art history – Krista Beucler

May 1, 2024May 1, 2024

April 2024 Books

Books Reread

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
CW: abusive relationship, alcohol abuse, assault (physical and sexual), death, depression, drugs, prostitution, sexism, suicide (attempted), war
I reread this one this month as a reference for one of my MFA classes. A woman in 1714 makes a deal with the Dark to live forever. But there’s a catch, no one will ever remember her. Three hundred years later, she meets a boy who does. I’ve already reviewed this one for the blog, and you can read my original review here. I was paying more attention to the construction of the novel this time and the way information was revealed to the reader, which I thought was done quite well. Also, addressing my thoughts from the first time I read it, new editions have fixed the Rembrandt mistake. There’s still a mistake that Addie tries Champagne for the first time twice. And about the ending, I like it more now than I did the first time I read it. I love the art history aspects of the story and the way Addie learns to make her mark, but I will say, she could have been fixing climate change or stopping wars by planting ideas in the brains of powerful people, instead of just inspiring artists to make art about her. Just saying. Also, Julia Whelan reads the audiobook, and she has to be one of my favorite narrators.
3.5/5 forgotten faces

The Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan
**Book Hangover Alert
The final installment of this wonderful series! The final smackdown with Gaia. Is it controversial of me to like this series even more than the PJO books? We love to see more Reyna and Nico and their developing friendship. We love Piper and Annabeth’s friendship. We love Nico in a Hawaiian shirt. We love Reyna being made pegasus friend (sobbing). We love Will Solace. We love Leo. We love Percy and Annabeth. This book is just excellent, and I don’t have anything else to say about it.
4.5/5 drops of demigod blood (looking at you, Percy)

New Books Read

Annie Bot by Sierra Greer*
CW: sexual assault, domestic abuse, misogyny
About once a month, I just have the urge to binge read a book. This was the book for this month. I read it in one night while my roommates were at a party. Annie is an android designed to be a girlfriend for her owner Doug. But of course, Annie grows and develops and begins to question her place in the world. I liked the concept and the exploration of power, humanity, and misogyny. This reminded me a little of the Sonmi section of Cloud Atlas and a little of Ex Machina. I think the question of what constitutes personhood is really interesting, and I think the critique of women as objects is cleverly done.
3.5/5 robots

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray*
This was not my favorite Victorian novel. It follows Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley during the Napoleonic Wars. I liked the character of Becky Sharp and the satirizing of British society. It was a bit long, and the audio performance a bit slow (I had to speed it up to 1.2x). It was still enjoyable though.
3/5 cashmere shawls

The Iliad by Homer, tr. Emily Wilson
**Book Hangover
I read Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey last year, so I was excited for The Iliad. The Iliad follows Achilles, Patroclus, and Hector during the Trojan War from the point where Agamemnon offends Achilles who then refuses to fight for the Greeks anymore, through to just after Hector’s death. I think I liked The Iliad more than The Odyssey, even though there really are a lot of names and cataloguing of the Greeks and the Trojans. I really like the poetic form Wilson uses, which lends itself so well to reading aloud, just like the original epic poem was intended. I also loved the more accessible language (Pope’s translation seems needlessly obfuscating). I recommend reading the Translator’s Note first (to get in a properly awed state), then read the poem, then go back and read the Introduction.
4/5 shields of Achilles

The Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life in Regency and Victorian England from 1811-1901 by Kristine Hughes*
I read this book for research for my novel. An every day history book covering the Regency and Victorian periods. It was kind of useful, but I did feel like the majority of the book focused on the 1840s instead of the whole period it says it covers. I was most interested in the 1880s so I didn’t feel like this book was super useful for me. Good background knowledge on the era, though.
2.5/5 pudding recipes

The Story of Art without Men by Katy Hessel***
This book is gorgeous and timely. Named after one of the seminal art history textbooks (The Story of Art), Hessel remedies the dearth of women in that book and shifts the focus to the many woman who have been forgotten or under-appreciated. I didn’t love Hessel’s writing style (a lot of long, overly complicated sentences), and I felt that the book could have been a little more carefully edited. But that said, it’s a wonderful work with beautiful, full-color images that finally gives women artists a little bit of the recognition they deserve.
4/5 women artists

Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein by Ann Eekhout
**Book Hangover Alert
One of my current favorite genres is historical novels that imagine something about the life of a real person. This story follows Mary Shelley on the fateful trip to Switzerland where she wrote Frankenstein, and a trip she took to Scotland a few years before, weaving the two together to paint a portrait of the inspiration for one of the most famous horror stories ever written. Frankenstein is one of my favorite classics, and I loved this spooky, dream-like, magical look into the mind of Mary. Not sure how much of Eekhout’s characterization of Percy Bysshe Shelley was invented and how much was based on truth, but I found myself questioning why someone as smart and interesting as Mary wound up with him.
4/5 monsters

The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty***
**Book Hangover Alert
Daevabad Trilogy book 1 of 3
CW: fantasy racism, genocide, child trafficking
This book was excellent. Street thief scam artist Nahri accidentally calls up a djinn while doing a fake exorcism on the streets of Cairo. This results in the discovery that she is part djinn and the ifrit are after her. So the djinn she calls up takes her to Daevabad, a city of djinn, where she has to learn to survive the intrigue of the court. The whole ending was a wild ride and I could barely keep myself from throwing the book against the wall (which would have been bad because I was reading the e-version on my iPad). It was so good. I loved the world and the characters and the intrigue. Super excited to read the rest of the series.
5/5 djinn

What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist–the Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England by Daniel Pool*
I read this one for research as well. It is also a Victorian history book, referencing a lot of things from Victorian novels that are confusing for modern readers. I thought it was a little more useful for my purposes than the Writer’s Guide above, but it could have had more info about death, mourning, and grieving. It does not matter how many Victorian history books I read, I will never understand what English pudding is. (One other interesting thing I learned from this book was that lady’s maids were known as abigails which is actually referenced in Annie Bot–the androids in cleaning and housekeeping mode are called Abigails.)
3/5 types of pudding

*This book only includes straight, white, cis people. The main character of Annie Bot is technically not white (the man who owns Annie the android chooses to model her on his Black ex-girlfriend, but made her skin a few shades lighter). But the book doesn’t really engage much with racism, so I’m still giving it this designation. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew has one paragraph on gay men.

**Book Hangover Alert indicates the kind of book that will leave you full up on love. Satisfied, but wishing the book never had to end. You’ll be laying on the floor with no idea what to do with yourself (other friends have called this feeling Good Book Depression or say that certain books necessitate Floor Time). This is the kind of book that gets its teeth in you and won’t let go easily. After the last page you’ll be thinking about this book for a long time. You’ll bother all your friends trying to get them to read it so that you won’t be alone in your Hangover.

***This book is part of my Books for a Social Conscience series! Read The Story of Art without Men to acknowledge the amazing contribution to art that women, trans, and nonbinary people have made. Read The City of Brass for an amazing Middle Eastern inspired fantasy with some LGBTQIA+ rep.

Reads marked as part of the Books for a Social Conscience series will regularly address topics like race and racism, colonialism and post-colonialism, LGBTQIA+ experience, feminism, BIPOC experience, social and political issues, history, identity, class, disability experience, immigration, gun violence, poverty, colorism, environmentalism, and more! The goal of these books is to diversify the stories we’re reading, grow our empathy for those who are different from us, and amplify voices who are often silenced.

December 1, 2023December 1, 2023

November 2023 Books

Books Reread

The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan
Percy Jackson and the Olympians book 5 of 5
**Book Hangover Alert
The thrilling conclusion! These books were so good. I am so excited for the new TV show.
5/5 pegasi

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare*
Yes, I read it again even though I read it last month. I listened to the BBC radio play version this time. Still stellar.
4/5 love flowers

New Books Read

Ways of Seeing by John Berger
It’s Nonfiction November apparently. I read this book in preparation for a class I’m going to teach in the spring about the connection between image and text, or art and writing. It was fabulous. It’s quite old, but still relevant.
4/5 visual essays

Artie and the Wolf Moon by Olivia Stephens
This was the big library book club book, so they had unlimited e-copies for people to borrow. So obviously I got it and read it too. Artie is a teen struggling with all the regular teen things with her single mom when she discovers she’s a werewolf just like her mom. Suddenly, she has to deal with school and friendships and also learning to use her powers and staying safe from vampires. It’s a graphic novel so it’s a pretty light easy read. It was enjoyable. I don’t have a ton to say about it. I’m not in the target audience of young queer black girls, who I think will really love this book. For me I thought the author could have gone farther in developing the theme of community and its importance in African American society.
3/5 werewolves

