Monthly Archives: April 2018

Book Review: Circe

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CirceCirce
by Madeline Miller
Mythological retelling
400 pages
Published April 2018

Circe was my April Book of the Month club pick, and WOW was it epic. I haven’t read Song of Achilles, but I just put a hold on it with my library, because this book was amazing. So amazing, in fact, that it sent me into a bit of a reading slump – what book could follow up this masterwork?

This is actually going to be a pretty short review because I’m just in awe of this book. Circe begins as a somewhat naive child in her father’s household, unaware of her own power until her brother points it out to her. For those powers, she is banished to a deserted island, but her powers only grow from there. We meet many figures of Greek mythology – from gods and goddesses to mortals and monsters like Scylla and the Minotaur.

I just don’t even know how to properly review this book other than it was amazing. If you like Greek mythology at ALL, you should read this book. It’s captivating.

From the cover of Circe:

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child–not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power–the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.

With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language and page-turning suspense, Circe is a triumph of storytelling, an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man’s world.

Book Review: Nerdy, Shy, and Socially Inappropriate

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nerdy shy socially inappropriate asperger autismNerdy, Shy, and Socially Inappropriate: A User Guide to an Asperger Life
by Cynthia Kim
Nonfiction
240 pages
Published 2014

I’ve been picking up books on Autism since we realized my husband was on the spectrum, in hopes of finding tools to help us manage daily life. He’s too busy with school and work to do much reading these days, so I’ve been doing the research and bringing it to him to discuss. It’s led to some enlightening conversations and we’ve both learned a lot about each other. Cynthia Kim’s blog was one I pored over and read parts of to him, and I finally got her book from my library.

One of the things I noticed most was she details social rules in ways I never would have thought to do – she has a list of seven very specific rules for eye contact, for example. As an allistic person, most of those rules are things I do instinctively, without even really knowing the reason for them. Like, in conversation, looking up or to the side means you’re thinking, looking down means you’re done talking. I read that to my husband and he jumped in, surprised, with “so THAT’S why I get interrupted so much!” I never would have thought to codify that into words, but it’s something I naturally do.

She talks about meltdowns vs shutdowns, which are things we’ve already learned the difference between with my husband, but we’re both eager for strategies to avoid, mitigate, and recover from them. She gave some strategies as places to start, but that’s hard to give general advice on as every autistic is so very different in that regard.

The chapter on alexithymia was really interesting. Alexithymia being an impairment in identifying and describing emotions. It leads to a lot of “Hey, are you okay?” “I don’t know.” “Well, how do you feel?” “I DON’T KNOW!” We’d already been introduced to this concept through her blog, but she expands on it in the book.

Another interesting (and applicable!) chapter was the one on executive dysfunction. (We joke that I am my husband’s personal assistant – I keep his calendar and remind him of important dates/events/homework due dates, and sometimes nudge him to do things if it seems he’s having trouble getting started.)

Kim uses the term Asperger’s in her writing (as well as autism), but Asperger’s has been rolled into the greater Autism Spectrum Disorder since 2013. Very recently there’s been some debate about the Asperger name, as it’s been revealed that Hans Asperger at least cooperated with the Nazis, and possibly was one himself. It’s still used commonly, though, and there is a large community built around being Aspies. Personally, I think using the Asperger term is a little too divisive – it’s basically the same as “high-functioning.” But. I’m allistic and my opinion on the matter isn’t the important one, so. We use autistic for my husband. (His choice, and when I asked his thoughts, he also thinks the Asperger term is divisive and not useful.) There’s a number of Twitter threads and articles on the subject of using or not using the Asperger term, and what it means to the community.

Overall, this was a really great book for learning about how autism affects day-to-day life, and gave us lots of talking points and words for things we didn’t have the vocabulary for. I’m looking forward to tackling the rest of my Autism Reading List.

From the cover of Nerdy, Shy, and Socially Inappropriate:

Cynthia Kim explores all the quirkyness of living with Asperger Syndrome (ASD) in this accessible, witty and honest guide looking from an insider perspective at some of the most challenging and intractable aspects of being autistic. Her own life presents many rich examples. From being labelled nerdy and shy as an undiagnosed child to redefining herself when diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome as an adult, she describes how her perspective shifted to understanding a previously confusing world and combines this with the results of extensive research to explore the ‘why’ of ASD traits. She explains how they impact on everything from self-care to holding down a job and offers typically practical and creative strategies to help manage them, including a section on the vestibular, sensory and social benefits of martial arts for people with autism.

