rsadelle | Entries tagged with recs

Attitude Adjustment

I've been feeling very Bah, humbug!/No one cares so why bother? about fandom recently, and then yesterday I got an email with my extras for my

bandgirlsbang story. They're amazing. I have made pleased gasping noises about them more than once. People took my story and made these incredible things for it, and I'm all full of joy again. I can't wait to share them with you next week.

Fic Reading/Recs Request/Recs Request Request

I have been doing a lot of escapist fic reading. Anyone have any recs? I really want to read romances in the 20,000-30,000 word range, but I will take other suggestions. I've been reading mostly Harry Potter (Harry/Draco), Star Trek reboot and reboot RPF (Kirk/McCoy, Spock/Uhura, Chris/Zach), Sherlock (John/Sherlock, Sherlock/Lestrade), Hawaii Five-0 (Steve/Danny, but I would read Kono and Chin things too, and would love Kono&Chin gen), and some Suits (I will read anything, even gen; the quantity has to do with snobbery on my part, not hard to find pairings). Again, I will take other suggestions too.

I read a lot of fic. Is there anything any of you want recs for? Do you like recs, or am I just talking to myself if I post/email them?

TV Watching

I had a random urge to watch the first episode of Grey's Anatomy, and since all of season one is on Hulu, that's pretty much what I did with my Thanksgiving break. (Note: Season one is only nine episodes.) I know it's cool to hate Grey's Anatomy for being soapy and melodramatic or whatever, but I'd forgotten how much I love it. I'm considering rewarding myself for finishing Yuletide (when I do) with a month of Netflix to watch more Grey's Anatomy and all the Star Trek I can handle.

This weekend, I wanted to keep doing nothing but watching TV, and since I didn't have anything else to catch up on, I wandered into the ABC Family shows available on Hulu. I have to admit a real love for ABC Family shows. They're kind of like YA novels, but as TV. Also, they have some very interestingly frank and progressive conversations about sex and birth control. Anyway, this weekend, I got myself hooked on Switched at Birth. As you might be able to tell from a combination of the title, the network, and my interests, it's a show about two teenage girls who find out they were switched at birth. One of the families is rich; the other is poor. Because this isn't enough drama and conflict, one of the girls is deaf and the other is hearing. Two warnings: 1. You might find yourself annoyed with the rich family's overwhelming sense of entitlement. 2. You might find yourself annoyed with the hearing family for not thinking they should learn ASL until someone else takes them to task for it several episodes in. Other than those two things, I love it, and it comes back for season two in January.

The other ABC Family show I'm working my way through is The Nine Lives of Chloe King.

norwich36 and I saw a trailer for it at the movies quite a while ago, but I'd forgotten to go look for it again once it started. Chloe turns sixteen and suddenly finds out that she's one of the Mai, which are essentially cat people, meaning they have cat-like superpowers and whatnot, and there's something about Baset. Which doesn't make much sense because she was born in the Ukraine. Chloe is not just Mai, she's the Uniter. I'm only a few episodes in, and all I know about what that means is that she has nine lives to lead. Most of this is nonsense, and the real pleasure of the series is all the teenage girl with superpowers things: one of her best friends is very excited because he's into comic books, Chloe has a great relationship with her mom, and there's a boy who is, of course, connected to the people trying to kill the Mai. The internet tells me this has been canceled, and I can see why: it's kind of fun, but it's not the kind of thing I would be involved in for years.

This entry moves from gushing to contemplative and critical to critical. This is an entry comprised mostly of pop culture critique along political lines, specifically around issues of sex and race. If that is not fun for you, or you don't think that's a worthwhile use of fannish energy, you should skip this entry.

This entry includes spoilers for all aired episodes of all three of these shows.

