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Reading update
Finished reading:
Sisters of the vast black by Lina Rather. Finished at last! I’d been spoiled for [thing], but that didn’t lessen my grim enjoyment of the plot when it finally arrived. I also didn’t see [other reveal] coming. I feel like I should have but I didn’t, and frankly kudos for that, author. I’d be tempted to keep reading the series, but all the reviews are talking about how the grim gets grimmer, which is very in line of where it was going, but also not somewhere I want to go myself right now.
How to keep house while you’re drowning by K.C. Davis. After having two people use the word lazy in genuine judgement (not at me!) in my presence within a few days of each other, I finally went looking for a sample of ‘Laziness does not exist’ which has been on my TBR for ages. It wasn’t quite what I was after, but the ‘readers also liked’ gave me the above, which was much more what I was after. This is about separating care tasks like housework, eating, and body cleaning from the framework of morality that so many, many people have them embedded in. The book’s designed for people who have ADHD/depression/grief, and who are generally struggling. I’m struggling way less than that general audience, and it’s a very short, very quick read. I still feel like this book lightly rocked my world’s foundations, and improved it in subtle but profound ways.
Choice quotes: “In fact, I do not think laziness exists. You know what does exist? Executive dysfunction, procrastination, feeling overwhelmed, perfectionism, trauma, amotivation, chronic pain, energy fatigue, depression, lack of skills, lack of support, and differing priorities.”
“If you are completing care tasks from a motivation of shame, you are probably also relaxing in shame too—because care tasks never end and you view rest as a reward for good boys and girls. So if you ever actually let yourself sit down and rest, you’re thinking, “I don’t deserve to do this. There is more to do.”
“How you relate to care tasks—whether you are clean or dirty, messy or tidy, organized or unorganized—has absolutely no bearing on whether you are a good enough person.”
“you do not exist to serve your space, your space exists to serve you.”
“You do not have to care about yourself to care for yourself. So many of us have the cart before the horse here: you think you must first like yourself to start being kind to yourself. It actually works the opposite way: caring for yourself is the greatest tool for learning to care about yourself.”
“As you embark on this journey I invite you to remember these words: “slow,” “quiet,” “gentle.” You are already worthy of love and belonging. This is not a journey of worthiness but a journey of care. A journey of learning how we can care for ourselves when we feel like we are drowning. Because you must know, dear heart, that you are worthy of care whether your house is immaculate or a mess.”
There’s also several incredibly important chapters on rest: the right to rest, the necessity of rest, and the fact that housework task balance in a relationship/household isn’t about who does the tasks, but the importance of everyone getting the amount of rest they need.
Highly recced. As someone on goodreads reviewed: ‘Short, sweet, and validating as fuck.”
Raven, graphic novel by Kami Garcia, illustrated by Gabriel Picolo. I read this because Beast boy kept bumping onto my radar as a Cool Thing, but it was second in a series, Raven is first, and I’m a completionist to my bones. There’s a really fantastic story here that either would have been better served as a traditional prose novel, or as a substantially expanded graphic novel. We get introduced to Raven as she’s involved in a car accident that kills her foster mother. She gets family-fostered into her aunt’s care, and that and her amnesia left me utterly floundering. The references to her mom left me floundering: her foster mom or her birth mom? I had no grounding in who she was before the accident, and only a vague sense of her personality by the end of the novel. There was so much going on with family history, powers, and baddies that as someone who was coming to it utterly cold, I only had the barest of grips on by the end of the book. Left me wanting a much deeper story.
Beast boy by Kami Garcia, illustrated by Gabriel Picolo. I’d been attracted by the opening pages (funny, charming, really good sense of interiority), and by someone’s tumblr screencap of a found family drawn from a neat camera angle. This was much, much better grounded, helped by Gar’s family, friends, and a full set of memories. Also it’s a much more traditional superhero comes into their own narrative, which helps, but it took nearly a month of not-really reading Raven vs three days of reading Beast boy, which feels like a shame.
Currently reading:
How to do the work by Nicole LePera. Got interested in her work via her Twitter account. This is a mix of working through trauma, soothing the body, developing better relationships with yourself and others type stuff. So far it’s a mix of ‘I knew 80% of that, but the rest of the 20% is new and hella useful’, and ‘oooof’ E.g. I know a fair amount about staying present and grounded so that wasn’t too challenging, but goddamn am I bracing myself for some ego work.
At 52% this a cautious rec so far: plenty of good stuff in here, but there’s also a really hefty thread of ‘yoga solved all my client’s problems!’ and also sincere plugging of intermittent fasting to ‘give your digestive system a break’, which… *makes very sour face*. So, rec, with caveats.
Didn’t finish:
Wolfsong by T. J. Klune. I nudged myself into reading the last chapter to see if I wanted to read the intervening 100-odd pages, and the answer was actually, no. Sadly, but no.
Up next:
- The ladies of Grace Adieu. having another go at it as bedtime/book-book reading.
- One of the many, many epubs I got from the Hugo voter’s packet. Probably the short stories and working up to the longer.
