The Seasonal Reading Challenge discussion

This is the thread where you can submit reviews for the Best Review contest. The thread is open for submissions and will close at Midnight EST on February 13, 2021. Voting will start the next day and run until the end of the GR day on February 28. The person whose review gets the most votes will have the opportunity to design a 20 point task for the Spring Challenge.

To be eligible for this task opportunity you must have achieved at least 100 points on the Winter 2020 Challenge Readerboard by midnight Eastern Time on February 12, 2020. Only one task per person per challenge.

Just a reminder that each person can only submit one review - but you can make edits to your review up until the end. The review does not have to be any particular length and doesn't have to be a positive one (i.e. you can choose to review a book you didn't like).
Please include your Readerboard Name.

PLEASE DO NOT comment on people's reviews in this thread - this is for submissions only - you will be able to comment when voting begins.

SPOILER ALERT!- These reviews may include spoilers

FLORENCE

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez

3 stars

When I first started reading this book I was all set to give it 5 stars, and to recommend it wholeheartedly to everyone I know.
And there is good reason for that: This book is eye opening, angering, and has been able to put into words so many things I have experienced.

But.


And this is a BIG but.

Perez has not learned from her research.

This is a book, in essence, about how an entire gender has been systematically discriminated against - not out of malice - but because the people making those decisions have been men. And men assume their lived experience is ALL lived experience, and design accordingly. This ignorant design goes on to harm, and in some cases, kill, women.

This makes it absolutely, unbelievably, INFURIATING that a book on gender discrimination, published in 2019, makes not one SINGLE mention of transgender or non binary people. Not. One.
From the first few pages where she sets out her parameters on how she will be using the terms sex and gender to describe men and women she resolutely ignores and erases any and all existence of people outside of the man-woman binary.

I was not surprised as a result when one particular section of the book was familiar to me (the section on bathrooms). I have seen this exact section used by a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) in order to petition for banning trans women from using women's bathrooms.
All people MUST have the right to urinate and defecate safely. This is a basic human need and campaigning against that need is brutal, dehumanising, and dangerous.

This book is not based in intersectional feminism.
Feminism which is not intersectional is not just bad feminism, it is outright dangerous.


This book is not without worth - I still think it is important reading, ESPECIALLY for men in positions where they are designing and building products, infrastructure, and systems of management and politics. But please read this with your critical reading glasses firmly on.

There is a gender gap in this book.
Read between the lines.

Joanne MI

Sailing to Sarantium-4 Stars

A mosaicist is summoned, from a distant city, to appear before the Emperor Valerius II in the city of Sarantium. This mosaicist is old and has no desire to travel the long and dangerous road to the metropolis and then spend years there completing whatever the Emperor desires . In his place he sends his partner, who has lost his wife and daughters to the plague. He urges the younger man to get on with his life. Before Crispin (as he is called) departs, an alchemist and a Queen both give him something to take on his journey. Crispin then begins his path to self-discovery. He travels alone at first, however for safety reasons joins other travelers along the road.

The story is set in the 6th century, in a place resembling The Byzantine Empire. The world is familiar, from other Guy Gavriel Kay books. While reading, if I am unsure of anything that seems important, I use Google to uncover parts of history I am vague about. Byzantine was one of those searches this read. I discovered that there was a poem written by W.B. Yeats entitled Sailing to Byzantium. Love finding things like that while reading.

The writing, as usual for Kay , is beautiful and poetic. This author can touch my soul, like no other:

Darkness lasted in the Aldwood, night a deepening of it not a bringing forth. Morning was a distant, intuited thing, not an altering of space, or light. The moons were usually known by pull, not by shining, though sometimes they might be glimpsed, and sometimes a star would appear between the black branches, moving leaves, above a lifting of mist.

This author effortlessly intertwines Historical Fiction and High Fantasy. Highly recommended if you are a fan of either.