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audaciaray's reviews
1618 reviews
It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita by Heather B. Armstrong
1.0
I totally love dooce.com and am very entertained by Heather Armstrong's bloggy antics. However, I just couldn't stomach her writing style in book form. The prose is just too peppered with pithy witticisms. I had to put it down after feeling annoyed for 100 pages.
Satan's Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century by Mike Dash
2.0
I am a real enthusiast of books about NYC history, and though I usually read stuff about criminals and outsiders instead of stuff about police, politicians, and insiders - this book is about the only policeman in US history to be executed for murder. Suffice to say, there's plenty about the life of crime in the late 19th and early 20th century.
The first half of the book is really really great - the characters are colorful, the interactions fascinating, and I felt drawn into the action and the fabric of NYC life in the time period. But once the murder in question happens, the unfolding of the trial just gets to be too much. And I say this as a history nerd who loves the details. If you just read the first half of the book, you'll be a much happier reader.
The first half of the book is really really great - the characters are colorful, the interactions fascinating, and I felt drawn into the action and the fabric of NYC life in the time period. But once the murder in question happens, the unfolding of the trial just gets to be too much. And I say this as a history nerd who loves the details. If you just read the first half of the book, you'll be a much happier reader.
Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us by Kate Bornstein
5.0
Here's the thing: when I was in college, I read Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, and it made me feel crazy. That book was my first intro to gender deconstruction, and it left my head spinning and heart hurting. I felt like I was trapped in the gender system, and that was a miserable miserable place to be.
Then I read Gender Outlaw.
Gender Trouble is the problem, Gender Outlaw is the solution.
Re-reading this book after 10 years, it was just as fun and fabulous as the first time I read it all those years ago in college. Kate Bornstein gives readers a sense of hope, encouragement, and plain old fun when thinking about and experimenting with gender. And it doesn't hurt that I've gotten to know Kate a bit since reading this book for the first time, so now I smile and picture her gestures and hear her voice as I read.
Then I read Gender Outlaw.
Gender Trouble is the problem, Gender Outlaw is the solution.
Re-reading this book after 10 years, it was just as fun and fabulous as the first time I read it all those years ago in college. Kate Bornstein gives readers a sense of hope, encouragement, and plain old fun when thinking about and experimenting with gender. And it doesn't hurt that I've gotten to know Kate a bit since reading this book for the first time, so now I smile and picture her gestures and hear her voice as I read.
The Scenic Route by Binnie Kirshenbaum
3.0
I read (or at least, read half of) this book because indie publisher, promoter, and book junkie Richard Nash thought I might like it.
The writing is deceptively simple - so simple and beautiful that you're almost tricked into thinking that it's too simple to be good fiction writing. Almost. The writing is good, and seductive, and just - pretty.
So why couldn't I finish the book? Personal reasons (it's not you, it's me). No, seriously. I like books with rich characters that I can either identify with strongly or show me a totally different aspect of humanity. The characters in this book did something in between for me. More than that, I couldn't finish the book because it's about heartbreak, and falling in love, and getting caught up in the web of another person. And at this particular moment in time (and in my own web of heartbreak and healing),I just can't stomach reading a novel like this.
That said, if you're a hopeless romantic (like I am) but also haven't recently gone through heartbreak (like I have), and want to fantasize about love and European roadtrips, you might just like this book a lot.
The writing is deceptively simple - so simple and beautiful that you're almost tricked into thinking that it's too simple to be good fiction writing. Almost. The writing is good, and seductive, and just - pretty.
So why couldn't I finish the book? Personal reasons (it's not you, it's me). No, seriously. I like books with rich characters that I can either identify with strongly or show me a totally different aspect of humanity. The characters in this book did something in between for me. More than that, I couldn't finish the book because it's about heartbreak, and falling in love, and getting caught up in the web of another person. And at this particular moment in time (and in my own web of heartbreak and healing),I just can't stomach reading a novel like this.
That said, if you're a hopeless romantic (like I am) but also haven't recently gone through heartbreak (like I have), and want to fantasize about love and European roadtrips, you might just like this book a lot.
Lady's Hands, Lion's Heart: A Midwife's Saga by Carol Leonard
5.0
I have never been so viscerally affected by a book as I was by this one. Seriously, never. I squirmed, I clutched at my heart, I cried.
Let me explain: in my admittedly limited and very finite universe, vaginas are for fun and especially for putting things into, they are not for pushing out babies.
This book is all about pushing out babies and the intense physical, emotional, and family stuff that comes along with it. That's stuff I've never personally experienced, or actually thought about all that much.