Well known in the autism community and beyond for her popular blog, Musings of an Aspie, Cynthia Kim’s book is rich with personal anecdotes and useful advice. This intelligent insider guide will help adults with ASDs and their partners, family members, friends, and colleagues, but it also provides a fresh and witty window onto a different worldview.

Friday Fun Day

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I’m going to designate either Fridays or Sundays as days for semi-random thoughts that may or may not be book related. Sunday Funday sounds better, I suppose. We’ll see.

Just a couple of random things today.

I’m thinking about doing some kind of giveaway when I hit 100 followers – I’m at 96 right now. Maybe an Amazon Giftcard?

I’m also thinking about quitting linking to Amazon – they’ve had questionable business practices for a while now. I see a lot of people linking to the Goodreads profile for a book, and I know there’s another online seller that people are using but I can’t remember the name of it.

If I do random thoughts on Sundays instead of Fridays, I could join the Friday 56 – which is basically turn to page 56 of the book you’re currently reading and post a non-spoilery excerpt. Could be fun. Which would make my blog schedule the following:

Sunday Funday (random shit)
Monday Book Review
Top Ten Tuesday
Wednesday Library Loot
Thursday Book Review
Friday 56
Saturday Book Review

And then I’d be publishing every day. I’m not 100% sure I can keep that up long term. I will have to consider that.

Dominaria Pre-Release is tonight! I don’t play Magic outside casual games with my housemates, but my husband is playing tonight, and will be bringing home the box we pre-ordered. I do love opening packs and scanning them into our database. I have a collecting personality. Between books, Magic cards, and pets/mounts/achievement points in World of Warcraft…yeah. I like to collect things. XD

Tomorrow we’re playing D&D, and sometime this weekend we’ll be seeing Infinity War. I’m gonna cry if Cap or any of the Wakandans die. They won’t kill T’Challa, though – he’s too profitable!

A very good point was made on Twitter the other day about using “inclusive” instead of “diverse” so I will be making an effort to change my language going forward!

Edit: Realized today was another school walkout day for the anniversary of the Columbine shooting. There was a shooting the year before that at Thurston, a high school 10 miles from my own. I was a junior at the time. I remember being herded into classrooms and watching the news. Kip Kinkel shot his parents, then went to the school and proceeds to shoot almost everyone in the cafeteria. He killed two students and wounded 25 more before two of the wounded students tackled him and held him until authorities arrived. We had no idea at the time that this would become common. (Kinkel is currently serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole.) This is why I support the walkouts.

Book Review: Beasts Made of Night

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beasts made of nightBeasts Made of Night
by Tochi Onyebuchi
Fantasy
296 pages
Published October 2017

So this Nigerian-influenced fantasy made enough of a splash when it was released in October that I JUST got it in my hands from the library. That long wait….was not actually justified, sadly. The cover is GORGEOUS and the concept is really, really cool – the execution is lacking. I can tell that the author had the world pretty fleshed out in his mind, from the geography to the vocabulary – but he didn’t actually pass that knowledge on to the reader. Kos is a walled city, but I’m not sure whether the Palace is within the walls or not? In one scene our protagonist LEAPS out of the castle and runs back the city – but in another scene he mentions that looking out the castle wall, Kos fits behind his fingernail. Kos is made up of several neighborhood plus a market – it’s not small. So either his fingernail is HUGE or Kos is a pretty decent distance away. But it’s written as if it only takes him about ten minutes to run there? Not to mention that he cracked a rib in the room that he leaped from (which is never mentioned again).

Oh and he winds up landing in an ivy maze out of nowhere – he couldn’t see it from the palace? Let’s see….the King regularly bombards neighborhoods with catapults in what’s called a “baptism” but the people haven’t revolted against this, for some reason. They talk about something called a “kanselo” but never define it. I -think- it’s like an organized group or coalition, but I’m really not entirely sure.