That Summer Feeling by Bridget Morrissey
This was fun. At a weeklong summer camp for adults, Garland must heal from the hurt of her divorce in order to discover the truth about herself and open herself to new queer love. It’s pretty simple and predictable, but I guess that’s what people want with romance books. I don’t read a ton of romance books unless they’re queer.
3/5 camp t-shirts

Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel by Lisa Cron
I read this for a fiction class I’m taking for my MFA program. I usually hate books like this. I don’t really believe that anyone can teach you how to write. They can teach you how they write, but you have to figure out what strategies work for you. I thought Cron had some useful things to say about story and your main character’s driving misbelief and how the inner story (the change the main character goes through) drives the plot. When she gets to the parts about outlining all the scenes, I experience my regular frustration at these books, though. I hate writing really in depth outlines because it makes me not excited to actually write the book because I already know everything about the story. I like writing to discover the story, not figuring everything out before I start. Maybe this isn’t as efficient as Cron’s system and I don’t have a book deal to prove my way works, so I could be wrong. But I don’t think I’ll be adopting all of Cron’s strategies.
2.5/5 scene cards

Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day by Peter Ackroyd***
I read this hoping to learn more about queer London in the nineteenth century. Ackroyd’s history spans London’s queer history from the Romans until the 2010s. It was actually almost overwhelming how much information was in this book. I had planned to just read the section on the nineteenth century, but it was so fun, I read the whole thing. The main takeaway I think from Ackroyd’s book is that there have always been queer people, in London and elsewhere, and even if they would not define themselves with the words and categories we use today, these feelings and preferences aren’t new. It does make me quite sad though how much queer history is suppressed.
3.5/5 dancing boys

Palestine by Joe Sacco***
If you’re one of the many people right now trying to educate yourself on the Israel/Palestine conflict, this is a great primer. Sacco, a Maltese American, is a graphic journalist who visited Palestine in late 1991 and early 1992, trying to himself understand the conflict. What I like about Sacco is his honesty. He has no illusions about what he’s there to do. He’s looking for a story, for anything good for the comic. He’s suspicious and questions everything. He tries to unravel the complicated history and current situation by sharing the stories of many Palestinians, and even a few Israelis.
3.5/5 olive trees

How Far the Light Reaches by Sabrina Imbler***
**Book Hangover Alert
CW: eating disorders
This book was stunning and gorgeous. The ten lyrical personal essays each explore a different sea creature and through that creature, one facet of Imbler’s life. The metaphors aren’t gimmicky or trite, but are truly insightful and thought provoking. I read this because someone had recommended one of the essays as something I could use in my class that I’m designing, but it was so good that I had to read the whole book. I aspire to write essays like these.
4.5/5 salps

The Curse of the Specter Queen byJenny Elder Moke*
Book 1 of 2 Samantha Knox Series
This book was so fun. Definitely one of my lighter reads this month. Samantha Knox works in an antique bookstore repairing old books in the 1920s. When a mysterious package arrives followed by some sinister men that burn down her shop looking for the package, Sam is catapulted into an adventure trying to solve an archeological mystery and stop those who want to bring about the Curse of the Specter Queen. Full of Gaelic and Celtic folklore and a sparkling cast of characters, this book gave me the escape I needed. My only quibble is that Bennet was kind of a stuffed shirt.
4/5 antique books

A History of my Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt***
Another book of essays, Belcourt examines the unique experience of being First Nations and queer in Canada. His essays are not only personal essays, but bring in theory and his deep reflections. Belcourt is also a poet and his style is interesting, both lyrical and academic as he tries to puzzle out how to live in this world.
3.5/5 queer bodies

Palestinian Walks: Forays Into a Vanishing Landscape by Raja Shehadeh***
Another good one for those trying to learn more about Palestine. Shehadeh, a lawyer and human rights activist, takes readers on six walks through the hills of Palestine from 1978 to 2006. He reflects on the changing landscape, noticing new Israeli settlements and roads and new laws that prevent him from walking where he once did. Though his walks have become increasingly dangerous, it is so clear that Shehadeh is deeply connected to the land, and I feel his love for it as a reader. Reading about the destroyed ecosystems and now inaccessible walking routes, I feel great sadness for Shehadeh’s land. The policies the Israeli government used to take Palestinian land are eerily similar to the way American settlers took Native American land, claiming that no one was using or cultivating the land, when that was not true, and then mismanaging the land and causing its degradation. Shehadeh is from Ramullah in the West Bank, whereas Sacco focused on Gaza, so it was nice to read both to understand the two different areas and the way people live in each. The West Bank is a patchwork of ever increasing Israeli settlements, interspersed with Palestinian villages. Gaza is a concentration camp.
4/5 walks

*This book only includes straight, white, cis people.

