I picked up Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy for Lesbians: How to Stay Sane and Care for Yourself from Pre-Conception Through Birth for research purposes. Pepper’s work is as advertised. After she had her daughter, Pepper realized there was a need in the lesbian community for a pregnancy guide from the queer perspective, with queer concerns at the forefront. Ultimate Guide is the culmination of her diligent research and personal experience. Though obviously dated (first published 1999), pages of advice are evergreen, and I received a good grounding in general conception options. My notebook’s pages are full of ink. Pepper has a fun sense of humor, and I enjoyed the little adages from queer couples on their parenting journey. 

As other reviewers have noted, the pregnancy portion takes on shades of memoir. Pepper briefly describes various choices and experiences before touting and detailing what avenue worked best for her. For example, she runs the numbers and finds home birth much safer and cheaper. These observations are backed by calculations, scientific research, and anecdotal evidence. All good so far. Then Pepper’s prose takes on a confrontational tone as she tries to convince the reader to have a home birth without drugs. It’s “more pure” and “natural.” The baby is less likely to cry (???). She describes her own experience in graphic detail, including how she was in so much pain that she forgot her own name. It seems bizarre to covet such suffering. Birth is one of the most painful experiences a human can have. I struggle to understand why one would only mitigate that pain with breathing techniques. Due to yoga, I know breathing is a powerful tool, but I doubt my ability to breathe away a pain worse than all four limbs being torn off. Pepper’s missteps in this portion cast doubt on her earlier pro-home birth statements. I’m going to research elsewhere. 

Still, Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy for Lesbians: How to Stay Sane and Care for Yourself from Pre-Conception Through Birth is a pleasant, informative read on the whole. As a queer person looking into maybe acquiring a child, it served as an excellent starting point. 

 Review to come when I learn to stop listening to high fantasy on audiobook. By its nature, the genre has a lot of details, and the novella length means every one is important. I think I got the general gist, but I know a missed a ton because part of my mind was thinking about mushrooms in Stardew Valley.

 I found Makoto Ueda’s Modern Japanese Writers and the Nature of Literature when I typed “Dazai” into my library catalogue’s search bar. Even after reading several other books by and/or about the man, the mind hungers to know more. 

Ueda’s book contains eight essays on then-modern Japanese writers: Natsume Sōseki, Nagai Kafū, Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, Shiga Naoya, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, Dazai Osamu, Kawabata Yasunari, and Mishima Yukio. Like other older works I’ve bumped into, Ueda’s choice of subject is praised as “diverse.” I again felt odd—today the praise “diverse” implies a variety of gender and racial minorities are involved—and hopeful—see how less white supremacist we’ve become as a society. Each chapter speculates on the respective author’s theory of literature and concept/purpose of writing. Ueda tackles this broad topic by splitting it into five sub-categories: (1) art versus nature, (2) the literary work and the author, (3) the literary work and the reader, (4) structure and style, and (5) the purpose of literature. 

Because it’s been a long while since my university literature theory class, and I’d only read Dazai-san’s works before, I only read the introduction and Ueda’s chapter on him. As I work my way to other authors, I may return to Modern Japanese Writers. Stretching old analysis muscles felt good, and Ueda’s prose is refreshing and accessible. 

That being said, I had the feeling I was reading a math problem where the mathematician used the wrong formula, but came at the right conclusion. Dazai-san is a tricky author to pin down. He stashes bits of himself every place, but never enough to give you a full sense of the flesh-and-blood Tsushima Shūji-san. There’s “Dazai” the pen name and public persona, “Dazai” the recurring character in his work, and “Ōba Yōzō” or other characters whose life experiences match up to Tsushima-san’s (sort of, kind of, if you squint). I thought it was a given in Dazai-san literary criticism that one doesn’t take the guy at his word. That’s how I interact with him, and other essayists like Keene, O’Brien, and Gibeau encouraged me to do so. Yet Ueda frequently takes what Dazai-the-character-in-a-fiction says as absolute truth. This analysis seriously weakened his arguments for me. As a writer myself, I know better than anyone that writers are liars. 

