Beyond Trans, Heath Fogg Davis

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Eye-opening and fascinating. I don't usually review the non-fiction I read, but this is one of those books that's too important to pass up.

There are many things in Davis' book to think about. What struck me most was: 1) becoming aware of the prevalence of sex-classification - all of the forms and sources of identification which ask or label us as M or F - which there really isn't a good reason to collect; 2) how we have historically compressed a range of human sexual identity down to an either/or choice which is not always applicable; 3) that "separate and equal" rarely is, and that the strategy of accommodation continues to reinforce binary sexual identity and sexism; 4) that we all suffer when we force people into boxes.

Cerex XIV, David Gallagher

Novella-length SF robot-human love story riff on The Twilight Zone's "The Lonely" (but this is much, much better). It also reminds me of one of my favorite films, (2009) Moon with Sam Rockwell, which is another quiet, SF, psychological thriller.

The narration in Ceres XIV alternates first person between "Him" and "Her." The highlight of the piece for me is the clinical, dawning awareness of what it's like to experience passion: liking, attachment, love, jealousy. And then there's a nice "ticking clock" and mystery to unravel - which I won't spoil! Brilliant.

Liberation's Kiss | The Mad Scientist's Daughter

I'm comparison reading a lot of robot-human love stories these days, and they really run the gamut. I tend to like robots more like Asimov's than (2004-9) Battlestar Galactica humanoid cylons which are really for all intents and purposes just more human characters with the occasional cyborg/mechanical oddity. (There are other things I liked about BG. Well, up through Season 2.)

Liberation's Kiss is squarely in the SF Romance camp: light on science, heavy on two young, beautiful characters finding wholeness & happiness by coming together. Worth reading as an example of the genre. My favorite scene was where she crawls inside his form fitting yet expandable suit which he then zips up to hide her. The feeling (safe, protected, skin-to-skin) was the emphasis, but the ungainly bizarreness of the image appealed to me.

I think that's indicative of what I was missing throughout: Philip K. Dick-style ungainliness, oddity, complication. But I respect that readers have different tastes, and I think there's more than enough room in the universe for a wide variety of SF.

The polar opposite is one of my new favorite books, Cassandra Rose Clarke's The Mad Scientist's Daughter, in which the setting is near future, realistic, and you never forget the robot is mechanical. Even when you're rooting for Cat and Finn, it's deeply disturbing, and the relationship they evolve is anything but straightforward. In fact, the times when Cat thinks it's uncomplicated are the moments she later matures to realize reflected her selfishness and how she too has denigrated his personhood, even while claiming to be a champion for his right to be a "he" instead of an "it." The style is lyrical; the emotion is gut-wrenchingly intense. I couldn't put it down.

Hearts Akilter, Catherine E. McLean

I thoroughly enjoyed this novella-length tech-heavy sci-fi rom-com. There's a great beginning; it feels like it could easily have been expanded into a full-length with a few more plot-twists. The romance felt a little compressed, but I liked the main characters and the quirky style so much I didn't mind. Henry, the one convinced he's having a heart-attack, is quite possibly my favorite robot ever. I would love to read more SF by McClean.

Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Judd Trichter

I thought this story about a man on a quest to reassemble the robot/woman he loves was fascinating. There were moments along the way I found shocking, thought-provoking, touching, and laugh-out-loud funny. One of the things I found most intriguing was that many of the parts he's searching for have been incorporated into other or new robots, with their own personalities and goals, which often don't include giving back the pieces he's after.

Late Victorian/Edwardian Romance novellas for $0.99 or free

Absolutely splendid - found myself unconsciously smiling while reading. Shaw's best lines are here, but with different resonance given the gender switch, which makes them fresh and surprising. The gender reversal worked brilliantly from my perspective: Higgins (as a man) is insufferably patronizing, and the power dynamic (gender, class, wealth, education, even age) is so extremely tilted in his favor that I have trouble enjoying the original, but Moss ingeniously upends the apple cart, resetting the balance to something closer to a tug-of-war, and the result is completely delightful.

A sweet story about a spunky, socially conscious late Victorian heroine and her romance with the troubled but good-hearted Mr. Beaumont.

Racy version of a "North & South" relationship between a young upperclass woman and a factory owner gentleman/not a gentleman she can't help but be attracted to. It was a fun, quick read with snappy banter. I liked "Swept Away" enough that I picked up her full-length "Unlaced," which is Book 1 of her Ashton/Rosemoor series, although I'm less taken with this and have stalled in the middle.

The explicit scenes, rather than the relationship, are the focus here, but if you like big hats and tea parties, the setting is fun.

Sweet "Jane Eyre"-like romance about an orphan who takes a post as a governess to an earl.

