Current Distractions, August 2016 Edition

I must say, I'm pretty sad to see August go. I've been more exhausted by this summer than anything, and fall is my second favourite season (after spring), but it's still bittersweet to see the summer pass by. Hopefully I'll have more to write about at the end of next month, but when I haven't been doing productive things or completely unproductive things, what I've mostly spent my time on is watching stuff.

Watching

How to Get Away With Murder season 2
I finished watching the first season of this with my friends quite a few months ago now, and what with summer stuff going on, we didn't manage to get back together to watch the next season until this month. I'd forgotten how batshit it gets and how insane the cliffhangers are at the end of every episode. This show is such trashy fun and I would encourage anyone who likes that sort of thing to watch it.

Stranger Things
Everyone else has already talked about this show. I liked it a lot!!

Star Trek TNG
Oh. My. God. Rewatching this for the first time in almost a decade has been so much fun. I'd forgotten how good it was, after watching several first season episodes that are incredibly lacklustre. I'm now partway through the second season and it's so good. I've said before and I'll say again: Deep Space Nine is probably a somewhat better show objectively than TNG, but it's certainly not more prominent in my heart.

Shaka Zulu
This giant 80s miniseries is on Netflix and I'm watching it with my mom, who supposedly first watched it while dealing with a colicky baby who may or may not share my name/initials/DNA. It's weird but I also kind of love it.

Next month I hope to be writing about The Knick, because I just picked up the first season from the library and I'm very excited to get into it although it may or may not scar me forever. Woo!

The Year of Reading Women In Review

One year ago tomorrow, I announced my Year of Reading Women. The goal was to read books by twelve female authors whose books I'd never read before. And I did it! I read 12 books by 12 different female authors, and then I read three more. (If you're wondering how my numbering works below, I counted books that were written by one man and one woman as half a book. If you're wondering why I haven't linked to my thoughts on a book, it's because I ended up writing a full review of the book that hasn't been posted on the blog yet.)

1.0 - Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
1.5 - Dragon Wing by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
2.5 - Alice by Christina Henry
3.0 - Saga Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
4.0 - Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
5.0 - The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman
6.0 - Bad Houses by Sara Ryan and Carla Speed McNeil
7.0 - Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft by Lyndall Gordon
8.0 - Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
9.0 - A Natural History of the Romance Novel by Pamela Regis
10.0 - We Band of Angels by Elizabeth M. Norman
11.0 - The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
12.0 - Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan

13.0 - Live Alone and Like It by Marjorie Hillis
14.0 - This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein
15.0 - Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin

So I'm really happy that I did this. I had a great time with it, and it really forced me to pay attention to what I was reading and how rarely I tend to reach for women's work. I didn't love everything that I read by any means, but I read some great stuff, too. I learned some things, added some more books to my reading list both for the blog and just in general, and I ended up reading half a dozen other books by women whose work I'd read previously, too. I've read more books by women in the last year than I have in a very long time, and that's really exciting!

I won't be formally repeating the experiment again this year, though, only because I have lots of reading to catch up on for this blog so that I can finish it someday soonish. Still, I'm trying to concentrate as much as I can on female authors for the Random part of the project, if only to offset how many men are on The List.

Wish me luck.

And wish a happy 219th birthday to Mary Shelley tomorrow :)

What I'm Reading: This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein

Here is a horror story.

Forgive me for getting a bit more political than usual.

I have to admit that I took a while to move from denial to acceptance when it comes to climate change. This has been part of a larger shift from gut feelings to deferring to experts and lived experience when it comes to my opinions in general. Of course there's guesswork involved when it comes to climate science (the fact that the guesswork seems to repeatedly lead to worse outcomes than predicted is particularly cruel).

In any case, I now find myself in a different kind of denial, where I avoid reading about climate change because it's just too scary. I faced my fears to read This Changes Everything, which unfortunately didn't do much to assuage them.

Naomi Klein's basic premise here is that action on climate change and capitalism are fundamentally incompatible. I mostly agree with her. For the most part, she supports this point well, showing how oil and gas companies have, continue to, and will continue to exploit the resource in reprehensible ways, encouraged/enabled by globalization and free trade. On the other hand, there were just enough eyebrow raising points (pro-naturopathy and anti-GMOs) that I found myself doubting her a bit. Her point of view and a lot of what's on the page are clearly biased to support her arguments (which, since it's her book, is her prerogative of course). I haven't fully delved into the opposing opinions out there yet, but I've started here.

Anyway, this is just one perspective on the encroaching doom that is climate change, and I'm planning to explore others when I can work up the courage to do so. Klein proposes solutions and points at growing grassroots movements to stop oil and gas exploitation, and those movements are certain to continue to grow.

Here's hoping.