I think I’ll add The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon to my stack of to-be-read books. I think it was Michael Silverblatt (Host of Bookworm on NPR until 2022) who said,“There are so many great books. What is more rare is great readers.” I used to consider myself a great reader. Or at least good. I received a BA in English Lit from a top tier University and loved reading and analyzing heavy, dense, beautiful prose and stories. It seems the past half decade or so, I only want to read lighter stuff for pure entertainment and escape. Not Marvel movie levels of vapidness, but still. I’m not sure how I feel about this state of being.
I can relate to that. I’m pretty firmly in the “read what you want” camp, and I mostly try to adhere to that for myself. I try to strike a balance between escapist, light books, and books that are more challenging (and I enjoy both!). But it’s hard to shake that feeling of “I ought to be reading XYZ book instead of this,” no matter what I’m reading.
Ebooks.com sells books without drm for publishers that don’t require it! I read a lot of sci-fi and Tor doesn’t publish with drm so I always buy their books there. I think Kobo is owned by Walmart so I try to stick to ebooks.com whenever I can.
This is really amazing. I have been looking for something like this for some time. Not super hard, but I am not buying an ebook with drm. I am surprised how many books on on there.
It is really great! Also just to be clear some books do come with drm, but it’s explicitly listed for every book. But you can also use a no drm filter in the search to see all the ones without it. A great way to find publishers to support!
There’s a new fork of DeDRM tools that should be able crack the new Amazon DRM. noDRM’s fork probably will be updated some time later to include the patches from the other fork.
I love my Kobo ereader and have been using their store for years. It’s totally a viable alternative. I also use Overdrive so I can borrow and read library ebooks on my ereader as well. I can also read things (even the borrowed books) through any browser or the Kobo app if I want.
I’m not sure about crackability of Kobo’s books but I’d imagine it’s much easier than Amazon. As you already discovered, Amazon updated their encryption recently so any new books can’t be cracked.
Narrow, literalist readings of Jewish writings collected in the Ketuvim (Writings) section of the Tanakh (Torah, Nevi’im, Ketuvim) fit that.
There wasn’t a hard distinction between learning and leisure like we pretend there is today. A story could have a kernel of historical truth, or perhaps a lot, or none at all; convey important truths about society, the world and our place in it; and be told dramatically to capture attention (ie entertaining) so listeners pay attention to those truths and remember them in difficult situations.
Jewish tradition is to look for 4 levels of meaning in a text, including allegorical and hidden meanings as well as the general plot. Even those who believe the surface level as literally true spend most of their time working with interpretation, what lessons we can learn from the stories.
Then along comes a Greek proselytiser who insisted the particular salvation religion he followed was literally True and therefore better than other salvation religions. And that literalness got read back into a different people’s texts, came to be seen by most of the world as the only way to read them and here we are today.
Queer and trans lives do not always follow the same timelines that cis and straight lives follow. We do not always hit the same milestones at the same times. Our lives are not always legible to those on the outside. This is one of the most beautiful things about queerness — the way it invites us to shed ways of moving through time that do not serve us.
I feel like this is trying too hard to claim for queer folks what is intrinsically, universally human. Is anyone’s life always legible to those on the outside? And come on, non-linear narratives are hardly new or unique to queer authors, lol. Plenty of folks have been bothered by that kind of narrative, it certainly doesn’t mean there’s anything special about that.
Of course I remain open to being corrected. It could well be that I’m just ignorant on the history and function of non-linear narratives. But this reads like the author is trying way too hard to lay claim to things that pretty much everyone experiences to varying degrees at one point or another.
I agree with you that straight people and cis people can also have confusing timelines in terms of experiences and growth and you of course don’t know what any person you meet has gone, or is going, through. Regardless of sexuality and gender.
I think the point made, the way I read it, is that because the general public still does not quite grasp the gender debate fully, there’s a tendency to think of transgender people in a very stringent way (to be transgender you must fit x, y, z standard). How can you be transgender if you didn’t know from being born? Why are you only coming out now? You’re not really transgender, etc. To be honest, similar to how gay people have been, and are being, treated too: Okay, we will “accept” you, but only if you fit a narrow definition that makes us the most comfortable (in this case a more chronological timeline to express yourself in).
I’m a genderqueer bisexual myself, just as an fyi.
Edit: I will say, however, of course you’re allowed not to like a certain writing style. Maybe this book just wasn’t for the people complaining about the lack of a chronological timeline and that’s also fine.
There’s very much a whole theory/literature around queer time (see the reference to Muñoz in the article) – being queer frees you from this sort of linear heteronormative progression through stages of life. This JSTOR blog post might be of interest. The argument isn’t that this sort of non-linearity is specific to queer people (see the bit in the JSTOR post tying the economic precarity of millenials to the notion of “adulting”), but rather that it is an extremely common queer experience precisely because the markers of “progression” through life are heavily rooted in hetero- and cisnormativity.
I’ve really enjoyed ‘Into Thin Air’ by Jon Krakauer. It’s about an Everest expedition that ended in disaster - it’s really well written and compelling!
Modern genres don’t really apply to ancient literature. Mythical, historical, symbolic and real are mixed and you’re expected to be reading or listening to the literature from within the tradition which would give you the context for knowing which is which.
Beowulf is myth, but also history. It has references and genealogy to real figures, but it is embedded within a myth that records the meaning of that history. It’s full of symbolic retelling of that history.
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