See Spot Read

Hmm...was gonna continue my series of People In and Out of My Life...but I've been
tagged by Jay with a book meme. Wah, my first meme! How rude of me if I didn't respond, ya? So here goes.


How many books do I own?

Hmmm…good question. Excellent reason to pack up, go home RIGHT NOW and count. Let's see, including comics – hey, they’re graphic novels ok – I estimate the count to be between 80 –100. I’m a cheapskate, so most of the books (especially comics) I’ve read in my life are my brother’s.


The last book I bought

How To Eat by Nigella Lawson!!! Let me justify…it was done out of love. Not for THE Goddess (that’s lust, not love) but for She Who Is Making Me Fat With Nigella-inspired Baked Goodies. Also known as snowdrop. Gift or not though, it’s sitting on MY bedside table – again, allow me to qualify that the book has absolutely no pictures of Ms. Lawson – it makes excellent reading. Conversations with Nigella, in bed. Yowz.


The last book I read

The Family Way by Tony Parsons. It’s been a very long time since I opened a book and got sucked into it from the first page. Read it over 2 days. It’s about making babies, be it accidentally or desperately trying to, having babies, coming to terms with not having babies, abandoning babies. Tony Parsons provides an amazing insight into the psyche of women and their biological clocks.

I picked this book up because I wanted to understand what my very dear friend is going through as she struggles along the road to conceiving again. The book suffers a bit in terms of believability in certain areas but I’d still recommend it as a crash course into appreciating the emotionally wrenching issues that motherhood, or a dream thereof, brings to every woman’s life. Facing the issue of motherhood, much like opening Pandora’s box, propels a woman into confronting all manner of fears, sorrow and ugliness, but ultimately, what’s left at the bottom of the box is Hope. For new life and a brighter future.


Five books that mean a lot to me

Stone Butch Blues – Leslie Feinberg

This is an amazing book and should be read by everyone, gay, straight, transgender or anything else in between. I was introduced to it by Julia when she gave me a place to stay soon after we met in a conference in Adelaide, Australia in 1997. In welcoming me into the home that she and her girlfriend shared in Melbourne, she threw open a window into a world I had never dreamed of seeing on such a personal level. Stone Butch Blues was the key that Julia offered as a means of understanding her.

It takes the reader on a heart-wrenching journey with Jess, who grows from a child who defies definition, secretly trying on her father’s suit as a child, to coming out in early adulthood as a butch, then progressing to passing as a man and ultimately, coming back to being a person who lives on the fringes of society’s two categories. "who was i now - man or woman? That question could never be answered as long as those were the only choices; it could never be answered if it had to be asked."

It's a story of incredible courage, strength and love in a world where "Other" serves as a sword of the fearful, condemning millions into the oppression of silence. This book is important to me because it gave me the language to voice the isolation in my heart, in the words of the hauntingly poignant Alone by Edgar Allen Poe. More about this book and Julia in a coming post.

Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence – Richard Wrangham

My first science book. It’s an anthropological study on the aggressive behaviours of the great apes; chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas and bonobos, as they relate to ours. Our nearest relatives, with the exception of the bonobos, don’t just lie about in the wild, munching on leaves and posing on trees; they stalk, murder, rape and engage in war with their own species. Chillingly familiar habits.

The most fascinating chapter is the one that examines the traits of the bonobos. In contrast to their violent rellies, this branch of the family lives in peaceful matrilineal communities and practices bi and same-sex, genito-genital rubbing as a mechanism for diffusing and resolving conflict. Now, is this a book to read or what?! Why is it important to me? Because it satisfied me that I was intellectual enough to digest a science book (calling a "science book" probably just disqualified any intellectual pretensions though…) and it’s fascinating as heck, given my academic interest in the paradox of humanity’s intrinsic violence.

Dragonlance Chronicles – Tracy Hickman & Margaret Weis.

Like Jay, I cheat here. It’s a trilogy (Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night & Dragons of Spring Dawning). This series is the reason why I find the book, Fellowship of the Rings, really rather boring. It just couldn’t compare to pace of the Dragonlance stories. I first read the books back in the early and mid 80s and my imagination went wild. Tanis Half-Elven, Sturm Brightblade, the battles of the Knights of Solamnia and the dragon army of Takhisis, the brothers Majere…pure, utter magic. It was a time of Kings & Things, Titan, Talisman & Dungeons and Dragons. Such fun. I also really like the style of fantasy-writing. There’s a lot of romanticism in it, without seeming to wussy.

Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

It’s been too long since I last read this, to the extent that I don’t remember much about it. I do know that it left a major impression on me as my first introduction to the style of magic realism. The story is told from the perspective of a man who was born on the day of the Partition of India to a Hindu family but was accidentally switched at birth with another baby from a Muslim family. Oh, and he and other babies born at the stroke of midnight on Partition have super powers. His life is then told as parallel with the political reality of the India-Pakistan conflict. It’s a difficult book to read mainly because of how voluminous and full of detail it is. This book is an important milestone in that it was the first grown-up book I actually appreciated.

Stardust – Neil Gaiman

Ah Neil Gaiman. Which to pick? Since we’re talking about books, I’ll reluctantly leave out the Sandman comics. Stardust is really a fairy tale, written for adults. Neil tells us the story of Tristran whose object of affection, a prim, spoilt girl, demands that Tristan bring her a fallen star as proof of his love for her. Quite the bitch. This sends love-struck Tristan off on what ends up as an adventure of a lifetime. He finds the fallen star who is pretty pissed off from the fall – she says "fuck" in the smallest font possible - and not exactly shining brightly at the prospect of being presented as a trinket. Along the way, a cast of witches, some goats, a cockatoo, ghosts, lords, queens and a unicorn are woven into the story and all ends happily ever after.

This book is also available in graphic novel form (I highly recommend this version, the pictures are brilliant). Aside from the fact that I love almost every book that Gaiman’s written and think that he’s a god, this book is important to me because it shows that you can be all grown up and still keep the child inside you wide-eyed with the wonder of fairy tales.

Five more people to tag

A.
Ame
Bertha
Biow
Lowem