I have been noting hither and yon pieces about people reading outside their comfort or at least usual zones and am somewhat surprised, possibly even attaining to status=aghast, that this tends to mean Moar Wymmynz, even when the people making this resolution are themselves women.
Since for decades now yr hedjog has been reading predominantly books ( Read more... )

A couple of weeks ago I was being interviewed by A Journalist for their obligatory piece on 50 Shades (you write one short article on the history of sadomasochism, and forever after you are A Nexpert) in which I pointed out that the text was an absolutely stock romance trope in which He starts out with All The Power and by the end She has acquired ( Read more... )

At the weekend we went to see Ex Machina, and as far as I can see, all the reviews/discussion focus entirely and obviously on its relationship to robotics/AI tropes, to the point when on one board people were claiming they could see what the twist was going to be on the basis of the trailer (they were RONG).
But, hello, there is a huge archetypal ( Read more... )

Somebody on my flist was deploring the very uncritical authorial attitude towards the protag of a classic male coming of age narrative -
And somebody else whom I read was noting that the Angry Young Men appeared to be being Irritable Towards Women and Snarky generally about people who were not Blokes Like Them, rather than, you know, actually ( Read more... )

Still very immersed in Sekkrit Projekt #ifitoldyouidhavetokillyou reading, but I did read two mentionable works.
Of course, some people may consider Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake series not entirely mentionable, and this one - Jason (2014) - is one of those shorter, inter-big-adventure works that focuses on character relationships. (Mostly while ( Read more... )

Because I do think Joan Smith has a point about the movie of Gone Girl, Gone Girl’s recycling of rape myths is a disgusting distortion, I'm not sure I go 100% with her reading -
(Saw the movie at the weekend: I gave up on the book, though did the flip-to-the-end to check out my suspicions thing, but thought it might work better as a movie, which ( Read more... )

Move over, Morse: female TV detectives are on the case now.
And, well, yay, but I have various cavils about that article.
One of which is, there's quite a long tradition of more or less dysfunctional/damaged male detectives - Lord Peter with his shellshock, anyone? - and I'm pretty sure I've seen comments about the recurrent motif of male leads in ( Read more... )

I did not see a single solitary bun during all my stay, although somebody else said they had, so maybe they have not all deserted the scene - or, of course, been turned into delicious comestibles, which did cross my mind after rabbit roulade was on the dinner menu one evening...

I have already mentioned the strenuous physical exercise - there were ( Read more... )

It is probably no news to my dr rdrz that I am not infrequently exasperated by narratives about the history of psychiatry/madness which make it All About Teh Wymmynz, with particular ire reserved for any kneejerk association with Female Creativity.

I am also so very over the fictional trope of the woman who has gone right over the edge of nervous ( Read more... )

The paper is infested with either Christmas presents &/or Christmas foodie stuff, or Looking Back At the Top Whatevers of the past year, which never seem to include the things I thought were the Top Whatevers, should they even be Whatevers that I am interested in in the first place.

However:

I was massively incensed by this: Danny Alexander, ( Read more... )