Wednesday reading — fangs and phalli

2013-09-19T01:55:33Z

What I've been reading

I read The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, which is unabashedly tropey vampire romance YA that actually respects your intelligence. The vampires are actually menacing, the worldbuilding is actually thought out and the special awesome hot vampire falls in love with the more ordinary protagonist because of something she does, namely, help him when it's not a particularly safe or easy thing to do, so yay.

I read How to Suppress Women's Writing, which was published thirty years ago this year and is depressingly relevant.

What I'm reading now

The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor. I have to keep pausing though to take notes or email things to my friend Bev or laugh like a lunatic, as at this massively understated reading of the apologia in Catullus 16:

The distinction between the castum…{et} pium poetam and his obscene work is a paradox and a joke. Although Catullus would only be proving his virility and the weak effeminicy of Furius and Aurelius by the acts proposed in 16.1, to rape one's friends would be neither castum nor pium. (13)

Best response. ♥

It's a good thing I read French, though, because all the incidental Greek in the Latin quotes is rendered as French in the Englishing and not translated further which is clever but unhelpful to non-francophones. Also none of the Latin in the footnotes is translated at all. Clearly, I should return to my one year of high school Latin and learn more. :D

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Wednesday reading — fangs and phalli