Books

Book 792: Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker

I forgot how beautiful this novel is. That’s not surprising considering it’s been over a decade since I read it and I’m honestly not sure if this is my original copy or if I picked up a new one in the past few years. [Can now confirm this is my original – I brought it to Boston in December 2012.]

I remember when I first read this. I had spent a semester studying the history of sexuality in America and we read many passages from Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality and I was obsessed. Between it and the other readings we read that term, a whole new world around sexuality, gender identity, and philosophy had opened up to me. So, more than likely I typed Foucault into Amazon and this came up and I purchased it.

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Updates

2018 Year-End Recap

Another calendar year gone and six more months toward 9 years of The Oddness of Moving Things. Now that my last books of 2018 have posted I’m ready to share my stats for the year.

It was yet another crazy busy year in my personal life and I’m not sure it will ever slow down again. After taking some time off and starting a new job at the very end of December that has a lot of long term viability I’m hoping at least my professional life will stabilize, allowing me to READ MORE BOOKS! Now on to the numbers.

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Books

Book 585: Abridged Classics – John Atkinson

I’m going to keep this review super short, since every 1-2 pages represents a classic that is hundreds of pages long! Who am I to write a super wordy review of a hilarious take on so many classics?

Not only are the abridged classics hilarious, but the illustrations included with each are so incredibly perfect I laughed out loud multiple times while reading this. Atkinson covered all my favorites including Austen and the Brontës, and he covered many I’m less interested in (and/or openly despise) like Dickens, Faulkner, Kafka, and Proust.

Recommendation: READ IT. It takes maybe 10 minutes to breeze through the entire work. Each one is a little more humorous than others and some are as puzzling as the original works when you read them. Thanks Caro and Nick for the perfect present!

Books

Book 561: Romancing Miss Brontë – Juliet Gael

I feel like I may have read this before, but if I did it was in my first year of blogging when I missed a few books in my reviews. Who knows, maybe I’m just so familiar with the Brontë’s story that it’s just become known to me.

Overall, I enjoyed this read and felt Gael did a great job embodying all of the Brontës, but I’m not sure how accurate the title was. It’s a little misleading in that I feel like more of the book should’ve come from Arthur Bell Nicholls’ perspective rather than from third person omniscient (I think)/Charlotte. Maybe a better title would’ve been The Romance of Miss Brontë or The Brief Romances of Miss Brontë, something that takes the emphasis from who the narrator would be. But blah, I’m sure this is just me. I had an issue with the last title I read too 😀 Continue reading “Book 561: Romancing Miss Brontë – Juliet Gael”

Books

Book 558: Autoboyography – Christina Lauren

I can’t believe I binged this. I started it around 4 PM on my way home from work and was done by midnight. I wasn’t expecting to love this as much as I did, but it just hit all the right notes for me.

Books like this and Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda make me sad that these weren’t around when I was a teenager, but also incredibly happy at how far we’ve (allegedly) come as a society and for the future LGBTQ+ teens out there. I have two more Freak Show and Geography Club that I picked up a few months ago and am excited to read in the next few weeks. Books like these and the more recent comics I read in No Straight Lines make me feel like those old LGBTQ+ individuals on YouTube who are in awe of the freedom we have today.

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