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mayhapWhat I've been reading
I read The Story of French, which was fairly engaging as a biography of a language, but I have to admit that I found the position of the authors on modern francophony somewhat incoherent—apparently non-French speakers learning French as a second language is awesome and broadening, but French-speakers learning English as a second language is terrible and oppressive because they have to express themselves non-natively. Also there's this hilariously snitty aside about how when the authors, who are husband and wife, give presentations to francophone audiences, Julie, who speaks French as a second language, gets complements on it while Jean-Benoît, who speaks québecois natively, does not. Yeah, that could be a symptom of prejudice against Québec in the French-speaking world, or it could be because you don't complement someone for speaking their native language fluently, duh.
I read The Best of All Possible Worlds, Karen Lord's followup to Redemption in Indigo, which is so clearly fix-it fic for reboot Star Trek, recast closer to the original spirit of Trek and cross-pollinated with Le Guin.
I read Relish: My Life in the Kitchen, a graphic memoir-cookbook that picked up an Alex award. I love memoirs by sequential artists; it's such a great medium for conveying this is what I remember it feeling like when I was a kid.
I picked up Al Ewing's Mighty Avengers because I like what he's been doing with Loki: Agent of Asgard. It's been pretty fun and engaging so far.
I read Heartstones, one of Ruth Rendell's standalone creepy stories in novella form, which reminds me that I always love her standalone books and I think there are still quite a few of them that I haven't read. I had a brilliant professor once who used A Judgement in Stone in a class about orality and literacy.
I read The Story of French, which was fairly engaging as a biography of a language, but I have to admit that I found the position of the authors on modern francophony somewhat incoherent—apparently non-French speakers learning French as a second language is awesome and broadening, but French-speakers learning English as a second language is terrible and oppressive because they have to express themselves non-natively. Also there's this hilariously snitty aside about how when the authors, who are husband and wife, give presentations to francophone audiences, Julie, who speaks French as a second language, gets complements on it while Jean-Benoît, who speaks québecois natively, does not. Yeah, that could be a symptom of prejudice against Québec in the French-speaking world, or it could be because you don't complement someone for speaking their native language fluently, duh.
I read The Best of All Possible Worlds, Karen Lord's followup to Redemption in Indigo, which is so clearly fix-it fic for reboot Star Trek, recast closer to the original spirit of Trek and cross-pollinated with Le Guin.
I read Relish: My Life in the Kitchen, a graphic memoir-cookbook that picked up an Alex award. I love memoirs by sequential artists; it's such a great medium for conveying this is what I remember it feeling like when I was a kid.
I picked up Al Ewing's Mighty Avengers because I like what he's been doing with Loki: Agent of Asgard. It's been pretty fun and engaging so far.
I read Heartstones, one of Ruth Rendell's standalone creepy stories in novella form, which reminds me that I always love her standalone books and I think there are still quite a few of them that I haven't read. I had a brilliant professor once who used A Judgement in Stone in a class about orality and literacy.
