#yes tamsyn muir owned my entire ass this year and what about it

[searidings]

reading wrap up 2022 GO

ok so my goal this year was to read 100 books and then i went ahead and read 109. and if i read the locked tomb series three times through that's no one's business but mine <3

italics are queer, bold are amazing, bold italics are queer and amazing

jan:

middlesex - jeffrey eugenides

the mountains sing - nguyên phan qué mai

the vegetarian - han kang

the galaxy and the ground within - becky chambers

to be taught, if fortunate - becky chambers

when we were orphans - kazuo ishiguro

americanah - chimamanda ngozi adichie

h of h playbook - anne carson

klara and the sun - kazuo ishiguro

the space between worlds - micaiah johnson

feb:

normal people - sally rooney

circe - madeline miller

blood of elves - andrzej sapkowski

gideon the ninth - tamsyn muir

time of contempt - andrzej sapkowski

baptism of fire - andrzej sapkowski

march:

the tower of the swallow - andrzej sapkowski

lady of the lake - andrzej sapkowski

harrow the ninth - tamsyn muir

the last wish - andrzej sapkowski

we should all be feminists - chimamanda ngozi adichie

a memory called empire - arkady martine

burnt sugar - avni doshi

a psalm for the wild built - becky chambers

april:

the alchemist - paul coelho

sword of destiny - andrzej sapkowski

oranges are not the only fruit - jeanette winterson

the colour purple - alice walker

the midnight library - matt haig

where the crawdads sing - delia owens

10 minutes 38 seconds in this strange world - elif shafak

the discomfort of evening - marieke lucas rijneveld

crying in h mart - michelle zauner

my year of rest and relaxation - ottessa moshfegh

the shadow king - maaza mengiste

the virgin suicides - jeffrey eugenides

sapiens - yuval noah harari

the manningtree witches - a. k. blakemore

may:

parable of the sower - octavia butler

hot milk - deborah levy

an unkindness of ghosts - rivers solomon

the water dancer - ta-nehisi coates

pure colour - sheila heti

this is how you lose the time war - amal el-mohtar & max gladstone

five little indians - michelle good

june:

indian horse - richard wagamese

ducks, newburyport - lucy ellmann

the vanishing half - brit bennett

medicine walk - richard wagamese

crier's war - nina varela

a quality of light - richard wagamese

after the quake - haruki murakami

death in her hands - ottessa moshfegh

the school for good mothers - jessamine chan

bluets - maggie nelson

of women and salt - gabriela garcia

lapvona - ottessa moshfegh

mcglue - ottessa moshfegh

songbirds - christy lefteri

july:

to paradise - hanya yanagihara

sankofa - chibundu onuzo

the argonauts - maggie nelson

jane: a murder - maggie nelson

eileen - ottessa moshfegh

iron widow - xiran jay zhao

homesick for another world - ottessa moshfegh

a desolation called peace - arkady martine

the art of cruelty: a reckoning - maggie nelson

the witch's heart - genevieve gornichec

dune - frank herbert

aug:

never let me go - kazuo ishiguro

the island of missing trees - elif shafak

the marriage plot - jeffrey eugenides

almond - won-pyung sohn

all over creation - ruth ozeki

the water cure - sophie mackintosh

drive your plow over the bones of the dead - olga tokarczuk

sep:

the remains of the day - kazuo ishiguro

the blind assassin - margaret atwood

go set a watchman - harper lee

a pale view of hills - kazuo ishiguro

seven fallen feathers - tanya talaga

an artist of the floating world - kazuo ishiguro

the atlas six - olivie blake

the inconvenient indian - thomas king

a tale for the time being - ruth ozeki

ru - kim thuy

split tooth - tanya tagaq

wintering - katherine may

nomad century - gaia vince

dune messiah - frank herbert

the unbearable lightness of being - milan kundera

oct:

nona the ninth - tamsyn muir

indians on vacation - thomas king

severance - ling ma

nocturnes - kazuo ishiguro

nona the ninth - tamsyn muir

a prayer for the crown-shy - becky chambers

nov:

