Award season reading has begun
I read 8 books in May and started/continued 1 other book. I’m still working on cataloging my ebook collection, including adding in the Hugo 2026 nominees. And I made a list of some of the Eisner Award nominees to read.
I’ve included snippets from my reviews and additional thoughts.
Favorite book I read in April 2026
Yeah, I will definitely be nominating The Subtle Art of Folding Space for awards next year.
I read 5 books in April and started/continued 2 other books. I didn’t read as much because I got swept up into a reading-related project.
So. I wanted to re-read a book (Maia Kobabe’s Genderqueer) that I was sure that I owned as an ebook. I couldn’t find it. Instead I found pockets and stashes of ebooks scattered over so many folders and devices and servers. Now I am trying to consolidate my ebook collection (and back it up.) I finally cracked Calibre and got it to work for me! I need to clean up my records! LibraryThing works too, but it requires so much effort. I spend too much time trying to find the correct edition, add it to my library, then the title is in Spanish, I have make more edits, and sigh. But it is very easy to get my data out of LT.
Still haven’t found the Kobabe book; however, I have found so many other books and comics that I want to read.
I’ve included snippets from my reviews and additional thoughts.
Favorite book I’ve read in March
You know when you start reading a book and enjoy it so much that you don’t want to finish it in case it disappoints you? I’m savoring Hell’s Heart.
I read 7 books in February and started/continued 4 other books. Unusually for me, I re-read two books that I had read just last year. Both of them were for book clubs or read-alongs. I forgot how much I like re-reading books. Why have I stopped re-reading books?
I’ve included snippets from my reviews and additional thoughts.
Yes, I’m asking that you take a second look at Sex and the City 2 during its first week of release. Why? Because most of the reviews out there say that it’s a terrible movie about overconsumption. Well, yes. It is ubermaterialistic and filled with many stereotypical orientalist fantasy elements. But SATC2 is a satire about how “liberated” we think our culture is.
The original television series advanced woman’s liberation. It celebrated the supposed sexual freedom of the modern woman, embodied by four different avatars: Carrie the neurotic girl, Charlotte the good girl, Samantha the bad girl, and Miranda the career girl. The show definitely did break down boundaries and made it okay for women from different generations to talk about sex. The avatars slowly changed into characters, into women making complicated and difficult decisions.
The first movie chronicled the rites turning Carrie from a single girl to a married woman. She finally achieved her supposed “happy ending.” The second movie attempts to answer the question – did Carrie really enjoy her happy ending? Of course not – at heart she’s still the avatar of the neurotic girl. Dramatically tackling those issues would be a downer of a film, not what the target audience wants or expects from the franchise. So the filmmakers chose another time-honored tradition to explore these issues: the satire.
Everything in this movie – the fashions, the settings, the choices, the desires – has been exaggerated. The characters have been flattened back into stereotypes, into girls. It definitely fetishizes the superficial; but the assumptions underlying these appearances are overtly and covertly challenged throughout.
SPOILER WARNING – I give away plot points below, but really this movie is anything but plot-driven. If you can’t figure out what happens when Samantha cavorts in a sexually repressed society, well, just think about it a little bit longer.
Posted in Second Chance Cinema
Tagged moves, reviews, satire, sex and the city 2, sexandthecity2
