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lebateleur) wrote2020-04-23 04:08 pm
lebateleur) wrote2020-04-23 04:08 pm
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What Am I Reading...Thursday - 23 April
My energy is at its lowest point on Wednesdays with this schedule and so I post Wednesday's meme on Thursday.
What I Just Finished Reading
Kushiel’s Dart – Jacqueline Carey
It’s been awhile since I’ve had such a complicated reaction to a book. Had Kushiel’s Dart been about a femdom ferreting out her clients’ dark political schemes with her talents, I would have been 100 percent on board. But instead it’s about a woman joyfully submitting to sexual dominance to ferret out said secrets, and this, alas, is Not My Thing.
And without the narrative hitting the right kinks, it’s hard to overlook all the weaknesses in the novel’s worldbuilding. Why is “whore” a common insult in a society where “love as thou wilt” is supposedly the highest spiritual law? How exactly is selling prepubescent children into servitude until they service enough clients in adulthood to purchase their freedom different from rape or sexual slavery, as the protagonist repeatedly insists? What happens to those adepts whose preferences don’t align with the practices of the house into which they’re sold? Is being fucked and dominated to the threshold of death really the only way the protagonist could possibly make so many people spill their secrets? Why do so many of the major political players all share this specific kink? If the main character really is the only woman in three generations who enjoys this sort of sexual domination, why do so many nobles have BDSM chambers in their manors? Who exactly are they whipping with all those goads, chaining to all those walls? On whom did they learn to wield those flechettes so adeptly? And then there’s the protagonist’s repeated praising of the inherent blood superiority of her countrymen, which, although believable for the character, still evokes the heebie-jeebies in at least this reader.
And yet.
And yet, there’s also Joscelin Verreuil, aka, proto-Beshelar, a ninja-cum-celibate monk whose initial self-righteous, priggish horror at being assigned to protect our sexual submissive protagonist spy puts him through a narrative wringer (menial servitude! Imprisonment in a kennel!) and culminates in his choosing apostacy out of loyalty to the protagonist. And I. Yes. This is very much My Thing.
So I finished the novel with 3 parts exasperation to 1 part Utter Squee over the glory of the character that is Joscelin and will probably rely on fanfic to explore all the most intriguing aspects of the universe that Carey outlines but doesn't really explore.
A Liberated Mind – Steven Hayes
Hayes is the “originator” (his term) of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT. ACT uses six pivots—defusion, perspective-taking, acceptance, presence (i.e., mindfulness), values, and action—to improve a person’s psychological flexibility in the face of adversity. Hayes is deeply enthusiastic about ACT—sometimes to a fault—but there’s a lot to be said for many elements of its approach. Of A Liberated Mind’s three sections, the first, which explains the mental roadblocks and misapprehensions that lead to rumination, self-condemnation, and similar mental ruts; and the second, which discusses the six pivots in detail, are the strongest. The third section is ostensibly about applying ACT to various facets of life (e.g. spirituality, work, addiction) but reads more like an extended infomercial for the approach.
ACT owes a lot to other methods for taming the mind, such as CBT, or Zen or metta meditation, and to be honest, the latter work far better for me because I find much of the ACT approach twee (e.g. imagine your difficult thoughts as leaves floating away on a stream, tell yourself “I’m incapable of walking around this room” while walking around the room, write your fears on notecards and carry them with you throughout the day). But my guess is those methods will probably work for people who find other methods too austere or abstract, and as the principles underpinning them all are the same, it can't hurt to have ACT in the arsenal alongside the other methodologies.
What I Am Currently Reading
The Goblin Emperor – Katherine Addison
For reasons.
The Magpie Lord – KJ Charles
Six chapters in, this is shaping up to be exactly the sort of Victorian potboiler pulp romance novel I need right now.
The Starless Sea – Erin Morgenstern
Last week I barely got through a chapter; this week I read a third of the book in a sitting. There are definitely days when I’m more in the mood for this novel than others.