gideon the ninth - tamsyn muir

harrow the ninth - tamsyn muir

nona the ninth - tamsyn muir

embers - richard wagamese

dec:

starlight - richard wagamese

the buried giant - kazuo ishiguro

autobiography of red - anne carson

notes on grief - chimamanda ngozi adichie

cloud cuckoo land - anthony doerr

on fire: the burning case for a green new deal - naomi klein

sufferance - thomas king

#thanks for asking bro!! #read some bangers this year that's for sure #read some stinkers too but hey #gotta cast your net wide right #hope you had a great reading year too!! #yes tamsyn muir owned my entire ass this year and what about it #if anyone has great recs that align with the greats i've read this year i am all ears!!! #happy holidays my bro #book recs

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

book blogging #1: Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation

by Olivia Judson, published 2002

Question: what do you think of when you think of books that are “fun” to read?

For me, a lot of speculative fiction comes to mind. Recent books that I found fun include Space Opera (Catherynne M. Valente), The Beautiful Ones (Silvia Moreno-Garcia), and everything by Sarah Gailey that I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. Though I haven’t gotten ahold of it yet, I’m pretty sure Gideon the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir) is going to be spectacularly fun as well. 

These are books that aren’t necessarily my favorite stories of all time, but they have been some of my favorites to read. They’re all propelled by zany premises and whirlwind plots, enjoying themselves way too much for anyone to ever stop and worry about the parts that don’t make that much sense. When Sarah Gailey says “I have a crew committing a heist while riding hippopotamuses, do you want in?” I don’t ask questions. I just say yes and go along for the ride.

But there’s one major anomaly that always comes to mind when I think of books that I’ve had fun reading, and that’s David Sax’s The Tastemakers: Why We’re Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up with Fondue. It’s a 2014 work of nonfiction, and as the title suggests it’s an analysis of popular food trends and the forces that power them. The Tastemakers isn’t what this blog post is actually supposed to be about, so I won’t go into too many details, but suffice to say that I was engrossed despite the fact that I know pretty much nothing about the world of culinary trends or foodie fads - or cooking in general, if I’m being totally honest. But there’s something really delightful about learning things that are entirely outside your wheelhouse without having to worry about the material showing up on a test later. 

Given that I’m posting this on a blog with relatively few followers and that this is a write-up of a very niche book that was published eighteen years ago and could not be further from trendy, I’m well aware that anyone reading this is probably already at least passing familiar with me and what I do, so you folks might be saying, “Hang on, Makenzie. Are you seriously trying to say that this is outside your wheelhouse? The title on your Tumblr has been “Ask The Sex Witch” since 2015. You’re a whole sex educator, for fuck’s sake!”

Well, yes and no. Judson is a real-deal evolutionary biologist and gets into some pretty serious science in this book, which is pretty wildly different from what I usually do. I talk to people about sorting out their likes and dislikes, their boundaries, their sense of personal sexual autonomy, and so on. Although I definitely advocate for introspection and self-examination, I rarely go looking for answers far beyond the individual level. Judson asks big biological questions to figure out how some truly peculiar-looking behavior evolves: Why is it worthwhile for some animals to fight to the death trying to fuck? What’s up with some species of insects eating their mates? And who, pray tell, is engaging in the noble art of penis-fencing? Clearly, this is a totally different ball game on many levels.

(Speaking of ball games, did you know that the male shiner perch’s testes completely shrivel up over the winter? That’s rough, buddy.)

Offering sex advice to humans is hard enough, but Judson - writing as chipper sex advice columnist Dr. Tatiana - easily offers education to an impressively vast variety of species. The framing device of the book is a charmingly weird one. Each segment opening Dear Prudence-style, with a short letter from an animal badly in need of advice. The first chapter, for instance, begins with a query written by a stick bug called Twiggy (aww) wondering how to get her boyfriend to stop having sex with her after ten continuous weeks of intercourse. (Answer: Girl, he’s not gonna. Apparently that’s how he stops any other stick bugs from getting it in.) For the final chapter Judson mixes it up by formatting a discussion about the pros and cons of asexual reproduction as a hectic daytime talk show, complete with microscopes to view the tiniest guests and seating that offers both saltwater and freshwater tanks for aquatic audience members to sit in, like something out of Zootopia. 

