Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul by Ariel Glucklich
Status: Completed
This book is very dense. It is incredibly interesting, as well – Ariel makes some intriguing points about the uses of pain in religious and ritual contexts, and his history of how conceptions of pain changed with the advancement of medical science from something inevitable, beneficial, and sometimes even desirable to something injurious, damaging, and to be removed at all costs was fascinating. However, I have two general criticisms. One is that it has a general air of being outdated, some of which probably has to do with the book being published in 2001, and some of it had to do with its weird overreliance on Jungian psychology in the early chapters. I studied psychology in college and I only heard Jung’s methods brought up in discussions of the history of the field, so reliance on it as an actual analytical and interpretave paradigm felt very outdated to me. Second, it was incredibly dense in places. This isn’t necessarily a problem with the book per se, as I’m pretty sure it was written by an academic for academics. However, in between intriguing ideas and vivid descriptions of historical uses and experiences of pain, there were long, dense sections about neurology, biology, and the neruobiological effects of pain and feelings about pain, and my eyes definitely glazed over several times. It does make some really interesting points and is solid overall, but be prepared going in for it to be pretty dense (and full of vivid and detailed descriptions of torture, medical content, injuries, and pain of all kinds).
Trigger Warnings: Blood (mentions), injury, medical content (severe), torture (severe), death, medical trauma, self-harm for religious/ritual purposes
Chameleon Moon by RoAnna Sylver
Status: DNF on page 202
This book has been on my TBR list for literally years. It came across my radar a long time ago and I heard it had polyamory in it, so I put it on my list. And it managed to stay through several years of sorting and culling the list because the back cover was so sparse on details that I didn’t feel like I could make a good decision. And the ideas here are really cool. There’s the city itself, slowly crumbling into the cavern beneath that used to be a river and is now an eternal fire, and the violent military/paramilitary group invested in keeping everybody there. There’s the people themselves, changed in strange ways by a “miracle drug” that gave fantastic powers, but often with horrible consequences. There’s our protagonists, a lizard-man with the power to turn invisible who had his memories stolen by a ghost and a singer with a super-powered voice, plus other characters like the ghost, a person who’s been Frankenstein’s monster-ed together out of other people, and the singer’s two wives, one of whom is mostly made of plants. People just are queer and are polyamorous and use they/them pronouns and nobody thinks anything of it. There’s perhaps an underground rebel organization, and there’s definitely weird stuff going on. There are so many good things in this book. But there’s also a mental illness/trauma angle that was so overwhelmingly heavy-handed. The characters are okay, but the only aspect of them that’s really developed is that they have anxiety and/or are traumatized in different ways. The singer and her family are the most “trauma informed” characters I’ve ever read, and somehow they became that way while still actively living through that trauma. Every few pages someone else has an anxiety attack and someone else has to talk them through it. I’m not saying that the stuff they’re going through isn’t traumatic, because it is. But the story keeps interrupting what could have been a truly interesting adventure to shoehorn in stuff about trauma and anxiety. It really feels like one of those thinley-veiled Morally Edifying Literature stories from like the Victorian era, except instead of promoting Modesty and Virginity it’s promoting Trauma Is Real and Be Compassionate With Anxiety Attacks. These are not bad things to promote, actually – I’m not arguing about that. But the way they’re done here is so overwhelming and heavy-handed. If you’re here for a good fantasy story, it’s going to yank you out of the adventure repeatedly to preach about anxiety and trauma. If you’re actually here for a Moral and Instructive Tale on Trauma and Mental Health, you’re probably going to find much of this very triggering. There were really good ideas here and I did want to read the story. I just got so, so fed up with the excessive mental illness and trauma preaching.
Tags: Polyamory, transgender protagonist, asexual protagonist, It’s Queer!
Trigger Warnings: Torture, fire/fire injuries (mentions), anxiety disorder, panic attacks, animal death (mechanical animal), violence, addiction (mentions), death, murder, transphobia (mentions), guns, unreality (mentions)
Make, Sew and Mend: Traditional Techniques to Sustainably Maintain an Refashion Your Clothes by Bernadette Banner
An Unread Shelf 2023 book
Status: Completed
I do have a habit of reading through reference books like they’re narrative works, but even though this is technically a reference book, it’s the kind that is best read straight through first and then consulted as a reference. I watch Bernadette’s YouTube channel, and her personality shines through in the instructions themselves (already impressive) as well as the narrative bits that surround the instructions. There are also essays from other people who do historical sewing about what it means to them. Plus the instructions are just great. It’s targeted towards beginners so I didn’t expect to learn much (I bought it becuase I love Bernadette Banner, not because I expected it to be fantastically useful), but I actually learned several things, including the actual name of a stitch I use a lot, how to properly do gathers (I’ve apparently been doing it wrong), and how to put in a sleeve gusset. So not only is this a rare reference book that is fun to read straight through, the actual reference content is very helpful. It’s both accessible if you’re new to sewing and will probably teach you a thing or two even if you’ve been sewing for a while. I’m glad I own this one, because I fully expect to be referencing it later.
Bluejay Reads 