culture consumed (December, 2023)

[hermionesviolin]

books

adult


• the first 2 books in the Pies Before Guys mystery series by Misha Popp: Magic, Lies, and Deadly Pies and A Good Day to Pie
  
  
• [December local library LGBTQ+ book club] Fine: A Comic About Gender by Rhea Ewing
  
  
• Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo -- the third novella in The Singing Hills Cycle -- after Abby read it [Abby: "I think it’s my favorite of the 3 I’ve read, which is saying something considering one story is about a sapphic tiger and her nerdy girlfriend."]
  
  
• [January work book club] Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt (even though it is not How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler -- which I have not yet read, but which Abby is currently reading)
  
  

  easy reader

• skim-read the first 5 Colt Lane "Monster and Me" early readers -- I don't super love them. 

  In Book 1 (Who's the Scaredy-Cat?) we learn that Victor von Frankenstein made F.M. in a laboratory in Europe 9 years ago and the townspeople were scared of F.M. and called him "Frankenstein's Monster" and ran them both out of town.

  "When Victor's search to find a new home for F.M. took them to China, Victor met and fell in love with Freddy's mom, Shan. Shan loved F.M. like her own son, and she helped them find this beautiful old palace in Nepal. She knew it was a perfect place both for F.M. to live safely and for Victor to do his experiments" (p.25).

  As the books go on, we learn that the mountain attracts fantastical creatures (they feel a sense of safety there) -- which totally makes sense as a plot device (it enables our characters to encounter unicorns, imps, etc.), but which felt kind of skeevy to me.  Like, ~*~ mystical mountain Somewhere In The East ~*~ ... in a book series written by a white dude.

  Sidenote: In going back to get the quote for the first time this comes up, I found a weird thing.  On page 66 of Book 1 we read:

  "Why is the yeti here?" F.M. asked, a little excited about meeting another monster. He was amazed they hadn't seen one in all these years. And today they'd seen two!

  "The yeti must be here for the same reason I came to this mountain. I could feel it was a safe place for mystical creatures like me. Whatever that magical signal is, it must have attracted the yeti, too!" [redacted in case you're concerned about spoilers] said.

  I was skim-reading initially and had just parsed it as like, sure, that makes a lot of sense that the mountain gives mystical creatures a sense of safety, since Victor's Chinese wife picked it out for them as a safe place for F.M.  But the text actually says that F.M. hadn't seen other monsters there in years, and then suddenly we get lots of them once this book series starts.  Possibly this will be explained in a later book?

  In Book 2 (The Palace Prankster), the village at the bottom of the mountain is celebrating Biska Jatra -- which is a real festival, so there are definitely attempts to ground it in particular reality, not just, "We said this was in Nepal, but we are only going to engage with the people who live there in the vaguest of ways."  But I still don't love it.

  Per Mombian, we do meet a new friend in Book 4 (Too Cool for School) who's casually trans (she discloses on page 49) and returns in Book 5 (The Impossible Imp -- where she mentions her transness on page 57).  I appreciate that moment in the 5th book for the part where she discloses to someone and says, "[So-and-so] didn't say anything to you?" and the other person says, "I'm sure [they] thought it was your story to tell."
  
  

• I read the next 2 Jo Jo Makoons books (Fancy Pants and Snow Days) and still don't love them.  [Jo Jo is 7 years old, and Ojibwe, and somewhat Amelia Bedelia-ish.]
  
  
• skim-read the Yasmin books (written by Saadia Faruqi & illustrated by Hatem Aly), which I continue to generally enjoy (I'd read Yasmin the Fashionista back in July, checking out books to maybe get for 5yo ~nibling J) -- Yasmin is a second-grader; her family is Muslim, Pakistani-American, and speaks Urdu and English.
  
  
• the 3 Too Small Tola books (written by Atinuke & illustrated by Onyinye Iwu) -- young Tola lives in an apartment building in Lagos, Nigeria.

  picture books

• read ~8 picturebooks myself -- and skim-read ~17 more (shout-out to Betsy Bird's 31 Days, 31 Lists for populating the bulk of that -- here's the 31st list, which has links to all the preceding 30 lists at the bottom)
  and read Abby ~10 picturebooks (7 of which were ones I'd read myself previously)
  
  highlights:
  
  
  • Wombat by Philip Bunting -- which I was meh on just skim-reading, but then read to Abby (in advance of showing it to my mom, who has a fondness for wombats) and enjoyed it a lot more
    