Rizzoli and Isles

Have you ever watched a buddy cop show and thought, "If only this were about women"? If so, Rizzoli & Isles is the show for you. Angie Harmon plays detective Jane Rizzoli while Sasha Alexander is medical examiner Maura Isles. Together, they solve cases. They're also the kind of buddy cops who are practically married. They go undercover in a lesbian bar in season one and pretend to be together (unfortunately badly) in season two. They bicker and talk about fashion and facts and people. The show also does a fantastic job of including Jane's family. And I like the male cops. My two favorite things from this season: ( Spoilers )

Haven

Earlier this year,

norwich36 linked me to an anonymous thread about shows with strong women characters to catch up on over the summer. Haven was one of them, so I started watching it. I was fascinated by how many people commented back about it when I tweeted about it, particularly for a show I'd never even heard of before. It's really good. Those of you reading this might also like it: the lead character is a woman, and there's a fantastic slash pairing. (Nate/Duke forever! Where is my story where they're exes?) But in the context of this post, what I want to talk about is how Audrey is interestingly nonsexual and nonsexualized, which is not something you see in women on TV. ( Spoilers )

Suits

In case you haven't noticed, I love Suits. The plot is stupid and gets in the way of a really fun show, but the fun stuff is enough to make up for it. My strategy has been to watch it once, and then only watch the fun parts again. But that's not what this post is about. This post is about women, so let's talk about the women on Suits. Parts of fandom (including me) are very excited about the women: Gina Torres as Jessica Pearson, lawyer whose name is in the firm name and who got Harvey out of the mail room and into law school in some fashion we haven't been made privy to yet; Sarah Rafferty as Donna, Harvey's fantastic assistant who gets all the best lines; Meghan Markle as Rachel Zane, paralegal who's smarter than most of the firm but with test-taking anxiety that's keeping her from taking the LSATs; and Vanessa Ray as Jenny, Mike's best friend Trevor's girlfriend who later becomes Mike's girlfriend. (Okay, fandom isn't as fond of Jenny. I think there are strong possibilities for some interesting stories there, but fandom's "OH MY GOD A WOMAN" thing means no one's likely to write them.)

But what I haven't seen yet (largely because I haven't gone looking for Suits conversation outside of the two email threads I'm on) is any discussion of the ways in which the show's portrayal of women is problematic. I think there's a layer of sexism on the show that's particularly insidious precisely because it's under the surface. ( Details/Spoilers )

Yesterday I was thankful for long, plotty stories I could immerse myself in. Specifically: The New Deal by Closer (Suits gen half-AU) and Fortunate Son by mardia (Star Trek reboot, Kirk/McCoy).

Today I'm thankful for books that are just as good now as they were when I fell in love with them as a teenager. Specific book in question, which I stayed up too late reading two days this week: Cheryl J. Franklin's Sable, Shadow, and Ice.

I'm relatively sure I heard good things about Patti Smith's Just Kids from various sources, although the only one I remember is

siryn99, so when I saw it in my mom's stack of books, I asked to borrow it. It floated around with me on a vacation and in my living room for quite a while before I finally sat down and started reading it.

The book begins with a foreword where Smith talks about learning of Robert Mapplethorpe's death. Starting with his death lends the whole book a sense of melancholy. Even as Smith tells us about meeting Mapplethorpe and lays out the foundations of their relationship, we know how it's going to end.

I didn't know anything about either Patti Smith or Robert Mapplethorpe when I started reading the book, so everything about their story was new to me. Smith drops a lot of names to establish the setting, and I didn't know who most of them were either. None of that detracts from the book. Even if I didn't know who they were specifically, I got the sense of who they were from Smith's placement of them in the story, and I got the sense of who Smith and Mapplethorpe were from her stories about them.

I know that it's the kind of memoir where Smith picked and chose the elements of the story she wanted to share, but what I really liked about the story she tells is how they push each other into what they end up doing: Smith keeps telling Mapplethorpe he should try photography and Mapplethorpe keeps telling Smith she should sing.

The pacing of the story is also interesting. Smith begins with a dreamy, emotional recounting of her growing up, which is intercut with a distant, factual account of Mapplethorpe's growing up. Since she's the author, we necessarily get more of Smith's story than Mapplethorpe's, even as time goes on. When they separate for short or long periods - there's a break of what seems to be something like a decade near the end of the book - the focus is still on Smith. As unbalanced as that might seem, it makes for a very focused emotional story.

The book ends as it began: with Mapplethorpe's death. I had to put the book down and cry my eyes out when I finished it. By that time, I'd gotten to know him, but more importantly, I'd gotten to know how Smith felt about him, and that feeling, that closeness and mutual artistic support, is what really makes the book.

