MAY - The Handmaid's Tale

May review for Book Riot's Read Harder 2017: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, 1985. [book you've read before category]

This is my third time reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. The first was in a high school class, pleasantly holding the dystopia at arm's length, enjoying the language and the narrative as purely fiction. The second reading was for a college class in 2012, called Women in Myth, and it was during Mitt Romney's bid for president. It was terrifying then, what with the "binders full of women" nonsense, but I never thought it would be MORE apropos than it was at that time. Gag. This, my third time through, comes on the heels of Trump's presidency and subsequent attempt at gutting women's healthcare and reproductive rights. I went back to it because my girlfriend had never read it, and we wanted to watch the new 2017 Hulu adaptation together. The Handmaid's Tale is a supremely important story to read, especially on the shady road our country seems to have turned down, and it makes me happy to see that it's topping the Bestseller lists once again.


The gist of Handmaid's Tale is the story of Offred, a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead in the not-so-distant future. Women can no longer own property, work, or read, and those that proved fertile before have been re-purposed as Handmaids, a ceremonial surrogate for important Commanders and their Wives. The Handmaid's Tale, a tongue-in-cheek nod to Chaucer with the title, follows Offred from a seemingly unimportant day through her revelations about this new society and what she can do in it. 

I am really enjoying the Hulu series thus far. It is visually stunning, the music is perfectly curated, and it is so fulfilling to see Offred brought to life as a little more savvy and a little more fiery than in the book. Elizabeth Moss does a fantastic job of playing this up. I enjoy that we have given Offred a "real" name, one that we can cling to as a part of the time before. I can see that a narrative like Handmaid's Tale would be difficult to recreate exactly, especially if the idea was to have the narrative to continue on for more than one season, and I approve of the way the writers have reimagined some of the narrative, giving voice to more of the characters, rather than relying solely on Offred's experiences. I like Alexis Bledel's Ofglen, the acknowledgement of her sexuality and its place in the fucked up world of Gilead. I look forward to seeing how the showrunners expand on said fucked up world, watching the Handmaids fight against their situation. 

Screencap from 2017 Hulu adaptation

Which brings me to the phrase. The rallying cry for three decades' worth of feminists (thanks, Margaret, for the tattoo ideas): Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Offred finds it in her closet, scratched into the baseboard, and she asks the Commander about it in their nightly Scrabble sessions. It is sort of an in-joke that really only makes sense if you're studying Latin--the joke is that it's sort of a fake Latin-sounding phrase. There are different layers to the in-joke now that Offred has found it and shared it with her predecessor, a circle apart from that in which the phrase was created. It was a taking-back, I like to think, of realms barred to the Handmaids: the realm of female friendship and intimacy, as well as the realm of scholarship and academia. 

I am sure I will revisit Handmaid's Tale at another point in my life, hopefully once our government has veered away from its dystopian teachings. It has meant too much to me to be one and done. (Or three and done, as the case may be...) Even though my life is not nearly as hard or as dangerous as Offred's, I take solace in her strength and her fight. I will continue to watch the Hulu series and continue to learn from Gilead. I'll be back. Until then, Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, bitches. 

APR - The Geography of Bliss

April review for Book Riot's Read Harder 2017: The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner, 2008. [travel memoir category]

The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner did not disappoint. For my travel memoir, I was looking for something that was not necessarily tied to a single place, but more of an adventure-hopping scenario, and GoB delivers immensely. Weiner recounts his travels to 10 different countries of varying degrees on the happy scale, from the Netherlands to miserable Moldova, attempting to define what about these countries (and their people) makes them happy or not so happy. 

My favorite chapter was about Iceland. He mentions an Icelandic saying that goes, "Better to go barefoot than without a book," (p147) and I wholeheartedly agree. Iceland loves its writers and I would love to be loved by Iceland for a time. This book as a whole played once more on my wanderlust, reminded me that I should travel more soon. This time last year, I was returning from Italy, and a few years before that, Israel, and before that, Ireland (wow, my family likes I countries, huh). This year, however, the only traveling I will be doing is for roller derby--and that might end up being pretty extensive, if we end up in Sweden for Playoffs. (But let's pray that does not happen, because no one has money for that.)

I would love to travel and write about my travel. I sort of have, I wrote up my Israel trip for a friend's website but it never took off. I had aspirations of being a photojournalist once upon a time, but decided I was probably too anxious (slash not quite brave enough) for such an occupation. 

What do I think about my own happiness? It has definitely skyrocketed in the past year, exponentially increased with my new relationship. My happiness is increased by my girlfriend. My happiness is increased by playing roller derby. My happiness is increased by doing the things I love to do with the people I care about. I think my happiness is connected to where I am inasmuch as I need to be in Ann Arbor for roller derby, but I do think the town itself contributes to my happiness. I like it here. Sure, I'd like a new job, to make a little bit more money, feel a bit more comfortable in my finances, but I would consider myself all around a pretty happy person. It was interesting to think about it in the terms that Weiner investigated over the course of the book, as I don't think I'd ever tried to quantify my happiness before. When all is said and done, I think I would give myself about a 7 or an 8. Always room for improvement, but pretty damn happy. 

APR - The Gunslinger

April review for Book Riot's Read Harder 2017: The Gunslinger by Stephen King, 1982. Dark Tower I. [fantasy novel category]

I've had The Gunslinger on my shelf for years, and since it's being made into a TV series at some point in the near future and my friends are super into that, I figured I should actually finish it. It is Stephen King's quest narrative answer to Lord of The Rings etc etc, the story of an unnamed hero questing after an unnamed foe in purposely vague and ominous-sounding language. It starts in medias res, right in the thick of things, and peppers in flashbacks that are almost indistinguishable from present occurrences. Sometimes I had trouble catching the haft of the story, but I kept moving forward, just like the titular character. 

