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wondering about whether you could rec some "romance is a social construct" texts? ofc it is, but i like having books and articles to reference/learn specifics from/see how these ideas have developed.
Sure! Here's a quick reading list. Bear in mind that I am not a professional historian and my reading on this subject is a little diffuse. I'm not tackling the behavioral ecology stuff right now because a) I don't have a more direct book rec off the top of my head than Evolution's Rainbow, which is not technically focused on social monogamy, and also b) I approach that whole field with my eyes wide open for people letting their own perspectives and cultural views get in the way of their observations of animals, and I do not have the energy to go deal with it right now.
If you're going to read two books, read these two:
Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, A History: how love conquered marriage. 2006. All of Coontz' work, having to do with the social construction of the family, is relevant reading to this question (and I'd also recommend The Nostalgia Trap, because the historical context of how we conceptualize families is a major part of the construction of romantic love), but this one is most focused on the social construction of romantic love specifically and what it has replaced. Coontz is, I will disclose cheerfully, a major formative influence on my thinking.
Moira Wegel, Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating. 2016. Exactly what it says on the tin; focuses more closely on the modern invention of dating and romance.
Other useful readings to help inform your understanding of different ways that various people have conceptualized sex, sexuality, society and long-term connection include:
George Chauncey, Why Marriage? 2015. Chauncey is best known for Gay New York, which also offers a useful history of the way that relationship models and social constructs for understanding homosexuality changed among men having sex with men c. 1900 to 1950. This book, published just before Obergefell v. Hodges, is a discussion of why contemporary queer rights organizations focused on same-sex marriage as an activism plank in the wake of AIDS organizing. I find it really useful to read queer history when I'm thinking about how we understand and construct the concept of romantic relationships, because queers complicate the mainstream, heteronormative concepts of what marriage and romantic relationships actually are. More importantly, queer activist organizing around marriage has played a major role in shaping our collective understanding of romance and marriage in the past twenty years.
Elizabeth Abbott, A History of Celibacy, 2000. In order to understand how various cultures construct understandings of marriage and spousal relationships, it can be illustrative to consider what the people who are explicitly not participating in the institution are doing and why not. I found this an interesting pass over historical and social institutions that forbid (or forbade) marriage with a discussion about general trends driving these institutions, individuals, and movements towards celibacy.
Eleanor Janega, The Once and Future Sex, 2023. This is a very pointed historical look at gender roles, concepts of beauty, and concepts of sex, attraction, and marriage among medieval Europeans with an extended meditation on what ideas have and have not changed between that time and today. I include this work because I think a deep dive into medieval notions of courtly romance is useful, partly because it is an important origin of our modern notion of romantic love and partly because it is so usefully and starkly different from that modern notion! Sometimes the best way to understand the cultural construction of ideas in your own society is to go look at someone else's and see where things are the same versus different.
It's a mish-mash of recommendations, and I'm reaching more for books that have stuck with me over the years than a clean scholarly approach to the subject. I hope other folks will chime in for you with their own recommendations!
I survived the library overwhelm! Which was utterly ridiculous. All but one book this month was a library book, when usually I have space for some ARCs or something, but as of two days ago, I have read and returned them all! Which is a relief because I also brought home ARCs that I really wanted to get to but rules are rules: library books come first.
My library reads were a pretty mixed bag, too. One of my highest ratings of the year so far, and I think my very lowest, and then all sorts of stuff in between. If you're interested in SFF and literary criticism, I absolutely recommend Trace Elements for being smart and fascinating and eclectic and thought-provoking. And no matter who you are, you can safely skip Bramah and the Beggar Boy, which was trying to do many, many, many things and never hit the mark for any of them. I applaud the author's ambition and vision.
In between, there were some really fun sci-fi reads (Radiant Sky, The Language of Liars), a slightly less fun but still good sci-fi (Of Monsters and Mainframes), some nicely solid fantasies (The Tapestry of Fate, The Hanging Bones*), a weird western that felt strangely slow (The Great Work), and a handful of titles that deserve more than a shout-out.
