Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy

Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy

3/5. This was a rec from someone at NPR and, uh, oh boy yes it sure was a rec from a person at NPR. I kid with love. Anyway, this is about 60% pregnancy/miscarriage/birth/post-partum memoir written by a woman of color, 20% "science," and 20% cultural commentary from a feminist and sort of intersectional perspective (I don't actually give anyone's intersectionality credit when it doesn't include disabled people, and hers doesn't seem to). I came for the science, and ended up enjoying the memoir. I've read a lot of miscarriage and birth stories, and a good writer – which she is – can make something you've heard a thousand times real again. This turned out to be good, because the science parts of this book are supposed to be the things that women just don't know about their bodies, and, uh, I already did? Maybe it's the circles I move in, but these "revelations" about the prevalence of untreated pelvic injury and the specific mechanisms of immune support via breast milk are not news to me. She's not wrong that they should be more widely understood, though, and in general I'm in favor of this movement towards science-based pregnancy and birth practices (though in the case of this book, underpinned with an amount of woo about trusting women's bodies that I wasn't quite ready for).

Basically, it's an NPR rec book.

Half-Resurrection Blues by Daniel Jose Older

Half-Resurrection Blues

2/5. Urban fantasy about Carlos who is half dead and makes various people all-the-way dead for mysterious supernatural forces.

Chalk this one up to an author whose online presence I enjoy but whose book I kinda didn't (see also: Jim Hines, Saladin Ahmed). The best character in this book for my money is New York City; it's colorful and loud and smelly and polyglot. And way more fun to spend time with than the main character, who has total amnesia regarding his life, in his defense. So there's not a lot there. And what is there seems to consist of his penis and the really shitty way he behaves in order to stick it into the woman he wants to stick it into. Yikes. Further books in this series might fill him in more, but eh, I have better things to do than take the chance.