I love Stephen King's writing style, and for the most part, I liked this book. I was more than a little off-put by the obsession with this quote "sexually ravenous" girl that the book preview notes, even though she is only part of the story for like two chapters. I felt icky, this focus on her sexual appetite felt super male-gazey and fetishizing and I was disappointed. You can do better, Stephen. 

I got the next two Dark Tower books from the library, and I'm gonna try to slip them in while I bang out my two books a month for this challenge. I've got some time before the TV show starts (can I just say, Idris Elba is dream casting. Perfection.), so I'll see what I can do. 

I do want to take a moment to talk about the afterword at the end of my copy, where Stephen King talks about the writing of The Dark Tower stories. He talks about the story needing to remain "alive and viable in [his] own mind," because "if a book is not alive in the writer's mind, it is as dead as year-old horseshit even if words continue to march across the page" (p308). I have often wondered why I haven't been able to go back to a story that I stopped mid-telling, and once again Stephen King has put words to a feeling I was unable to name. I need to find a way back to these stories, to revitalize my muse and get my butt in gear again. 

MAR - The Well of Loneliness

March review for Book Riot's Read Harder 2017: The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, 1928. [book that has been banned frequently category]

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall is often hailed as a lesbian classic, and it almost ruined Hall's literary career. It is the story of Stephen Gordon, a wealthy girl born to parents who really wanted a boy and so they kept the only name they'd picked even when their daughter was born. This does not do terribly much damage, as Stephen grows up and is consistently at odds with her ostensible femininity, preferring to dress like a boy, and even coming up with an alternate persona, Nelson, which she puts on to impress one of the house servants (whom 12-year-old Stephen also falls in love with). Offhand references are made to "inversion," a sort of opposite-feeling that a certain outcast set of society feels, and the term "lesbian" is never used once, although Stephen does befriend an undeniably lesbian couple later on in Paris. Well of Loneliness moves through Stephen's childhood and maturation and follows her few romantic relationships with (surprise!) women. It is a thinly veiled corollary to Hall's own life, critics say, hence the ruining-of-her-career bit.

It was banned pretty much instantly--and quite frequently thereafter--because LESBIANS. Never mind that the raunchiest Hall's descriptions of the Sapphic lovers get is "she kissed her full on the lips as a lover." However, recent readings have questioned Well as a lesbian versus a transgender story. Hall does use the term "invert," which seems to refer to an individual that feels sort of the opposite of what they were born to, but as it was published in 1928 and there wasn't really transgender terminology back then, it has often been classified as a purely lesbian story. With the increasing defining space between gender and sexuality in recent years, this becomes a more pertinent question, and I do think the tone of the narrative changes, depending on your opinion of Stephen as a butch lesbian woman or a trans* man. My own personal reading tends toward the latter.

**SPOILER ALERT -- I'm going to complain about the ending. If you're planning to read this book, skip this paragraph please. Or don't, who am I to say?** So. The ending. This entire book feels like an extended lashing of Stephen by the cruel universe, so much so that she internalizes it and begins to lash at herself, her own happiness, by the end. For the latter half of the book, Stephen is in a relationship with a woman called Mary, who she met in the army and has taken into her home as her partner and lover (I suppose, although no specifics were given; 1920s euphemisms, et cetera). Mary begins to have feelings for Stephen's friend (and one-time rejected lover) Martin, and cannot decide between her love for each of them. So Stephen forces her hand, fakes being another woman's lover and sends Mary into Martin's arms for a nice normal happy life. Self-sabotaging at its finest. I was very dismayed at the conclusion of Stephen's story, and it made me wonder if this was the beginning of no happy gay stories in fiction? Kill your darlings, and whatnot? I closed my book and hugged my girlfriend close, thanking whatever Powers That Be that I don't have to sabotage my own happiness.

Ultimately, as Alison Hennegan's introduction reads in my copy, "the very fact of the book's existence was a source of strength." Whichever way you read Stephen, she is revolutionary in her existence. (I use female pronouns because those are the ones used by the author, although it is possible gender neutral would feel more apropos.) I feel like I could spend a lot of time unpacking this book (I can imagine more than a few old professors I'd love to listen to wax poetic about it), but already this post is woefully overdue, and I should most likely cut it short. 

#30/30 - 2017

Unintentional early bedtime
for the last day of April.
Shirking all our Sunday plans
for the warm embrace of each other in our bed.
Laundry not done, poems not written, dinner not made,
but dreams were had.

#29/30 - 2017

There is a moment that crystallizes
not because of its beauty,
but because of its sheer uncomfortableness.
I do not know what to say.
I am (un)intentionally tangentially the butt of this joke
and I cannot find words to say so.
She is someone I love and care for,
but I can't listen to her talk anymore.
What she says is peppered with unfiltered hurt
unacknowledged and unapologetic.
I have never really had the strength to say,
you are hurting me.

#28/30 - 2017

"writing is easy"
said no one,
ever,
especially not a writer.
Especially not one who has
a thousand tricks to put her mind in the right space,
superstitions from the correct time to the most comfortable place,
the temperature of her drink to the angle of her screen,
the way she folds her legs and the way her glasses gleam.
Awkward rhymes fall out unbidden
and the writer hopes they make sense,
pared of all the ancillary thought-noise
that only exists in the head
bare and clean and black and white
and full.

#27/30 - 2017

Today, I went to see someone
about some store-bought neurotransmitters.
It turns out,
I function much better with a little
balancing, with a little
chemical modulation,
and that's ok.
It slows the spin of panicked scenario-building,
the paralyzing hypothetical situation analysis,
letting my feet tread more methodically
through my train of thought.