First up, to get it out of the way, I read Yesteryear. I don't know how much Tumblr's been going on about it, but it's flying off the shelves and work and definitely buzzy. It's worth it! A fun thriller with some smart things to say about women and gender roles and America and our cultural moment. Natalie is both sympathetic and unlikeable, which is impressive.
Next, we have Nine-Tenths, an indie queer fantasy romance that handled the romance with more depth and nuance than a lot of the trad pub romance I've read, that actually put in the work to build out the world and have genuine fantasy stakes, and that had themes of autonomy and class-based power dynamics and the fallout from colonialism.
And lastly, my travel memoir of the month which I got in just under the wire. I picked up Travels in West Africa at a used bookstore on a whim because hey, single Victorian woman who goes on adventures in Africa? Sign me up! It delivers this in spades, with self-deprecating humour and pluck. There are lovely depictions of scenery, astute observations of people, advice for travellers, and a lot of descriptions of African cultures because ethnography was one of the reasons she was travelling. I enjoyed the snapshot of the time and place and can't imagine there are many other sympathetic depictions of Africans from this era to stand alongside this. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean Kingsley wasn't racist. She makes upsetting assumptions and statements throughout the book, mostly about appearances, intelligence, and motivations, and I hated being slapped upside the head every time she dropped one. Whatever book I pick up for this challenge in June is going to be more modern, that's for sure.
And yes, another book haul. Saga because I didn't have it; Fauna because it was 25¢ and promised me climate apocalypse body horror; and The Blue Castle because it was free and Jo Walton in Trace Elements recommended reading contemporary romances from historical eras to get a sense of how people actually lived and thought. (We're not going to talk about the ebook haul that suggestion caused. I don't expect to read everything I downloaded, but at least I don't have to dig them back up if I change my mind.)
June is going to see me reading cozier fare, starting with my current read, The Geomagician. I have a couple other cozy ARCs on my "read it soon" stack, and I know there's going to be the new KJ Charles romance coming in for me fairly soon. Beyond that, I don't know exactly where my reading will take me, but I do know I plan to start in on the edits for my WIP in earnest.
*two solid books from Tesch means I should keep following her, I think
And now, as usual, without further ado, what I read this month in order of how glad I was to read them…
Trace Elements - Jo Walton and Ada Palmer
Essays about speculative fiction and the nature of reading and stories.
9/10
🇨🇦
library book
Radiant Sky - Alan Smale
Vivian Carter’s Lunar Geographic Survey team is circumnavigating the Moon when they’re attacked by … possibly the Soviets? Again?
8/10
Black and Latino secondary characters
warning: gun and battle violence
library book
The Language of Liars - S.L. Huang
Ro has trained for years to be able to Jump into the mind of a Star Eater, but what if he can’t? What if he shouldn’t?
8/10
🏳️🌈 author
warning: genocide, slavery
library ebook
The Tapestry of Fate - Shannon Chakraborty
Amina Al-Sirafi has been tasked with finding another Transgression: a spindle in the possession of a sorceress on an enchanted island.
7.5/10
largely Middle Eastern cast, Muslim protagonist, major Muslim characters, 🏳️🌈 secondary characters (sapphic), Muslim author
warning: slavery
library ebook
The Hanging Bones - Elle Tesch
When the mystical Breimar Stag appears in the forest, gamekeeper Katrin enters the hunt in the hopes of winning the death of her overlord—but the stag isn’t the only creature that crossed the veil.
7.5/10
🏳️🌈 protagonist (aroace), Black secondary characters, 🇨🇦
warning: sexual assault and harassment, gore and body horror
library ebook
Travels in West Africa - Mary Kingsley
A British spinster travels solo to West Africa in the 1890s, to study the cultures and collect specimens.
A barista in a holding pattern, a mysterious draconic customer, and a kitchen fire that sparks a romance and some rather uncomfortable questions about how the world is run.
