What I'm Reading Wednesday
Oct. 10th, 2012 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miss_lucy21Right, it's Wednesday. I am so screwed up this week because life around here has been pretty off schedule. Anyway, here's what I've been reading:
Farmer Jane: Women Changing the Way We Eat by Temra Costa. 4 out of 5 stars. I would make a horrible farmer. I'm allergic to everything- very especially hay and grass- and I'm not a fan of the kind of hard physical labor involved in farming. But farming has always kind of fascinated me, so I keep reading about it. This book was a great overview of modern farming specifically from the point of view of women who are working towards new sustainable farming practices and techniques to improve food supply in the United States. It includes profiles of traditional organic farmers, urban farmers, food advocates and educators and young farmers. There are some amazing things going on in the world of organic/community centered farming and this book is a great introduction to that world. My only real criticism is that it is completely focused on the US, and it would have been nice to at least have a sidebar, if not a whole section, about these topics in other parts of the world.
Friday Night Lights, by H.G. Bissinger. 4 out of 5 stars. I've never seen the show, although I'm told it's pretty good. But small town high school football is something that kind of intrigues me. I went to a high school where football was nowhere near as important as it is in these towns, and it's interesting to see how the emphasis on football shapes the character of these places. One might say, warps the character, to some extent, too.
Alternate Beauty, by Andrea Rains Waggener. 2 out of 5 stars. Ordinarily, I wouldn't mention something I really didn't like here, but this book got me all ranty, so. It's pretty light and reasonably entertaining to some extent, which I expected from a "chick lit" kind of book. But, well. I'm a fat woman, so while on one hand, I'm kind of the target audience for a book that involves a scenario where fat people are considered the pinnacle of beauty and thin people are ostracized for being thin, on the other hand, there were so many things that bothered me about the book. Thing the first was the idea that because the main character was fat, she obviously was obsessed about food and was a binge eater. I know this can be difficult for people to grasp, but *not all fat people are binge eaters*. Or obsessed with food. Actually, the vast majority of fat people eat roughly the same amount of food as non-fat people.
The second thing that bothered me was how the main character, once she was in an environment where binge eating was encouraged or acceptable and where her body type was considered to be very beautiful, which made it easier for her to love her body, stopped bingeing and therefore lost weight, fairly rapidly. The message there being, well, of course if you eat less you will lose weight. This is not necessarily the case- weight loss being much more complex than calories in, calories out- and even if it was the case for this person, it's kind of portrayed as being an overall solution for every person who is overweight. Loving your body does not necessarily equal weight loss.
The third issue was the oppressed turned oppressors in the alternate reality. I want my body type to be seen as acceptable to society at large (heh), but I don't see any reason why that should have to come at the expense of other people. I can't explain it any better than that, but it was very uncomfortable.
And finally, the thing that may have bothered me the most (aside from the binge eating thing) is that when Veronica comes back from the alternate reality, she's thin and she stays that way. It seemed to miss the whole point of being accepted for who you are and accepting yourself for who you are, not how you look.
So, in other words, interesting premise, but very flawed execution.
And in the blogosphere, one of the things I read this week was The Long Unraveling by Diana at A Deeper Family. I'm sticking a trigger warning on it because it's the sort of thing that would make me sit down and sob for hours if I came across it unawares on a fragile day. It's a very real, very compelling personal essay about the sorts of things a family goes through when one of its members is nearing the end of their life. It made me nod and say "yes, yes, this is how it is. This is the real part".
(also note that the site, A Deeper Family is part of a larger site, A Deeper Story, and the sites have a very Christian focus. This particular essay does not mention religion or make any reference to God, but others on the site do)
And here's what I've added to the list this week:
The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL by Carolyn McCaskill. I did not know that there were different varieties of American Sign Language. I did know that there are differences between sign language in the United States and the rest of the world, but I did not know there were dialects within ASL. The book came recommended on a sociology blog I follow, so I added it to the list.
Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son, all by Lois Lowry. When I was a kid, I read The Giver and loved it. Well, I did not know there were more books connected to it! So, I have to catch up on this, of course.
Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell. I saw the trailer for the upcoming movie and thought the concept would probably work better as a book than a movie. Lo and behold, it's a book.
Farmer Jane: Women Changing the Way We Eat by Temra Costa. 4 out of 5 stars. I would make a horrible farmer. I'm allergic to everything- very especially hay and grass- and I'm not a fan of the kind of hard physical labor involved in farming. But farming has always kind of fascinated me, so I keep reading about it. This book was a great overview of modern farming specifically from the point of view of women who are working towards new sustainable farming practices and techniques to improve food supply in the United States. It includes profiles of traditional organic farmers, urban farmers, food advocates and educators and young farmers. There are some amazing things going on in the world of organic/community centered farming and this book is a great introduction to that world. My only real criticism is that it is completely focused on the US, and it would have been nice to at least have a sidebar, if not a whole section, about these topics in other parts of the world.
Friday Night Lights, by H.G. Bissinger. 4 out of 5 stars. I've never seen the show, although I'm told it's pretty good. But small town high school football is something that kind of intrigues me. I went to a high school where football was nowhere near as important as it is in these towns, and it's interesting to see how the emphasis on football shapes the character of these places. One might say, warps the character, to some extent, too.
Alternate Beauty, by Andrea Rains Waggener. 2 out of 5 stars. Ordinarily, I wouldn't mention something I really didn't like here, but this book got me all ranty, so. It's pretty light and reasonably entertaining to some extent, which I expected from a "chick lit" kind of book. But, well. I'm a fat woman, so while on one hand, I'm kind of the target audience for a book that involves a scenario where fat people are considered the pinnacle of beauty and thin people are ostracized for being thin, on the other hand, there were so many things that bothered me about the book. Thing the first was the idea that because the main character was fat, she obviously was obsessed about food and was a binge eater. I know this can be difficult for people to grasp, but *not all fat people are binge eaters*. Or obsessed with food. Actually, the vast majority of fat people eat roughly the same amount of food as non-fat people.
The second thing that bothered me was how the main character, once she was in an environment where binge eating was encouraged or acceptable and where her body type was considered to be very beautiful, which made it easier for her to love her body, stopped bingeing and therefore lost weight, fairly rapidly. The message there being, well, of course if you eat less you will lose weight. This is not necessarily the case- weight loss being much more complex than calories in, calories out- and even if it was the case for this person, it's kind of portrayed as being an overall solution for every person who is overweight. Loving your body does not necessarily equal weight loss.
The third issue was the oppressed turned oppressors in the alternate reality. I want my body type to be seen as acceptable to society at large (heh), but I don't see any reason why that should have to come at the expense of other people. I can't explain it any better than that, but it was very uncomfortable.
And finally, the thing that may have bothered me the most (aside from the binge eating thing) is that when Veronica comes back from the alternate reality, she's thin and she stays that way. It seemed to miss the whole point of being accepted for who you are and accepting yourself for who you are, not how you look.
So, in other words, interesting premise, but very flawed execution.
And in the blogosphere, one of the things I read this week was The Long Unraveling by Diana at A Deeper Family. I'm sticking a trigger warning on it because it's the sort of thing that would make me sit down and sob for hours if I came across it unawares on a fragile day. It's a very real, very compelling personal essay about the sorts of things a family goes through when one of its members is nearing the end of their life. It made me nod and say "yes, yes, this is how it is. This is the real part".
(also note that the site, A Deeper Family is part of a larger site, A Deeper Story, and the sites have a very Christian focus. This particular essay does not mention religion or make any reference to God, but others on the site do)
And here's what I've added to the list this week:
The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL by Carolyn McCaskill. I did not know that there were different varieties of American Sign Language. I did know that there are differences between sign language in the United States and the rest of the world, but I did not know there were dialects within ASL. The book came recommended on a sociology blog I follow, so I added it to the list.
Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son, all by Lois Lowry. When I was a kid, I read The Giver and loved it. Well, I did not know there were more books connected to it! So, I have to catch up on this, of course.
Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell. I saw the trailer for the upcoming movie and thought the concept would probably work better as a book than a movie. Lo and behold, it's a book.