NOV - Infinite Jest

November review for Book Riot's Read Harder 2018: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, 2005. [assigned book you never finished]

My friends and I started reading Infinite Jest a few years ago, but our little book club petered out. It sat on my shelf for a long time, until this category! I do love the language, the way DFW plays with words, but it was difficult to get through, especially in the way I've been reading, snatches on my commute or drowsy in bed. That being said, I am glad I finished it.

How does one really summarize Infinite Jest? It is a postmodern encyclopedic novel, a behemoth of a text that I used as a headrest on more than one occasion. It has been described as "meta modernist" and "hysterical realist." It's set in a halfway house and a tennis academy, features junkies on both sides, told in a stream-of-consciousness similar to that popularized by Virginia Woolf, but very very clearly written and created by a man. There is an Infinite Jest wiki that was wildly helpful throughout my reading, because god knows the footnotes were just as cryptic as the book itself.

So much of this book is figuring out DFW's language/shorthand etc. He uses footnotes for wildly differing reasons, from defining the technical composition of drugs to parenthetical interviews to asides to fucking defining POV but there's nothing that is like "when I say demapped it means killed or suicide" like most normal footnotes. The truth (Truth) in this book is constructed, rather than reported (page 1048, footnote 269). The footnotes can be used as construction, in various ways: through asides (264), definitions (308), parentheticals (325), and research (304), among others.

A friend's review of IJ, immortalized

I am glad to have read this book, I am stubborn enough to have finished it, but I am equally glad that it is over. David Foster Wallace is a very talented and complicated man, to be sure, and a genius with wordplay, and he is truly worth studying.

NOV - Nimona

November review for Book Riot's Read Harder 2018: Nimona by Noelle Stevenson, 2015. [comic drawn and written by the same person]

Nimona is so many things I've always wanted in a graphic novel. Scrappy girl protagonists, magic, upending of the dichotomy of good and evil, magical bureaucracy, and shapeshifting! Plus Noelle Stevenson, the author/artist is like, the coolest (and now she has made She-Ra on Netflix, which is equally rad).

Nimona comes to Sir Ballister Blackheart as a new sidekick and pretty much throws a wrench in all of his plans. Sir Ballister is pretty much the top dog in a magical world that blends magic and sci-fi tech, and he never really gets much done until Nimona shows up. He has to try to teach is protege restraint (she always wants to go around killing people and setting things on fire, which is a bit too far for the cerebral villain Sir Ballister. Nimona is a fiery little girl with a butch haircut and a big mouth who also happens to be a shapeshifter! How incredibly cool would it be to be Nimona?

Nimona and Ballister go on missions, quibble about the level of villainy that is acceptable, and slowly become close. The Good Guy Brigade (I mean, the Institute) employs Ballister's archnemesis, the hero Goldenloin, who has some serious history with our villain. As the story progresses, we learn more and more about the less-good things about the Institute, Goldenloin gets more and more disillusioned with his job sitch, and Ballister and Nimona burrow their way into each others' hearts, and of course the inevitable happens, where they hurt each other and leave, but Sir Ballister works to find her again, and set things right. Nimona deals with such heavy shit in such a completely understandable and accessible manner, even though it is sci-fi, and it is going to be a classic for a long time.

Nimona in a nutshell

OCT - Handling The Undead

October review for Book Riot's Read Harder 2018: Handling The Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist, 2009. [genre fiction in translation category]

Handling The Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist is a spooky book. But spooky in the way that it's pretty much our normal, everyday world, except for this one supernatural turn. I recognize that a lot of horror (and also thriller) can be explained this way, but my point is that Lindqvist doesn't come at the novel from the perspective of writing a scary story. He introduces human emotion and watches what happens when the world is turned upside down. What does grief do to a person, especially in the face of the impossible?

When the city is faced with a heat wave and weird occurrences start bringing people's loved ones back to life...but are they the same people? David's wife is the first one to come back, and he always knew she was too good for him, so how is he supposed to carry on and raise their kid without her? Or how can a grandfather go on without his favorite grandson? Or an old woman whose husband died recently, and his recurrence makes her question everything about her faith? Slowly, the country figures out what to do with the risen dead, calling in the army to sequester the increasingly more violent problem, and people pack in to see their loved ones when everything goes terribly wrong. Again, Lindqvist manages to tap into the most human part of horror, and Handling The Undead will leave you with the slightest of tingles at the base of your scalp long after you've turned the last page.