***This book is part of my Books for a Social Conscience series! First a caveat: I have decided that simply having queer people and/or people of color in a book is not enough to qualify it for the Books for a Social Conscience distinction. That sets the bar too low. So while in the past I would have included Artie and the Wolf Moon and That Summer Feeling, I will not be including them in the new system. We love representation! Don’t get me wrong, but honestly at this point if you don’t have queer people and/or people of color in your book, like what are you doing? I will now be including a new designation: *This book only includes straight, white, cis people.

Anyway, read Queer City to learn about how queerness has always existed and been part of history. Read Palestine to learn more about the Israel/Palestine conflict. Read How Far the Light Reaches to discover more queer, non-white perspectives. Read A History of My Brief Body to understand how Canada’s colonialism still affects Native populations, especially queer Natives. Read Palestinian Walks to learn more about the Israel/Palestine conflict, specifically in how it relates to the land.

May 29, 2023May 29, 2023

May 2023 Books

New Books Read

The Last Hero by Linden A. Lewis***
Book Hangover Alert**
The First Sister Trilogy book 3 of 3
CW: fantasy racism, oppression, scientific research and testing without consent, prostitution
The stunning conclusion to the First Sister Trilogy, this book is a whirlwind of war, politics, and resistance. I won’t say too much because I don’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t read the first two books. I enjoyed the final book, though I do feel like the pacing was relentless in that every chapter we switched character POVs and every chapter the POV character was in mortal danger. It was exhausting as a reader. The book is already pretty long, but I felt I need some places to rest when the characters could breathe. But I found the series conclusion satisfying.
4/5 synthetics

River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer***
CW: slavery, n-word, racism
I wanted to like this book more than I did. In Barbados just after the end of slavery, a mother searches for her children who were sold away from her plantation. She discovers freedom in the long shadow of slavery. While I was interested in learning more about the history of slavery in the Caribbean and about the legacy of slavery, particularly how it continued with the ‘apprenticeships’ after the legal end of slavery, I didn’t feel like I connected with any of the characters. I also felt that the protagonist’s journey was almost too easy. She actually does find out what happened to all of her children which seems sort of unlikely. I also found the way the dialogue was written to be rather jarring. I’m sure it was probably historically more accurate than writing the dialogue like we speak today, but it pulled me out of the story.
3/5 rivers

Hellbent by Leigh Bardugo
Book Hangover Alert**
Alex Stern book 2 of at least 2
I was utterly useless for three days while I sat and read this book, doing everything one handed and complaining about going to work. Alex Stern, agent of Lethe, the oversight agency of the secret societies at Yale, continues her quest to rescue her mentor Darlington, ready to go through hell and back to bring him home. It was excellent. Perhaps even better than the first one. There are a few pretty traumatic events in the first book, and this one was in my opinion less traumatic. We also got to spend more time with characters we already love, so that’s why I think I enjoyed it even more than Ninth House.
5/5 rituals to open a portal to hell

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
Scholomance book 1 of 3
This book was very enjoyable. In an odd way, it reminded me of Gideon the Ninth in that it was a fantasy with a complicated magic system and world building with a protagonist with a very distinctive voice. Unlike Gideon the Ninth though, I liked it. I liked El’s distinct voice and how she grew over the novel. It was a little hard to understand the magic system and world at first but it was very unique and worth the effort to understand it.
3.5/5 mals

The Sun and the Star by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro***
Companion to the Percy Jackson series
CW: trauma
We’ve all been waiting for Uncle Rick to give us a book about Nico and Will and it’s finally here! Nico, son of Hades, and Will, son of Apollo, must undertake a quest to Tartarus to rescue a friend. Along the way, they’ll learn just how much they mean to one another. This book was good. It was enjoyable and I’m grateful to Riordan and Oshiro for writing it because it think there are some teenaged queers that need to see themselves represented in fantasy. I didn’t love it as much as I’d hoped; I didn’t love it as much as the first two series of Percy Jackson books. There was a lot of working through trauma and developing healthy relationships, which are of course good things, but sometimes you just want demigods making jokes and killing monsters.
3.5/5 nightmares