(I haven’t seen Zootopia and the only thing I know about it for sure is that in one scene there’s a DILF-looking tiger, but I’m pretty confident in the assumption I’m making here.) 

Judson does an admirable job of providing pretty comprehensible explanations for a lot of evolutionary science, and while I did have to power skim through a few segments that were really beyond my grasp, it did make a pretty lively read out of the biological pros and cons of producing sperm bigger than your own body. It’s not exactly a book that’s difficult to put down, but I had a perfectly pleasant time reading it in the moments between doing anything else - eating a meal, resting in bed, getting some sun in my backyard - and even learning a little while I did so. I fully intended to use Dr. Tatiana as a break between the two installments of N.K. Jemisin’s Dreamblood duology, and it has served that role magnificently.  

Am I recommending this book to you? Not exactly, unless you’re extremely interested in evolutionary theories that are nearly two decades old or a science fiction writer looking to give your non-human characters some thoroughly non-human sexual habits. I’m not supremely interested in making recommendations with the blog in general, unless someone specifically asks for them; I’m hoping this will be more like writing up my personal thoughts about books and then hurling them into the virtual void like messages in bottles. If they wash up on your shore and you read them and come to the conclusion that this is something you, too, would like to read, that’s pretty rad. I love that for you! But it wasn’t necessarily my intent.

Strictly speaking, I didn’t even recommend this book to myself. In 2019 I tried to stay pretty intentional about my to-read list, really whittling it down to stuff that I actively wanted to engage with rather than anything that sounded vaguely not awful. I was hoping to keep that trend up in 2020, but like many other things that are much more serious, this whole pandemic situation has scuppered those plans a bit. I get most of my books by borrowing them from the public library where I work, and that’s been closed for nearly two months. Unlike many book bloggers I’ve observed I don’t keep a massive stack of unread books around at all times, so I’ve really been relying on the kindness of friends to keep me supplied in these trying times.

My friend Paige slipped me Dr. Tatiana’s (along with the aforementioned Dreamblood books and several volumes of Kurtis J. Weibe’s comic series Rat Queens) in exchange for some books I lent to her, because we all have to look out for each other in These Trying Times. I trusted her good taste, despite having no idea what the book was about and more than a few reservations. 

At other times I think this book might have sailed right over my head - not to sneer at the so-called soft sciences, but there’s a reason I gave up on my childhood dream of marine biology and got a sociology degree instead - but right now, as I’m finally adjusting to the slower pace of life in quarantine and remembering how to focus, I’m finding that it fits my needs. It’s unlikely to live on as an all-time favorite, but it’s something to do and gives me an occasional excuse to gasp and tell my roommate something absolutely wild, like the fact that spiders have two penises and that the dual arachnodicks are located on their faces, on either side of their mouths.

My basic understanding of evolution is that change rarely happens based on logic or reason, but by finding something that works and then sticking to it, no matter how improbable it may seem. When male elephants get horny they apparently develop an insatiable bloodlust and piss so constantly their penises turn green (yikes!), which is definitely not the most practical way to do things, but evidently it’s been getting the job done. Getting through quarantine has been sort of like that, has it not? A lot of behavior that might not be the most intuitive but is somehow enabling ongoing survival, like occupying myself with books that I might not have given a second glance in the halcyon before times.

That’s totally the same thing, right?

Right.

A note about the appearance of this book:

I’ve been talking a fair amount lately about my dislike for what I see as pretty transparently romanticized materialism in a lot of book blogging spaces, with an emphasis placed on acquiring and showing off as many pristine books as possible. I don’t own this book, and it looks like ass. It looks like Paige stole it from a library in North Carolina, which would not be shocking. When I noticed the large brown stain in the corner I jokingly asked if she’d dropped it in coffee, and she unflinchingly confirmed that yes, she had.

#bookblr #in which makenzie is a book blogger until she forgets about it