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Reading Wednesday
Sep. 22nd, 2021 01:24 pmJust finished: After Delores by Sarah Schulman. I think one of you recommended it? Usually when I take books out of the library, it's because someone else mentioned it. It seems it was a kind of milestone as a popularly reviewed lesbian novel back in the day. The unnamed protagonist/narrator is not recovering well from getting dumped by the eponymous Delores in 1980s New York and she falls in love/flirts with a few other women, one of which gets murdered. Also, our protagonist inherits a gun from one such love interest and immediately starts elaborating on multiple revenge fantasies. So the breakup novel becomes a detective story. This book was a lot of fun! It kind of felt like a YA book except I guess these don't usually include graphic lesbian sex descriptions. I would say that the narration is not quite "stream of consciousness" in the way that Atwood writes that, for example, but her thoughts do jump from here to there quite wildly and it was a delight to read that; it felt very organic to me. My mind doesn't work like the protagonist's but I could see so many similarities to how my partner thinks. There's an AA meeting scene in there that reminded me of Elementary; I wonder if the show's writers picked up that aspect of the show from this book, or if AA is just more popular with addicts/recovering in NYC?
I'm also thinking quite a bit about the gendered lens through which to look at revenge fantasies... If the protagonist was a man I would have thought quite differently about the plot.
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Speaking of this icon, shooting for Babylon Berlin Season 4 has wrapped up! Early 2022 release on German TV, and I'm guessing around the same time on Netflix...
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Speaking of Babylon, I've started a Babylon 5 watchthrough! I used to catch episodes here and there but hadn't really watched the whole thing back in the day. Holy molly was it done on a budget. Many of the main actors 1) had serious alcohol/substance abuse and/or mental health issues back then and 2) many of them are dead already! Claudia Christian is probably the best of the lot, having found some chemical treatment for alcoholism that she has been promoting relentlessly since then. Yay Claudia! She also looked like one of my high school crushes.
I'm also thinking quite a bit about the gendered lens through which to look at revenge fantasies... If the protagonist was a man I would have thought quite differently about the plot.
- - -
Speaking of this icon, shooting for Babylon Berlin Season 4 has wrapped up! Early 2022 release on German TV, and I'm guessing around the same time on Netflix...
- - -
Speaking of Babylon, I've started a Babylon 5 watchthrough! I used to catch episodes here and there but hadn't really watched the whole thing back in the day. Holy molly was it done on a budget. Many of the main actors 1) had serious alcohol/substance abuse and/or mental health issues back then and 2) many of them are dead already! Claudia Christian is probably the best of the lot, having found some chemical treatment for alcoholism that she has been promoting relentlessly since then. Yay Claudia! She also looked like one of my high school crushes.