I was in the midst of seriously questioning Ueda’s scholarship when he cited a letter to Siga Naoya-san to back up his arguments. Saying that Shiga-san was too “strong,” Dazai-san wrote “Become a little weaker. Be weak, if you are a man of letters. Be more flexible. Try to understand people who are different from you; try to understand their agonies.” Basically, have compassion for all humans and their foibles. Not necessarily in a “all people think they’re the protagonist” way, but in a “everybody has their reasons and their hurt” sort of way. Humans are wretched. Show the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and show the ideal and the nobility in that too. Be a friend to the disabled, the losers, delinquents, minorities, and the poor. Literature provides comfort, sympathy; consolation. Since Dazai-san was writing to another writer, advising on their craft, being critical of Shiga-san, and sending a message that seems in line with his work—I was convinced on this point. Despite all the weirdness that had come before, Ueda arrived at a conclusion I agree with. The empathetic thesis is fitting for an author whose works make so many neurodivergent people feel not alone. 

Overall, Modern Japanese Writers and the Nature of Literature was an insightful read—in a very sideways manner. I might pick it up for a second time, but only if I have a very specific itch.

 Back in…2019…I read this amazing blog post by Casey the Candian Lesbrarian about the best books she’d read that year. My Favorite Thing is Monsters was on it, and I put it on my TBR, so future!Natalie would remember. Future!Natalie came through.

Karen Reyes is a ten year old girl obsessed with horror movie monsters. With bullies, a best friend lost to homophobia (still alive, but heavily forced into the closet by parents), and the stress of working class ‘60s Chicago, she has a A Lot to process. And that’s before her upstairs neighbor Anka is murdered, her older brother becomes the prime suspect, and her mom gets a cancer diagnosis. Trusty sketchbook and fedora in tow, Reyes decides to figure out whodunit. What she doesn’t bargain for are tapes of Anka telling her life story in Nazi Germany, rife with parental abuse, rape, and pedophilia.

The entire, hefty book of My Favorite Thing is Monsters is styled as Reyes’ journal and sketchbook. The art is GORGEOUS. The book is art and art is the book. I was reminded of coffee table books, which are set out to entertain guests. Then again, the subject matter is not for the light of heart. Ferris pulls no punches, and her heroine’s lives are dark. A serious dead dove; don’t eat situation. I thought the story would focus more on the intersection of queerness and horror, and it does to a certain extent. There’s just a whole lot more. Anka’s flashbacks take up more pages, which makes sense because Reyes is ten and Anka died in her fifties. While Anka and Reyes are twin pole stars, the other characters aren’t neglected at all. The depth of character is truly incredible and incredibly colorful.

Despite the grim subject matter, there’s a thread of youthful hope throughout the story. If you can grasp it and hold tight, I highly, highly recommend Ferris’ masterwork. My Favorite Thing is Monsters is a beautiful, heart-wrenching magnum opus.

Casey’s blog post: https://caseythecanadianlesbrarian.wordpress.com/2019/01/08/my-2018-year-in-reading-favourite-books-of-the-year-most-memorable-character-best-cover-and-more/

 I hadn’t heard of Muriel Spark’s novella before it was cited in the opening pages of Dr. Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran. Like many of Dr. Nafisi’s cited books, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie went on my To Read list. Later, when I was scrolling through Libby’s “dark academia” tag, I spotted Prime and it was only four hours long. I borrowed it. 

Miss Jean Brodie is a vivacious schoolmistress at Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh, Scotland. The school urges its students to conform to patriarchal ideals under the guise of “team spirit.” Girls can expect a brief career as a nurse, teacher, or secretary before being condemned to a suffocating marriage. Miss Brodie alone is unmarried and middle-aged, and she fills her life with art and travel. As a teacher, she encourages her students to do the same: to think for themselves, resist conformity; to live passionately and ambitiously. She takes especial interest in six girls, and they’re privy to their teacher’s love affairs with two other staff members. While Brodie plays, one student plots, hoping to bring her down. 

