A review by rrose3000
Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel M. Lavery

I have loved everything this author has ever written--articles on the Toast, Texts from Jane Eyre, The Merry Widow, all of Dear Prudence...but not really this book. It's just sort of hard to follow if you aren't familiar with the source texts, which I wasn't for the most part--I've never seen Columbo, I've barely seen any Star Trek nor a lot of the films mentioned, and I have almost no familiarity with the Bible. The author is gifted enough to at least keep me reading about things I didn't understand (nor care about--I don't care about William Shatner, I just don't) but since he was often using these texts to provide a lens on experiences of transness, something I also don't know much about but DO care about--it was two layers of unfamiliarity, so I was often just lost. I don't mind being lost for a little while, but it got sort of boring to not understand several essays in a row.

The pieces where I did know the source text really did work for me--the one on the Golden Girls I found deeply moving, and the one about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was silly but funny. I thought the one that referenced Huck Finn was interesting but seemingly incomplete.

I honestly think I was just not the target audience for this book, which is disappointing but fine. Not every book needs to be for me. Maybe the next one will be.