Touched by Venom: Book One of the Dragon Temple Saga. Janine Cross.

Cross, Janine. Touched by Venom: Book One of the Dragon Temple Saga. Roc, 2005.

First of all, this is a dystopian world. Our protagonist is in a very low class, and she's a woman in a world where women are treated poorly. We start out following her as she deals with a boy her own age, and we get to see how he's allowed to abuse her (and even her mother, to some extent) because, after all, he's male and they're mere females. Good times.

Second, as our protagonist moves from situation to situation and place to place, things rarely seem to improve all that much, and that's rough. Cross does a great job of paining the desperate picture of someone who has no home, no real positive long-term bonds. (I'm simplifying a bit, but the bonds she does have are complicated, and definitely not anything you could call positive without serious qualifications.)

The Book of Guinevere: Legendary Queen of Camelot. Andrea Hopkins.

 Hopkins, Andrea. The Book of Guinevere: Legendary Queen of Camelot. Saraband, 2004.

I can't decide if I enjoyed the book more for the text or for the illustrations. Both were fascinating--at least to someone like me, who's been weirdly into the whole Arthurian story for about as long as I can remember. Thing is, somehow I've mostly read modern re-tellings, and I definitely missed some of the "classic" medieval content, which is what Hopkins covers in this book. 

Basically, Hopkins goes through selected bits of medieval writings about Guinevere (also Gwynnever, Gwenever, Gwenhwyvar, Guenhumara, and on and on) to build a sense of her character as presented in those writings. Some view her more favorably, some view her less favorably, and different texts highlight different aspects of her personality.

Advanced Grammar: A Manual for Students. (Chapter 1) Dorothy Disterheft.

Disterheft, Dorothy. Advanced Grammar: A Manual for Students. Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004.

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Study of Grammar

Step one in books on this topic is pretty much always to identify exactly what the writer is even talking about in the first place, as “grammar” has meant somewhat different things at different times. In what Disterheft refers to as the “traditional” sense, grammar is “specifically the rules that govern sentence structure (syntax) and the forms of words that appear in any given construction (morphology)” (3). However, in this book, she (like most present-day linguists) uses the word “grammar” more liberally to mean “the system of rules that every speaker formulates through the process of first language acquisition” (3), and therefore the book deals with phonetics/phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and the lexicon.

The End of Policing. Alex S. Vitale.

Vitale, Alex S. The End of Policing. Verso, 2017.

I give this book three out of five stars because… well, partly it’s a preaching-to-the-choir situation, where I don’t think those who don’t already agree with his viewpoint will be terribly convinced by his approach, and partly I found that it didn’t offer much additional information or ideas about what to do next.

I read books about social issues largely for two reasons: One, I want more information about those issues, whether it’s about their history or how they affect people or how they’ve played out in court or WHATEVER… just more info. Regardless of where I stand on the issue when I begin reading, I’m looking for additional credible facts and analysis. Two, I want ideas about what I can do next, beyond reading the book.

Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America. Linda Tirado.

Linda Tirado. Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America. G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2014.

If you're middle class+ and interested in knowing what many working class people deal with to make ends meet in the U.S., this book offers a window onto some of that. It's one woman's story; as she notes, she's not in the worst possible position and she certainly can't speak for every working class or poor person in the country--but in a lot of ways that makes the stories she can tell even more eye-opening, because you know it's even worse for someone without the privileges this writer does have.

After this book was published, there was apparently some kerfluffle over various aspects of the writer's life, with some people digging into her past/present and trying to discredit her as "not poor enough" to be writing this book. From what I've found, that mostly sounds like bs; everything I read about that was offered as "proof" that her story was fake was pretty easily discredited elsewhere. I think it's unsurprising that someone talking about the difficulties of living in this bracket got attacked for it, though.

Some reviewers also have a problem with her tone, because she sometimes sounds angry and judgmental. That one's entirely accurate, but I don't understand why that's a problem. She's got plenty of reasons to be angry and judgmental, especially when she's talking about the issues addressed in this book. If you as a reader feel attacked, you could take it as a nudge to consider what behaviors you're engaging in that this book perhaps makes you feel called out for.

If you're looking for an academic analysis of U.S. poverty, this isn't the book you want. If you're looking for a cross between a memoir and a well-informed, humorous-yet-hard-hitting rant that addresses social issues from the perspective of a quote-unquote normal person, this would be a good choice.

Mass Incarceration on Trial: A Remarkable Court Decision and the Future of Prisons in America. Jonathan Simon.

Simon, Jonathan. Mass Incarceration on Trial: A Remarkable Court Decision and the Future of Prisons in America. The New Press, 2014.

The book focuses on a handful of court cases that have significantly affected law regarding prisons and prisoners in California. While Simon is ultimately arguing that mass incarceration is wrong and should be discontinued everywhere in the United States, he says that he focused specifically on California for this book because California's prison system is the worst and most over-crowded. What we learn here, though, applies throughout the country.

Pros: This book contains a lot of information about court cases with direct bearing on the problems inherent in a mass incarceration system--especially one that consistently operates at 200-300% over capacity. It also does a good job of centering the importance of social narratives: The way we think about prisoners affects how we're willing to (mis)treat them, and sometimes changing the narrative is even more important than changing individual laws.

Cons (no pun intended): The book was repetitive. It was clear and easy to read, but each chapter repeated too much information from previous chapters, which became irritating over time.

There were glancing references to issues of race and class, but it seemed to me that these subjects--so important when discussing the justice and penal systems--were glossed over more than I would have expected.

The High King's Golden Tongue. Megan Derr.

Derr, Megan. The High King's Golden Tongue. Less Than Three Press, 2015.

The first thing you should probably know when figuring out whether you'd enjoy this book is that the author is particularly into writing m/m slash. "I love writing slash," she says on her website, "it works for me in a way that writing other things never did." I don't quite know how to describe what this means, but you'll know it if you're into the stuff: The book reads a lot like m/m slash. I guess in part what I'm identifying is that it's kind of a lot about the sex...but it's not porn or erotica, exactly. It's slash. If this isn't making any sense, you could just read the book to get a sense of what I mean.