(no subject)
in the fridge:
- cookie dough, this time with Crisco instead of butter. apparently this gives a famous amos like texture. I'm not holding my breath but hey, there will also be peanut butter chips mixed in with my usual chocolate chips
- ragout made with the leftover (failed) bak kut teh with lamb pieces. except this ragout is even thicker because it will be made into krokets! i've got to buy breadcrumbs but i'm very much looking forward to this.
finished:
- ranajit guha's dominance and hegemony
- arjun appadurai's modernity at large
working on:
- Cheah Pheng's Spectrality of Nations
also read:
- holocaust for hire which is a silly captain america novel that a prof gave away (along with a bunch of comics). it is from the 70s, has a grumpy but comedic white nick fury, an italian mafia, and some journalist couple who start of hating each other but end the story in love in the most contrived way possible. the red skull has got hold of some sonic gun technology and is using it to level cities and plans on using a satellite to annihilate the world, and of course captain america must stop him. what never fails to baffle me about these kinds of plots is how the scientists who develop the science who happen to be on the good guys' side never seem to think through the consequences of their work as they develop it. it's such an easy read, and it's a very slender book, so i think i finished it in an hour or so.
- when she woke by Hillary Jordan. it's a scifi retelling of the scarlet letter, a dystopia in which criminals undergo "melachroming" which means their skin is literally tinted to mark the severity of their crime, and since the main character committed the crime of murder as she had an abortion (it's also a super fundie setting) she is sentenced to be a "red". it's still a pretty fucking racist world but there's only a couple of characters of color. the structure of the book is pretty straightforward with its five-act, and thru it a transformation of the MC's romantic love for her lover that forestalls a happy ending together. there's a "feminist" group that gets women who have been melachromed red for abortion out of the states into Canada, and helps provides abortions. it's generally a very fast read but idk, while it's def a condemnation of christian fundamentalism, with an exploration of how even a loving family can bring a child up believing some fucked up shit that only leads to tragedy, i don't think it goes far enough and at the end of the day it's still about the main character trying to get rid of the stigma of being a Red. It doesn't match up with the interesting work that scarlet letter does, but then I read it when i was very young and from what i understood of it, hester subverts the stigma of the scarlet letter, appropriating it and making it an emblem not of "adultery" but of "absolution" and she lives her life.
reading:
- MISTERI ANAK JAGUNG which i gather is about an indonesian migrant living in someplace called "urbana, america" and about two chapters in i kind of got bored. i'm still planning on finishing it! it just will take longer than i expected
This entry was originally posted at http://jhameia.dreamwidth.org/120128.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
- cookie dough, this time with Crisco instead of butter. apparently this gives a famous amos like texture. I'm not holding my breath but hey, there will also be peanut butter chips mixed in with my usual chocolate chips
- ragout made with the leftover (failed) bak kut teh with lamb pieces. except this ragout is even thicker because it will be made into krokets! i've got to buy breadcrumbs but i'm very much looking forward to this.
finished:
- ranajit guha's dominance and hegemony
- arjun appadurai's modernity at large
working on:
- Cheah Pheng's Spectrality of Nations
also read:
- holocaust for hire which is a silly captain america novel that a prof gave away (along with a bunch of comics). it is from the 70s, has a grumpy but comedic white nick fury, an italian mafia, and some journalist couple who start of hating each other but end the story in love in the most contrived way possible. the red skull has got hold of some sonic gun technology and is using it to level cities and plans on using a satellite to annihilate the world, and of course captain america must stop him. what never fails to baffle me about these kinds of plots is how the scientists who develop the science who happen to be on the good guys' side never seem to think through the consequences of their work as they develop it. it's such an easy read, and it's a very slender book, so i think i finished it in an hour or so.
- when she woke by Hillary Jordan. it's a scifi retelling of the scarlet letter, a dystopia in which criminals undergo "melachroming" which means their skin is literally tinted to mark the severity of their crime, and since the main character committed the crime of murder as she had an abortion (it's also a super fundie setting) she is sentenced to be a "red". it's still a pretty fucking racist world but there's only a couple of characters of color. the structure of the book is pretty straightforward with its five-act, and thru it a transformation of the MC's romantic love for her lover that forestalls a happy ending together. there's a "feminist" group that gets women who have been melachromed red for abortion out of the states into Canada, and helps provides abortions. it's generally a very fast read but idk, while it's def a condemnation of christian fundamentalism, with an exploration of how even a loving family can bring a child up believing some fucked up shit that only leads to tragedy, i don't think it goes far enough and at the end of the day it's still about the main character trying to get rid of the stigma of being a Red. It doesn't match up with the interesting work that scarlet letter does, but then I read it when i was very young and from what i understood of it, hester subverts the stigma of the scarlet letter, appropriating it and making it an emblem not of "adultery" but of "absolution" and she lives her life.
reading:
- MISTERI ANAK JAGUNG which i gather is about an indonesian migrant living in someplace called "urbana, america" and about two chapters in i kind of got bored. i'm still planning on finishing it! it just will take longer than i expected
This entry was originally posted at http://jhameia.dreamwidth.org/120128.html. Please comment there using OpenID.