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Reading on a Wednesday
Mar. 27th, 2019 10:58 pmRead: Spinning, an autobiographical graphic novel about a lesbian who was a mid-level competitive synchro and freestyle skater for twelve years.
On the one hand, I liked it when I read it. The art was decent and the usage of colors was good, though I had trouble keeping track of some of the characters/people with more generic designs.
However - the storytelling part of it needed a lot of work, and the more I've mulled it over since finishing, the less satisfied with it I feel. In fact, I think the main problem with may be that it is - to borrow a saying from my advisor - less like a story and more like a book report: this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened. Not enough connection between events or themes. There are a lot of loose ends left dangling, and a lot of unanswered questions about the narrator, her life, and how she felt about things that were happening or that she did.
Part of this may stem from the fact that not a lot of time has passed between the later events in the story and the book being published; I would guess it was drawn at most three years after she quit skating. While that's not nothing, it felt like it would have benefited from more time and distance between her and what happened.
Part of it may also come from how much was jammed into the book. I'm sure the author wanted to tell her full story, and it's not a short volume; however, combined with the lack of connections between scenes, it made the story feel scattered sometimes. It's not just about skating and being a lesbian skater and rage against the hyperfeminine aesthetic expected in the sport; it's also about rink politics and coming out and homophobia and first love and bullying and loneliness and an inability to let anyone in (she is constantly asked by adults if something is wrong or if she needs help and she always brushes them off) and mental health and sexual assault and going through the motions and falling in love with a nontraditional career path instead of going to college.
A few examples of the things above that particularly bothered me after reading it:
We see the MC form her crush on her First Love. I don't remember if there was anything in there about what drew the MC to FL, but that's fine. Sudden cut to a scene of them watching a Youtube video about how to kiss a girl, which they promptly use on each other. It's a very cute scene! It's also very confusing, because so far there's been no hint about whether FL likes her back, or any context to this scene. Have they confessed to each other? Were they skirting around the edges of confession but clearly interested in each other? Did they Google it as a joke? What is happening? How did they get to the point of kissing? After their relationship is found out, we are told she didn't see FL again for 'many years' (I'm guessing around six or seven at the most). That's all the info we get about their future reunion.
MC says that she was constantly looking for love and affection at the rink because she didn't get it from her family; it is true that her mother seems very distant, although we never learn if there's a reason for it. However, she does seem to get along well with her dad, who is supportive, and she also says she was very close to her brother, though there aren't many scenes showing this. This seems contradictory - does she specifically mean a female connection? Was her relationship with her dad and brother not enough or lacking in the affection she needed?
Her coming out happens in a single sequence. Her brother doesn't take it well, but this is never brought up again - since they were so close, how did that affect their relationship? Did he ever change his mind or is she still hurt by his attitudes to this day? She didn't come out at the rink because she wanted it to be a safe place and not deal with drama there - did anyone ever find out? Did she ever imagine what might happen? Did she ever wonder if any of the other girls were bi or gay? Was she concerned about being known as a lesbian in a sport that a) requires you to be around and touching other women in skimpy costumes b) tries really hard to sell itself as totally straight? Is she still happy with that decision?
At one point, someone attempts to sexually assault her. She writes that for years she was convinced it was her fault for wearing a tank top. At a later point in the story, she bemoans having to compete in front of the judges in short, thin dresses with no underwear and a lot of makeup. I think you could easily draw a connection between these two scenes, but the theme is not picked up by the author. She was also sexually assaulted by a girl at her school, but again there is no connection made, since that part of the story takes up a few sentences of her telling her first girlfriend about it and then moving on with no further weight to the story.
She says that she hated skating for years and years and didn't know why she kept doing it out of inertia instead of quitting. I think that's understandable. However, there are times when she does seem to genuinely enjoy skating and competition, and mentions being repelled by the expectations of femininity but attracted to the feminine women in it (which was a very interesting observation). It was confusing to me whether those times she seemed to be having fun and fulfilling her competitive spirit counted for her or not, when she had been so emphatic about not enjoying it for all that time.
How does the MC feel about skating now? The framing device of the story is her being nervous to get back on the ice for the first time in years, then at the end, doing a couple of things on the ice and leaving with a smile. Does she feel free without it? Does she miss anything about it? Does she wish she stopped earlier? Is she glad she did it, at least for a while? Does she try to avoid the sport? To end the story, we get another flashback to a memory from a competition she went to as a kid. It's a striking memory and well-drawn, but it doesn't answer these questions.
Not all of these questions need to be answered in the one volume the author had (and it's possible I'm forgetting a few answers, since I don't have the book on hand anymore), but this was the general feeling I was left with after reading it - not sure how she felt about things, wondering what had happened here and there, and wishing that the author had tied together the story better. Overall - I would give it a try if you are interested in the combination of 'skating + LGBT autobiography + graphic novel'. If not... it's not a bad book, but I'm just not sure whether I would give it a general rec.
Reading: Foundation by Isaac Asimov. I'm about 100 pages in and I... I have to say that I don't find it that interesting, believable, or good so far. I'm also not sure that a single woman has even so much as been mentioned, while there are plenty of male characters. Yes, it's old SF, but it's getting more noticeable as the book goes on and more characters come in. Personally, I am really, really struggling to buy the central conceit that people can just calculate human actions thousands of years into the future with ridiculous accuracy, to the point where I keep (unfairly, I know) wondering if Asimov knew how people worked. I know it was before chaos theory and back when behaviorism was still the most scientific part of psychology. Doesn't help. (Also doesn't help - but this one is not in any way Asimov's fault - that this 'science' is called 'psychohistory', which is a real-life pseudoscience which I associate with people making disgusting claims about foreign cultures.)
