May 2023 Review – Récap mai 2023

Hello, hi, welcome to the May recap, which marks the second recap in a row of this definitely-monthly series! I never want to see a cardboard box again and lost the keys to two different apartments three times by now, but I’m still mostly holding it together. Can’t say I’m not looking forward to the end of June move and to having only one apartment instead of the current THREE!

Do you feel like there’s a lot of energy in this first paragraph? Well, the energy spike applies to my entire life these days – moving is exhausting but the prospect of going to my beloved mountains has basically cured my depression. (My therapist doesn’t believe me.) I kept my newfound running habit and am happy to report that up from 8 minutes in March, I can now run 25 minutes at once, and faster too!

Smaller thoughts, I’ve been thinking about how rating books makes no sense at all and expressing the will to do better. I’ve also lost all my reading highlights from May 8th to May 31st, so I’m trying not to cry right now. I read so much good stuff and now not only have I lost all my notes, I’ve also lost my history of all the articles I’ve read. Urgh.

Please tell me how I could make this recap nicer or more useful to you!

Reading

Books

The Lambda Literary prize finalists have been announced, so you shouldn’t be surprised to see a lot of LGBTQ+ books in English in this month’s list. Actually, only two books are not from an awards shortlist and one of these two is still about lesbians.

• High-Risk Homosexual, by Edgar Gomez, a memoir by a gay Nicaraguan kid in the United States, who tries to mix his femme-ness and the racist expectations around him. Hilarious and heartbreaking, usually not at the same time.
• The Foghorn Echoes follows two gay boys, then men; one of them lives in Syria during the civil war, the other loved him when they were teenagers and managed to emigrate to Canada, where he drowns his trauma in drugs and reckless sex.
• Dead Letters from Paradise is a cozy mystery in which a woman receives mysterious lesbian letters that are unsigned; she investigates to return the letters, and finds herself in the process, all this with a child sidekick who swears more than she does, and during the 1960s in the South of the United States of America.
• Somehow, I had never read Rebecca, by Daphné du Maurier. And then I found it in one of the book boxes in my local park, and then I thought «hey, it’s a classic, can’t hurt to read it, right?» Well it did hurt, okay? It hurt my soul. It was great.
• Bottle Rocket Hearts, Zoe Whittall – I waited FOREVER to get this book in French and never found it and gave up and read it in English, and it was worth it, like every Zoe Whittall book. This book does not have a single likeable character and has many québecois lesbians. What else could I possibly ask for?
• The Call-Out, Cat Fitzpatrick, was so good that it almost made me forget how much I dislike novels in verse. Trans women with all kinds of stories and personalities being all linked together by the call-out and its devastating effects; I loved it.
• Burn Down, Rise Up, by Vincent Tirado, should probably not have touched me so much. I mean, it’s American, very much so, it’s young adult, and it’s horror. And yet I couldn’t put it down, the book, the queer characters, the cannibals and the Bronx fires all coming together in a beautiful mess of a book.
• Big Girl is my favourite read of the month, by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan. The intergenerational trauma of fatness added to the weird smudge of lesbianism added to life, it’s all just so much and so big!

Articles académiques

J’ai perdu toutes mes lectures et je veux crever :)))) Mais en voilà deux de mémoire.

• CAUDRON Alice, « Carrière queer et (dés)engagements professionnels : à la recherche d’une radicalité soutenable », Travail, genre et sociétés, 2023/1 (n° 49), p. 103-120. DOI : 10.3917/tgs.049.0103. URL : https://www.cairn.info/revue-travail-genre-et-societes-2023-1-page-103.htm
• CLOS Clémence, ROYET Mathilde, « Le coût de la virilité ou les déboires du féminisme libéral : problèmes épistémologiques et enjeux politiques d’une mesure », Nouvelles Questions Féministes, 2023/1 (Vol. 42), p. 146-150. DOI : 10.3917/nqf.421.0146. URL : https://www.cairn.info/revue-nouvelles-questions-feministes-2023-1-page-146.htm

Non-academic articles

Again, lost all my highlights and history, so this is mostly my reads from the first week of May + things that I commented on during the month.

