Joshua Glasgow > Recent Status Updates

I’m pretty positive I added this to my WTRs a long while back when specifically searching for books by graduates of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. This promises to be about incarceration and justice and forgiveness and humanity. I’m not far in yet, but I’m feeling optimistic that I’ll like it.

I’m still so early in the book that I don’t have a solid grasp on it, so it’s possible I’ll hear a few minutes more tomorrow and realize this was a ridiculous thought, but is this being narrated by the dog? If so, that is not what I had anticipated.

Audiobook. I barely got started with it, just listened on the way back from dropping Odo off this morning. Not even 10 minutes in.

Maybe tomorrow? Again, things are clearer still about what Sasha’s education has been for, yet at the same time, it’s too abstract to really understand. It really feels like we’re rolling up to the “To Be Continued”. She’s nearing the end of her metamorphosis, so to speak. Then what? Am I going to have to read the second book? I suppose I must.

Well… what Sasha is learning is becoming clearer, in a sense (she’s… transforming? gaining powers? becoming a “concept”?), but is still overall unclear. I’m aware this is a trilogy, and I’m starting to understand that this book is most likely all setup for the next in the series.

“Sasha, do you consider yourself a corporeal entity?”

Finished “Part I” and what Sasha is learning is still very shrouded. Her teachers keep telling her she couldn’t understand. I guess it’s giving her super abilities, though, kind of? Something about seeing beyond this plane of reality? If the book would stop playing games and get to what it wants to say already, it could be interesting. But now I’m nearly halfway through and still frustrated.

Still waiting for the plot to become clearer at 1/4 in. Sasha is at school now, learning… what exactly? She doesn’t know, and everybody is intentionally, frustratingly cryptic about it when she asks. There’s only so much of this obfuscation I can take. Mystery alone isn’t enough to sustain a story. Hopefully I’m just around the bend from where things come into view and I’ll find I’m speaking too soon.

There better be a good reason why a 16-year-old girl had to repeatedly swim to a buoy naked and then later had to urinate in a public park every morning for months to prove she was worthy to go to Hogwarts or whatever. That all seemed pretty weird. Anyway, Holly has been talking this book up nonstop. I’m eager to find out if it’s as good as she’s been asserting it is.

I should have finished this today. Oh well, I will for sure tomorrow. This section is post-Manzanar and I’m actually liking it a lot more because it’s a lot about her racial identity and her internal struggle about how others see her and how she sees herself. This feels much more personal and therefore more immediate.

The B&D, yes, good. The D&S: perfect, no notes. The S&M… yikes. I’m sorry, there’s a balance here and the book sometimes upsets it by becoming too cruel/disturbing. I’m not really soothed by the assurances that O is actually into it, at least after the fact. I’d say that disturbing stuff hasn’t been *too* frequent, but it has cropped up (no pun intended) a few times and has made me uneasy.

I’m reading this a lot slower than I anticipated I would. Not sure why that is, it’s really pretty short. It’s also… I dunno, not quite what I had expected. I think I might have said it in my last update at 18% but I feel the same: the outrage, the horror, the visceral reaction I expected to feel isn’t coming through, for the most part. I wonder if it would be different had she been an adult at the time.

PRISONER’S DILEMMA had sections about Japanese internment during WWII and it struck me how similar to present day ICE this is. I sought out books related to the topic and this was a recommendation. It’s a short nonfiction YA novel apparently a lot of people read in high school. I’m a little concerned so far that it doesn’t tell the story as viscerally as it ought. It feels written very much at a remove.

A chapter on transgenderism and the State advocates for police abolition, taking major cues from Angela Y. Davis. Prison abolition is an imperative for a just society, if we are ever to have such a thing. The fact that SCOTUS has invented all of these bullshit “tests” for when they’ll actually follow the law/Constitution and doesn’t subject incarceration to strict scrutiny is proof that the Court is a fraud.

Faye makes an analogy here between trans healthcare and abortion. Both are not, generally, “medically necessary” but relate to individuals’ autonomy over their own bodies. Unfortunately, the “moral panic” of the mob tends to supersede self-direction. It’s so disheartening to know that society keeps repeating the same mistakes again and again. We take 1 step forward and 3 steps back.

