Book Bingo: June 2020 - Final

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

First and last, a big thank you to kingstoken who provided the card and thus made a fervent wish (to do a book bingo) come true for this reader.



Banned Book: Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire [translator: Richard Howard]. I loved this book, and I bought it, and it's a keeper. But to be fair, this was my process for each poem: read in French, listen to French (on librivox.org), read English. It was the first book in a long, long time that I have actually had to look up words (the English words!) and that makes me very happy. That's a poet translating a poet and making another poet very happy. And Baudelaire was a miserable bastard (and so am I, these days) so I feel a kindred spirit when I read these poems. Also, lesbians and vampires.

Classic: The Brothers Karamazov by Fydor Dostoevsky. 700 pages of ugh. I even read the Cliff Notes along with it so I understood better what I was reading but still, ugh. There was one line that reminded me of Crowley (of Good Omens) and my Season of Kink bingo card.

But he is not Satan: that's a lie. He is an impostor. He is simply a devil — a paltry, trivial devil. He goes to the baths.

I had planned to read Orlando by Virginia Woolf but the opening scene of that book is Orlando playing sword-fighting with shrunken African heads hanging in his family's attic. I couldn't go on after that. The boys' father is African and the decapitated heads of Africans are not toys for children to play with. It makes me rather ill. So I literally googled 'classic literature' and scrolled across the listing to find one that I hadn't read and that I would consider reading. I didn't realize how long The Brothers Karamazov was when I picked it out but I am stubborn and when I did figure it out, I was too stubborn to quit. Also, I am very tired of the 'village idiot girl' gets pregnant trope.



I have been struggling lately with my choice of literature. Apart from this bingo, I read and listen to mysteries. And mysteries, as a genre, almost always include a police element, if not the police as the main protagonist and hero. I know that these detectives are fictional, and that real police do not operate like that. In real life, they don't help, they don't solve problems, and are, in every case, part of the problem. They are there to protect property, not people. Violent, racist, and when not actively being violent, looking the other way so that their violent colleagues can operate with impunity (both on the job and off of it, in situations of domestic violence). So, for example, I turn on an audiobook of Maigret [which is kind of like a French episode of Law & Order] to distract me from the torture of cooking dinner and there is no joy, no distraction, just another layer of torture that it is something that used to provide escape, but doesn't. I understand the answer is to switch genres but that is easier said that done. I am in-between places. Not able to find pleasure in what I used to enjoy and not yet having discovered a replacement.

And I did not enjoy two of the books that people I admire enjoyed and so I would really, really like to cut, I'm dying to cut, actually but I may have an opportunity to go to a BLM vigil tomorrow afternoon and I don't want to hold up my sign with arm slash marks (it's 90 degrees here, so long sleeves would be uncomfortable) so I am postponing it. I feel also that I don't even harm myself for a noble anxiety, like police brutality or systemic racism, just these petty personal failings that matter to no one but my hateful brain. Not liking a book, who cares? My brain does. A lot.



So here's the full list:


The First Book in a Series: A Death in Vienna by Frank Tallis [ebook]
Diverse Reads: The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey
More than 300 pages: The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides [audiobook]
Humour: Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
Non-fiction: The Interior Castle by Saint Teresa of Avila
Book Mentioned in Another Book: Death Comes to the Archbishop by Willa Cather
Book on Display at the Library: Transcription by Kate Atkinson [audiobook]
Movie/TV tie-in: War Horse by Michael Morpurgo [audiobook]
Banned Book: Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire [translator: Richard Howard]
An Animal on the Cover: Devotions by Mary Oliver
Set in Your Country: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson [audiobook]
Classic: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky [e-book]
FREE SPACE: The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin [audiobook]
Mystery/Crime: This Poison Will Remain by Fred Vargas
Food/Cooking: Tea Cyclopedia by Keith Souter [e-book].
Title has a Name in It: Lord Darcy Investigates by Randall Garrett (e-book)
Children/YA: Clay the Cromer Crab and the Invasion of the Jeellyfish by Salena Dawson
Colour in the Title: Colour Scheme by Ngaio Marsh [ebook]
Award-winning Book: Ancillary Justice by Anne Leckie
Dystopian: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Published in 2020: Slippery Creatures by K. J. Charles [e-book]
Romance: Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
An Author You've Never Read Before: The Raven Tower by Anne Leckie [audiobook]
100 pages or less: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
POC Author: The Frangipani Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu

Comments

[mafief]

Woot! Look at that finished card! That has to feel good. The year is only half way done - do you have plans for another card?

:::gasp::: Are you going to send Crowley to the Turkish baths? Or Roman baths since he was around during that time. Or did you already do that and I missed the fic?

Also, I am very tired of the 'village idiot girl' gets pregnant trope.
Don’t like this trope as well. I’ll need to remember to add it to my “don’t like” list.

Were you planning on visiting the BLM on the city street in DC? My sister (who lives in DC) visited and it was worth seeing. Lots of folks there.

Would you consider going to another event where short sleeves would be more comfortable thus giving yourself another milestone to further postpone?

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Thank you! No, one a year is enough. If kingstoken or someone else makes a new one in January, I'll do it again, though, with at least some different categories.

Yes, I was planning to send Crowley to the Turkish bath. But, you know, I know nothing about Roman baths so that is a great suggestion. I might learn a bit about them and that might give me something non-fiction to read about that might actually be interesting to me. Great idea. I mean, after Aziraphale tempts him with oysters, who knows what will happen? :)

Yeah, it popped up in The Brothers Karamazov and in one of my Maigret stories in the span of a week, so it isn't something I would normally notice but I really don't like it.

No, not DC. That's a long trip for me, and I'd have to go alone and I wouldn't know where to go or anything. I went to the Women's March (the first one) in DC and there were buses organized from where I live and I went by myself and it was ok. If they do that (the buses) for the thing Al Sharpton is planning at the end of August on the Mall, I might do that.

I don't know. I don't get out much, but it would be a good strategy. I mean, when soccer is in season I try to keep the cutting to a minimum because I'm around other people a lot more but sometimes I just say 'fuck it' because the pull is too strong, and I'm already lost so what do I care what a bunch of people who don't understand me or my issues anyway think about me? I can't think of anything I'd want to actually go to.