Malinda Lo's Huntress takes place in the same world as Ash (my review here), only several hundred years earlier.

Our main characters are Kaede and Taisin, students at The Academy, where girls go to learn to be sages. Taisin has never wanted anything but to be a sage. Kaede has never even managed the simplest blessing, but she doesn't want to go home to be married off for political advantage. The land is in a state of constant winter, and the king has been invited to visit the Fairy Queen. Instead, he sends his son, Con, along with Taisin, Kaede, and a small batch of guards, to accept her invitation.

( Spoilers/Review )

My greatest wish is for Malinda Lo to be one of those writers who really learns to write by the third book. Ash and Huntress are both good, with moments that are exquisite, but I think Lo has the potential to be truly great.

If anyone wants to read Huntress, leave me a comment, and you can have my copy.

I spent three days last week reaching the end of good Suits fic on the internet, and this weekend reading a lot of mediocre to bad Suits fic. (It's a new fandom. Eventually, I'm sure, there'll be a lot of good fic.) By far my favorite story is Habeas Corpus, wherein Harvey is turned into a cat and adopted by Mike:

Harvey peers at the screen, feeling a growing incredulity. The two words Harvey has for Mike's contract are concise and airtight. He presses closer to the screen and slips on the space bar. Wait, Harvey thinks, scrambling back, this could work. He steps back on the keyboard.

It comes out ggooood because he leaves too much pressure on the keys, but it clearly says good.

"Did you just type feedback on a legal contract I drew up?" Mike asks.

There was supposed to be a plot bunny with this entry, but it grew and is now a ficcish thing in the next one.

Going off of

eleanor_lavish's list of things to read, I read

maja_li's Sweet Thang yesterday and quite enjoyed it! Now I want a story where Mike successfully ties Harvey up and doesn't let him come for a very long time. Eventually, Harvey is worn out and mussed, nothing of his usual polish left. Mike thinks, "I made him look like that." Then Harvey ties Mike up and makes him come more times than he thought he could in so little time. At the end, Harvey looks down at Mike with a smile that's mostly smug but a little fond too. Mike thinks, "I made him look like that." And then Mike wins a case by some means that Harvey hadn't even thought of. Harvey's actually surprised and a little impressed. Mike thinks, "I made him look like that."

I've been devouring Harry/Draco fic at a steady rate for the past couple of days. I usually say I like first time stories, but I don't think that's it. I've read a lot of things that end when they get together, but leave me thinking, "But how does it work now?" (Generally speaking, I'm too practical for typical romance. Have you heard "Remind Me" by Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood? I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be terribly romantic, but every time I hear the lyric, "you missed your flight/but that meant we had one more night," all I can think is, "That's so irresponsible!") I think what I really like are not necessarily getting together stories so much as learning to be together stories. This is why I love stories with non-sexual intimacy before they're actually together and stories where they're sleeping together before they fall in love.

This weekend, I read

saras_girl's Reparations, a getting together story, and its sequel, Foundations, which is the next step of them being together. (Argh! I read them at an archive with horribly ugly formatting I had to turn off and only now do I find that they're also on LJ, which is where those links go.) They were so good I don't really need to read any more Harry/Draco fic. (Although, let's be honest: I probably will.) Harry is in training to be a Healer when he gets assigned to the Chemical Dependency rotation. Chem Dep is officially under the purview of Healer Redrow, but Stage Two - the post-detox rehab part of it - is entirely run by Draco. Harry and Draco learn to get along, then find they're attracted to each other, figure out that they can be together, and then move on with twining their lives together. Each story has a plot, and the plots felt real and interesting and not as if they were there only because the author thought she had to have a plot other than people falling in love. She also does an incredible job with the sex scenes. There are a lot of them in the second story, but I didn't get bored with them. Like the plots, they fit naturally into the story and never seemed shoehorned in for the sake of smut. The only warning I have for you about reading these stories is that they are very long, so if you, like me, don't have the self-control to walk away and come back to it later, you may want to wait to read them until you have a large chunk of time to devote to them.

I loved Friends With Benefits. It's a movie about people who have sex and then fall in love, which is totally a story I love. It's also by the guy who made Easy A, and like Easy A, I laughed all the way through it, except for the parts where I cried.

