State of the Bookshelf
Thought I’d get back into blogging now that my website is back in order. Didn’t realize until I pulled this short list together that I’m off to a very emotional start this year. I wonder what that’s about 🙂
*Read*
Ask Not: The Kennedys and The Women they Destroyed
Starting off with the most insane one - I listened to the audiobook and it included some of the most horrifying things I’ve ever heard. It is unbelievable to me that any of the Kennedys are still alive (what with their propensity for car and boat and plane crashes) much less still enjoying the spoils of old money and political pedigree. I do think Maureen is a bit overly precious with some of the women in the book, sometimes stripping them of their own agency (read: complicity) in a way I find infantilizing. However, the stories are conveyed in the precise way needed to wrap your head around the chronic misbehavior of these men. Truly incomprehensible that such a disgusting family could be so ingrained in the fabric of a nation’s leadership. A masterclass in nepotism. Absolutely haunting, Highly recommend.
Box Hill
I’ve really been fujoshing out for the past couple of months and I keep seeing ads for Pillion, so naturally I had to read Box Hill. It’s a quick read that I finished in one evening. The focus of the story is a rather unconventional relationship between a young man and an older biker, but i think anyone who has experienced romantic attachment to someone older, or in a relatively more powerful/secure position than their own can relate to the dynamics here. The anxieties of the main character felt familiar in a way that was a bit sad. Really incredible but it is a much more devastating read than I expected going into it. Consider yourself warned.
You Could Make a Life
This is a long one - We’re really in a hockey romance moment and I for some reason have a LOT to say about it. I started this series (Which is more like a cinematic universe) at the recommendation of a friend and I fear i’m in deep. I won’t list them all here but I have read I think 6 or 7 works in the series.
I’m going to compare You Could Make a Life (YCMAL) to Heated Rivalry (HR) a lot because I think at this point it’s the cultural touchpoint for gay hockey romance writing - but I want to acknowledge that YCMAL began way before HR (even in it’s earliest AO3-Captain-America-Alternate-Universe-Fanfiction form) entered the scene.
YCMAL is far more hockey-focused than HR, and I got the sense immediately that the sport played a much larger role in the life of the author (Taylor Fitzpatrick) than it did in the life of HR’s author (Rachel Reid). Not that I think Rachel is a fake fan, there is just a much more intimate knowledge of training, recruiting, trading, contracts, team structures, off-seasons, etc. present in YCMAL.
I believe none of the characters in YCMAL are real people (hockey fans please confirm), but you could call it fanfiction of the NHL Hockey teams that the characters play on, as the teams follow the same winning and losing arcs that they did in real life. Actual hockey games also take up more space on page than in HR and on-ice interactions are more important in the context of the stories.
Be warned, Taylor is not afraid to make her characters (or her readers) suffer. Injuries have the same stakes in the books that they would in real life. Careers fizzle out. Trades are often unexpected, and management unforgiving. Sometimes teams suck and there is no Miracle-esque redemption arc. This may all sound depressing but it really just makes the wins feel more meaningful and earned, and overall things do tend to work out eventually.
The writing is of a very high quality and there is soooo much of it to enjoy. Just for a final comparison - if you enjoyed HR but found it slightly unbelievable or one-dimensional then you will likely enjoy YCMAL. There are so many happy endings (not just the sex kind, you pervert) and the paths to get there are winding, wonderful, and full of hockey.
TLDR; I think this is the banger ice hockey romance series Heated Rivalry is imagined to be.
*Currently Reading*
The Island of Missing Trees
This book has made me so emotional I almost don’t even know what to say. Incredible writing by Elif Shafak. Incredible audiobook narration. It’s got fig trees and love and grief and joy and compassion for impossible decisions. I can’t wait to update you all once I’ve finished it.
*Did Not Finish*
How Civil Wars Start
I really wanted to like this. I really wanted to finish it, but i was so put off. Barbara opens with an overview of the research she’s done, which I believe to be good and meaningful work, and she says “It turns out one of the best predictors of whether a country will experience a civil war is whether it is moving toward or away from democracy.'‘ And while I believe in her as an expert and I’m sure this is literally true in the statistical sense, the way she goes on in the next page to say how ‘obvious” that makes the civil wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen raised a red flag for me.
I kept reading for a bit after this but I felt her analysis lacked any serious critique of western Intervention. Colonizers are mentioned but rarely implicated in a meaningful way. Destabilization is spoken about as an inevitable side effect of the honorable task of ‘bringing about Democracy’ - whatever that even means - and not a consequence of intentional and deeply fucked up acts of colonialism. She also spends some time speaking about how divisive and radicalizing the internet is, which always feels a bit “save the children”-y for my taste. I am, and have always been, a Very Online Person™ and I’ve managed not to become a neo-nazi. So, I actually think those people were primed for radicalization regardless.
I’ve looked into her OpEd writing about the state of U.S. politics and actually quite liked what she had to say. I do think her analysis on the history and future of domestic conflict in the U.S. is interesting, and I may circle back to reading those sections of this book later, but generally did not feel good about this one. It just felt like a VERY western liberal (derogatory) perspective.
Tornado weather
I’m sure that this story is really interesting but the writing style was so irksome to me that I didn’t make it past the first three pages. Sorry!
Anyway that’s all I’ve really got. A slow and kind of emo reading season, but we’re trucking along nonetheless. Hope you all are having a wonderful winter.