[I've been reading]

Drama   book icon  
by Raina Telgemeier (2012)

read: 13 June 2013
rating: [+]
category: graphic novel

Another great one from Telgemeier this one dealing with a lot of high school drama in both the literal and figurative ways. Telgemeier is great at having her characters be complex without being inscrutable. I enjoyed this story of putting a high school play together and all the interrelated teen interactions that go into doing something like that.

Smile   book icon  
by Raina Telgemeier (2010)

read: 13 June 2013
rating: [+]
category: graphic novel

As someone who went through a lot of really annoying dental stuff when I was too young to really be able to deal with it, I loved this graphic novel about the time when Telgemeier lost her two front teeth and had to deal with a bunch of corrective dentistry at just the same time that she was becoming a teenager and entering junior high school. Well written and illustrated, very very relatable.

Are You My Mother   book icon  
by Alison Bechdel (2012)

read: 13 June 2013
rating: [-]
categories: graphic novel, unfinished

I really like Bechdel but this book failed my 50 pages test. After the first 50 pages I found that I was no more interested in reading it than I was when I picked it up. I feel like I should qualify this. I loved Dykes to Watch Out For and I really empathized with what was going on in Fun Home with the gay dad and the creative mother who felt stultified and was sort of chilly. But this book just seemed... not engaging in that way that other people’s dreams are interesting to them but only interesting to you if you are dating them or if you are in them. Bechdel’s anguish about being worried about what her mother would think about the book take up far too much of the beginning of the book and I just got to the point where I wanted to read about her childhood and not more about her therapy appointments.

Inferno   book icon  
by Dan Brown (2013)

read: 9 June 2013
rating: [+]
category: fiction

Enjoyed this book significantly more than the last Brown book I read. He seemed to get the message that keeping things a little more linear and a little less gory would go over better, or maybe I was just more interested in this story with Italy and Dante at the core than one with Masonic conspiracies and Washington DC as central plot points. Enjoyed it, did not get too deep into it.

Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability   book icon  
by Paul Longmore (2003)

read: 16 May 2013
rating: [+]
category: non-fiction

Longmore was a disability activist and chronicler of the history of disability in the US. His central thesis--that the most disabling thing about having a disability is actually the social conditions surrounding disability in the US and not the actual physical/mental issues--is carried through this collection of essays. This all leads up to the final essay in which he outlines quite clearly how the disabled are legally punished for being productive members of society (via reductions to their SSI income if they make money via royalties or fellowships) and how difficult it has been to make any headway in changing these laws.

My favorite chapter in this book was about disability activism in WPA era where a group formed called The League of the Physically Handicapped and tried to get the same access to jobs programs for disabled people that able-bodied folks had. It’s a great narrative of an unknown (to me) aspect of US history that has had a lasting affect on anti-discrimination policies in the US in the time since.Longmore also discusses other topics dear to accessiblity/usability/disability activists which is the portrayal of disabled people in movies and the role of disability activists and disabled people generally in the Right to Die movement.

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