The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill
CW: domestic violence
I love Barnhill’s work. In the near future, a teenaged girl’s mother falls in love with a man who is sometimes a crane, and sometimes a man. The crane soon becomes an abusive and menacing presence, demanding the mother, a talented weaver, create a masterpiece for him. The protagonist is then left to care for the house and her younger brother alone without the income from her mother’s work, and unable to convince her mother of the evil of the crane. The novella is a dark fantasy reimagining of the crane wife folktale from Japanese mythology, and it does a wonderful job of examining domestic violence, generational trauma, and the patriarchy.
4.5/5 cranes

The Bone Shard War by Andrea Stewart***
**Book Hangover Alert
The Drowning Empire book 3 of 3
Another conclusion to a trilogy this month. Two years after the conclusion of book two, Emperor Lin is struggling to hold her empire together as the governors grumble, resistance factions spring up, and the secrets of the Alanga threaten to tumble her rule. Sometimes I feel like writers give their characters too much adversity. I realize the story would be boring without it, but at this point I just want Lin and Jovis to be happy. The conclusion to the series was bittersweet and satisfying, which is really the most I can ask of any book.
4/5 ossalen

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz***
CW: homophobia, hate crimes
This book gets a lot of hype on BookTok, and I’ll be honest, I thought it was going to be more gay. In this coming of age novel, Mexican-American Ari and his best friend Dante learn how to be themselves in a world that’s not always kind. The book is compulsively readable but I didn’t love it and I didn’t hate it. Ari has a lot of self loathing to work out, which is a relatable experience for many queer teens, but is not always enjoyable to read. I have one other qualm but it’s a spoiler so read on at your own risk. Read More: SPOILERS AHEAD

Throughout the book, Ari is obsessed with knowing more about his brother who has been in jail since he was young and no one in his family will talk about him. Ari eventually finds out that his brother committed a homophobic hate crime, murdering a trans person. And that doesn’t really seem to bother Ari that much? Which I thought was odd? Ari is irate when he learns Dante is beaten to within an inch of his life for being gay, but he seems to feel no anger that his brother committed that crime. And I understand that Ari is worried about becoming like his brother because he also has anger issues and likes to fight. But he chooses to put up photos of his brother and wants to write to him in prison and while I’m all for forgiveness and healing, I didn’t understand why he wasn’t more upset that his brother MURDERED someone, specifically a trans woman.

3/5 birds with broken wings

Me trying to be as cool as Claude Cahun with her self portrait photography

Exist Otherwise: The Life and Works of Claude Cahun by Jennifer L. Shaw***
CW: antisemitism, homophobia
This lovely coffee table book details the life of Claude Cahun, an artist and writer active in the Surrealist movement of the 1920s. Cahun and her partner Marcel Moore also resisted fascism, running a sophisticated anti-Nazi propaganda movement on the occupied island of Jersey during WWII. The book is fascinating and full of photographs of Cahun and Moore’s work. Moore was an artist in her own right and she and Cahun collaborated on much of their artistic work.
3.5/5 surreal collages

Atalanta by Jennifer Saint
CW: victim blaming, rape
Jennifer Saint is one of my favorite writers of mythological reimaginings. Atalanta follows the titular character from her abandonment on a mountain as a baby, her childhood being raised by bears and nymphs of Artemis, and her involvement in the Argonaut’s quest for the golden fleece. The champion of Artemis and the only woman on the quest, through Atalanta’s eyes we get to experience the myth of the golden fleece anew through a feminist lens. I adored it.
5/5 bears

Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark T. Sullivan***
CW: genocide, slavery, antisemitism, war
Based on a true story, this novel follows the experiences of Pino Lella during WWII as he helped refugees flee across the Alps from Italy to Switzerland and then became a spy for the resistance in the Nazi high command by driving for General Hans Leyers. The book was definitely very engaging and interesting. I didn’t know much about the war in Italy. That being said, there have been some rumblings on the internet about how much truth there is in this ‘true story.’ The author’s note states the following:

“Due to the document burning, the collective amnesia, and the death of so many characters by the time I learned of the story, I have been forced in places to construct scenes and dialogue based solely on Pino’s memory decades later, the scant physical evidence that remains, and my imagination fueled by my research and informed suspicions. I have also comingled or compressed events and characters for the sake of narrative coherence and have fully dramatized incidents that were described to me in much more truncated forms.