In the reality of the world and the female experience of vaginas, most women in the world push a baby out of their vaginas at some point. Carol Leonard is all about giving women the opportunity to do this in a way that honors their bodies and their individual experience and is not medicalized, sanitized, and dehumanized. In other words, she's a midwife, and has become a powerful and noisy proponent of undisturbed birth. Starting in the 1970s she has fought against the medical takeover of birth by empowering women to make their own choices about their birth experiences. This means that she's attended thousands of births in rural New Hampshire and caught babies in all sorts of peculiar circumstances, many of which she writes about in this book.
I learned a hell of a lot about the birth process and especially the power of women's bodies in this book. Even if I never give birth, this book was so worth reading, just to know and understand how strong women are. Also, Carol Leonard is really hilarious, and approaches her work as a activist with a big heart and a huge sense of humor. Behold these few sentences about teaching women about their bodies and encouraging self-exams:
"Susie and I are Abbott and Costello with a speculum. We take off our pants in church basements, in universities, in consciousness-raising groups. It is educational - and a little bit naughty."
Amazing.
Since I finished this book a week and change ago, I have thought about it often. I suspect that I'll think of it often for years to come.
Let me explain: in my admittedly limited and very finite universe, vaginas are for fun and especially for putting things into, they are not for pushing out babies.
This book is all about pushing out babies and the intense physical, emotional, and family stuff that comes along with it. That's stuff I've never personally experienced, or actually thought about all that much.
In the reality of the world and the female experience of vaginas, most women in the world push a baby out of their vaginas at some point. Carol Leonard is all about giving women the opportunity to do this in a way that honors their bodies and their individual experience and is not medicalized, sanitized, and dehumanized. In other words, she's a midwife, and has become a powerful and noisy proponent of undisturbed birth. Starting in the 1970s she has fought against the medical takeover of birth by empowering women to make their own choices about their birth experiences. This means that she's attended thousands of births in rural New Hampshire and caught babies in all sorts of peculiar circumstances, many of which she writes about in this book.
I learned a hell of a lot about the birth process and especially the power of women's bodies in this book. Even if I never give birth, this book was so worth reading, just to know and understand how strong women are. Also, Carol Leonard is really hilarious, and approaches her work as a activist with a big heart and a huge sense of humor. Behold these few sentences about teaching women about their bodies and encouraging self-exams:
"Susie and I are Abbott and Costello with a speculum. We take off our pants in church basements, in universities, in consciousness-raising groups. It is educational - and a little bit naughty."
Amazing.
Since I finished this book a week and change ago, I have thought about it often. I suspect that I'll think of it often for years to come.
We Did Porn: Memoir and Drawings by Zak Smith
A few disclaimers before I write about this book: Zak Smith is a friend. He writes about me (as Auspicia Clay) in this book. In general, he writes about my/our friends in this book and some of the events he writes about were ones I was present for or have heard stories about through other channels.
I took this pic of Zak and Mandy in July of 2007, when I was in Los Angeles on the book tour for Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration. They'd just moved to LA. This picture really cracks me up every time I look at it.
So, I'm involved.
All this means it's hard to write about this book. But here goes:
We Did Porn is definitely a page-turner, and not just because I was nosy about how Zak would write me (I was pleased and amused by what he said about me), but because it was a genuinely enjoyable read. And the drawings served as great punctuation to the written bits.
One of the things that struck me upside the head as I read We Did Porn is that most of the books I read about the sex industry are written by women who at some point are or were activists. Women who write memoirs or other stuff about the sex industry frame their work in some way in relationship to feminism. If you’re a woman writing about the sex industry, you kind of can’t help it. And that's a very different kind of read than this book. Zak just has a different perspective on the porn industry, which is not to say that he’s necessarily feminist or anti-feminist – the subject just doesn’t really come up (and I’ve never really hashed it out with him either, it’s never seemed like the most pertinent of conversations we could be having). He's not apologetic about the fact that he signed on to make porn because he made a joke to Benny Profane about fucking girls on camera. And this simple fact - that Zak would like to fuck more girls - remains his reason for being in the business. The rationale being: if you were a dude, and you got offered the chance to fuck hot girls and get paid for it, you'd be insane not to go for it.
