mayhap: hennaed hands, writing (Default)
mayhap ([personal profile] mayhap) wrote2016-06-22 10:26 pm
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Wednesday reading — explorations

What I've been reading

I read Girls Standing on Lawns, which is a sort of multimedia collection containing vintage snapshots from MoMA's collection, paintings inspired by said photographs, and bits of text by Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket). I'm not sure how much the latter two elements really add to the original photographs, but I like the idea of the collaboration anyway. I scanned a bunch of old family photographs of a similar vintage and girls standing on lawns were everywhere.

I read Bertram Cope's Year, which caught my eye when [livejournal.com profile] lysimache read it. It's so odd to think that it was actually published in 1919—self-published and to a pretty cool reception, from the sound of it, but still. Without being explicit as such it's very frank about its gay characters, especially their various foibles. I could personally have done with a little less of the A-plot of single girls hopelessly throwing themselves at the hapless Bertram Cope and a lot more of the tensions among the various male characters, but so it goes.

I read The Worst Night Ever, the sequel to Dave Barry's middle grade book The Worst Class Trip Ever. Owing to not being set during a class trip, it returns to Miami, which is where Dave Barry's work comes closest to approaching realism, and it made me laugh muliple times.

I read Sex with Shakespeare: Here's Much to Do with Pain, but More with Love. You might recall that Jillian Keenan wrote that Modern Love column about her spanking fetish; this is the much longer version of that story, with a lot more imagined conversations with Shakespeare characters. I related pretty hard.