おまけのこ – 畠中 恵 (Omake no Ko – Hatakenaka Megumi)
To recap: protagonist Ohina wears freakishly heavy makeup despite being mocked because she’s afraid to go out in public without it. Through a comic twist of events, she unwittingly compels a byobunozoki to talk her through the problem as an ad hoc therapist. His appeals to logic fall on deaf ears, but he’s able to convince Ohina to give up the makeup by showing her the thousands of empty cosmetic wrappers (the chapter’s eponymous tataugami) her grandparents have collected from her trash, dated, and saved every day, for years after she applies her makeup each morning. Oh, my grandparents love me and worry about my problem, a chastised Ohina thinks upon seeing the mountains of carefully hoarded wrappers. Maybe tomorrow I can go out without my makeup on.
But. The loving, worrying grandparents' reaction to their granddaughter’s problem was to carefully collect, date, and save her trash—for years—instead of, maybe, you know, talking to her. Because, of course, Japan.
We shall see what this week’s chapter brings.
What I'm Reading Next
I’ve acquired the first several novels of Terri Winding’s Borderlands series, as well as the last three Murderbot novellas courtesy of Tor.
これで以上です。
What I Just Finished Reading
Kushiel’s Dart – Jacqueline Carey
It’s been awhile since I’ve had such a complicated reaction to a book. Had Kushiel’s Dart been about a femdom ferreting out her clients’ dark political schemes with her talents, I would have been 100 percent on board. But instead it’s about a woman joyfully submitting to sexual dominance to ferret out said secrets, and this, alas, is Not My Thing.
And without the narrative hitting the right kinks, it’s hard to overlook all the weaknesses in the novel’s worldbuilding. Why is “whore” a common insult in a society where “love as thou wilt” is supposedly the highest spiritual law? How exactly is selling prepubescent children into servitude until they service enough clients in adulthood to purchase their freedom different from rape or sexual slavery, as the protagonist repeatedly insists? What happens to those adepts whose preferences don’t align with the practices of the house into which they’re sold? Is being fucked and dominated to the threshold of death really the only way the protagonist could possibly make so many people spill their secrets? Why do so many of the major political players all share this specific kink? If the main character really is the only woman in three generations who enjoys this sort of sexual domination, why do so many nobles have BDSM chambers in their manors? Who exactly are they whipping with all those goads, chaining to all those walls? On whom did they learn to wield those flechettes so adeptly? And then there’s the protagonist’s repeated praising of the inherent blood superiority of her countrymen, which, although believable for the character, still evokes the heebie-jeebies in at least this reader.
And yet.
And yet, there’s also Joscelin Verreuil, aka, proto-Beshelar, a ninja-cum-celibate monk whose initial self-righteous, priggish horror at being assigned to protect our sexual submissive protagonist spy puts him through a narrative wringer (menial servitude! Imprisonment in a kennel!) and culminates in his choosing apostacy out of loyalty to the protagonist. And I. Yes. This is very much My Thing.
So I finished the novel with 3 parts exasperation to 1 part Utter Squee over the glory of the character that is Joscelin and will probably rely on fanfic to explore all the most intriguing aspects of the universe that Carey outlines but doesn't really explore.
A Liberated Mind – Steven Hayes
Hayes is the “originator” (his term) of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT. ACT uses six pivots—defusion, perspective-taking, acceptance, presence (i.e., mindfulness), values, and action—to improve a person’s psychological flexibility in the face of adversity. Hayes is deeply enthusiastic about ACT—sometimes to a fault—but there’s a lot to be said for many elements of its approach. Of A Liberated Mind’s three sections, the first, which explains the mental roadblocks and misapprehensions that lead to rumination, self-condemnation, and similar mental ruts; and the second, which discusses the six pivots in detail, are the strongest. The third section is ostensibly about applying ACT to various facets of life (e.g. spirituality, work, addiction) but reads more like an extended infomercial for the approach.
ACT owes a lot to other methods for taming the mind, such as CBT, or Zen or metta meditation, and to be honest, the latter work far better for me because I find much of the ACT approach twee (e.g. imagine your difficult thoughts as leaves floating away on a stream, tell yourself “I’m incapable of walking around this room” while walking around the room, write your fears on notecards and carry them with you throughout the day). But my guess is those methods will probably work for people who find other methods too austere or abstract, and as the principles underpinning them all are the same, it can't hurt to have ACT in the arsenal alongside the other methodologies.
What I Am Currently Reading
The Goblin Emperor – Katherine Addison
For reasons.
The Magpie Lord – KJ Charles
Six chapters in, this is shaping up to be exactly the sort of Victorian potboiler pulp romance novel I need right now.