The male protagonist treats every woman his age as a potential love interest, debating whether to give them his heart-stone, or whether people will think he’s already given one girl or another his heart-stone – but never stops to ask if the girls are interested in HIM that way. Because of COURSE they would be, right? He’s the Sky-Fist! The Lightbringer! The one whose tattoos never fade! (Eating sin-beasts causes a black tattoo to appear on your skin – on most sin-eaters these fade eventually.) Also he’s just DUMB. He recalls that the sin-eater who ate his mother’s sin had a certain tattoo, and when he runs across her years later, it takes him three or four encounters before realizing it’s the same sin-eater. (The tattoo is a spider. Covering her FACE. It hasn’t faded.) He makes stupid decisions – after nightmares of one love-interest being attacked by sin-beasts, he LEAVES HER SURROUNDED BY THEM to go run out into the city. He has at least FIVE love interests in this book. And only ONE of them seems interested in him in return.

I really wanted to like this book. The concept of sin-eating is great. But the main character and all the one-dimensional characters that surrounded him, along with the confusing geography, just turned me off. And I’m not even getting into the “ending.” Yeah. Definitely throwing quotes on that because that was not an ending. The book just stops.

Skip this. It was a terrible book wrapped in a deceptively pretty package.

It does tick off my “time of day in the title” prompt for the PopSugar 2018 Reading Challenge, though.

From the cover of Beasts Made of Night:

In the walled city of Kos, corrupt mages can magically call forth sin from a sinner in the form of sin-beasts—lethal creatures spawned from feelings of guilt. Taj is the most talented of the aki, young sin-eaters indentured by the mages to slay the sin-beasts. But Taj’s livelihood comes at a terrible cost. When he kills a sin-beast, a tattoo of the beast appears on his skin while the guilt of committing the sin appears on his mind. Most aki are driven mad by the process, but Taj is cocky and desperate to provide for his family. 

When Taj is called to eat a sin of a member of the royal family, he’s suddenly thrust into the center of a dark conspiracy to destroy Kos. Now Taj must fight to save the princess that he loves—and his own life. 

Debut author Tochi Onyebuchi delivers an unforgettable series opener that powerfully explores the true meaning of justice and guilt. Packed with dark magic and thrilling action, Beasts Made of Night is a gritty Nigerian-influenced fantasy perfect for fans of Paolo Bacigalupi and Nnedi Okorafor.

Library Loot – April 18th, 2018

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queens of geekI mentioned a couple of these yesterday in my Top Ten Books by Autistic Authors. Nerdy, Shy, and Socially Inappropriate, and Queens of Geek are both books by autistic authors that I’m reading for Autism Acceptance Month.

I picked up one more nonfiction book, The Alternative Autoimmune Cookbook. It’s by one half of the blogging team behind the AutoImmune Wellness website. I’m currently working alternative aip cookbookthrough the cookbook written by the other half, The Autoimmune Paleo Cookbook. I have Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, a condition in which my immune system goes haywire and attacks my thyroid. I’ve been on the AIP diet for two and a half weeks at this point, and the amount I’ve energy I’ve regained is astounding. I’m sleeping better, and haven’t had heartburn since I started. So I’m eager to crack the other book for more recipes.

sing unburied singFor fiction I picked up Sing, Unburied, Sing, one of the most popular novels last year. (I requested it in December, but there was a long line!) For my Canadian read I got The Young in One Another’s Arms – besides being Canadian, it’s also about alternative family structures. My last book this week is To Kill A Kingdom, a young adult novel about predatory mermaids. I do like predatory mermaids!

It’s a pretty eclectic collection – but I am trying to branch out from my sci-fi/fantasy habit all the time!

 

TTT – Top Ten Books by Autistic Authors

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So I’ve mentioned it on Twitter, but I have been remiss in mentioning it here – April is Autism Acceptance Month! This is another cause close to my heart, because my husband is on the spectrum. We didn’t actually realize this until a year ago, but having realized it, it has given us SO MANY tools to use to manage daily life. The improvement has been amazing. So in the last year I’ve been doing a lot of self-education about autism, and I recently learned that there is a publishing house specifically for autistic authors, because so many mainstream publishers were turning them away! It’s called Autonomous Press, and their slogan is Weird Books for Weird People. Goodreads also has a list of books by autistic authors; some are explicitly about autism, some are fiction with autistic characters, and some aren’t about autism at all. But reading books by autistic authors is a great way to support the community and neurodivergence. This list is more of a to-be-read list for me; these are books I want to read. My library only has a few of them, though, and a few of them are working their way through the system to me.

