User Profile

interlibraryprone

interlibraryprone@bookwyrm.social

Joined 9 months, 3 weeks ago

Book nerd, cat person, tree hugger. Intersex, queer & disabled. Pronouns: ze/zer or she/her

I appreciate book recommendations of: 1. Futuristic sci-fi books where we actually mitigate climate change. 💚 2. Hard sci-fi but with queer/feminist gender politics. (I want more Expanse 😭 ) 🛰️🏳️‍⚧️ 3. Stories with quality intersex representation that do not contain sexual violence. 💜

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interlibraryprone's books

To Read (View all 9)

Currently Reading

Bogi Takács, Lisa M. Bradley, Stefani Cox, Julie Nováková, Polenth Blake: Rosalind's Siblings (2023, Atthis Arts, LLC) 3 stars

If you like sci-fi short stories, you'll probably like it

3 stars

Per the title. The genre isn't really my cup of tea. The book bills itself as stories about marginalized scientists and only a couple of stories actually fit this bill. It's run of the mill sci-fi short stories. Don't go in expecting stories about Rosalind Franklin, you will be disappointed. If you want that, "Woman Scientists in America" by Rossiter is what you should be picking up instead.

finished reading 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley Robinson: 2312 (Hardcover, 2012, Orbit) 3 stars

The year is 2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. …

Guessing at the start/end dates. Started strong but petered out in a way that was rather than unsatisfying. Found it on a list of books with intersex rep, and I think this is inaccurate - Swan is trans/altersex (she intentionally transitions to mixed sex characteristics). She is not intersex. Some of the other characters /might/ be intersex but it would really more accurately be varsex representation than intersex because they're not really specified as intersex, just that they have variant sex characteristics. I did appreciate reading a book where being varsex was so normalized that the cause of the sex variation (i.e. natural genetics, intentional transformation, etc) wasn't worth mentioning in the bulk of the cases.

Celeste E Orr: Cripping Intersex (2022, University of British Columbia Press) 5 stars

The intro has me jazzed. It really is frustrating how so many #intersex people will try to distance our community from disability and then are surprised Pikachu that we continue to have problems with pathologization, bodily autonomy, epistemic power, eugenics, etc. Positioning intersex as "not a disability" reinforces the medicalizing ableism that hurts both intersex and other disabled people.

Charles C. Mann: 1491 (EBook, 2005, Knopf) 4 stars

A groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of …

I learnt a lot but came out with a bad taste in my mouth. The book was too often uncritical in ways that were frustrating. Like his discussion of agriculture in the Amazon: he couldn't just do the logical thing and promote landback. Also disappointing how he doesn't take indigenous sources of information like oral history seriously. Also also disappointing to see him treating Jared Diamond like a legitimate source 😬

Thea Hillman: Intersex (for lack of a better word) (Paperback, 2008, Manic D Press) 4 stars

Intersex (For Lack of a Better Word) chronicles one person’s search for self in a …

Has some good essays but suffers from insufficient editing

3 stars

This book has some good essays! Some will stay with me for the emotional punch that Hillman landed. Some got me thinking about something I'd never thought about before.

But the essays are not organized in a way that makes much sense - they don't thematically build on each other and feel random in their order. The tonal whiplash makes for a tough read. Some of the essays are needlessly confusing. It makes me feel like the book wasn't edited. Little things like how two different essays are titled "Education" add up to feeling like this isn't a finished product.

Favourite essays: - Education (the first one) - Chang - Present - Condition - Okay

CONTENT WARNINGS: - Medical sexual violence in essay titled "Out" - Mention of sexual violence in essay titled "Reshaping"