Ever since I learned you can copy text from photos, I started taking pics of pages from my books to keep quotes rather than writing them myself or using talk-to-text. I just have to remember to actually go back and copy the text from the images into a note. I have 20 pictures (so far) that I need to copy over and then delete. All of which is to say: I’m taking down a fair number of quotes. If that means anything!

As today is Transgender Day of Visibility (evidenced by lots of posts of trans flags but few posts celebrating trans PEOPLE), I decided to start this book after finishing DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL. I tried starting it once before but wasn’t in the right headspace for it, wanted something lighter/easier. I’m ready now. I think it’ll be a fairly quick read. It’s 496 Kobo pages, which should be a snap.

I mean… it is living up to expectations. 😳 I looked at some reviews of the book on GR and a number of them objected that the sex scenes were too tame. I don’t agree with that complaint. They seem plenty explicit to me.

I’m finding this book compulsively readable, which Is a great feeling. I’m picking it up to read with any few seconds I get and stayed up later than I ought because I couldn’t put it down. Still, I can’t imagine giving it 5 stars. Probably a solid four. That said, I’m getting close to the end now and there’s way too much game left. I’m afraid we’re getting a “To Be Continued…” Hope I’m wrong.

It’s got momentum and it’s keeping me engaged. I’m not really a big gamer. My go-tos are MarioKart and Kirby. I feel like I’d get more out of this if I were more of a video game nerd than I am. Nevertheless, I’m having fun reading it and I’m getting through it fast. Not sure how to feel about its, like, literary worth or whatever. Still considering that.

Latest audiobook. This is BDSM erotica which has been on my radar for a while. I have mixed feelings about it so far, as I imagine must be the point. O’s treatment is both titillating and disturbing in equal measure. Also, the first 53 minutes of this audiobook was foreword and introductions, which is kind of insane to me. Luckily, I had it playing at 1.5x speed but sheesh.

There’s been hints that Eddie Sr. is creating a fake world, maybe in miniature but probably just on paper, called Hobstown. I thought it was a major element of the book but here we are 3/4 of the way through and it still hasn’t been fully explained or exhibited. Is Powers saving it for the end?

I could have read more today but played video games instead. There was a section of the book on Japanese internment and I realized it’s a part of American history I’m aware of but I have never heard voices of survivors. I added a few recommendations on the subject to my WTRs after reading that part of the book.

Seeth and Kerwin are revealed to be brothers about halfway in. Until that point, they never once mentioned being brothers. Now they can’t stop bringing it up. The book also wants to have its cake and eat it too regarding Miranda. She’s ditzy 90% of the time but sometimes acts very smart like it’s no big deal. It’s like OH-HO WOMEN BE SHOPPIN’, but also: feminism. But also: WOMEN TALK TOO MUCH, AMIRITE!!

Not much new read but I want to say something I haven’t expressed (here) yet. This reminds me a lot of ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’. These upper-class, well-educated, white characters who speak to each other in metaphors—sometimes to the point of being silly. But there’s a lot of poetry packed into everything Powers writes and I am definitely drawn to that. Overall, I guess I’m feeling positive about the book.

A character in this book, instead of “pal”, called another character his “palamino”. Weirdly, in the book I’m currently reading to Odesa (FIZZOPOLIS #2: FLOOZOMBIES), the protagonist calls his friend “palamino” as well. I have NEVER, so far as I can recall, read a book where a person calls another “palamino”. And now I’m reading two simultaneously? It’s kinda bonkers.

I don’t know how I’m feeling about it. 3.5, I guess? Good, not great. Some really incisive moments but not the tour de force LINCOLN was. Still—on the whole? Pretty good. I’d like to finish tomorrow if I can. Only 34 more pages. That’s doable.

In case it was keeping you up at night with worry, I've written about 2/3 of my review for ADULT CHILDREN OF EMOTIONALY IMMATURE PARENTS. It's going to be one of those long ones where part of the review is in comments because I had so much to say: in this case, mainly lengthy, direct quotes from the book. Anyway: hopefully I'll write the rest... this week? We shall seeeeeeeeeeee