Wednesday Reading Meme

[jesse_the_k]

Recently finished
AIR (a four-volume comic book) by G Willow Wilson, art by M K Perker.
This was delicious. Flying controlled through pure mental power — by a flight attendant. A home for mental-power flyers in the sky, run by Amelia Earhardt.
Wilson recently published Alif the Unseen, which I keep getting from the library, reading some of, and then having it recalled.

Here, We Cross, a poetry collection ed Rose Lemberg. The focus is genderfluid speculative poetry. The book-group discussion was, as always, illuminating. Some of the poems were outstanding, some were pedestrian, and some were completely and totally mystifying. I was gratified to finally understand what SFNal poetry is about: world-building, character-building, political statement, evocations of beauty and evil -- and sometimes in just 14 lines.

Currently Reading
Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life by Margaret Price.
Fascinating, enlightening, and really, really hard. It's rare for me to encounter words I don't know or can't scry: this one has "able rhetors" and "kairos" and "topoi" (among many others, plus Foucault. To her credit, the Price recognizes the need to define these concepts.) I'm slogging through because it raises crucial, profound questions about the social construction of madness. Is there room in the academy for mad teachers and mad students? Are the reflexive responses to school shootings exemplars of how the academy conceptualizes mental disability? Mustn't we recognize that some of our best minds will be mad minds, and therefore independent scholars?

Up Next
Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon
I read his wonderful work on depression, The Noontime Demon, twice. I’m looking forward to his exploration of families with “horizontal” identities: when the parents are hearing and the kids is deaf or autistic or ...; children conceived through rape and scores of other folks who are different in various ways. A topic of abiding interest to me.

Comments

[lilysea]

Recently finished
AIR (a four-volume comic book) by G Willow Wilson, art by M K Perker.
This was delicious.

Thanks for the recc - I'd never heard of it before you mentioned it. I've just
ordered vol 1 from Book depository, it sounds like a lot of fun! ^_^

[sasha_feather]

I heard Solomon talk about "Far From the Tree" on public radio! He sounded very thoughtful, deliberate, and good-humored. I'd like to read this book too I think.