There are two things that make it very, very interesting as a mainstream movie:

First, the sex. There's a lot of it, and for the characters, part of what just sex means is that they don't have to engage in their usual patterns. Specifically, they can give directions to get what they want - and that goes for both of them. Yes, that's right, a woman in a mainstream movie gets to direct her own sex life for her own pleasure without ever being slut shamed for it. How often do you see that?

Secondly, one of the themes of the movie is that love should be a partnership, that happily ever after isn't being swept off your feet - although that can be fun - but walking through life together. In case you haven't figured it out from reading my LJ, that is exactly my belief, and you don't see it enough in the standard romance narrative.

I'd really like to read more lesbian fiction. I will take any and all recs, from any genre of professionally published work or fan fic. If you're reading this, there's a good chance you already know my tastes, but just in case you don't, a quick rundown of my recent-ish experience with lesbian profic: loved Malinda Lo's Ash and Huntress (review forthcoming) and all of Naomi Kritzer's work; hated Gerri Hill's The Killing Room and Karin Kallmaker's Substitute for Love; and am struggling my way through SteamPowered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories (although to be fair to the collection, I don't really like steampunk prose). Any suggestions?

If Melissa Ferrick's "Drive" (listen/download at box.net) is the ultimate song about sex, then Melissa Etheridge's "Sleep" (listen/download at box.net) is the ultimate song about afterglow.

This post has been brought to you by lesbian singers named Melissa and that time a record label retweeted me.

Short version: Really good. Made me cry. Too much lens flare.

Slightly longer version: ( Spoilers )

I don't make a habit out of reading House fic. In fact, I can only ever remember reading one other House fic and it's also fairly kinky (rec here). But when I was reading Sherlock d/s fic, I stumbled across the original prompt for "everything you won't tell me (is mapped in your scars)" and its prequels (my rec here) which referenced

aris_writing's Directed Verse. The Directed Verse is a handful of stories set in a world where everyone is a dom or a sub. (I only read the House ones, not the Pirates of the Caribbean one.) I think what makes this one stand out so much compared to other variations on the theme that I've read is that while there are romantic relationships, the central conceit is an examination of identity in that kind of world. I have now made it sound much more boring than it actually is. It's not boring. It's fascinating. The last story closes off the House/Wilson arc, but I'm sorry the author stopped there. To me, the most interesting character is Cameron, and I wanted to see more about her arc.

"Cameron, everyone fucks up sometimes," he said. They stepped into the elevator, waited for the other passengers to clear out. "You can't expect things to go right every time. You have to pick yourself up and start over."

"Wisdom from the greeting-card industry," she said, jabbing the button of their patient's floor.

He sighed and crossed his arms. "Seriously. You can't go back to being a dom and pretend that none of it ever happened. That it isn't happening, that you don't fit into that box any more."

She looked at him. He was staring at her, expression tight, almost vulnerable.

"Maybe," she said, "maybe it's worth being a little less happy, if it means I get to keep my life."

She expected him to argue, but all he said was, "Maybe it's lucky that you get to make that choice."

The stories are several years old, so if you, like me, stopped watching House some time ago, everything will still be familiar to you.

I mentioned before how much I loved Sherlock. After I got home from visiting

lakeeffectgirl, I *cough*acquired*cough* all three eps so I could watch them through again. Then I bought them on DVD, largely for two reasons:

In a capitalist society, the best way to show your appreciation/approval of something like this is to vote with your dollars, so I wanted to throw some money at them.

I kept seeing stuff in fic that didn't seem to come from anywhere, and I wanted to see if some of it came from the special features.

There are four special features: commentary by Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffit, and Sue Vertue on "A Study in Pink"; commentary by Mark Gatiss, Martin Freeman, and Benedict Cumberbatch on "The Great Game"; the unaired pilot; and a featurette about the origins/making of the show. With a few exceptions where they point out something about the location or the camerawork (and it does have amazing camerawork, which I didn't consciously notice until they were pointing it out to me), the commentaries, especially for "A Study in Pink" don't have a lot to do with what's going on on the screen and can just be listened to. I'm not good at just sitting and listening, but I did a lot of cooking and washing dishes this weekend, which gave me the perfect time to listen while doing something else with my hands.

