The Golden Darter
My Life Through Books
Middle School was a weird mix of classics and Star Wars. I was obsessed with The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux to the point of the book falling apart. I also discovered that while I love Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters can go hang. As for Star Wars... I've read almost every meta-verse book that was published up until the New Order cannon. I can still go into detail and recite storylines of a few beloved books. Hence, my nerd life began.
High school was very paranormal, vampire, scifi, etc. I would literally go online and search for book series that concerned vampires and read everything on the list. We are talking Anita Blake, Charline Harris, Anne Rice, Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Tanya Huff, Steven King, etc. This was before they sparkled, ya'll. Early college was philosophical and political theory for school, and mainstream fiction in my personal time. Wicked, Life of Pi, Memoirs of a Geisha. These are the 3 books that pushed me into my next phase, mostly because of how ambiguous I felt about them, and their questionable endings.
Late-mid college I was introduced to LaVyrle Spencer by way of Hummingbird courtesy of a gripe session with my Mom about how depressing the books I had been reading lately were. I've never looked back and have been hooked on the romance genre ever since. I've read and loved a ton of LaVyrle Spencer (who is a little hit and miss), Judith McNaught (of the rapetastic 80s era of romance), and Georgette Heyer (who writes in the vein of Austen). More recently I've discovered the joys of contemporary authors like Susan Elizabeth Phillips.
Lately I've been trying to read more non-fiction. I really do enjoy learning about subjects that interest me, but non-fiction can feel like work sometimes. So I fall back to romance. You just can't go wrong with knowing that there will almost always be a happy ending.
Currently reading
Review written for both A Tale of Two Daddies but both the same with the exception of pictures and a few Q&A'sA while back I heard a story on NPR about a shift in children's books toward inclusion of homosexual parental units in the stories. It wasn't something that had ever occurred to me before, both because I don't have kids and am not discriminated against because of my sexuality. But I can see how it is a growing need. How confusing would that be as a child of a same-sex couple to constantly be seeing traditional parental units in books and TV... But not in your own home.I love several things about this book, not the least of which is it's mission. But it also takes traditional gender roles (as assigned to the mother and the father respectively) and assigns them to one of a same-sex couple where these "gender roles" mean nothing. For example...The book revolves around two children meeting at a park, a girl with two daddies and a boy with presumably heterosexual parents. So the second child is curious about which of the little girls dads preforms each of the tasks that he is accustomed to either his mother or father preforming. On one page he asks: "Which dad would build your house in a tree? And which dad helps when you skin your knee?" Building a tree house, in my mind anyway, would be the traditional provenance of the father and tending wounds that of the mother. So when the little girl responds with Poppa's the one who builds in a tree. Daddy's the one who fixes my knee. she is assigning both of these tasks to one of her parents, not to a gender.There are also questions that do not receive a specified answer, like how "neither" of her parents stay up late or catch a dog, that the girls doesn't need a parent to match up her socks for her, and that both can catch a frog and tuck her in at night. They are also both there when she is "sad and needs some love". Because that is what this is all about. If romance novels have taught me nothing else, it's that love comes in many forms. I should also mention that proceeds from the sales of this novel are going to charity, so buying both or either of of these books(one written for two mommies and one for two daddies) is supporting a good cause. Copy courtesy of VanitaBooks, LLC, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.