Then and Now #60 (27/11/23 - 10/12/2023)

Happy Sunday!  The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted @ Caffeinated Reviewer. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme. Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week.  It is hosted weekly over at Mailbox Monday and every Friday they do a round-up of some of their favourite, shared reads! 

Last Week

Still kinda struggling with something that's not really a reader slump, but more of a "omg where is the time going, I haven't touched a book in weeks"-thing. I'm really hoping to get back to blogging more, but that kinda requires me to also get back to reading... I've got a week's worth of holiday coming up though, between Christmas and New Year's, so I'm hoping to get some more reading done then! I have been Christmas baking though, and next week I'm meeting up with some of my family, so I'm very much looking forward to that as well. Get some family time in while also going to a conference and engaging in some interesting exchange about research ideas.

It was a good week, aside from that! We had another warnstrike on Tuesday and then yesterday the good news came through that in negotiations a deal has been reached and we will get a salary raise. While I'm doing good with the salary I get, I'm still on a part-time position, and therefore part-time pay, with the expectation of full-time work. (Aah Academia, you're great.) And some of my fellow PhDs are actually on student assistant contracts which get them a few hundred Euros a month, which is not enough to live on. So I'm glad a deal has been made to get those student assistants into our tarifs, so they will get better deals, and that many of our demands were met. Negotiations are always a give and take, and I think our negotiation team was also very aware that just walking away from negotiations if not all demands are met was not really a possibility, as many of us don't really have the means to strike long-term. So I'm glad about that! The rest of the week was busy, but I finally rounded off all of the marking and am still very much enjoying teaching.

Posted:

• Book Central #16 - 'Many Years Ago, I Was Standing in a Meydan' by Sema Kaygusuz
• Friday Friyay: Sundial by Catriona Ward

Recommendation

This video by HBomberGuy on YouTube has been causing some waves, but for all the right reasons for once. Plagiarism is an incredibly important topic in academia, of course, but the reason I thought this video was important was because we give some online voices waaaay to much lenience when it comes to citing their sources and making sure that the information they spout is true! The video is 4-hours long, so I did have it on in the background while doing other things, but I would still recommend it.

Mailbox Monday

Mouth: Stories by Puloma Ghosh (Astra Publishing House; 6/11/2024)

In this debut collection, Puloma Ghosh uses the speculative as a catalyst to push her stories and characters beyond what reality allows. Exploring grief, intimacy, sexuality, and bodily autonomy, Mouth leans into the bizarre and absurd while reaching for the truth. 

In "Dessication," a teen figure skater with necrophiliac tendencies is convinced the only other Indian girl at the rink is a vampire. A woman returns to Kolkata in “The Fig Tree,” where she is haunted by her deceased mother or a shakchunni, or both. “Nip” bottles up the consuming and addictive nature of infatuation while “Natalya” is a hair-raising autopsy of an ex-lover. And in “Persimmons,” a girl comes to terms with her own community sacrifice.

Blurring the lines of conventional reality and giving fangs, talons, and singular sharpness to the otherwise ordinary, awkward, and unmentionable, Mouth’s surrealism is both unique and captivating. Puloma Ghosh reaches into otherworldly spaces while exploring the everyday struggles of isolation, longing, and the aching desires of our flesh.

I was really intrigued by the cover of this, how the mouth is echoed by the unpeeled clementine, and what it says about freshness but also vulnerability? And then I read the blurb and I was like "Oh yeah, I need this in my life!", so I'm very excited to dive into this collection!

Orbital by Samantha Harvey, narr. by Sarah Naudi (RB Media; 12/5/2023)

A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men hurtling through space—not towards the moon or the vast unknown, but around our planet. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate. So are the marks of civilization far below, encrusted on the planet on which we live.

Profound, contemplative and gorgeous, Orbital is an eloquent meditation on space and a moving elegy to our humanity, environment, and planet.

I'm currently reading another book by Samantha Harvey, so when I saw this audiobook available for request on NetGalley I thought, why not dive into space with Harvey for Christmas? I've only listened to the first chapter or so, but I think I'm enjoying it!

Projections by S.E. Porter (Tor Publishing Group; 2/13/2024)

S.E. Porter, critically-acclaimed YA author of Vassa in the Night, bursts onto the adult fantasy scene with her adult novel that is sure to appeal to fans of Jeff VanderMeer and China Mieville.

Love may last a lifetime, but in this dark historical fantasy, the bitterness of rejection endures for centuries.

As a young woman seeks vengeance on the obsessed sorcerer who murdered her because he could not have her, her murderer sends projections of himself out into the world to seek out and seduce women who will return the love she denied—or suffer mortal consequence. A lush, gothic journey across worlds full of strange characters and even stranger magic.

Sarah Porter’s adult debut explores misogyny and the soul-corrupting power of unrequited love through an enchanted lens of violence and revenge.

Another book that grabbed me by the throat (haha, pun intended) with its cover. I was immediately intrigued, and then I also just loved the idea of a woman wanting to avenge her own death? Like, that's so cool? So yeahhh, another book I'm hoping to dive into over Christmas!

And that was my week! What are you reading?