2024 books: 1-4

[the_siobhan]

Did I really not list any books this year?

I mean I knew it was a rough year, but still.

OK here's all of them, split up into what will probably only be two posts.

(But seriously, holy crap people.)

She Walks In Darkness by Evangeline Walton No clue where this one came from. Walton apparently wrote most of her books between the 1920s and '50s and this particular one was published posthumously. It's kind of interesting to me how the time period it was written in really comes out in the language used. Formal is the wrong descriptor, but the rhythm is very different. The plot is gothic horror. A young woman is trapped in an old mansion with her unconscious injured husband and a would-be rapist. Things go down hill from there.

Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead A book about the life of an indigenous two-spirit sex-worker living in Winnipeg. Incidents in his current life are contrasted with his experiences growing up on the reserve. There isn't really a plot, just slices of a life taken out and laid under a microscope. I said at one point that as soon as I find out an author is Canadian I start looking for the dead body. There are a few of them here, and plenty of other kinds of pain to go around - lost children that were taken from their families, homophobia, poverty. There is also love and kinship and bravery. The book reads like a long poem, full of imagery and metaphor. And sex. So much sex.

How To Live In A Chaotic Climate by LaUra Schmidt, Aimee Lewis Reau, and Chelsie Rivera I got this book from a neighbour. The Good Grief Network runs a series of workshops for people who are dealing with grief and despair over the fact that a handful of really rich people are working very hard to make the planet uninhabitable for the rest of us. This book basically outlines how their program works in a series of steps. I was expecting something about community organizing and instead it's all about processing feelings. So not for me. I fall much more into camp, "OK yes, yes, we all feel terrible, doom despair agony, etc, but what do we do?" Not a bad book but not a fit for me.

What Fresh Hell Is This?: Perimenopause, Menopause, Other Indignities, and You by Heather Corinna   The author is apparently a friend-of-a-friend who was asking people to buy this book so I picked it up as part of a use-up-a-girt card purchase. I wish I had this book when I started in on menopause because those little pamphlets they hand out at the doctors office? Do not even come close to explaining the Clown Show your life is about to become. And I had a comparatively easy time of it. Corinna talks about the hormones changes, all the systems they impact, and how those impacts can be affected by other things going on in your life. She talks about people who are not cis, or straight, or financially comfortable, or who may not have a strong support network in their lives. Highly recommended. If I have any complaint it might be that some parts got a bit wordy. I already know that the medical industry considers women's bodies to be an afterthought, and non-gender conforming bodies to be no thought at all, I didn't need an entire chapter devoted to reminding me. But yeah, 4.9/5 stars.