To read: Finish Foundation unless it gets too dire for me. I would probably enjoy his robot books a lot more, but I should get back to Genji.
On the one hand, I liked it when I read it. The art was decent and the usage of colors was good, though I had trouble keeping track of some of the characters/people with more generic designs.
However - the storytelling part of it needed a lot of work, and the more I've mulled it over since finishing, the less satisfied with it I feel. In fact, I think the main problem with may be that it is - to borrow a saying from my advisor - less like a story and more like a book report: this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened. Not enough connection between events or themes. There are a lot of loose ends left dangling, and a lot of unanswered questions about the narrator, her life, and how she felt about things that were happening or that she did.
Part of this may stem from the fact that not a lot of time has passed between the later events in the story and the book being published; I would guess it was drawn at most three years after she quit skating. While that's not nothing, it felt like it would have benefited from more time and distance between her and what happened.
Part of it may also come from how much was jammed into the book. I'm sure the author wanted to tell her full story, and it's not a short volume; however, combined with the lack of connections between scenes, it made the story feel scattered sometimes. It's not just about skating and being a lesbian skater and rage against the hyperfeminine aesthetic expected in the sport; it's also about rink politics and coming out and homophobia and first love and bullying and loneliness and an inability to let anyone in (she is constantly asked by adults if something is wrong or if she needs help and she always brushes them off) and mental health and sexual assault and going through the motions and falling in love with a nontraditional career path instead of going to college.
A few examples of the things above that particularly bothered me after reading it:
We see the MC form her crush on her First Love. I don't remember if there was anything in there about what drew the MC to FL, but that's fine. Sudden cut to a scene of them watching a Youtube video about how to kiss a girl, which they promptly use on each other. It's a very cute scene! It's also very confusing, because so far there's been no hint about whether FL likes her back, or any context to this scene. Have they confessed to each other? Were they skirting around the edges of confession but clearly interested in each other? Did they Google it as a joke? What is happening? How did they get to the point of kissing? After their relationship is found out, we are told she didn't see FL again for 'many years' (I'm guessing around six or seven at the most). That's all the info we get about their future reunion.
MC says that she was constantly looking for love and affection at the rink because she didn't get it from her family; it is true that her mother seems very distant, although we never learn if there's a reason for it. However, she does seem to get along well with her dad, who is supportive, and she also says she was very close to her brother, though there aren't many scenes showing this. This seems contradictory - does she specifically mean a female connection? Was her relationship with her dad and brother not enough or lacking in the affection she needed?
Her coming out happens in a single sequence. Her brother doesn't take it well, but this is never brought up again - since they were so close, how did that affect their relationship? Did he ever change his mind or is she still hurt by his attitudes to this day? She didn't come out at the rink because she wanted it to be a safe place and not deal with drama there - did anyone ever find out? Did she ever imagine what might happen? Did she ever wonder if any of the other girls were bi or gay? Was she concerned about being known as a lesbian in a sport that a) requires you to be around and touching other women in skimpy costumes b) tries really hard to sell itself as totally straight? Is she still happy with that decision?
At one point, someone attempts to sexually assault her. She writes that for years she was convinced it was her fault for wearing a tank top. At a later point in the story, she bemoans having to compete in front of the judges in short, thin dresses with no underwear and a lot of makeup. I think you could easily draw a connection between these two scenes, but the theme is not picked up by the author. She was also sexually assaulted by a girl at her school, but again there is no connection made, since that part of the story takes up a few sentences of her telling her first girlfriend about it and then moving on with no further weight to the story.
She says that she hated skating for years and years and didn't know why she kept doing it out of inertia instead of quitting. I think that's understandable. However, there are times when she does seem to genuinely enjoy skating and competition, and mentions being repelled by the expectations of femininity but attracted to the feminine women in it (which was a very interesting observation). It was confusing to me whether those times she seemed to be having fun and fulfilling her competitive spirit counted for her or not, when she had been so emphatic about not enjoying it for all that time.
How does the MC feel about skating now? The framing device of the story is her being nervous to get back on the ice for the first time in years, then at the end, doing a couple of things on the ice and leaving with a smile. Does she feel free without it? Does she miss anything about it? Does she wish she stopped earlier? Is she glad she did it, at least for a while? Does she try to avoid the sport? To end the story, we get another flashback to a memory from a competition she went to as a kid. It's a striking memory and well-drawn, but it doesn't answer these questions.
Not all of these questions need to be answered in the one volume the author had (and it's possible I'm forgetting a few answers, since I don't have the book on hand anymore), but this was the general feeling I was left with after reading it - not sure how she felt about things, wondering what had happened here and there, and wishing that the author had tied together the story better. Overall - I would give it a try if you are interested in the combination of 'skating + LGBT autobiography + graphic novel'. If not... it's not a bad book, but I'm just not sure whether I would give it a general rec.
Reading: Foundation by Isaac Asimov. I'm about 100 pages in and I... I have to say that I don't find it that interesting, believable, or good so far. I'm also not sure that a single woman has even so much as been mentioned, while there are plenty of male characters. Yes, it's old SF, but it's getting more noticeable as the book goes on and more characters come in. Personally, I am really, really struggling to buy the central conceit that people can just calculate human actions thousands of years into the future with ridiculous accuracy, to the point where I keep (unfairly, I know) wondering if Asimov knew how people worked. I know it was before chaos theory and back when behaviorism was still the most scientific part of psychology. Doesn't help. (Also doesn't help - but this one is not in any way Asimov's fault - that this 'science' is called 'psychohistory', which is a real-life pseudoscience which I associate with people making disgusting claims about foreign cultures.)
To read: Finish Foundation unless it gets too dire for me. I would probably enjoy his robot books a lot more, but I should get back to Genji.
