#roubaixred

board games — no, i have no patience for this, if you want to move a thimble around on a cardboard square petition an earl within a different castle  favorite animal — cats are very acceptable. reptiles and owls are good. sucks tiny dinosaurs aren’t available tokyo ghoul — never read it, but yes, regale me, i thrive on second-hand furybooks/movies — movies are something that happen to other people and over the past few years books normally have been as well but oddly enough i have indeed recently read good books, on account of unearthing my kindle and rediscovering the ability to read words; specifically i have enjoyed all of the following

the mob and the city, c. alexander hortis (a history of the mafia in new york; very rigorously researched, equally thoroughly cited, just an all-around phenomenal piece of work. a historian after my own heart, here is a man who knows how to do the bloody thing, i’d like to shake his hand)

an unfinished life: john f. kennedy, 1917-1963, robert dalek (the quintessential 800-page doorstopper kennedy biographic. satisfyingly thorough, surprisingly even-handed; deeply bittersweet, read during the trump presidency)

johnny, we hardly knew ye, kenneth p. o’donnell & david f. powers (fond memoirs from two of kennedy’s top aides, undoubtedly full of bias but tremendous fun. very light-hearted, and certainly fully correct about LBJ being a rat bastard. the first chapter is deeply upsetting, as o’donnell and powers’ recollection of kennedy’s death is strikingly visceral, but it’s very intentionally the opening of the book so that the darkest piece isn’t the end, which works well. also bittersweet to read now, for the same reason)

counselor, ted sorensen (i’ve stalled out a little on this one because i haven’t been able to take my meds to read at home recently but i’m still DYING about it; the speechwriter and the president, the Words and the Voice, two halves of a single brain, and sorensen had the undying loyalty thing so bad. i like him immensely, and there is a drop-dead hilarious portion about JFK’s total and utter inability to fire his secretary, and many good thoughts on clear communication of one’s ideas and politics. great and somewhat nonsequential memoir, definitely one i intend to finish)

slightly out of focus, robert capa (i’ve talked about this one before, but you must read it; everyone must read it; it is capa’s autobiography and by god, here was a human being that existed so vividly—with such absolute, blinding intensity—that sixty-four years after he stepped on a land mine while out photographing the first indochina war his words are still more alive than most actual, living people. this book is so unrelentingly funny, and so imminently readable, and at the same time it’s also the kind of up close and personal depiction of world war ii that everyone needs to consume as a reminder, once in a while, to know damn well why it is so profoundly imperative that we never, ever let it happen again. the book has his photographs in it, and you must read it, really, everyone deserves to experience capa in his own words)

the craft sequence, max gladstone (i talked a while back about the fantastic text-based games choice of the deathless and the city’s thirst, which intrigued me enough to finally pick up the books; i’ve now read the first three and have just started to forage into the fourth, which doesn’t sound like much but is in fact the first fiction i’ve actually managed to read probably since inhaling all of pratchett in 2011 (!) so you may consider it a ringing endorsement. the series is a little bit about necromancer lawyers and skeletons that do litigation but mostly it is about gods and contractual magic, and in all i like them very much. i would like to talk to somebody about them, and most of all about the king in red. so far i think two serpents rise has been my favorite, because it’s a bit modern-aztecs-without-spanish-influence but not in a way that grates as poorly-researched, because “what if aztec gods were real, and then somebody KILLED THEM” is in fact a very different premise from “what if modern aztecs,” and anyway none of this takes place on earth. there are a great many queer characters, also, and many queer relationships, which is refreshing; there are trans people too, after a fashion—the protagonist of full fathom five is explicitly a trans woman, and the author certainly does give trans inclusivity the old college try, but he’s still painfully cis about it. i don’t think he really gets the whole gender-is-a-construct thing and he doesn’t seem to be aware of the existence of nonbinary genders at all, so i wince a lot and there’s a lot of “his or hers,” but, you know. it feels like a well-meaning sort of ignorance, like he’d probably shut up and listen if you sat him down and talked him through the basics, so it hasn’t been enough to put me off the books, especially when there’s so much else about them that i really do like)

a sicilian in east harlem, salvatore mondello (haven’t quite gotten around to finishing this one, either—it’s not an overly riveting read but it is an excellent firsthand account of italian harlem in the ‘40s and ‘50s, a straight personal memoir, heavy on the atmosphere. mondello wanted to capture the memory of the italian harlem that was, and if ever you needed to get a sense of this particular part of early new york’s ambiance this book would certainly serve)

the gay metropolis, charles kaiser (absolutely garbage citations, no footnotes or easy way to reference the sources dumped in the back vs. the text, who publishes like this, it’s bad and charles kaiser should feel bad, BUT: a lot of great oral history presented via block quotes. obviously not the best historical work but a fun read. the source of “bird, you can’t cruise our next president,” and really, i still haven’t gotten over that one, because given that the future president in question was JFK tennessee williams most certainly could)  

turf wars, michael dante dimartino (the legend of korra comics. they’re good! they’re so good! what a joy. my butch lesbian hero. i love korra best, always and forever)