Elizabeth > Recent Status Updates

I was excited to read a lighter werewolf novel after the trans werewolf horror YA _The Transition_, but this middle-schooler's anxiety is killing me.

> ["]Maybe you have heard of Nine Inch Nails?" He looks around, but only the counselors nod their heads.

I am withering into dust.

Huh. "[1952 lesbian pulp novel] SPRING FIRE's author, Vin Packer, was a pseudonym for Marijane Meaker, who would go one to write young adult novels as M. E. Kerr."

Oh, that was a really excellent punchline* to that scene.

* "punchline" is not the correct word, I don't think, but I don't know what is, and I'm tired.

Moments that have not aged well

"Ayana: The DOE office you are now running is the one that, for example, gave the big government loan that saved Tesla from an early demise.

Jigar: Yeah, and we're proud of that. I think that loan changed the face of personal car transportation."

I am amused that Fern mentions "Copernicus presented his revolutionary hypothesis," and I'm like, "Oh, I read a thread during Synod ranting about Copernicus" (https://bsky.app/profile/triquetra3.b...).

Okay, I did not see THAT coming.

The end of the "wrath" chapter feels like a good place to pause.

"As my late mother once said, with great power comes great back pain and stress."

I appreciate the reminder at the beginning of this Sherri Mitchell essay ("Indigenous Prophecy and Mother Earth") that "science" is not inherently neutral/positive.

How many times do we think I'm going to cry (positive) at the end of this book? This is at least the second time.

Oh, our first mention of lesbians. Like, it's the 1980s NYC ball scene, and I've seen S1 of Pose, so I expected it was gonna be all trans women who are into men, and gay men. Lesbians are so much not a part of this book that it honestly feels jarring to have them mentioned -- like, if you know they exist, where are they?

"But traditionally religious people build their lives around intense personal relationships with someone who is even worse at fitting into human categories or definitions of nature than we [trans people] are: God."

"But in a controversial 1978 decision, the European Court of Human Rights held that the techniques, while 'inhuman and degrading,' did not amount to torture. (In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2011, when the American administration of George W. Bush was fashioning its own 'enhanced interrogation' techniques, officials relied explicitly on this decision to justify the use of torture.)"

Reading about the "sparrows" in Filipine history, I wonder if Stronach was (partially) drawing on that with the Sparrows in _The Dawnhounds_.

Learning so much I didn't know.

"In the aftermath of the Edsa Revolution, Thai protestors filled the streets of Bangkok. Another man stood before another tank at Tiananmen Square. The Berlin Wall fell, with Germany thanking the Philippines for showing them the way.

Once upon a time, we were heroes."

Does Barbara Kingsolver always write like this? I am on page 1 of my first book of hers and the writing style is A Lot.

[Healing] Can be a haircut, a blow job, an accessible dance party, a Reiki treatment---or all four at once.

"I’ve learned to reframe telling people as inviting in, instead of coming out—inviting into a place of trust, a space for building"

Aww, I cried :)

Okay, I have a guess as to who the murderer is.

"We are deluged by information regarding our destruction of the world and hear almost nothing about how to nurture it. It is no surprise then that environmentalism becomes synonymous with dire predictions and powerless feelings."

Yeah, this book continues to not feel slow-paced. Looking back for the review(s) which had asserted it was, I was amused to find one that calls it "fast paced" :)

From GR reviews, I was prepared for this to feel really slow-paced -- but that is not particularly how I would describe this opening so far. (This is not a criticism. And I can definitely imagine this lengthy book feeling slow-paced in some ways as it goes along.)

I'm late starting this book for book club, but it reads quickly from jump.

Have finished the Prose section.

"The answers could be combined in a seemingly infinite number of ways yet always will result in something dead."