The majority of the commentary on "A Study in Pink" is basically Gatiss and Moffit being really excited about getting to write Sherlock Holmes fan fic. (Let's face it: Sherlock is basically a modern-day AU.) One of the things they do is take us through a lot of trivia "for the fanboys," largely around things they've incorporated from other Holmes stories than the main one they're telling. It's adorable, and it's a good listen. It's also where we learn that they made the sixty-minute pilot and the BBC liked it so much that they asked them to rework it as a ninety-minute show.

"The Great Game" commentary isn't quite as great to just listen to, although it has a lot of entertaining bits, particularly about clothing. It's the first time Martin and Benedict got to watch the ep, so they're a little more involved in seeing how it's been put together than in commenting on it, although there is some of that. The best moment is when Martin has to leave (I don't know if they couldn't schedule it for a time when they could both be there for the whole thing or if something came up in the middle of it). Gatiss suggests that Benedict could do Martin, to which Martin says, "He can probably do me. Or if not, do Rickman," and then Benedict does a creditable Alan Rickman impression.

Both sets of commentary make it clear that while the cases are interesting, the center of the story is the relationship between Holmes and Watson.

The featurette mostly repeats things from the "A Study in Pink" commentary, although it does have some bits of Martin and Benedict as themselves, and someone talking about how the two of them actually became friends.

What's most interesting in terms of things that have crept into fic without being in the main run of the show is the unaired pilot. ( Spoilers. )

The thing that shows up in fic all the time that doesn't seem to come from anywhere is ( Spoilers. )

And then there's the thing in the commentary that I can't believe hasn't made it into fic (or at least I haven't seen it): ( Spoilers. )

Edit: The comments have made clear to me that I have done something I didn't want to and written a post that made people feel talked at. So this is a belated disclaimer: This post is about what I think about when I'm writing and what I think about this particular discussion in fandom. This is not a prescription for what you should do. I do believe the fandom as escapism approach is absolutely valid and useful, and I also go through periods of wanting just stories and no meta in between periods of wanting to tell you everything I think about meta topics. /edit

A very long while ago,

inlovewithnight linked to a very interesting post about the question Why am I not writing the stories I say I want to read? In case you don't want to read the post, the question is specifically around the issue of saying we want more fic about women and poc characters but continuing to write slash about white men. (

happydork phrases this entirely about her, but I'm using "we" deliberately because I think it extends beyond just her.)

For me, the one of her reasons that I'm actively changing in my own writing is the "habits of mind." She says, "There are comfortable ruts in my mind that any story I write can happily rest on. It takes me a long, long time to change these, and a lot of thought, insight and effort." But we can change them, and even if it takes a long time, you have to start somewhere. I've specifically, consciously been doing this around writing about women and gender roles. I'm sure I'm not always successful, but I have been making the effort. I specifically tried to avoid anything that referenced roles that were determined by gender in Fighting For (although I reread it somewhat recently and realized I missed one that needed to come out). I made an effort to make You Have My Heart (In Your Hands) pass the Bechdel test. When I edited A Great Idea to fix the sex scene, I also took out Andi's references to being "girly" as something she didn't want to be/like being.

Part of my resistance to editing my Gabe/Victoria accidental marriage story is that it's at least 40% about how Gabe doesn't sleep and Victoria gets him to - and I don't like the idea that a woman's role is to be in service to men. I've had people tell me that every relationship has its give and take, that if you have trouble sleeping it's easier with someone else in bed with you, and that one plot point is not necessarily a patriarchy-upholding pattern. And yet, I'm still uncomfortable with it. It may just be one plot point, but it's one plot point in the context of a society that tells us in a million other ways that women are supposed to serve men.

( This got a little long, plus this part talks about sex and sex writing. )

There's one more point in this discussion where you might have figured out what I think but I'd like to say it explicitly. In a comment on

inlovewithnight's post,

mosca said:

I think there's an additional wrinkle here, which is that there's so much "We have to write more women and people of color!" talk, that when one actually writes about a woman or a person of color (especially the latter), it's often seen as a political move rather than an actual expression of fannish affection for that character.