OCT - Heat Wave

October review for Book Riot's Read Harder 2018: Heat Wave by Richard Castle, 2016. [book with a cover you hate category]

I had to think real hard about this, because I often do the opposite: choose to read a book purely because I am intrigued by the cover. I don't know that I have ever actively hated a book cover: I am generally OK with movie tie-in editions, although I don't profess to *love* them, as long as I can still get my own attractive copy. So I had to dig deep and think about what I would really roll my eyes at when I saw a book. I settled, in the end, on romance novel covers (inexplicably glistening pecs and mid-swoon damsels) and pulp crime novels.

Heat Wave by Richard Castle is a little bit of both, arguably. It is a sort of tie-in with Castle the TV show (starring Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic), and I read it just as I was starting my partner on the show. Needless to say, the similarities between the Heat Wave characters and their inspirations are many and sometimes I had to double check which case I was in. Having that backstory (from the show) certainly enriched the experience, and I felt a little closer to the story than I maybe would have if I had just picked it up with no knowledge. All in all, I enjoyed this quick little read, even if the cover drove me a little crazy.

2019 Read Harder

Hello! It is already nearly the end of February and I am still finishing my writing for 2018, shame on me! In any case, a lot has been going on, and I am trying to chug away at it as best I can. In the mean time, I want to make a little note to myself as I introduce the Book Riot 2019 Read Harder Challenge that I will be following again this year.

First of all, I (re)discovered Libby, an app that works with your library card to bring you e-books and audiobooks, and let me tell you that my work life is forever changed with the addition of audiobooks! I have already listened to so many, and it's only February! Because I have such a plethora of options available to me, I have made it a personal little challenge to increase the diversity of what I read, especially in terms of women, queers, and people of color. I have read enough white men for a while, and while a few may sneak back from time to time (looking at you, Stephen King) I want to prioritize other voices this year. I just finished We Were Eight Years In Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates (click here for a great review of it), and while it was very heavy, it is very very necessary and I have already stocked my Libby TBR pile with similar books for the coming months. White Fragility, When They Call You A Terrorist, Educated, Shrill, How Long 'Til Black Future Month....titles abound!

BOOK RIOT’S 2019 READ HARDER CHALLENGE

1. An epistolary novel or collection of letters
2. An alternate history novel
3. A book by a woman and/or AOC (Author of Color) that won a literary award in 2018: The Fact Of A Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

1. A humor book
2. A book by a journalist or about journalism
3. A book by an AOC set in or about space: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
4. An #ownvoices book set in Mexico or Central America
5. An #ownvoices book set in Oceania
6. A book published prior to January 1, 2019, with fewer than 100 reviews on Goodreads
7. A translated book written by and/or translated by a woman
8. A book of manga
9. A book in which an animal or inanimate object is a point-of-view character
10. A book by or about someone that identifies as neurodiverse
11. A cozy mystery
12. A book of mythology or folklore
13. An historical romance by an AOC
14. A business book
15. A novel by a trans or nonbinary author
16. A book of nonviolent true crime: Can You Ever Forgive Me by Lee Israel
17. A book written in prison
18. A comic by an LGBTQIA creator
19. A children’s or middle grade book (not YA) that has won a diversity award since 2009
20. A self-published book
21. A collection of poetry published since 2014

As of right now, I have a few books for the challenge under my belt, though I haven't written about any of them yet. I have to get back to my languishing partner, Writing, and treat her with the respect that is her due. It has been far too long!

Happy reading, 2019! 

SEPT - Yellowthroat

September review for Book Riot's Read Harder 2018: Yellowthroat by Penny Hayes, 1988. [western category]

In order to find a book for this category, I pretty much just googled "lesbian western." And I found Yellowthroat by Penny Hayes, who apparently is the lady who came up with the lesbian western in the first place! Good to know that I started from the beginning. I've always been sort of a purist that way.

Yellowthroat was published by Naiad Press, one of the publishing companies dedicated to lesbian lit (succeeded by Bella Books), and I think I may have gotten a very early edition of the book, because the pages were falling out of the old glued binding by the time I was done. But I love this copy. I love the cover design, I love the simplicity of it. It is what it is, and nothing more. A sentiment Margarita (the bandit) and Julia (the kidnapped) both emulate in their own ways by the end.

