Bad commute day

Half the roads are being resurfaced. Which meant that I had to take a detour in one part, and had to ride on really rough roads in another part. (I will be grateful for this next week, I'm sure.)

One guy blared his horn for so long that I felt compelled to respond, "I AM RIDING LEGALLY AND FOLLOWING ALL RULES OF THE ROAD." Another guy leaned out his car and started yelling at me for I don't know what reason. I couldn't even hear him.

Someone turned left in front of me so closely that I was very, very lucky I managed to stop in time. I think in the future I will just have to anticipate that no car going in the opposite direction from me will ever (a) see me (b) realize they have to yield when turning left.

My pants leg came unrolled and nearly got caught in my chain.

Not a great time.

Wednesday Reading

What did you just finish reading?

I See the Promised Land: A Life of Martin Luther King Jr., Arthur Flowers, illustrated by Manu Chitrakar

A graphic novel biography written by a blues-based performance poet and illustrated by an artist in Patua, a form of Indian picture-based storytelling.

This is not the book I would recommend to someone doing a school project -- the text is quite brief and more a work of poetry than a work of fact. But both the text and the illustrations are very beautiful. As a work in the interstitial boundaries of poetry, biography, and graphic novel, it's something else entirely, and an excellent something else.

At the mass meetings he kept the good colored folk of Montgomery fired up.

Told them a man can't ride you unless your back is bent.

Told them we won't stop until we've won our full freedom in this country and redeemed the soul of America.

Note that move now; that redeem the soul of America bit. That little bit of ideological orchestration.

This what make Martin Luther King special.

He saying this not just about us. This about saving everybody.

Keep an eye on this, now. Equating the Black struggle with the struggle for human dignity. This is where he find his Fa.

The Rithmatist, Brandon Sanderson.

Winger, Andrew Smith.

A 14-year-old junior in boarding school is slightly outcast among his peers, but also not really, and gets himself in trouble wanting too many girls at the same time.

I had issues with it, previously stated.

Far, Far Away, Tom McNeal

Original, well-written magical realism about the friendship between a boy, a girl, and the ghost of Jakob Grimm. I think it rides the boundaries between "dark" and "twee" better than A Corner of White does. I have some quibbles with it from a story-structure perspective, but they're quibbles; it is never too quirky or too cynical or too sweet or too sad, and it feels old-fashioned in a good way.

What are you reading now?

All Our Pretty Songs, Sarah McCarry. The story of the rich, damaged daughter of a dead musician, and her unnamed best friend; how the narrator falls in love with a musician, and how things go wrong. It luxuriates in describing 1990s Seattle -- goths, punks, alcohol, cigarettes -- and it occasionally feels like it's trying to out-Block Francesca Lia Block (although McCarry does a lot better than Block on navigating race and appropriation, I think -- also the prose is not quite so mannered). Starts out a little slowly, but I guess that's to set it up for the big, sharp fall.

There is a lot you could pick at in this book -- I'm skimming through the negative reviews on GoodReads and thinking, "Well, no, you're not wrong..." but it gets full points on hitting me in the feels.

UGH WHY IS THIS A TRILOGY. I want the catharsis, not the waiting.