#summer reading interlude

[bethanydelleman]

I am reading Daughter of the Gods by Stephanie Thornton and while it seems very well researched, as far as I can tell, the characters just... don't feel like people half of the time. Or like the people they ought to be. The novel is about Hatshepsut, who despite being a woman ruled as pharaoh and her story is very cool but the character doesn't seem to act like royalty at all and she doesn't to have any filter. I mean again, I'm not that up on ancient Egypt and their levels of propriety, but I was totally thrown out of the story when she said this to her husband's advisor whom she's known for a couple months about a new concubine:

"Anything that keeps Thut [her husband/half brother] from my bed-"

TMI! This is your husband's friend! Who says that? I could see her saying something like that to a trusted female friend, but she doesn't really seem to have that now that her sister is dead.

And for someone who is royal and like, the daughter of the gods, she doesn't have much... gravitas? I accept her not fitting well into her role as princess/queen because she did just force her way from regent to co-monarch but I just don't buy this girl as a queen who thinks she's the descendant of the gods. Also, the lack of bodyguards/retinue...

Anyway, maybe I'm just being whiny but I need to find some sort of sweet spot in historical fiction where the characters feel human and there is also research. It can't just be one or the other! side eye to A Lady's Guide to Fortune Hunting for having the opposite problem

(also the fat shaming is over the top, god forbid a bored concubine enjoys food)

...And I rage quit:

"I would propose keeping a personal bodyguard with you at all times," Pennekheb said. "One can't be too careful." "I really don't think that's necessary." She didn't care to always have someone lurking in her shadow.

WOMAN YOU ARE THE REGENT OF EGYPT YOU NEED BODYGUARDS! Also again, not a Egyptian historian, but I really imagine she would've been shadowed by a bunch of servants from birth.

I wouldn't trust this woman to run her own life much less the country

Freaking modern woman cosplaying as a badass Egyptian queen

[bethanydelleman]

I highly recommend the book The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold and the free podcast, Bad Women (S1) by Pushkin which covers the same material (though the book has more detail).

It's not about the crime or Jack the Ripper, it's about the women who were killed, the majority of whom were not connected with the sex trade at all. Their lives are fascinating and so full of different experiences. The book is an amazing window into the lives of lower/middle class women and their struggles.

Though it's set in the Victorian era, the ways these women and others in poverty were treated and thought of is hauntingly familiar. Disability and mental health problems are a major factor in many of the women's lives as well.

Also, the British military backdated someone's marriage so their kids would be legitimate and I find that strangely satisfying.

[bethanydelleman]

I randomly picked up a light novel called Qualia the Purple by Hisamitsu Ueo and Shirou Tsunashima and I loved it!

I didn't know anything about it, I just picked it out of the manga section in a used book store. I didn't even see the girls' love marking on the back and I took a really long time to realize it was science fiction. At first it seemed like a cute little high school novel where this girl didn't realize she was in love with her friend who sees everyone as robots but then it got INSANE. It reminded me of This is How You Lose the Time War. Spoilers below:

The main character had her hand cut off by a serial killer and then her friend "repaired" her with parts from her cell phone and then she went on a parallel universe quest to keep her friend from being killed by scientists. She ended up dying over and over again and rewriting the universe to save her friend.

Some quotes:

Maybe Yukari's death wasn't an accident... I didn't have any real proof. I was mostly just taking out my frustration. Yet I got stuck on that idea. I needed it. A color to paint my blank mind. Something to burn on the fuel of my feelings so I wouldn't have to think.

We met miraculously -improbably- in this wide world. No matter how many people there may be in the world, no matter how many hugs, no matter how many kisses, that encounter of ours, that kiss, belongs to us alone. That feeling when we embraced and looked into each other's eyes, belongs to me alone, my qualia of purple.

Lol, this review: "one of the most heartwarming, romantic applications of quantum physics you've yet seen."

If you want to read science fiction yuri, it's great!

[bethanydelleman]

I love how in The Hobbit both Bilbo and Gollum think they've told the easiest riddle ever that even a toddler could solve and they're going to lose the riddle game but they don't realize that one has been underground for over a hundred years and doesn't remember eggs very well or that one doesn't fish and therefore has no idea what "mail never clinking" would refer to.