• Un article à rallonge sur Bernard Friot et son approche (problématique) du communisme advenu, qui m’a servi d’introduction à sa pensée (bon, j’avais quelques bases, mais juste des bases) et beaucoup fait réfléchir
• On the side of Ben Werdmuller, an article on the value (?) of AI in journalism and another one on the cultural differences that might explain the differences between ActivityPub and BlueSky’s AT protocol
• Cory Doctorow talked about improving book publicity with decent CRMs for managing ARCs – sounds so simple, and yet, the industry is terrible at it.
• I wrote about needing two women in your org when your industry makes it impressive to have one female member
• Tracy Durnell wrote about why RSS is nicer to use than social media timelines
• On Autostraddle, I read this beautiful essay on how we try to justify trans women’s place in competitive sports by insulting them.

Regardé

• Théologie queer, une série en plusieurs épisodes de Game of Hearth
• Elon Musk & Simulation Theory
• The Historic Downfall of the Walking Dead
• A 4-hour recap, episode by episode, of The Secret Life of the American Teenager
• How to build a solarpunk city
• Des migrants privilégiés sur les quartiers, villages, bulles de personnes «expatriées» qui ne s’embêtent même plus à apprendre la langue du pays hôte
• The (queer) politics of Eurovision, of course, since this is May.
• The role of class in animated sitcoms
• America’s war on the Gays and the Communists: James Somerton’s history videos are really, really good.

Écouté

Podcasts

• L’opposition aux vaccins du XVIIIe au XIXe siècle, Paroles d’histoire avec Laurent-Henri Vignaud
• Les enjeux raciaux des révolutions, Paroles d’histoire
• Les deux morts de Roger Rivière, Les Grands Récits
• We need to talk about the New York Times, You’re Wrong About with Tuck Woodstock
• Baerut/Beirut (Queer Geography part 3), Zoned Out
• Word Magic, Lingthusiasm
• La vie, la ville, la nuit, La cantine numérique de Brest avec Edna Hernàndez-Gonzalez
• Le gouvernement peut-il dissoudre la révolte ?, Penser les luttes
• Comme des oiseaux, ARTE Radio

Music

I barely listened to any music this month, but discovered Lily Island’s ambient music, which sounds like a cute video game soundtrack. Special love for Tuna Tank.

Played

Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. A lot. I can’t figure out if I love it or am deeply indifferent to it.

And since I didn’t mention games last time: April had a few Stardew Valley, Slay the Spire and Hades hours. It also had a bunch of I was a teenage exocolonist, which is a solarpunk text-heavy game with narrative choices and optional deck-building challenges. I love it. I love it so much.

Visité

À Grenoble, j’ai visité Le Magasin et ses expositions du moment, dont une très belle exposition sur l’Algérie et sa diaspora que je recommande chaudement, en attendant de faire un post de blog sur le sujet. Ne retenez pas votre souffle : il aura fallu trois mois d’attente pour le récapitulatif de mon voyage à Niort, enfin publié le 7 mai !

J’ai aussi visité le musée dauphinois et son exposition sur la ganterie, exposition qui finissait le 27 mars 2023 mais qui était apparemment toujours à début mai. Et tant mieux : c’était super cool !

Wow, you made it all the way to here! I don’t track anyone on this blog and have no stats at all, so if you want me to know you read this, I’d love a little encouraging comment, and maybe some of your own suggestions as well!

Bravo, vous avez lu cet article en entier ! Je n’ai aucun traqueur sur ce blog, et aucune statistique : n’hésitez pas à prendre le temps de m’écrire un gentil (?) petit commentaire pour laisser une trace de votre visite qui me fera chaud au cœur, et profitez-en pour me partager vos recommandations !