The pieces of the book that really shine are the moments where he draws the parallels between the art and smut businesses. There's a lot of depth there. Though his style throughout the book is somewhat disaffected (see above bit about the simplicity of his porn-doing motivation), there are great moments of intensity, when he gets fired up and not just in a cantankerous way (though that stuff is delightful too). For example, this moment (pg 391 for those playing along at home) in which he's writing about a conversation between me, Bella Vendetta and Mandy Morbid that he listened to as we were doing late night food after the 2008 AVN Awards:
In writing about the sex industry, it seems that women have to more carefully negotiate the issues around exploitation, good and bad experiences of sex, all that touchy stuff that people get crazed about – but seem much less concerned about when it comes to thinking about men and the sex business. Zak runs with this, but also cracks open tough stuff around abuse, negative experiences of sex, and mental illness in porn business folks. Zak isn’t afraid of writing ugly things about the nature of the porn business and the sadness that touches the people who are in it – but he doesn’t get too heavy handed about it either. And actually, characterizing Zak and the writing as not being afraid is kind of silly and trite – that really sells it short, like it’s some other kind of book, like it’s a brave thing and there should be head patting and reverence. And that’s – just not really it either.
Let’s boil it down to this: I love how Zak mixes writing about porn and art without any of the tired old "is it porn or is it art?" garbage. It just is. These things are in parallel and also entangled universes. It's a mess. There aren't any stupid questions in this book and no overly simplistic answers, just tough, weird, messy stuff. Coiled together, this stuff isn’t nonsensical, but it doesn’t have a neat and tidy narrative either (and my use of the word “narrative” will be funnier to you once you read the book. Which you should).
Zak has a bunch of book events coming up in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Seattle - you should see what he's up to and go to one of his signings if you can.
4.0
A few disclaimers before I write about this book: Zak Smith is a friend. He writes about me (as Auspicia Clay) in this book. In general, he writes about my/our friends in this book and some of the events he writes about were ones I was present for or have heard stories about through other channels.I took this pic of Zak and Mandy in July of 2007, when I was in Los Angeles on the book tour for Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration. They'd just moved to LA. This picture really cracks me up every time I look at it.
So, I'm involved.
All this means it's hard to write about this book. But here goes:
We Did Porn is definitely a page-turner, and not just because I was nosy about how Zak would write me (I was pleased and amused by what he said about me), but because it was a genuinely enjoyable read. And the drawings served as great punctuation to the written bits.
One of the things that struck me upside the head as I read We Did Porn is that most of the books I read about the sex industry are written by women who at some point are or were activists. Women who write memoirs or other stuff about the sex industry frame their work in some way in relationship to feminism. If you’re a woman writing about the sex industry, you kind of can’t help it. And that's a very different kind of read than this book. Zak just has a different perspective on the porn industry, which is not to say that he’s necessarily feminist or anti-feminist – the subject just doesn’t really come up (and I’ve never really hashed it out with him either, it’s never seemed like the most pertinent of conversations we could be having). He's not apologetic about the fact that he signed on to make porn because he made a joke to Benny Profane about fucking girls on camera. And this simple fact - that Zak would like to fuck more girls - remains his reason for being in the business. The rationale being: if you were a dude, and you got offered the chance to fuck hot girls and get paid for it, you'd be insane not to go for it.
The pieces of the book that really shine are the moments where he draws the parallels between the art and smut businesses. There's a lot of depth there. Though his style throughout the book is somewhat disaffected (see above bit about the simplicity of his porn-doing motivation), there are great moments of intensity, when he gets fired up and not just in a cantankerous way (though that stuff is delightful too). For example, this moment (pg 391 for those playing along at home) in which he's writing about a conversation between me, Bella Vendetta and Mandy Morbid that he listened to as we were doing late night food after the 2008 AVN Awards:
Their basic attitude -as they dissect the convention and the people in it- is that everything about sex and porn is really stupid, except the sex and porn that they like.
And this, again, is strikingly similar to the way I feel about art.
In writing about the sex industry, it seems that women have to more carefully negotiate the issues around exploitation, good and bad experiences of sex, all that touchy stuff that people get crazed about – but seem much less concerned about when it comes to thinking about men and the sex business. Zak runs with this, but also cracks open tough stuff around abuse, negative experiences of sex, and mental illness in porn business folks. Zak isn’t afraid of writing ugly things about the nature of the porn business and the sadness that touches the people who are in it – but he doesn’t get too heavy handed about it either. And actually, characterizing Zak and the writing as not being afraid is kind of silly and trite – that really sells it short, like it’s some other kind of book, like it’s a brave thing and there should be head patting and reverence. And that’s – just not really it either.
Let’s boil it down to this: I love how Zak mixes writing about porn and art without any of the tired old "is it porn or is it art?" garbage. It just is. These things are in parallel and also entangled universes. It's a mess. There aren't any stupid questions in this book and no overly simplistic answers, just tough, weird, messy stuff. Coiled together, this stuff isn’t nonsensical, but it doesn’t have a neat and tidy narrative either (and my use of the word “narrative” will be funnier to you once you read the book. Which you should).
Zak has a bunch of book events coming up in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Seattle - you should see what he's up to and go to one of his signings if you can.