Sylvester, Georgette Hayer

Audiobook read by Richard Armitage ("North & South," BBC 2004). This was my first encounter with Hayer and smashing good fun - thank you to Linnet Moss' excellent blog for putting the word out about this audiobook. If you have been missing Mr. Thorton, you will enjoy the proud, stiffly formal, cold & hot Sylvester.

Union Street Boarding House, Jamie Michele & Mary Rinehart

Practically perfect in every way. I thoroughly enjoyed this well-written, 1907 Pittsburgh murder mystery--the kind where there's an obvious suspect and the complications cast doubt, culminating in a courtroom drama (I love these). The characters, especially the slippery narrator, are intriguing, and the dialogue rang true for me, which is iffy in a lot of historical fiction I come across.

Here's the catch--and maybe it's only me. The book is 'co-authored,' and not in the sense that I'd expect. Jamie Michele specializes in rewriting little-known texts, so this is her rewrite of Mary Rinehart's original "The Case of Jennie Brice." (You can find the text on Project Gutenberg here.) There is A LOT of overlap. Without going line-by-line, I'm not confident how much is Michele and how much is Rinehart. I suppose the good thing is that Michele is bringing texts back into circulation--I stumbled across "Union Street Boarding House" and only found out about Rinehart when I read the book's  Acknowledgements page. And it is worth noting that Michele gives Rinehart credit on the cover and in her acknowledgements, but this idea of 'rewriting' still makes me twitchy.

Regardless - it's a fantastic, novella-length read and a darn fine mystery!

A Room with a View, E.M. Forster

Recently rewatched and then promptly reread A Room with a View, which is one of my Very Favorite Books in the universe. It is not as sophisticated or subtle as Forster's later Howard's End or A Passage to India, which are objectively better, but how can one not love it?

There's so much to like: the spunky yet painfully muddled and vulnerable Lucy, George with his Note of Interrogation and the Eternal Yes, the kind Mr. Beebe and irrepressibly middle-class-and-loving-it Honeychurchs, and my favorite character, expansive, forward-thinking, gentle Mr. Emerson senior.

The older I get, the more I appreciate Forster's handling of the two priggish "villains" of the piece: Cecil and Charlotte, and the fact that I feel I need to put the word "villains" in scare quotes is a huge part of it. He handles what could have been stock characters with enormous humanity, so that one sees and feels their limitations, and even their redeeming qualities. One ends up feeling sorry for them, but realizing that while they need our compassion, they (and their beliefs) should not be allowed to squelch the life and passion out of others.

I love both the book and the 1985 movie (NOT the 2007 remake, which was a travesty). One of the things rereading the book did was impress me with how brilliant Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's screenplay is (the third member of the Merchant-Ivory team). It is faithful in all the right ways--most of the screenplay is line-for-line dialogue from the book, at times intelligently compressed--and she dramatically improved the end. Forster has a very long, torturous scene for Mr. Emerson and Lucy, which I think Jhabvala cleverly distilled, and for Forster, Charlotte's role in bringing about the resolution is a sort of surprise-twist-ending, whereas in the screenplay it's a more organic piece of the narrative that wraps up the character and respectfully shades away to leave the final focus on the two lovers.

Above all, I admire Forster for his emphasis on kindness. He has a horror of artificiality and snobbery, although again, he is able to have compassion for even the characters whose lives are dominated by them.

The Mind-Body Problem, Linnet Moss

I haven't been in academia for years, but it still feels like home to me, and Moss captures it perfectly in her three stories set in her made up Parnell State University. One of the things that's fun about Moss is that her Parnell State U. characters weave in and out of each other's stories. She writes sensually--about food, about clothes, about sex--in a way that is sensitive rather than aimed at titillation, and there is a huge difference. These are thoughtful, nuanced, grown up stories about middle-aged couples trying to understand themselves and form relationships with an emphasis on healing.

Moss changed forever how I think about sex in books with a post in her blog in which she writes:

"Authors of “literary fiction” usually avoid writing sex scenes, thereby banishing from the lives of their characters a key aspect of human experience. I suppose one could argue that the mechanics are the same every time, so there is no need to describe it. But that shows a distinct lack of imagination, does it not? If there is something to be learned about the characters by looking in more detail at their sexual selves, it seems to me that to drop a veil of discretion over a sex scene (“Afterwards…”) is a failure of nerve. People vary greatly with regard to their physical, emotional, and moral responses as sexual beings. Admittedly, in many stories this information may be irrelevant. But if the story deals with the mystery of two people’s attraction to each other, it is (or can be) a key to character."

If you are a fan of Alain de Botton's work, in particular his "Course of Love," Moss is a great choice. You can find her books on Amazon.