Gollum being like, "He'll get the fish one, everyone knows about fish."

Bilbo:

(and vice versa with Gollum and the eggs and the sun)

[bethanydelleman]

Bilbo is only ever half committed to this adventuring stuff. He'll be excited for a few days but the second they run low on food he's like, "Why did I ever leave my Hobbit hole this was the worst idea ever."

I love a hero who is both surprisingly competent and a whiney baby.

[bethanydelleman]

I keep thinking about Katniss's relationship with her mom and how it's this perfect representation of how you keep the oppressed from seeing their real oppressor.

Katniss's dad dies in a mine explosion, leaving behind Mom, Katniss, and Prim. Katniss is still too young to qualify for the charity food, so the mom needs to work to make up for the loss of the dad's income. Unfortunately, the mom goes catatonic with grief and they all almost starve to death. Katniss despises her mom and admires Gale's mother, as Gale's mother worked herself to the bone doing laundry to keep her kids alive...

Except, Gale's mother couldn't keep her kids alive on her income, that's why Gale traps animals. Katniss is mad at her mother for not doing the impossible, for not being able to replace the main breadwinner's income in exactly 1 month. And even while she blames her mother, she observes that people starve to death in District 12 all the time. It's normal.

Which means this was never a failure of her mother's, it was always a failure of the system itself. No government should be routinely allowing it's citizens to starve, especially after something like a mine explosion. They gave Katniss a medal instead of the means to live. But Katniss can't take down a government or fix a broken system so she does the same thing we all do: she redirects her anger towards something accessible, her mom.

It's why people blame "welfare queens" when the welfare cheque is far too small. We hate people who abuse the system (or at least we perceive that they abuse it) instead of recognizing that the system itself is unjust. And the Capital encourages this by turning district against district in The Hunger Games, don't hate the people who put your children in the arena, hate the kid from 2 that actually used the knife.

Katniss can't help it, it's not her fault that she feels that way. It's what we do. Governments and multinational companies are faceless and untouchable, so we hate the people beside us. And so corruption and oppression lives, until we lift our eyes and find the real evil.

[bethanydelleman]

I deeply appreciate how Katniss is portrayed as not at all okay from the beginning. Her dad dying, her mom's catatonia, and almost starving to death already cracked her, but she was determined to survive. Normal people don't think to themselves, "Ah yes, my sister, the only person I'm sure I love." Normal people don't "accept" hugs from their mom.

Prim being picked and the games themselves widened that crack. Having to pretend to be in love with Peeta and not knowing how she felt just further messed her up and left her unable to use supports she needed.

And when it's announced that she's going back into the games and she just loses it and smashes through a window and screams, then gets drunk. It feels so much more real than her facing any of this heroically or stoically. She's an incredibly broken person and they keep trying to tear her apart. All she really manages to do most of the time is not fall to pieces. That is her ability. That is her resilience. She is the person who can walk forever without falling down but that's not right.

It's so freaking sad because she has all this love and beauty inside her and it can't get out because she's so broken. She can't even properly identify love. She feels she has to justify herself for not wanting Peeta to die. You can see glimpses of what an unbroken Katniss would look like and it would be amazing but at 11 years old that Katniss was crushed and never allowed to be.

She is so human and so weak and so blind in so many ways and I really love it.

[bethanydelleman]

Shakespearean Men believing their wife/betrothed is cheating on them by evidence offered, ranked from most sympathetic to least:

1. Othello, Othello: subject to a premeditated slander campaign, handkerchief used as evidence, takes a while for him to believe it. Understandable, if horrible, and very tragic.

2. Posthumus, Cymbeline: proof in the form of a love token and the description of his wife's body. Also kind of understandable because they were subject to a seperation of unknown length. Murder was a little extreme though...

3. Claudio, Much Ado About Nothing: tricked by a man who literally just tricked him, sees two figures in the dark and a woman calling herself "Hero", immediately willing to believe it. Somewhat understandable, I guess, maybe.

4. Leontes, The Winter's Tale: VIBES. Pure vibes, man.

At some point between 3 and 4, did Shakespeare just lose his faith in humanity?