Megan > Recent Status Updates

Sir!! "The precept "Love thy neighbor as thyself," breeds in us most often the disposition to see one's neighbor merely as a poor imitation of oneself, and to hate him if he proves different."

"Those embarrassed about occasional impotence would do well not to visit medieval Europe. (Actually, as I hope this book makes abundantly clear, no one should ever take any opportunity to visit medieval Europe.)"

The footnotes in this book have me in stitches: "I should note that, this being an ancient poem that no longer exists in its entirety, there are many translations of it, and I have consciously selected Anthony Kline's 2005 interpretation for having a closing line that could most easily be mistaken for a Mitski lyric."

"She smiled, really smiled. It was bright and lopsided and absolutely stunning. It only lasted for a second, but he saw the impression of it behind his eyelids the way he might see a firework that had gone out. Then she frowned and raised her fingers to her lips, as if she was confused by her own moment of happiness. Which, aside from anything else, was pretty fucking depressing."

(romancelandia filter) I don't think I've ever been as literally stunned by anything in this community as much as I am now. I'm sad and enraged and (I hate saying this phrase so much, but...) as a reader/reviewer of color, I feel like the masks are off as to what prominent authors of color apparently mean by their calls for diverse romance. Much love and support to my fellow readers and reviewers of color.

"The appropriation of black language cannot be stopped, except only if we were to leave for Mars and never come back. At issue isn't the transmission, but the vacuous want behind it--as if black culture lives to rescue mass culture from boredom. (...) For the curse to be undone, the desire must be undone, and undoing the desire means taking a knife to its insides and learning what it's full of."

This was surprise bookmail for me (I forgot I entered a giveaway for it; thanks, Kensington). The cover's very pretty in person--the twinkly shiny stars!--and I'm very excited to read this.

This is literally my only social media account, so my public support is going here: The Board of Directors & the Ethics Committee of the Romance Writers of America has chosen to protect bigotry. It's not my professional organization, but I benefit from the industry (& financially contribute to it), & I'm angry on behalf of authors who've worked so hard to try to make their professional organization less racist.

Finished Volume I. I'm feeling the secondhand (and thirdhand) embarrassment so acutely this reread.

I'm doing a Lazarus Family Greatest Hits (An Unnatural Vice, Any Old Diamonds) reread in preparation for Gilded Cage. Lucky me, those two books are also--and this is probably not a coincidence--my favorite books by Charles.

How to recognize a heroine in history, in this case heiress and forensics pioneer Frances Glessner Lee: "She'd also managed to alienate J. Edgar Hoover. (...) Eventually, the FBI put a note in her file indicating that she was 'somewhat antagonistic.'"

Reading highlights the intersection of narrative and self-image to create compelling explorations of identity. Reading allows us to witness ourselves. (Edim)

Church was my refuge, one of the few places where my sensitivity, my creativity, and my penchant for bigger questions and larger feelings were embraced. Those were all parts of myself that I had to silence at karate practice, in physical education class, and on the playground. But not at church.

"Though later, as always, you'd realize that what you knew about the worst of the world, the knowledge about life you'd stored up, tart and proud because of where you'd been born, what you'd run from, what'd made you, all amounted to--mostly nothing, like anyone else's stupid history. It didn't make you any wiser or stronger, the way you hoped, the way you usually played it. It just made you you."

I am enjoying this book so much. "It was strange to have respect for a child, and stranger still to lose respect for one. With all her toothsome pride, Hero would have expected Roni to be above that kind of embarrassment. That she wasn't somehow irritated Hero."

"The defendant's assembled supporters claimed to feel the presence of the departed not only in a place as close to the veil between this world and the next as the Tombs was thought to be, but throughout the Empire City and the haunted nation around it. They filled the courtroom on a Monday morning in springtime not just because Mumler was in danger, but because they feared their beliefs might be."

High-five across history to Walter Reed; one of his virtues was that he didn't believe evangelicalism was for kids: "[...] when his son, Lawrence, was in school, Reed was incensed to learn of a Methodist revival there: "I don't approve of such things for Children," he wrote. "My boy hasn't done anything that he should be told that he is lost since and in danger of hell-fire.""

"The yellow fever epidemic of 1878 altered the fabric of the city forever. By the turn of the century, the original population of Memphis was almost entirely replaced by one much more provincial, Protestant fundamentalism and white supremacy flourished, and cultural diversity all but disappeared. (...) Immigrant populations ceased to move to Memphis, or the South in general, in the great numbers they once had."

The writing has no chill; forgivable, given the subject matter: "The city collapsed, hemorrhaging its population, its income, its viability. Trains pulled away, leaving people weeping beside the tracks, their last chance at escape gone as the final train cars rolled to a start. (...) In July of [1878], [Memphis] boasted a population of 47,000. By September, 19,000 remained and 17,000 of them had yellow fever."

Finished "Memoirs: Looking Back." A common thread that interested me in the three preacher memoirs was that when God calls you to preaching and Satan tells you to stop, that you won't be good enough (and human men tell you to stop and thwart you at every opportunity), listen to God. :) The other two memoirs (Lucy Delaney, Ella Sheppard) were also interesting, and I want to read them in their entirety.