If you don’t care about Unnatural Selection in particular but you are interested in the question of trust/mistrust of nonfiction authors in general, scroll down to here, which is where I stop talking about Unnatural Selection. Because I just figured out how to hyperlink to places in my own post. What what. Technology. Unnatural Selection is a book about how widespread access to abortion in many developing nations has led to a crisis in sex-selective abortion, where the ratio of boys born to girls born — a necessary constant because nobody wins in a sex-skewed society — shifts well out…
33 CommentsReading the End Posts
Over Thanksgiving break (I know, y’all, I’m the worst at reviewing books promptly), I read this book Keepers of the Flame: Literary Estates and the Rise of Biography, by Ian Hamilton, which was all about how various authors — nearly all of them public domain folks, nothing super modern and juicy — managed (or failed to manage) their literary estates. Each chapter was a case study, and they were all interesting, and I deeply regret that I didn’t review it when it was still fresh in my mind and I could tell you many anecdotes from it. I AM SORRY.…
19 CommentsMy family is fond of proposing slightly morbid hypotheticals over dinner. Well, Mumsy and Indie and Social Sisters and Captain Hammer and I are fond of this, and Legal Sister is sometimes fond of it and sometimes acts like she thinks we’re nuts and needs to be talked into participating. Daddy usually gazes at us like we are crazy. We like to discuss which sister would get chosen in a Sophie’s Choice situation (it would definitely be Legal Sister, because Social and Indie Sisters are frail flowers, and I am just not that brave). Or who we would pick to…
43 CommentsI’ve read a few reviews of Revolution that have said it would be a more interesting show if (well, if several things, but the relevant one here is if) instead of starting fifteen years on from the blackout, it had a chronological plotline starting from the blackout. In fact (said these reviews), very few dystopian world pieces of media really show you how they got there. They’ll talk about how they got there, in greater or lesser degrees of detail, but that won’t be the plot of the story/show/movie/book. There isn’t anything wrong with doing it this way, to be…
18 Commentswhen you are occupied with this new game called Kerfluffle where you go “Kerfluffle!” and your puppy-niece waves her teensy little paws at you in response and that’s it, that’s the whole game. And when you are occupied with this highly adorable game, you do not always have time to read the blogs promptly so sometimes you miss posts that notify you that you are supposed to post an introductory post to the Harry Potter Readalong. And then it is nine in the evening and you are scrambling to get a post written fast fast fast even though what you…
54 CommentsMe and Henry James have a quarrel. Our quarrel is that he called Oscar Wilde a fatuous fool and a tenth-rate cad, and when Oscar Wilde’s trials happened, he claimed to feel sorry for him but refused to sign a petition in support of shortening his jail sentence. Number one, those are really lame insults. Number two, it’s painfully obvious from the accounts of their encounters that Henry James was jealous of Oscar Wilde for being smarter and writing more successful plays and getting laid more often. Which is to say, more often than zero times. YEAH I WENT THERE…
20 CommentsProject: Read Gillian Flynn’s Books In Order is now one-third complete! Huzzah! Now I just have Dark Places and Gone Girl to go, and I already own one of those. So my project is closer to being, like, three-sevenths complete. It may be some time yet before I get to read Dark Places. I am eleventh of fourteen on the holds list for that one. It’ll happen! Just not right away. I’ll have plenty of time to think about Gillian Flynn in between reading her first and second books. If God truly loves me He’ll send me Dark Places right…
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