallucinations, for example a town in New Jersey where people are turning into mastodons turns out to be a vision.

Meanwhile, chapters on Quichotte are interspersed with Sancho’s narration and the Author’s. The Author is similarly estranged from his sibling and son, and as time progresses the worlds of the characters and the author intertwine. First, Sancho senses the Author digging around in Quichotte’s brain, and then events of the book start to play out in the author’s world.

A theme of the book, beyond needing the absurd to make sense of anything, is that the world is going to end. And it starts to, Quichotte then convinces Miss Salma to head to a lab with him to go through a portal together. They burst into the Author’s world only to choke on the air that is too big for them to breathe.

I started off intrigued but a little meh on the book. For context, it was published in 2019 during the first Trump presidency. There are allusions to an orange, deranged president, nothing concrete, but it clearly is inspired by that time and those policies. It does make sense that to try and make sense of a tv president you need a tv addicted man. And that you would go a little crazy.

Once the author emerged as a character I was much more intrigued. There are passages that address what he hopes to do with this work, and notes that he makes for himself about the characters. The interplay of the characters coming into this world as his world intercedes on theirs I think culminates in a really accurate portrayal of what it’s like to live in the Trump era. You feel as though you’re the only sane one, and media consumption is driving you nuts. The only way to cope is to pretend as though it is all normal, like the folks being turned into mastodons. There’s something fundamental that this work captures really well, and I think I might have to reread it to fully put my finger on it, but it spoke to me so strongly.

Now of course I would like this book, at its heart it is a postmodern masterpiece where there are so many movie, tv, song, and pop culture references that it might overwhelm you. But I think that the culmination of it all creates something that is inherently very relatable. I am not an immigrant, but I think it also captures what it’s like to be an immigrant without getting too far into policy or the violence (even though there is some). But just the insane unreality of what we are living in is expertly captured and pinned under a microscope.

This Is Beautiful: Job Interview

 I have a job interview later today! Wish me luck, it's the first that I've gotten and I've been looking since August. (To be fair I've gotten replies outside of interviews, but this is still the first and that's exciting.) I hope it goes well, I do like the job posting quite a bit so I hope there's some good news after this.