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Aug. 7th, 2007 07:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
furyofvissarionWater Logic - Laurie J. Marks. This is not a book one can read quickly. That's a good thing--it forced me to linger over it, rather than inhaling it in my usual style. There's a lot of beautiful, comfortable, somehow comforting slice-of-life stuff: Marks shows that the world doesn't just revolve around rebellions & wars, but runs on cups of tea, scouring pots, baking bread. I really loved all the domestic details; it didn't feel gross or gendered, either. And I love the relationships her characters have w/each other; I love that there's this somewhat amorphous mass of people who consider themselves a family, even though only some of them are sleeping w/each other, & some other folks have had children that everyone takes care of (honestly, since Earth Logic I couldn't even remember who'd fathered the children!). What I found tedious in this book was the whole plot about Zanja being pulled back in time. It seemed a little too precious & mystical in parts, &... I dunno, I think sometimes the magic in this series is a little too nonspecific for me to grasp or believe easily, & I think Zanja's whole journey back, like how the water witch got her there & put her back, reeked of that. Still, I am happy to keep reading & am anxious for Air Logic to appear!
Woman's Best Friend: Women Writers on the Dogs in Their Lives - Edited by Megan McMorris. Awwww! You can't really go wrong w/an anthology about dogs, I've found. Even if some of the pieces made me really irritated. Maybe your dog throws up all the time b/c you're feeding her crap, including the vet-prescribed crap! And another woman talks about how she was against puppy mills & pet shops, & then ends up buying her son a mini dachshund from one (&, when he hugs the dog & says, "His name is Cutie!" she, always having had dogs w/pretentious names, says, "What about Rilke, since dachshunds are German dogs? Or Goethe?" Are you kidding me?). There were a lot of tear-jerking moments in this anthology. My one big thematic complaint was that pretty much every essay was about the dog fitting into family/couple/baby life (heterosexual, natch). Lots of other types of women have dogs, y'know!
Can We Talk About Race? And Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation - Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph.D. This book is slim but v. weighty, comprising a series of lectures Tatum (author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?) gave. One thing that struck me was how screwed-up the concept of IQ testing is from its source, & how biased science was in deploying it. She mentions someone who used it & found that men w/more schooling scored higher. Instead of concluding that schooling improved brainpower, the researcher concluded that the men who went for more schooling were naturally smarter (never mind considering issues of privilege in who got to go to school)! She also talks about how many schools are more segregated now than they were in the post-Brown vs. Board of Education era. Many schoolchildren are growing up w/o any personal relationship w/children of other races; instead, they gain their information about them from (racist, natch) media. I was fortunate enough to go to a school w/a large number of people of color (even if there were virtually no Asians to provide models for me & my brothers not being freaks), so the idea of growing up & only knowing white people astonishes me. She also talks about how important it is, in interracial friendships, for white people to be open to talking about race issues w/their friends, & to be open to being challenged on their white privilege. Overall this is a v. important book, & highly recommended in tandem w/Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
One at a Time: A Week in an American Animal Shelter - Diane Leigh & Marilee Geyer. I cried so hard reading this. I can't remember the last time I cried as much; maybe when I saw Dekada '70. This book is a series of profiles--photographic & text--of animals that pass through a California animal shelter in one week. Not all of them are profiled, of course: there are too many of them (363, 117 of which were euthanized). The authors kept the stories of the animals in rough proportion to the fates of the animals in a typical shelter: so most of the stories end w/the animal being euthanized. I know people surrender pets to shelters for stupid reasons, but I was floored by some of the examples they used, like a woman who came to pick up her dog from the shelter. The dog had been running loose, & the woman was appalled that she would have to pay a $20 fee to reclaim him, "when he'll just get loose again." So the woman decided on the spot to surrender him to the shelter, even filling out a personality profile talking about what a great & loving dog it was! The book also points out that the AKC will register any puppy for whom records of parentage have been kept--yes, even puppy mill puppies can have AKC papers. It's a cash cow for the AKC, who has, in fact, opposed laws seeking to stop puppy mills. I was horrified.
Woman's Best Friend: Women Writers on the Dogs in Their Lives - Edited by Megan McMorris. Awwww! You can't really go wrong w/an anthology about dogs, I've found. Even if some of the pieces made me really irritated. Maybe your dog throws up all the time b/c you're feeding her crap, including the vet-prescribed crap! And another woman talks about how she was against puppy mills & pet shops, & then ends up buying her son a mini dachshund from one (&, when he hugs the dog & says, "His name is Cutie!" she, always having had dogs w/pretentious names, says, "What about Rilke, since dachshunds are German dogs? Or Goethe?" Are you kidding me?). There were a lot of tear-jerking moments in this anthology. My one big thematic complaint was that pretty much every essay was about the dog fitting into family/couple/baby life (heterosexual, natch). Lots of other types of women have dogs, y'know!
Can We Talk About Race? And Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation - Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph.D. This book is slim but v. weighty, comprising a series of lectures Tatum (author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?) gave. One thing that struck me was how screwed-up the concept of IQ testing is from its source, & how biased science was in deploying it. She mentions someone who used it & found that men w/more schooling scored higher. Instead of concluding that schooling improved brainpower, the researcher concluded that the men who went for more schooling were naturally smarter (never mind considering issues of privilege in who got to go to school)! She also talks about how many schools are more segregated now than they were in the post-Brown vs. Board of Education era. Many schoolchildren are growing up w/o any personal relationship w/children of other races; instead, they gain their information about them from (racist, natch) media. I was fortunate enough to go to a school w/a large number of people of color (even if there were virtually no Asians to provide models for me & my brothers not being freaks), so the idea of growing up & only knowing white people astonishes me. She also talks about how important it is, in interracial friendships, for white people to be open to talking about race issues w/their friends, & to be open to being challenged on their white privilege. Overall this is a v. important book, & highly recommended in tandem w/Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
One at a Time: A Week in an American Animal Shelter - Diane Leigh & Marilee Geyer. I cried so hard reading this. I can't remember the last time I cried as much; maybe when I saw Dekada '70. This book is a series of profiles--photographic & text--of animals that pass through a California animal shelter in one week. Not all of them are profiled, of course: there are too many of them (363, 117 of which were euthanized). The authors kept the stories of the animals in rough proportion to the fates of the animals in a typical shelter: so most of the stories end w/the animal being euthanized. I know people surrender pets to shelters for stupid reasons, but I was floored by some of the examples they used, like a woman who came to pick up her dog from the shelter. The dog had been running loose, & the woman was appalled that she would have to pay a $20 fee to reclaim him, "when he'll just get loose again." So the woman decided on the spot to surrender him to the shelter, even filling out a personality profile talking about what a great & loving dog it was! The book also points out that the AKC will register any puppy for whom records of parentage have been kept--yes, even puppy mill puppies can have AKC papers. It's a cash cow for the AKC, who has, in fact, opposed laws seeking to stop puppy mills. I was horrified.