The 25 in '25 Reading Challenge!

#1

Owls in the Family by Farley Mowat

(Finished January 3rd)

I remember our teacher reading this to the class in grade 3 as part of a whole unit on owls. We got to disect an owl pellet and everything. Kind of cool, but kind of gross too. Anyhow, I decided to check it out from the library on a whim to see if it holds up. Like the title implies, it's about a boy in Saskatoon who finds two orphaned owls and adopts them as pets. Hijinks ensues. It was fine I suppose. Lots of young-boys-playing-rough-and-having-adventures-in-the-great-outdoors type stuff that isn't super up my alley, but they seem to be having a good time. So far as I can tell, this story takes place in the 1930s sometime and well, let's just say we've come some way as a society on how to properly treat animals. Domesticating wild owls as family pets doesn't really vibe with modern sensibilities. There are a few scenes where side characters veer into outright animal cruelty and it's only portrayed as a bad thing in the most glaring instances. I raised an eyebrow or two here and there. Still though, it was alright. The ending did make me feel something a bit, so it did the job.

#2

Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell

(Finished January 14th)

A friend lent me this one. Like the title suggests, it explores lingustics and the impact society has on language and vice versa. All from a feminist perspective. It certainly gave me plenty to consider here and there. I enjpyed the chapters on how women speak among other women and how a lot of vocal affectations and slang adopted by girls are at first mocked and derided before being picked up by society at large over time. The chapter going into gay culture was also quite enjoyable (Finally, someone acknowlesges that the gay "lisp" isn't actually a lisp!). There's a chapter as well focusing on languages with gendered verbs and how that can present a challenge for feminists, and how other languages hardly acknowledge gender at all. That's something I might want to look into more eventually. However, finishing this book 6 days before the start of Donald Trump's second term as U.S President really hit home how much this book feels like a relic of a bygone era. It was only published in 2019, but the feminism that was culturally ascendent in the 2010's - even through Trump's first term - that this book represents died brutally and suddenly on November 5th, 2024 as the results rolled in. The future she posits where people might someday introduce themselves witht their pronouns as naturally as they do their name? Yeah, that's not happening. The tone of confidence that women are on their way to their place in the sun and that things are on the right track long term rings rather hollow as I write this. It feels like the whole idea of "civil rights" was just an experiment we tried for 60 or so years and now we're going to scrap it all in favor of extremely rigid hierarchy and outright facism. Yes, Trump was president when this book was written as well, but there was a sense that it was a very rough, four year setback to progress. Now that he won again, the sense of complete and utter defeat is palpable. The incels, the alpha bros, the talibangelists, the straight up Nazis. They won. We felt like we were pushing them back for a couple generations, but we failed. Nothing but a boot stomping on a human face forever now. Until climate change kills us all anyhow. Yeah...

#3

Beyond Getting By by Holly Trantham

(Finished January 25th)

A personal finance management book with a left wing perspective. I watch the Financial Diet a fair bit on Youtube, so this book published by them was an easy pickup at the book sale. A lot of the advice is specific to the United States and I've always estimated myself to be good with my finances, so not all of it was relevant to me. It did inspire me to check my monthly spending though, -and yeah- I could stand to eat out less often. Props for inspiring a positive change in my habits.