journalThe first book on my list is one I HAVE read – The Journal of Best Practices: A Memoir of Marriage, Aperger Syndrome, and One Man’s Quest to be a Better Husband. I really enjoyed this one, as a chronicle of a marriage almost torn apart but ultimately saved by their new understanding of how his brain works. So many of the author’s behaviors are things I also see in my husband – I often stopped to read passages to him, only to have him stare at me in surprised recognition. It was also surprising to me – I’d have to stop and say “wait, is that really the way you think about that subject?” To which he’d reply “what, that isn’t normal?” So it was a journey of discovery for us both.

queens of geekCurrently out from the library I have Queens of Geek, which I didn’t realize was by an autistic author and only makes me more eager to read it. (Also, look at that cover! Bright hair FTW!) Nerdy, Shy, and Socially Inappropriate – A User Guide to an Asperger Life is by a blogger whose blog I pored through, reading nerdy shy socially inappropriate asperger autismentries to my husband and following links to quizzes and other resources. (Taking the diagnostic quizzes together was also enlightening – I really did not fully realize how differently his brain worked from mine – and we’ve been together over twelve years!)

pretending to be normal aspergerMaking their way to me through my extended library system (they’ll ship books to my county from any system in the state, it’s amazing!) are Pretending to be Normal – Living with Asperger’s Syndrome and Loud Hands – Autistic People Speaking. I really prefer loud hands autistic people speakingreading about autistic experiences through the eyes of actually autistic people. I know there’s several books out there by family members or doctors, but really. Who knows them better than themselves? I’m trying to be aware of the #ownvoices movement when reading about marginalized groups, and this is part of that.

So those are the five books I have read or am going to read. The next five are ones I either don’t have requested yet, or my library doesn’t have them at all. But they look interesting.

ABCs_of_Aut_Acceptance_Ebook_Cover3_largeThe ABCs of Autism Acceptance is one I should DEFINITELY read. I might be making an order from Autonomous Press soon! This is a collection of 26 short essays about autistic culture, systemic barriers that face autistics, and some of the history of autism. I really want to pick this one up.

The_Real_Experts_Online_Cover_largeThe Real Experts: Readings for Parents of Autistic Children doesn’t apply to me specifically, but I still thought it should receive a place in this top ten list. It’s another collection of essays, this time by a variety nothing is rightof autistic adults.

The Shaping Clay series of novels looks interesting; they’re about the life of an autistic man named Clay Dillon. They begin with Nothing is Right, set in first grade. The books continue through Imaginary Friends to Defiant, taking place when Clay is 30. The books are written by Michael Scott Monje Jr, who is transgender as well as autistic.

Spoon_Knife_Cover_Final_JPEG_largeThe Spoon Knife Anthology: thoughts on Compliance, Defiance, and Resistance looks like a fascinating book, edited by Michael Scott Monje Jr. and N.I. Nicholson. This appears to be an annually published book, with Spoon Knife 2 being called “Test Chamber.” They’re published by NeuroQueer, an imprint from Autonomous books that focuses on gender, sexuality, and race, and they’re billed as an “annual open-call collection to find new talent.”

barking sycamoresAlso under the NeuroQueer imprint is the first anthology of Barking Sycamores, a quarterly magazine of neurodivergent literature and art. The magazine publishes “poetry, artwork, short fiction, creative nonfiction, and hybrid genre work by emerging and established neurodivergent writers as well as book reviews.” They’re only available online at the website, though past issues can be bought as ebooks. They publish one piece per day on their blog until the issue is complete. I’ll definitely be following this blog!

So those are my Top Ten books to read this month for Autism Acceptance Month. (Technically I suppose that’s thirteen books, but I grouped the series together.) I think an order from Autonomous Press is in my near future!

So I had finished this post and had it ready to publish when a friend of mine gave me a few more titles! The Autism Women’s Network has published a few books like All The Weight of Our Dreams, which is a collection of essays by autistic people of color, and What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew, a collection of essays by autistic women. So those are also worth checking out!

As I continue to find and read books by autistic authors, I’m just going to list them at the bottom of this post so they’re all in one place to refer back to!

All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome

The Kiss Quotient

Look Me In The Eye