While not necessarily spooky, a feeling of unease permeates the novella. In an alternate version of this story, Brodie is the feminist heroine who defies ageism and sexism to live happily. I was pleased to hear, repeatedly, how middle-age is a woman’s prime. I rooted for Brodie and her students to find happiness, financial independence, and artistic fulfillment. I loved that girls got to be gooey and gross. In Spark’s actual work however, Brodie’s good points are overshadowed by her rotten core. The narrator is Brodie’s betrayer so she’s never put in absolutely good light, but some of her actions are undeniably evil. Brodie frequently praises Mussolini and Italian fascism. There’s like, actual grooming, as Brodie encourages and positions a student to fuck a man twenty years the student’s senior. 

Brodie’s fall from grace left a bitter taste in my mouth. The betrayer’s actions seem rather random. She gains nothing and isn’t motivated by morals or a specific spite. She wants to bring her teacher down, so she does. Perhaps that was the point. Brodie taught ambition, and the betrayer’s ambition was to stab her where it hurt. Overall, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was an entertaining, knife-twist of a read. If you want darkness in an academic setting, pick it up. 

After enjoying Winter’s Orbit, my book club picked up Ocean’s Echo. Since other book club members enjoyed this second adventure in the Resolution Universe, it might be a case of “it’s me, not you,” but Tennal and Surit’s stories made me want to pull out my hair. I did not finish at around 75%.

A big source of my grumbling is the shifted focus. I liked Winter’s Orbit because it focused on intra-empire diplomacy. Ocean’s Echo fully dives into imperial military and its toxic culture, with lots of proverbial looking into the camera and asking if I’m aware imperial militaries commit atrocities. I live in the USA. What do you think? The book died before my eyes, becoming boilerplate moralizing that military = bad. I agree, but I didn’t come to this book to be reminded of state-sanctioned violence. These reminders of banal atrocity were coupled with superfluous world-building and character work. Orshan’s militaristic society isn’t very different from Iskat’s militaristic society as we left it in Winter’s Orbit. The pacing dragged something wonderful as we re-tread ground.  Tennal and Surit didn’t feel very different from Kiem and Jainan: they’re the same character dial knobs twisted slightly. The same-ness extended to Istara, Vinys, Oma, and Legislator, who all felt like the same character on different points in one life. I guess the point was to say that the military will corrupt even the most moral person? No matter a person’s intentions, it will corrupt them. The only way to avoid corruption is

to be like Istara and leave.

My boredom reached critical mass. Small annoyances collected until they became Big Deals to me. The “readers” and “writers” euphemisms were tedious. The romance was slow-burn, but I grew irritated how often the love plot was set aside for yet another human rights violation perpetuated by somebody in uniform. For a book that touts the soulbound trope, the narrative concludes

that soulbinding is awful and unethical. The ending goes so far as to eliminate it completely, which felt like a trite, unsatisfying solution. Surit is the noblebright archetype, but what is the point of noblebright if there’s no moral quandary to struggle against?

Ocean’s Echo is marketed as Adult, but seems to forget the adult reality of nuanced moral landscapes and lack of neat solutions.

Last, I want to talk about Tennal. It was very hard to watch Tennal engage in self-harm and swirl on a destructive spiral. I had a lot of room in my heart for his aunt, who did not want to be a parent and inherited two children, one of whom already had severe behavioral problems. She’s tried everything and nothing is convincing Tennal to care about himself:

Honestly, I would be at a loss here too. From the above paragraph, she’s tried everything. Her “solution” that kicks off the book shouldn’t have been considered, but I empathized with a person totally at the end of their rope. To end on a high note, Tennal’s issues pushed Maxwell into nuance (until the end) and reminded me of the times when my brain just utterly hates me. Sometimes it do be like that. The description of Tennal’s abilities were among the most beautiful prose in the book, making me wish we saw more of it. 

Ocean’s Echo and I are like baking soda and vinegar. Apologies on the explosion of a review. Many other readers enjoy Maxwell’s second foray into the Resolution Universe.