The gist of Yellowthroat is a wlw romance, which I am obviously here for. I loved the scandalous description on the back cover for what happens once Margarita's band of bandits is required to take a female hostage back to their camp because one of them is gravely injured: "Once more Margarita's life undergoes drastic changes. Because amid a growing emotional attachment to Julia Blake, she has discovered the unthinkable: a sexual attraction to another woman." GASP. This is exactly what I wanted. Another item of note in the pro column of this review, is that the lady romance is not the climax of the book. So many of the lesbian novels I read climax quite literally with a single sex scene between the two women in the last act of the book. But Yellowthroat subverts that by introducing the attraction early on, and allowing the falling action of the book to be the women coming back together for their happily ever after (once Margarita has stopped being an idiot).

That being said, the ending fixed itself. Throughout the latter half of the book, there was a lot of internal monologue of Margarita's where she denied herself her desire to live out the rest of her life with Julia. She claims she doesn't want to be tied down, but in the next breath talks of how she will most likely marry a man again eventually. The two women start a damn business together and move to a gold mining town and everything is going pretty great when Margarita throws a grenade into everything, saying "sorry I cannot be with you because it doesn't fit what I think my life should look like so bye." I am grateful that the scenes after where Margarita lives by herself in the valley again and berates herself for leaving go by quickly and do not take up nearly as many pages as their time together. I am also incredibly grateful for her finally coming to her senses and returning to Julia, even though she tells herself she's just stopping by as she passes through the town. (No one just stops by in the Old West. It takes too long to get there. It is very clear you wanted to see Julia and kiss her again so just admit it! -- my brain as I read the last few pages.)

But we do get a happily ever after! There is no kill your darlings, return to heteronormativity, or self-denial in this tale! And boy was I happy to get there. I do believe I will be checking out the rest of Penny Hayes's ouvre in the coming months. I do enjoy a woman who knows how to ride a horse...

SEPT - Ash

September review for Book Riot's Read Harder 2018: Ash by Malinda Lo, 2009. [romance novel by POC category]

I really liked Ash by Malinda Lo. It was a simple retelling, which I always enjoy, but even moreso when they're queer! Because queers deserve fairy tales too. As in, all the fairy tales need to be queered. (Note to self: write queer fairy tales.) It is a reimagining of Cinderella but with faeries and hunters and lady love. As is standard with Cinderella stories, we begin with an overview of Ash's childhood: her mother's illness and subsequent death, her father's distance and remarriage, the tyranny of her new stepmother after her father passes. The one constant throughout all of her trials are the fairy stories her mother used to tell her, as well as a copy of a book of fairy tales her father bought her as a way to remember her mother. She copes with the death of her parents by escaping to the woods at night, trying to find the fairies, and Ash focuses a lot on what it means to love fairy tales, and how you would respond to the opportunity to live in one.

There's a fantastic review in the Los Angeles Review of Books that talks about the positions of women in this universe: the Huntress, Kaisa, at the head of the King's Hunt, Greenwitches responsible for the magic of the land, et cetera. Ash doesn't interact with very many men after her father dies, and the fairy she meets is not necessarily gendered, although she uses male pronouns to describe him. Women abound in Ash's world, and she is constantly trying to see how she is going to fit. She does not think that she has a place in any of these spaces, just a quiet orphan girl with no skills or anyone to back her up. But still she manages to find her way in the world, meeting a faerie and the King's Huntress and moving through it with their influences, conscious or no.

Ash starts to feel "something as yet unnamed" (p202) when she starts spending time with Kaisa, going on hunts and reading together in the sunshine. I absolutely love this phrase, the way it acknowledges the complexities of emotion and budding sexuality. She does not shy away from this, but keeps observing in her small, shy way, and goes to attend the final ball and see Kaisa once again. But, of course, she is thwarted and has to flee the night. Normally I root for the faeries but not when dawning lady love is at stake! Damn faeries...

But everything is alright in the end. And what an excellent ending, may I say!! Happy endings are few and far between for queer tales, and it left me incredibly pleased. I also enjoyed that (spoilers) she didn't have to choose between endings: she submitted to her deal with the faerie who helped her get out, and then she goes to find Kaisa and tells her that they are free to love each other and that she has found a home. I mean, how much more perfect can you get? Not only a happy ending, but one that was actively and determinedly chosen by a young girl who has found her own power in her story.