    
  • Big Bad Wolf’s Yom Kippur by David Sherrin, ill. Martín Morón -- also has some nice Hebrew puns :)
    
    
  • Latke’s First Hanukkah by Alan Silberberg [board book] -- maybe more fun to read as an adult, tbh (we had a lot of fun deep-diving into the illustrations)
    
  
  

art

• [Peabody Essex Museum] As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic with Abby -- "On view June 17 through December 31, 2023" and we managed to get in the last weekend before her son's top surgery (at which point she'd be pretty housebound)
  & Bats! (On view September 9, 2023 to July 28, 2024, but I wanted to see it), which was more science/conservation education, but did also include some art

trailers

• Furiosa (the Fury Road prequel) with Abby

YouTube video essays

• Fri Dec 8th I finally watched the Dec 3rd (?) Plagiarism and You(Tube) by hbomberguy -- intending to just watch the first half about plagiarism generally, but ended up watching all of it (so including the James Somerton takedown)

  lol @ 39:21 "Creative people often have trouble recognizing their skills *as* skills because eventually they feel like second nature. And they don't feel real and practical like building a house or domming."
  
  

• from the sidebar: A Man Plagiarised My Work: Women, Money, and the Nation by Philosophy Tube (Abigail Thorn) -- which is much more about the development of society such that a man took credit for work that Abigail did rather than about plagiarism per se

  "What is a woman? A scam invented by the Chrysler company to get free labour!"

  
  "What is a woman? A scam invented by white people to get free labour! Or to put it in technical philosophy language, sex/gender can be understood as an economic and sociopolitical construct that determines people's access to resources. It intersects with race, which does the same thing."
  
  "What is the family? A scam invented by rich people to get free labour!"

  about 35min in is where it got really interesting to me, about the appeal of fascism to (white) British women in the mid-20th century

  I later saw this Tumblr post, which talked about conservatives thinking of the Other as truly Different -- which feels related.
  
  

• from H's recs in his video: TikTok Gave Me Autism: The Politics of Self Diagnosis by Alexander Avila -- which is far-ranging and I should maybe watch again when I'm less tired?

  In addition to the expected stuff about how the DSM criteria for stuff like autism is really subjective, Avila talks about how (in the West) "madness" and "reason" being opposites developed in the 17th century (in earlier centuries, "madness" was considered a kind of esoteric, spiritual knowledge ... not necessarily desirable, but still a form of knowledge) -- and gets all the way into, "What even is the self?"  
  
  

• ToddInTheShadows' I Fact-Checked The Worst Video Essayist On YouTube (a fact-checking rebuttal of all of James Somerton's false claims)
  
  
• About a week later I learned that Somerton had done a video on the Barbie movie, so I tracked down the archive of his videos to hatewatch it (it's #74 there).  I messaged a little bit of live commentary to Abby while I watched and at one point:

  me:
  Why so many digressions, James?
  Plagiarize yourself an editor!
  Reference: Abigail Thorn, re: a different clip: "I realise this is besides the point but this clip is also so overwritten? He should try plagiarising an editor"

  Abby:
  I watched like 20 seconds of the clip she’s responding to and god, babe, why do you hate yourself?
  

• (I also watched JS' Dec 21 apology video.)
  

***

Currently reading: 

[feminist sff book club] The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia (shout-out to thedeadparrot for the recommendation) for this coming Sunday.

Also, GR claims I'm still Currently Reading: When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar (because Abby) & Sorry, Bro by Taleen Voskuni (sapphic Armenian-American romance), and I sort of am; they've just been kind of back-burner-ed.

Reading next: 

Local library now has a climate change book club, and the Jan 10 book is The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres & Tom Rivett-Carnac, so I will maybe read that.

Comments

[lunabee34]

I'd never heard of Somerton until the call out blew up on meme. I think at one point the defense was something like, we can't be plagiarizing because we don't read! LOL

[hermionesviolin]

Yeah, Somerton didn't sound familiar when I first heard about hbomberguy's video in a fannish Discord I'm in -- and then I saw lots about the takedown videos on Tumblr and Twitter.

Including the bit about how they don't read/do research (which was from cowriter Nick), which I eventually saw in ToddInTheShadows' video (he did more sleuthing into Nick than hbomberguy did): https://pearwaldorf.tumblr.com/post/735837065250586624

[lunabee34]

*nods nods*

That line sounded like it came straight out of the mouth of one of my students. LOL