7.5/10
🏳️🌈 protagonist (bi man), 🏳️🌈 secondary characters (bi man, nonbinary), Indigenous, Black, Muslim, and East Asian secondary characters, 🇨🇦, 🏳️🌈 author
warning: classist and colonial thinking, violence, blood, emotional abuse
library book
Yesteryear - Caro Claire Burke
Natalie has the husband, kids, farm, staff, merch line, and followers of the perfect tradwife influencer, until one day she wakes up in the 1800s and wonders how she got there.
7.5/10
warning: child abuse, domestic abuse, sexual assault, mental illness, drug abuse, alcoholism
library ebook
The Great Work - Sheldon Costa
Gentle and his nephew set out across frontier Washington to kill a giant salamander that could hold the key to the philosopher’s stone, but of course the path to the stone could never be easy.
7/10
🏳️🌈 secondary characters (sapphic, gay), Indigenous secondary character
warning: mentions of domestic and child abuse, misogyny, homophobia, and toxic masculinity; death and grief; gun violence
library book
Of Monsters and Mainframes - Barbara Truelove
Ship’s AI Demeter wakes up to discover all the humans onboard are dead and Dracula might be responsible—and that’s just the beginning.
6.5/10
major 🏳️🌈 character (sapphic), 🏳️🌈 secondary characters (nonbinary, sapphic)
warning: violence, murder, death of grandparent, blood, injury
library ebook
Bramah and the Beggar Boy - Renée Sarojini Saklikar
A novel in verse about survival and hope in a corporate climate dystopia.
What would you do if you were a bear? Ride a motorbike? Visit friends?
DNF
The Subtle Art of Folding Space - John Chu
After Ellie finds a device designed to keep her mom alive, in the skunkworks that run the universe, she must reckon with family legacy while tracking down the culprit.
I just have to say I read your fanfics a year ago and stopped because I deleted this app and came back…because I can’t find writing anywhere as good as your fics
Aw thank you! If you want to check out some amazing writers, highly recommend looking through my rec lists:
Supernatural Fic Rec List
Dean x reader, Dean x oc, Sam Winchester x reader, Sam Winchester x oc
As proposed by @fluffbruary, I have made a Valentine's rec list. Now that I've read through it, It seems to have become more of a love letter...
First of all, I want to thank someone special in the Sherlock fandom - the remarkably talented podficcer extraordinaire @podfixx There isn't a day that goes by without that comforting voice weaving its way to my heart and core. Picking a favourite is almost impossible, because every single one is a gem. But, there is one I will promote a little extra on this romantic day.
The Wedding Garments by cwb
Summary: This is the story of a young consulting detective who wants nothing to do with marriage and an army doctor who wants to find true love. It's 2020 post-Brexit England and the British government is encouraging arranged marriages. Candidates meet through state-run agencies and date in hopes of finding love (and tax benefits). Sherlock doesn't need or want a spouse, at least not until John Watson shows up. Hesitant to give in to his more carnal urges because of the way they derail his mind, how will Sherlock progress toward the more intimate aspects of a relationship? The answer lies in a very special wedding gift.
There are authors and fics out there that get less attention than they deserve. This story is just one example of that. It's utterly sweet and there's a dog! Sherlock's dog. Please, give it some love!
Late Nigh Emergency by consult_this_prick
Summary: Sherlock shows up late one night with his sick dog at the doors of John's veterinarian clinic.
There is a collection on AO3 I want to direct your attention to. It's called Johnlock on Holiday in FTH 2024 The title says it all, really. Perhaps you'll find some holiday tips.
And last, but certainly not least, the fandom's librarian, the keeper of lists for every possible and impossible prompt, AU, trope, etc - Steph @inevitably-johnlocked
We have a saying where I live: no one mentioned, no one forgotten, and I am certain that I have forgotten many amazing people, but not mentioning anyone would undermine the task completely, so there's that. It is what it is...
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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Does anyone have any recs of fics that take place during the non Hollanov book eras, that focus on Shane, even from an outside perspective? Mostly because I feel like Ilya gets a lot of incidental character development and growth because he shows up in cameos large and small in the other books, but Shane is largely off page or only mentioned, and I would *love* to have more development for him in those years! He's my baby! I'm working on a few things, but I want to read stuff too, and it's taking a bit to get through AO3 (positive!)