The Starless Sea – Erin Morgenstern
Last week I barely got through a chapter; this week I read a third of the book in a sitting. There are definitely days when I’m more in the mood for this novel than others.
おまけのこ – 畠中 恵 (Omake no Ko – Hatakenaka Megumi)
To recap: protagonist Ohina wears freakishly heavy makeup despite being mocked because she’s afraid to go out in public without it. Through a comic twist of events, she unwittingly compels a byobunozoki to talk her through the problem as an ad hoc therapist. His appeals to logic fall on deaf ears, but he’s able to convince Ohina to give up the makeup by showing her the thousands of empty cosmetic wrappers (the chapter’s eponymous tataugami) her grandparents have collected from her trash, dated, and saved every day, for years after she applies her makeup each morning. Oh, my grandparents love me and worry about my problem, a chastised Ohina thinks upon seeing the mountains of carefully hoarded wrappers. Maybe tomorrow I can go out without my makeup on.
But. The loving, worrying grandparents' reaction to their granddaughter’s problem was to carefully collect, date, and save her trash—for years—instead of, maybe, you know, talking to her. Because, of course, Japan.
We shall see what this week’s chapter brings.
What I'm Reading Next
I’ve acquired the first several novels of Terri Winding’s Borderlands series, as well as the last three Murderbot novellas courtesy of Tor.
これで以上です。
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I've re-read The Goblin Emperor several times. So good!
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The Goblin Emperor is definitely comfort food reading for me. I have to take breaks from it so I can forget parts of the story before I re-read it again.
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Why do so many of the major political players all share this specific kink?
This contrivance really, really bugged me, too.
If the main character really is the only woman in three generations who enjoys this sort of sexual domination, why do so many nobles have BDSM chambers in their manors? Who exactly are they whipping with all those goads, chaining to all those walls?
IIRC, while Phedre is the first anguisette in three generations, that means she has, like, preternatural-level masochism powers? Like, similar to a state of religious rapture, and she can handle a lot more pain than a non-god-touched person could. But there are still, and have been, people who enjoy, like, human levels of BDSM. IIRC, Valerian at Night Court is where you would find those adepts, and presumably there are also just regular people who enjoy it with their long-term or casual partners. (I don't know why I feel compelled to explain worldbuilding I found stupid in a book I didn't particularly like, but here we are :P)
And then there’s the protagonist’s repeated praising of the inherent blood superiority of her countrymen, which, although believable for the character, still evokes the heebie-jeebies in at least this reader.
Yeahhhhh. This does not get better in the first trilogy (I think, possibly, worse, as Phedre meets more people who are not D'Angeline and continues to feel superior to all of them). I was actually not at all sure, during the first trilogy, whether this was a character detail (believable, as you say) or actual authorial POV, which would've made it so much worse. The second trilogy switches narrators, and apparently it was just a Phedre POV thing, which I found retroactively reassuring. But man, that never stopped being a huge turn-off.
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I was definitely wondering about this, so thank you. I've been toying with the idea of getting hold of the sequels to "just read the parts I'm interested in," but since I'm constitutionally incapable of skimming this would inevitably devolve into reading each entire book. It's good to know things do improve somewhat if I ultimately end up going that route.
(I don't know why I feel compelled to explain worldbuilding I found stupid in a book I didn't particularly like, but here we are :P)
I'm glad you did though. ^^ Broken record warning--as female submission is not my kink and because the Night Court's recruitment system rubs my 20th century social sensibilities the wrong way, my attention was on other aspects of the story. I was much more interested in learning what Phedre and Alcuin would do after they purchased their independence and the legal right to use their skills independently of Delauney's whims. Alas, the narrative disappointed me on that front, too...
This does not get better in the first trilogy (I think, possibly, worse, as Phedre meets more people who are not D'Angeline and continues to feel superior to all of them).
I was worried about that. Even in the first book, I found Skaldi culture--where people call a slave a slave--preferable to the disingenuous decadence of D'Angeline society.
The second trilogy switches narrators, and apparently it was just a Phedre POV thing, which I found retroactively reassuring. But man, that never stopped being a huge turn-off.
Yeah, mm. Thanks for this insight--at the very least, it sounds like I should take a substantial breather before I pick the series back up, if indeed I ultimately do.