What are you reading?

[aishah]

sex & disability ed. robert mcruer & anna mollow
The title of this collection of essays, Sex and Disability, unites two terms that the popular imagination often regards as incongruous. The major texts in sexuality studies, including queer theory, rarely mention disability, and foundational texts in disability studies do not discuss sex in much detail. What if "sex" and "disability" were understood as intimately related concepts? And what if disabled people were seen as both subjects and objects of a range of erotic desires and practices? These are among the questions that this collection's contributors engage. From multiple perspectives—including literary analysis, ethnography, and autobiography—they consider how sex and disability come together and how disabled people negotiate sex and sexual identities in ableist and heteronormative culture.

[cane]

Just Kids by Patti Smith. Kinda interrestning. And she's not a bad writer.

[justkim]

My focus has been off lately as I am trying to get some final touches done in my apartment. When I moved in it was a PIT! But I have been trying to get some reading in before bed and I picked up a not so new series. The Fallen by Lauren Kate. Where were all of these young adult books while I was growing up? I did enjoy the first book and I am now onto the second book titled Torment. The story line is easy to follow and this makes it easy to read when one is tired.
I still have not downloaded The Hunger Games, but I will sometime this week. I also need to pick up the newest Game of Thrones book...

Did anyone ever pick up the Werewolf series I mentioned some time ago?

Happy reading everyone...

[weatherboi]

Set in the late 1890's, it is a crime novel.
He did a great job with food descriptors and this tends to draw me in.

[pajama]

I have been sucked into the Sookie Stackhouse series because the new season of True Blood will not come soon enough! It's fast reading and okay. I am on book three, but figure I will get bored in another book or two. It's simply written, which I like sometimes to give the mind a break.

I am however loving reading it on my new-to-me Kindle that I've had since Xmas 2010 and never got around to using it. I can't imagine reading paper again. (Except for the series that I actually collect.)

A

[The JD]

Last night, I finished Cruddy by Lynda Barry... I loved Barry's weekly cartoon strip years ago, and her world of quirky adolescents. Cruddy is a novel, but her characters still come off as exaggerated, absurd and cartoonish. And yet it works.

It's also very dark. It has this weird disturbing sociopathic twinge to it, reinforced by the main character (an adolescent girl raised as a boy) referring to her parents as "the mother" and "the father." Well, that, and the trail of carnage and destruction she leaves. If you like your reading to unsettle you, this is the book.

On another note... I just got an iPad. Can anyone recommend their favorite ereader app?

[justkim]

Originally Posted by The JD

Last night, I finished Cruddy by Lynda Barry... I loved Barry's weekly cartoon strip years ago, and her world of quirky adolescents. Cruddy is a novel, but her characters still come off as exaggerated, absurd and cartoonish. And yet it works.

It's also very dark. It has this weird disturbing sociopathic twinge to it, reinforced by the main character (an adolescent girl raised as a boy) referring to her parents as "the mother" and "the father." Well, that, and the trail of carnage and destruction she leaves. If you like your reading to unsettle you, this is the book.

On another note... I just got an iPad. Can anyone recommend their favorite ereader app?

i think you can download all of the apps...

[The JD]

Just started In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard. Her last book, Boys of my Youth, is on my top 10 favorite books list. She's got a knack for capturing the tiniest and often conflicting details of a child's view, that dread feeling of "mom's going to kill me when she finds out" combined with the exhilaration of doing whatever it is that's about to get you in trouble. And she's hilarious. This book looks like it's on the same path- here's the first paragraph:

"We can't believe the house is on fire. It's so embarrassing first of all, and so dangerous second of all. Also, we're supposed to be in charge here, so there's a sense of somebody not doing their job."

Off to read more.

[Christy51274]

"The Alienist": Great read and written by an historian, so many of the venues described in this novel probably did exist! You must read "Angel of Darkness"!

[Soon]

Appetites: Why Women Want

--Carolyn Knapp

Powells' Review (excerpt):

The late Caroline Knapp was not Everywoman, but there were enough women — and men — who felt that her writing spoke directly to them to put her first book, the memoir Drinking: A Love Story, on the bestseller list. Her second book, about the relationship between people and dogs, did nearly as well. Her third, Appetites, published now, a year after she died at 42 from complications arising from lung cancer, may seem like the culmination of her writings just because it is the last one we'll have from her. But the scope of the book, its effort to root out all the ways that women's desires get twisted, thwarted, redirected and obliterated, using her own youthful bout with anorexia as a case in point, suggests that Appetites was a keystone work for her.