There's an implication in

mosca's comment - and particularly in the fannish response it describes - that writing about a woman or a person of color as a political move is a bad thing. I don't think it is. Fandom isn't going to change unless we - the people who make up fandom - make that change happen. One way to make that change happen is to choose to tell stories based on the political change we want to make in combination with what interests us.

I'm still trying to figure out if I can organize my thoughts enough to be able to write a long version of why I didn't like X-Men: First Class, but in the meantime, I thought I would rec you something I can gush over.

I don't actually like Arthurian legends. I know they're a classic example of the heroic journey/Jesus story, etcetera, but I don't like them. I'm pretty sure the only reason we went to see King Arthur was because Keira Knightley is in it. I'm so glad we did, though, because it's one of my favorite movies.

Three things I love about it: ( Spoilers )

While I was visiting her,

lakeeffectgirl showed me Sherlock, which I loved. It has the same two elements that I love about H50: they're married (or at least well on their way to together, complete with everyone thinking they're together) from the beginning, and it's funny. (My favorite line: "I'm in shock. Look, I've got a blanket.") I've read my way through the first few pages of highest hit count and longest things (minus anything that sounded ghastly or was part of a series) on AO3, and I'm finding the same thing with this fandom's fic that I found with H50: a lot of it is boring. My sample size of two is actually too small to make any definitive judgments, but I'm wondering if there's something about fictional person fandoms - either in terms of who they attract or in terms of the canon itself - that makes this more likely. Anyway, my point here is that I would love some recs! And I will give you some too.

First up are two stories I read on recs from

lakeeffectgirl that are basically the same story, except one is kink and the other has texting.

etothepii's "everything you won't tell me (is mapped in your scars)" is the kink one. It's set in a world where everyone is either a dom or a sub. It's actually the third in a series, but I originally read it without reading the prequels, and it made perfect sense. (I did then accidentally read them last night, and they are also very good.)

misslucyjane's "My Phone's on Vibrate For You" is the texting one. They both hit my love of stories where the characters are involved before they ever put a name to it. From "everything you won't tell me (is mapped in your scars)":

"He told me to choose between you and him," John admits, and looks away. His mouth feels suddenly dry. "He didn't like that I help you with your cases."

"So you chose me," Sherlock says, softly. There is something in his voice that John can't identify, and on someone else he'd almost call it awe.

"I don't need a sub," he says. But I need you, I need what we have.

Sherlock beams at him.

From "My Phone's on Vibrate For You":

Then came the day when Sherlock texted him a blunt, "Come home and fuck me. SH," and a few weeks after that John woke up to a text of, "I'm downstairs and naked. Where are you and why aren’t you here? SH," and then only a few days passed when Sherlock texted him from across the room, "Take off your clothes. I want to do stuff to you. SH," which made John laugh out loud, but he also took off his clothes.

Because it's me, after reading through a lot of unsatisfactory things (remember the part where I said it was funny? Why is the fic all serious?), I finally got down to business and started working my way through things tagged john/sherlock+d/s at delicious. I have two recs from that reading.

First up is

thisprettywren's "Transport," in which Sherlock's kink of choice when he needs to decompress is sensory deprivation. John happens to be filling in as the medical person on duty at the club where he does this and finds out. This was so good, and I absolutely believed that Sherlock would need a break from taking in all that information.

The abrupt removal of the touch on his skin was one of the most disorienting moments of Sherlock's life, the sudden lack of connection making his head spin. So intently had he been focusing on that single point of contact that, when it disappeared, his first dizzying fear was that it was he who had been obliterated.

They'd played games before, confronting him with teasing bursts of stimulation that came and went, leaving him to swim in a void, keeping him guessing. It was enjoyable and distracting, and when it happened again he'd accept it as he accepted everything else.

It was also not what this was. Or, he didn't think it had been. That intense, sustained connection hadn't been teasing at all, it was... exploratory. Communicative. Then it was severed and he called out for it, biting down hard on the gag between his teeth, once again grateful for the anchoring presence of the leather restraints. Just this, he thought, here, and the pressure of the straps against his skin was the proof he needed.

