i've given everyone i know/a good reason to go
I can't sleep and there's a chocolate chip pound cake in the oven, which I fully expect to be delicious.
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I've read the first half of Too Wise To Woo Peaceably by McKay (Harry Potter, Snape/Harry) and am taking a break to write this post before reading the third and fourth chapters. Probably everyone in the world has read this story - it's a classic from 2001 - but in case you haven't, it's an AU where Hogwarts put on 'Much Ado About Nothing'. As such, it's a backstage story as well as a love story, and backstage stories are a genre I love. So far it's really lovely, a gentle and satisfying read as well as having some cracking sexual tension. I wanted to mention it here partly just to say that I'm reading it - I've been meaning to do so for, oh, the last 6 years - but I fully expect it to be worth recommending, too. If you're interested in longish Shakespeare-focussed Snape/Harry, you'll love this. (No knowledge of the play is required to enjoy it - true story, I actually started reading it last week because I had plans to see a performance and thought that it would be more fun to get a handle on the characters and plot first through fanfic than Spark Notes.)
Also on a Potterish front: sign-ups are open for deeply_horrible
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Yesterday I finished 'Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth Century America'.
It was published in 1991 so it's a little bit outdated in some respects, and doesn't really 'finish the story' of the 20th century, but it was a really easy-to-read book and sparked lots of ideas and conversation re: identity politics, the role of desire v. context in definitions of sexuality and so on with my lovely partner. I was especially interested in the early sections on 'romantic friendship' and the later chapters on the feminist sex wars, which were quite neutral in tone and therefore not face-achingly awful to read. But the sections that taught me the most, and opened my eyes to things I rarely think about, were the ones on the 20s and 30s (which were fascinating - I want to read more about that) and the Lesbian Nation stuff in the 70s.
Fun fact I learnt from this book: women have been calling themselves gay since at least the 1920s. So when I feel more comfortable calling myself 'gay' than 'lesbian', it has a long history. Lesbian is such an important word, and has been associated with so many things that are in effect 'my' past, but it still doesn't feel like it's mine or roll naturally off my tongue. 'Queer' does, these days, and I would have been interested to read more treatment of that as an identity (too modern for the book, alas) relating to a muddied pool of gender as well as good old 'inverted' sexuality. And I want to read more about early-century butch/femme culture, even if lots of it seems awfully rigid now (and very far away from the identities of butches and femmes I know). The book certainly made me interested in reading more gay/queer/lesbian history, at any rate, something which I apparently skipped in my coming out process.
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I have no interest in the Olympics but also haven't minded them much; they haven't been a huge problem for me in terms of transport the couple of times I've ventured into London, and I don't have a TV so they've been easy to avoid (except on Tumblr, where I can just keep scrolling). But the other day I discovered that they mean there's a University Challenge hiatus and I was therefore deprived of Paxman!face both last week and this week on iPlayer. Whyyyyyy?
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I've read the first half of Too Wise To Woo Peaceably by McKay (Harry Potter, Snape/Harry) and am taking a break to write this post before reading the third and fourth chapters. Probably everyone in the world has read this story - it's a classic from 2001 - but in case you haven't, it's an AU where Hogwarts put on 'Much Ado About Nothing'. As such, it's a backstage story as well as a love story, and backstage stories are a genre I love. So far it's really lovely, a gentle and satisfying read as well as having some cracking sexual tension. I wanted to mention it here partly just to say that I'm reading it - I've been meaning to do so for, oh, the last 6 years - but I fully expect it to be worth recommending, too. If you're interested in longish Shakespeare-focussed Snape/Harry, you'll love this. (No knowledge of the play is required to enjoy it - true story, I actually started reading it last week because I had plans to see a performance and thought that it would be more fun to get a handle on the characters and plot first through fanfic than Spark Notes.)
Also on a Potterish front: sign-ups are open for deeply_horrible
---
Yesterday I finished 'Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth Century America'.
It was published in 1991 so it's a little bit outdated in some respects, and doesn't really 'finish the story' of the 20th century, but it was a really easy-to-read book and sparked lots of ideas and conversation re: identity politics, the role of desire v. context in definitions of sexuality and so on with my lovely partner. I was especially interested in the early sections on 'romantic friendship' and the later chapters on the feminist sex wars, which were quite neutral in tone and therefore not face-achingly awful to read. But the sections that taught me the most, and opened my eyes to things I rarely think about, were the ones on the 20s and 30s (which were fascinating - I want to read more about that) and the Lesbian Nation stuff in the 70s.
Fun fact I learnt from this book: women have been calling themselves gay since at least the 1920s. So when I feel more comfortable calling myself 'gay' than 'lesbian', it has a long history. Lesbian is such an important word, and has been associated with so many things that are in effect 'my' past, but it still doesn't feel like it's mine or roll naturally off my tongue. 'Queer' does, these days, and I would have been interested to read more treatment of that as an identity (too modern for the book, alas) relating to a muddied pool of gender as well as good old 'inverted' sexuality. And I want to read more about early-century butch/femme culture, even if lots of it seems awfully rigid now (and very far away from the identities of butches and femmes I know). The book certainly made me interested in reading more gay/queer/lesbian history, at any rate, something which I apparently skipped in my coming out process.
---
I have no interest in the Olympics but also haven't minded them much; they haven't been a huge problem for me in terms of transport the couple of times I've ventured into London, and I don't have a TV so they've been easy to avoid (except on Tumblr, where I can just keep scrolling). But the other day I discovered that they mean there's a University Challenge hiatus and I was therefore deprived of Paxman!face both last week and this week on iPlayer. Whyyyyyy?