“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.

“Every Heart a Doorway” by Seanan McGuire

This is another book that has been on my list to read for ages. I saw it getting kicked around in lists of books with asexual main characters, and I knew a few friends that read it and really liked it. Honestly I surpassed all of my expectations, I loved the world of this book and I’m really excited to dive into the rest of the series. 

The book follows Nancy, a girl who has just returned from the Halls of the Dead to parents who thought she was kidnapped and don’t understand why their daughter is behaving so differently now. They send her to Eleanor, a woman who runs a home for troubled children like Nancy. Hidden from the parents though, is that this is a home/school for many similar children who went to other fantasy worlds, returned, and have a hard time adjusting. Nancy’s roommate is Sumi who went to a Nonsense world, and her friends include Jack and Jill, two twins that went to the Moors, a land ruled by a vampire. Jack becomes an apprentice to a mad scientist and Jill becomes the vampire lord’s pet. There’s also Kade who went to a fantasy realm and was kicked out when he realized he is actually a boy.

Things heat up when Sumi is discovered head, with her hands cut off. Then another girl is discovered dead with her eyes removed. Nancy, Kade, Jack, and Christopher (from a skeleton realm) stick together to try and survive, especially since the other kids suspect that the creepy kids from death realms and the mad scientist might be behind this. Eventually it’s revealed that Jill has been behind this, she’s trying to create a perfect girl from pieces of girls to make someone who is wanted by every realm so that she can return to the Moors. Jack stabs her sister and is then able to bring them both back to reanimate her. The book ends with Nancy discovering an old note from Sumi that tells her to write her own story, leading to her rediscovery of a door to the Halls of the Dead and returning.

Now the best part of the book is the way it turns some fantasy tropes on their heads. After the kids return home, what happens next? Of course they have a difficult time with their parents and peers. There is some order to the worlds, some are Nonsense and some are Logic, but I honestly never really understood that. But it is really amusing to hear about the different worlds. One character went to a spider realm, Sumi went to a candy realm or something, and just about every version thereof. And each child is molded to that realm meaning that the personalities are just as vibrant as the realms.

Also fun is the representation. Nancy is pretty openly asexual and talks about it a lot, including dropping that she isn’t aromantic. As Kade flirts with her it makes her anxious until she explains that she just finds people pretty, leading to his understanding (even though she never used the word with him). Kade similarly is openly trans from the time we meet him, and it leads to him being rejected by both his parents and the world he went to. I would love more information on his experiences, but it was heartbreaking to hear about how badly he wants to remember his experiences despite the pain from not being about to go back ever. And I love that the main love interest is trans, that’s so great for people to see.

The book is really short, I think it’s technically a novella. But for all of that it establishes a universe from the beginning and doesn’t waste time getting to the main mystery. I’m so excited to check out the rest of the books and hopefully expand this whimsical world.

This Is Beautiful: Halloween!

 I think I enjoy Halloween more as an adult than I did as a kid! This year my partner and I dressed in 90s fashion and put Beanie Baby tags on the animals to be Beanie Baby collectors. Then my lab had a party which was cute and I put a tag on my lab mate! It was really nice doing a low-key celebration and just being around the lab members again for a social event. It's great to have an adult fun holiday!

“The Ladies Guide to Petticoats and Piracy” by Mackenzi Lee

This book has been on my list for a while, it’s one that gets circulated a lot if you are interested in reading asexual characters. I had not gotten around to it as it isn’t quite the genre I like the best (aka historical fiction) but it was a fun, easy read to get through.

The book follows Felicity, a young girl in the 1700s who desperately wants to become a physician despite only being rejected by medical schools for being a woman. At the start of the book she is living with Callum, a baker, in Scotland and she has to reject his offer of marriage. She heads to London where her brother Monty and his boyfriend Percy live where she tries again at a London medical school and is similarly rejected. However, she learns that this legendary doctor, Dr. Platt, is about to set off on an expedition and that he is getting married soon, so she wants to intercept him at the wedding to an old friend of hers. However, Monty disagrees with this plan so she ends up joining with a mysterious pirate of color named Sim to head there. Felicity isn’t sure about Sim’s motives, it sounds like Sim wants to steal something, but it’s too convenient for her to pass up.

They get there and Felicity has to try and make up with Johanna, a childhood friend that she had a falling out with. Felicity remembers it as Johanna demeaning her for not being interested in boys and parties, and Johanna remembers it as Felicity looking down on her for being interested in those things. They start to make up, and then Felicity catches Sim robbing Johanna. Then Felicity realizes that Johanna has run away and she teams up with Dr. Platt to find her in Zurich. Once there, Felicity overhears that Dr. Platt wants to kidnap Felicity so she also sneaks away and runs into Johanna. Turns out that she wants to get her mother’s things from a museum storage but they won’t let her since she’s a woman. So Felicity goes to steal it and runs into Sim trying to steal the same stuff.

They scuffle but then end up leaving together when Sim is injured on a broken vial. Felicity treats her, and they learn that Johanna’s mother was studying sea dragons, animals whose scales hold stimulating properties. They make the trip to Africa, where Sim is from. There Felicity and Johanna are separated and captured, but Monty shows up to save them from Dr. Platt. They then all head to where the eggs are and fight the English, but a sea dragon shows up to finish the deed for them and save her eggs. The book ends with Sim and Felicity heading back to Africa so that Felicity can study medicine there, and Johanna returns to England to claim Dr. Platt’s things.

Alright well first the ace representation. I thought Felicity was well written in that she never uses the words “asexual” or “aromantic” but it is very clear that this is what the author is going for. Felicity doesn’t get the “spark” with other people or have any interest in marriage or relationships. Potentially people would criticize this for going too far in the other direction, where Felicity is a tomboy that looks down on feminine women, but I think the subplot of her making up with Johanna and realizing that it is ok to be more feminine is a really nice way to round out her character.

There are times where the book is a little too obvious with what it is doing. Of course Felicity and Johanna make up. Of course Sim ends up not so different from Felicity after all. There was clearly a moment where Felicity basically said “I’m not like other girls” and Sim said she probably never looked for other girls like herself. But it is a young adult historical fiction, so that’s ok. I don’t think criticisms calling female characters “too modern” have much of a basis usually, there have always been women that care about their rights and how other characters are treated and such. Felicity does mention that she had to do some warming up to her brother being gay as well, so it’s not like she had completely modern viewpoints either.

The sea dragons did feel pretty out of place to me. I don’t think those are real creatures or anything, and to plop them into a pretty straight historical setting felt inconsistent to me. The scales in particular, I know that they need to like discover new things or something, but that felt very much as though it was a Deus Ex Machina of medicine for Felicity and Johanna to then study or whatever. And it isn’t totally needed, there’s plenty of natural world in Africa that was ruined by colonialism to talk about.

Anyways, this was a quick and pretty fun read if not completely my cup of tea. The characters are delightful and it’s easy to get through. Just sometimes I think it could use a little more complicating.