Sidetracks - July 15, 2011
Jul. 15th, 2011 11:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
helloladies posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
ladybusinessAna
1. Evolution, rape, ovulation, and how to get your opinions labeled "Science."
2. Bad Astronomy: Richard Dawkins and male privilege. This whole story horrified me, but it's nice to see awesomely sane coverage in such a huge blog.
3. "It is important to ask whether feminism has gone too far, because if it HAS, we need to take action to prevent good men being ruined by accusations of things they didn't do, and also things they did do, because isn't being accused of something you did the cruellest injustice of all?" Hahaha. (via Alexandra)
Jodie
4. Jenny's Books talks about The Good Wife enthusiastically and at length. I love The Good Wife - have I mentioned this? I also love when book bloggers talk about tv.
5. Colleen Mondor at Chasing Ray got a book deal for her piece of creative non-fiction this year. Her book ('The Map of My Dead Pilots') now has a cover and a pre-order button. Having waited I dunno YEARS for the publishing industry to realise what they were missing and having read the extracts I pressed pre-order the day I found out I could.
6. The Rejectionist explains when it's not appropriate to kill of your lady characters. Can you just feel the 'I am trying very hard not to put my fist through something' rage coming off that post?
7. My Friend Amy talks about preferring stories about women. I just really enjoyed hearing this alternate perspective.
8. The Reading Ape ran a whole series of posts about book blogging and reading (I'm lazy, so I'm not gonna link to them all). I was most interested in this post, particularly the last line, because, well, I'm probably misreading him but my first thought was that I expect my lit-fic to be entertaining as well as 'soul sustaining'. It's the lit-fic that doesn't entertain that I find the least enriching. I expect we're using the word entertain in different ways (and my way is much less precisely defined). I don't always expect lit-fic to have a driving plot, but I do expect to be interested and any book that just goes 'aha look at my mastery of technique and the sentence' without trying to engage me in other ways may look pretty to me, may be something I'm interested in analysing at a remove, but I'll probably feel much less engaged/ enriched by it than something that works to conjure entertainment alongside technique. So to give a broad example, 'To the Lighthouse' gets a hurray from me on multiple levels (technique, emotion, kind of plot, characters) as does 'Wolf Hall', because they go deep but they still seek to be entertaining about it.
And books outside of lit-fic can be full of nourishing stuff, it goes without saying. I just think we need to get past this dichotomy of fun vs enrichment. I want both and I get both in many, many places.
9. And then The Reading Ape close read the first sentence of 'The Blind Assassin' illuminating lots of extra depth and a reminder to pay attention to first sentences.
10. Rachel's post where she reflects on her life made me kind of sappy in a good way.
11. Meg Rosoff's new book involves a good pun and a comic fantasy premise, which makes me determined to read her books someday.
12. 13 year old Scottish girl wasn't allowed to play in a football competition with her (otherwise male) Scottish team because it took place in England and hey we don't allow mixed football teams to play in contests over here (after the age of 11). She was the captain, her team went on to lose.
13. 250 books by the ladies!
Renay
14. Recently, Lev Grossman (yes, that Lev Grossman of the book with interesting parallels to Harry Potter) interviewed some members of fandom by organizing through the OTW. The resulting article is actually one of the best articles on fandom and fanfiction I have read. I admit I do not read a ton of them because I learned my lesson about people outside the community completely misunderstanding (you know, how fanfic is nothing but porn and dudes fucking), but I think he did a great job with the time and space he had. There's also some interesting commentary in on the commentary written by
fajrdrako (quick! someone get me an Inception macro!). I noted this quote:Sure, fanfiction's unfairly stigmatized by its worst elements, but so's romance. (And for a lot of the same reasons, i.e., girl cooties.)
And thus, fanfiction became a valid literary topic at Lady Business! \o/
15. The Brave teaser! OH MY GOD, PIXAR, FINALLY, A GIRL LEAD.
16. In before accusations that the movie made less money/was less popular because of the girl and various skeevy commentary! Oh wait, I am too late, it's already started.
17. When I found this video on tumblr, there was no description, just a command: STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND WATCH THIS VIDEO. I don't regret it and maybe cried a little so I'll do the same.
18. One of my favorite films of last year was Winter's Bone, which was so very near to my own childhood experiences of the South and also meth culture. I found a really neat review of it that made me look at it in ways I hadn't before: Winter's Bone: A Mythic Marrow (beware of spoilers).
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Date: 2011-07-16 11:43 am (UTC)Also, I am so excited for Brave!
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Date: 2011-07-16 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-17 05:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-17 11:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-18 03:37 am (UTC)(Although, I started Sisters Red and then got TOTALLY DERAILED by zombie v unicorns, so um...)
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Date: 2011-07-18 08:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-16 03:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-17 05:10 am (UTC)