It's also a heart-rending one, because despite the manifest intelligence and sensitivity of Knapp's writing — this is quite possibly the smartest and deepest anorexia memoir ever written, and it's also more than just a memoir — she only occasionally manages to grasp the source of the agonies she details so well. It's as if she's trying to describe a yard behind a tall fence, a scene she can only catch glimpses of by jumping as high as she can. There's a flash of the other side here, and again there, but often she's just telling us about the fence. Yet you can't help but think that Knapp almost made it over that barrier, and that if she had been given a few more years she would have arrived in full.

http://www.powells.com/review/2003_05_23.html

[Christy51274]

"Wicked Autumn" by G.M. Malliet. I so love my cozy mysteries and all the more if they're set in the UK.

What could be more dangerous than cozy village life in the English countryside?

Max Tudor has adapted well to his post as vicar of St. Edwold’s in the idyllic village of Nether Monkslip. The quiet village seems the perfect home for Max, who has fled a harrowing past as an MI5 agent. Now he has found a measure of peace among urban escapees and yoga practitioners, artists and crafters and New Agers. But this new-found serenity is quickly shattered when the highly vocal and unpopular president of the Women’s Institute turns up dead at the Harvest Fayre. The death looks like an accident, but Max’s training as a former agent kicks in, and before long he suspects foul play.

Max has ministered to the community long enough to be familiar with the tangled alliances and animosities among the residents, but this tragedy surprises and confounds him. It is impossible to believe anyone in his lovely village capable of the crime, and yet given the victim, he must acknowledge that almost everyone had probably fantasized about killing Wanda Batton-Smythe.

As the investigation unfolds, Max becomes more intricately involved. Memories he’d rather not revisit are stirred, evoking the demons from the past which led him to Nether Monkslip. In WICKED AUTUMN, G.M. Malliet serves up an irresistible English village—deliciously skewered—a flawed but likeable protagonist, and a brilliantly modern version of the traditional drawing room mystery.

One of The Boston Globe's Best Mysteries of 2011
One of Library Journal's Best Mystery Books of 2011

[genghisfawn]

According to many, I should be ashamed of myself, but...

The Hunger Games Trilogy.

The_JD recommended it, and I could barely put it down! It's getting its second read-over now (just starting Catching Fire again.)

To give myself a break, I'm rereading Battle Royale (yes, same basic premise, but I read Battle Royale many years ago.)

[tonaderspeisung]

i actually just finished the hunger games trilogy too
my niece and nephew were hyping it up pretty good but i feel rather indifferent about the series

right now i'm mid way through 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created - Charles C. Mann

the author clumsily tries to distance modern feelings toward some of history's more horrible aspects by using weak academic reasoning but i'm really enjoying it
so much to ponder with this book

[aishah]

i'm rereading the hunger games now with a group of friends on another board the first two books are still annoying me for certain reasons but...they're growing on me. i want to see the movie now. (okay, lenny kravitz as cinna is kind of amazing.)

still on the beginning of sex & disability. it's good so far.

i've also been rereading ruthless trust by brennan manning on and off it's one of my favorite religious/devotional books.

[MrSunshine]

Darkness Visible ~ A memoir of Madness By William Styron (fitting)

[weatherboi]

So many great restaurants that are no longer in business. Great illustrations of food and landmarks.

[JAGG]

"Physics of the future". By Michio Kaku

[Sparkle]

"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer

I've not seen the film, I'm not sure if I want to see it at all.

The book is very beautiful: the narrator delightfully odd and loveable, the story is terribly sad.

I'm a big fan of Foer's writing; if you've not read anything of his I would recommend "Everything is Illuminated" highly (the film adaptation is quite good too).

[Viola]

I can relate so well with asperger syndrome...

Originally Posted by violaine

how did i get here - chapter 1


".. i'm sure i was sociable. days were nearly always spent kicking balls, exploring the woods, digging in soil, and sometimes eating it, roaming the hills and in each other's houses..." - keith

i am reading asperger syndrome- a love story, written by sarah hendricks and keith newton. the couple explain who they are as individuals, chronicle their meeting and first ill-fated relationship, followed by a painful but vital period of separation and learning to the final destination of a new, different, more satisfactory relationship together. personal accounts - embracing [humourously a lot of the time] neurodiversity!



i'm also still reading jayber crow, a novel by wendell berry. [his work with farm alliance is amazing, by the way]. this book is poetic, philosophical, and the community members/town is imagined- richly so!



i hope you are doing well, daisy - whatcha readin' ?

belle
ox

[Viola]

Originally Posted by Sue

I can relate so well with asperger syndrome...

I read this book and apply this book to my life - learning how to tune out sounds...