As a result, then, the story you are about to read is not a work of narrative nonfiction, but a novel of biographical and historical fiction that hews closely to what happened to Pino Lella between June 1943 and May 1945.”
-Mark T. Sullivan

So perhaps it’s more constructive to think about this book like a movie based on a true story–as we know movies always “Hollywoodize” the true story. Several different people on the internet have made different claims about the veracity of several pieces of the narrative. So I guess I would say to read the book, enjoy it, learn more about the broad strokes of WWII in Italy, but treat the book more as a historical fiction.
3.5/5 cathedrals of God

Weyward by Emilia Hart
CW: domestic violence, abuse, trauma, rape
I enjoyed this book. It was my March BOTM pick. The novel follows three women from different generations of the Weyward family as they discover their affinity with nature, survive abusive men, and come into their own power. I found all three narratives compelling and I liked the way they were all woven together. I did find the writing style a little choppy and featuring too many em dashes (which contributed to the choppiness) at least in the first half of the book. It didn’t bother me as much in the second half, either because I got used to it or the writing flowed better later on.
3.5/5 crows

The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang***
The Poppy War book 1 of 3
CW: genocide, extreme body horror and mutilation, rape, war, addiction, colorism, racism, human experimentation, self harm, slavery
I loved Babel by Kuang so I was really excited to read this book. The start to an epic fantasy trilogy, the story follows Rin, an orphan from a remote part of the Nikara Empire who tests into the elite military academy Sinegard where she attempts to prove she belongs there. Along the way she discovers her own shamanic powers and begins to unravel the mysteries of her past. The book is inspired by Chinese military history from the mid-20th century but set in a world closer to the Song Dynasty of the 13th century, with fantastical elements. It’s an incredible work of fantasy to be sure. I didn’t love it, and it isn’t because it wasn’t good. It was good. All the characters, but especially Rin, were so complex and interesting and flawed. It was so fresh and new and I’ve never read anything like it. But it was a little too dark for my taste. It was a little too gory. The atrocities were more gruesome and horrifying than I wanted to read about. I’m not very knowledgable about Chinese and Japanese history, so it’s possible that some of the atrocities described by Kuang are inspired by actual events, in which case I think it’s important to learn about those things, however, I didn’t necessarily pick up this book because I wanted to read 101 ways humans can desecrate other humans. That being said, I’ll probably still read the rest of them.
4/5 poppy seeds

Yellowface by R. F. Kuang***
Book Hangover Alert**
CW: racism, microaggressions, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts
I can’t stop thinking about this book. And I’m not sure I’ve thought about it long enough to form a coherent review of it. Yellowface follows June Hayward, a white author who steals an unfinished novel draft from her Asian-American author friend after her untimely death. June finishes the novel and passes it off as her own and we watch as everything spirals out of control. This book reminded me of Self Care in it’s page-turning, watching-a-train-wreck quality. And June reminded me of the protagonists in Self Care, who were the same kind of white woman (we all know the one). Kuang’s biting satire of the publishing industry brings up a lot of important issues like who should be able to tell what kind of story, what is cultural appropriation, how the publishing industry treats writers of color, how privilege operates in the industry, how white women weaponize their own victimhood. It was so good. I might have more to say later, but I’m still in the lie-on-the-floor stage of the Book Hangover.
5/5 stolen manuscripts

***This book is part of my Books for a Social Conscience series! Read The Last Hero for disability, LGBTQIA+ rep in sci-fi. Read River Sing Me Home to learn about the legacy of slavery in Barbados. Read The Sun and the Star for LGBTQIA+ rep in fantasy. Read The Bone Shard War for an Asian inspired fantasy with LGBTQIA+ rep. Read Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe for a Mexican-America, gay coming of age story. Read Exist Otherwise: The Life and Words of Claude Cahun to learn about a forgotten female, lesbian artist and her heroic resistance against the Nazis. Read Beneath a Scarlet Sky to learn more about WWII and the atrocities committed in Italy. Read The Poppy War for a fantasy inspired by Chinese and Japanese history. Read Yellowface to learn more about racism and microaggressions in the publishing industry.