Sisters of the vast black by Lina Rather. Finished at last! I’d been spoiled for [thing], but that didn’t lessen my grim enjoyment of the plot when it finally arrived. I also didn’t see [other reveal] coming. I feel like I should have but I didn’t, and frankly kudos for that, author. I’d be tempted to keep reading the series, but all the reviews are talking about how the grim gets grimmer, which is very in line of where it was going, but also not somewhere I want to go myself right now.
How to keep house while you’re drowning by K.C. Davis. After having two people use the word lazy in genuine judgement (not at me!) in my presence within a few days of each other, I finally went looking for a sample of ‘Laziness does not exist’ which has been on my TBR for ages. It wasn’t quite what I was after, but the ‘readers also liked’ gave me the above, which was much more what I was after. This is about separating care tasks like housework, eating, and body cleaning from the framework of morality that so many, many people have them embedded in. The book’s designed for people who have ADHD/depression/grief, and who are generally struggling. I’m struggling way less than that general audience, and it’s a very short, very quick read. I still feel like this book lightly rocked my world’s foundations, and improved it in subtle but profound ways.
Choice quotes: “In fact, I do not think laziness exists. You know what does exist? Executive dysfunction, procrastination, feeling overwhelmed, perfectionism, trauma, amotivation, chronic pain, energy fatigue, depression, lack of skills, lack of support, and differing priorities.”
“If you are completing care tasks from a motivation of shame, you are probably also relaxing in shame too—because care tasks never end and you view rest as a reward for good boys and girls. So if you ever actually let yourself sit down and rest, you’re thinking, “I don’t deserve to do this. There is more to do.”
“How you relate to care tasks—whether you are clean or dirty, messy or tidy, organized or unorganized—has absolutely no bearing on whether you are a good enough person.”
“you do not exist to serve your space, your space exists to serve you.”
“You do not have to care about yourself to care for yourself. So many of us have the cart before the horse here: you think you must first like yourself to start being kind to yourself. It actually works the opposite way: caring for yourself is the greatest tool for learning to care about yourself.”
“As you embark on this journey I invite you to remember these words: “slow,” “quiet,” “gentle.” You are already worthy of love and belonging. This is not a journey of worthiness but a journey of care. A journey of learning how we can care for ourselves when we feel like we are drowning. Because you must know, dear heart, that you are worthy of care whether your house is immaculate or a mess.”
There’s also several incredibly important chapters on rest: the right to rest, the necessity of rest, and the fact that housework task balance in a relationship/household isn’t about who does the tasks, but the importance of everyone getting the amount of rest they need.
Highly recced. As someone on goodreads reviewed: ‘Short, sweet, and validating as fuck.”
Raven, graphic novel by Kami Garcia, illustrated by Gabriel Picolo. I read this because Beast boy kept bumping onto my radar as a Cool Thing, but it was second in a series, Raven is first, and I’m a completionist to my bones. There’s a really fantastic story here that either would have been better served as a traditional prose novel, or as a substantially expanded graphic novel. We get introduced to Raven as she’s involved in a car accident that kills her foster mother. She gets family-fostered into her aunt’s care, and that and her amnesia left me utterly floundering. The references to her mom left me floundering: her foster mom or her birth mom? I had no grounding in who she was before the accident, and only a vague sense of her personality by the end of the novel. There was so much going on with family history, powers, and baddies that as someone who was coming to it utterly cold, I only had the barest of grips on by the end of the book. Left me wanting a much deeper story.
Beast boy by Kami Garcia, illustrated by Gabriel Picolo. I’d been attracted by the opening pages (funny, charming, really good sense of interiority), and by someone’s tumblr screencap of a found family drawn from a neat camera angle. This was much, much better grounded, helped by Gar’s family, friends, and a full set of memories. Also it’s a much more traditional superhero comes into their own narrative, which helps, but it took nearly a month of not-really reading Raven vs three days of reading Beast boy, which feels like a shame.
Currently reading:
How to do the work by Nicole LePera. Got interested in her work via her Twitter account. This is a mix of working through trauma, soothing the body, developing better relationships with yourself and others type stuff. So far it’s a mix of ‘I knew 80% of that, but the rest of the 20% is new and hella useful’, and ‘oooof’ E.g. I know a fair amount about staying present and grounded so that wasn’t too challenging, but goddamn am I bracing myself for some ego work.
At 52% this a cautious rec so far: plenty of good stuff in here, but there’s also a really hefty thread of ‘yoga solved all my client’s problems!’ and also sincere plugging of intermittent fasting to ‘give your digestive system a break’, which… *makes very sour face*. So, rec, with caveats.
Didn’t finish:
Wolfsong by T. J. Klune. I nudged myself into reading the last chapter to see if I wanted to read the intervening 100-odd pages, and the answer was actually, no. Sadly, but no.
Up next:
- The ladies of Grace Adieu. having another go at it as bedtime/book-book reading.
- One of the many, many epubs I got from the Hugo voter’s packet. Probably the short stories and working up to the longer.
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Do you have a copy of Sisters of the Vast Black available for sharing? It is on my long TBR, but I haven't been convinced that it is my thing to the tune of actually acquiring it.
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