The other thing I read that I really liked is

thedeadparrot's "If I Fell." In a lot of ways, it's the same kind of d/s fic you might find in any fandom, but then, I like that sort of thing.

"Do you trust me?" John asks when Sherlock turns to look at him.

He's not touching Sherlock. There is a careful two feet of space between them, yet Sherlock wants to lean towards him, wants to bury his face in the wool of John's jumper and just breathe in the scents of it, London and dim sum and John's particular brand of detergent. "Yes," Sherlock says, and the word tastes strange on his tongue.

"Good," John says, as he brushes his lips across Sherlock's, light enough to be a tease. "I want you kneeling."

Sherlock drops to his knees almost as soon as John's finished the sentence. "You knew," Sherlock says, still feeling a bit petulant. He's not in that place in his head yet, where all he can do is want and obey and need. "You knew and you didn't say anything."

"I suspected," John says. "I didn't know until just now." He runs a hand through Sherlock's hair, his fingers digging lightly into Sherlock's scalp. "You'd be obedient at the strangest times and I could never suss out why that was."

norwich36 and I went to see Hanna this afternoon. It was so incredibly interesting. There is really only one (minorly spoilery) comment I absolutely have to make: ( Another superlative. )

I know I already said this book was excellent, but I was only about a hundred pages into it at the time. Now that I've finished the book, I can tell you for sure: this book is excellent.

I stumbled across The Splendor Falls at Barnes & Noble. Usually I just write down the books I want to read later, but when I read the first couple of sentences of this one to see if I might want to read it, I didn't want to put it back on the shelf, so I actually bought it.

Our protagonist is Sylvie Davis, a ballerina who's broken her leg and can't dance anymore. She had an incident caused by mixing Vicodin and champagne at her mother's wedding, which means she doesn't get to stay home in Manhattan while her mom goes off on her honeymoon. Instead she's shipped off to stay with her dad's Cousin Paula in Alabama. This is not Sylvie's preferred way to spend the summer: "I wanted to hate Alabama, and nothing about my arrival disappointed me."

( Spoilers ) One of the interesting things about the book is how distinctly PG it is. There aren't even any swear words in the text. ( More spoilers. )

I don't think I'm really doing justice to this book, and you really should just read it. Sylvie is an extremely compelling narrator, and the plot is excellently well done.

( More spoilers. )

The last non-spoilery things I'll tell you about are two potential triggers/annoyances. First, Sylvie was a ballerina and Cousin Paula's partner Clara's daughter Addie wants to be a model, so there are some discussions about food and calories that might be triggering. For me, they weren't particularly bothersome, especially since it was much more mild than I expected from a ballerina narrator. Secondly, as a white (at least as far as I can tell) author writing about white characters, Clement-Moore gets to mostly sidestep the race issues inherent in Sylvie's family having owned this estate in the South since before the Civil War. She doesn't avoid them altogether - Clara and Addie are black and live in one of the outer buildings, Clara makes a comment about the parallel of her (implied slave) ancestors having lived outside of the big house, and Sylvie wonders if their family's slave-owning history is part of what made her dad leave - but this is not a book that delves deeply into that aspect of the town's history.

I have promised my mother that she can borrow the book, but if any of you would like to have it after she's done, just let me know.

Ruth Sadelle Alderson

Disagreeing with fandom since 1999.

Fannish Things: A Small Mishmash

Women on TV: Three Shows I'm Watching

Thankfulness: November 18

Thankfulness: November 4

Dewey Decimal Project: 782.421 SMI

PoC Author: Malinda Lo, Huntress

Rec: Suits, Cat!Harvey

Bunny of the Day: Suits (the show) Kink

Rec: Long, Amazing Harry/Draco Fic

Friends With Benefits

Recs Request: Lesbian Fiction

If-Then Statement (Lesbian Sex Song Version)

Super 8

Kink Fic Rec: House d/s AU

Rec: Sherlock on DVD

Writing the Underrepresented: Habits of Mind, Sex Scenes, and Political Action

Movie I Love: King Arthur (2004)

Recs Request, Rec, Kink Recs: Sherlock

Possibly the most interesting movie I have ever seen.

Rec: The Splendor Falls by Rosemary Clement-Moore

Profile

Links

Syndicate

Tags

Expand Cut Tags