What I'm Reading Now

Suzette Haden Elgin, Native Tongue

This is a science fiction novel from the 80s. The science is mainly linguistics. The conceit is that in the 1990s, the United States disenfranchises women, and strips them of most of their legal rights. The novel is set a few centuries after that event. 

In the world circa 2200, women have the legal status of children -- they cannot vote; they can work only with the written permission of their husband or other male guardian; the jobs they are allowed to do are limited; they cannot control any money they earn; they cannot own property; they can be locked in insane asylums if two male relatives/guardians say they should be.

A small number of "Lines," or extended families, specialize in linguistics and in translation, particularly translations of alien languages. (In Elgin's future, Earth has many, many off-world colonies, and has encountered dozens of alien species.) Children of the Lines learn alien languages from infancy, by being with representatives of specific alien lifeforms for several hours each day; they also learn two or three human languages each from infancy on, by being exposed to people speaking those languages; and they add several more languages as they grow to adolescence. They begin work at about ten, translating alien languages in negotiations, and translating Earth languages for the aliens. Both male and female children do this work, though it's a given among the men of the Lines that women don't actually understand the things they're translating. They're like a translation machine, or a wire that transmits signals.

Women have their own culture, as we learn, which the men know nothing about. They pass on knowledge of women's history, and -- in this first book -- are sculpting a woman's language which, they believe, will change reality.

The first novel in the trilogy is one of the best books I've read in months, though it is a bit dogged and didactic at times. The linguistic stuff is the best part. Elgin was a linguist, so I suppose that makes sense. 

The second book in the trilogy, The Judas Rose, is readable but less interesting that the first. I could not finish the last novel in the trilogy at all -- Earthsong takes as its conceit that the big problem with humans is their deep-seated need for violence, which I can agree with, but then posits that the way to fix this is to end hunger by means of Gregorian chants (or any music, really) which humans use the way plants use sunlight. It was one impossible thing too many for me, though the writing remains good.

Rachel Parris, Introducing Mrs. Collins

I really wanted to like this one more than I did, and the first half of it is pretty good. It's Pride and Prejudice from the point of view Charlotte Lucas, later Charlotte Collins. That's a great premise, and at first the novel goes well. I'm thinking, this is a novel about someone who marries without romance and makes a good life by doing so. That's an interesting topic. And in the first half, Parris seems to be retelling Mr. Collins pretty successfully, so that we can see how Charlotte can manage to have a good life with him.

But then Parris decides this has to be a romance with a capital R, and Charlotte falls in love with Colonel Fitzwilliam, blah blah blah. Kills Mr Collins off, now Charlotte is free to marry again. The last half of the book was a real disappointment. Sigh.

Edward Ashton, After the Fall

Edward Ashton wrote the Mickey 7 books, which were a lot of fun and compelling at times, so when I saw this in the new book section, I picked it up. It's a B+ science fiction novel. Aliens have invaded because humans are destroying (really, have destroyed) the ecosystem. They wipe out most humans and keep a few as breeding stock, which they have been breeding for neoteny, basically, cuteness, small stature, that sort of thing. (That's a semi-impossible thing, but Ashton does say the aliens are working on the genetic surgery level, not just breeding the way we bred dogs. So I got past it.) These humans are adopted as puppies, um, toddlers and small children, by the aliens and kept as pets. Any that age-out, get too old for adoption, are "put down," casually and butally.

There's a plot of sorts, in which John (one of the pet humans) locates some feral humans -- those who escaped execution when the aliens took the planet. But mainly this book is showing us the world of the aliens and how humans react to it. On the whole, Octavia Butler did it better.

The Selected Letters of Laura Ingall Wilder, Ed. William Anderson

Wilder was one of the formative authors of my childhood, so I enjoyed this. It's what it says on the tin, letters chosen by Anderson from the time of Wilder's young adulthood (when she and Almanzo leave South Dakota) onward. Anderson is not a reliable narrator, so I don't know how much he messed with the letters, nor what he left out. Still, I enjoyed reading this.

Brrr

It was 38 degrees when we went to the dog park this morning. I think this is the last cold(ish) day we're going to have.

Next week looks spring-like. Summer isn't far behind, I am sure.

Screen door, dishwasher, garage door, gutters....

All day yesterday workmen were here taking down rusty and leaking gutters and putting up wonderful new ones. This is the last of the things our house inspector said needed to be done, so, knock wood, this is the last big ticket item we will need to do on the house.

I do want wood floors, instead of this horrible carpet; or, as Richard Wilbur put it, "The end of thirst exceeds experience."

Or, as Buddha put it, "You want to end suffering? Stop wanting shit!"

Measles, Whooping Cough, Chicken Pox...

Earlier this year we had an outbreak of whooping cough at the university. We haven't had measles yet, but the Department of Health is worried about the outbreaks elsewhere spreading here. And now we have a case of chickenpox in a nearby small town. The parents sent the kid to school before they knew they had chickenpox, so the whole school is at risk. 

Many local parents are shrugging this off. Getting chickenpox is good for the immune system, they ignorantly claim. Why, my grandmother had a "chickenpox party" for my mother when she was....

I mean, yeah. Parents did used to do that, because getting chickenpox as a child was safer than getting it as an adult, and no vaccine existed yet. But as someone who had chickenpox as a kid, I absolutely do not recommend this practice, now that we have a safe and tested vaccine.

You can tell these local parents have never been really sick in their lives. If they had lived through measles, mumps, and chickenpox all one winter when they were six years old (me), not to mention endless cases of strep throat (two or three times a year from the time I was five) and flu, they wouldn't think this was something to just shrug off.

Much less congratulate yourself over.

What terrible parenting.

Wait

Trump announced a few days ago that his war in Iran is over, and that we won.

Now he says it's SOON going to be over. And by the way, let's send thousands of more troops to the area.

Gas at the cheapest station in Fayetteville is $3.49 a galloon. 

The national average is $4.10 a gallon. A month ago the national average was $3.69, and a years ago it was  $3.10.

These days I think often about that farmer in my health club who said he had to vote for Trump, because "these gas prices" needed to come down. Arkansas is leading the nation in farm bankruptcies right now.

Orban Defeated

Rod Dreher's favorite fascist was defeated in the election yesterday, and people are dancing in the street:

Hungarians celebrated the landslide defeat of Orban by singing "We Are the Champions" out in the streets

[image or embed]

— Pasquinel (@pasquinel.bsky.social) Apr 12, 2026 at 6:29 PM

Bye, Orban. May many fascists follow you down this road.

ETA: See PZ Myers on this topic as well.

Oh, so THAT's how you win a war

Trump: “Whether we make a deal or not makes no difference to me because we’ve won”

Source

As a comment later puts it, this translates as "Reality makes no difference to me, because my base will believe any crazy fucking thing I say."

I Know It's TikTok, but I love this Poem

 It's by a guy named Lucas Jones:

@lucasthejones Books in bio 🥀 Poem: ‘I’m doing this thing where I’m pretending to be nice to women’ #poem #fyp #spokenword #foryou ♬ original sound - Lucas Jones

Alternative link

Paying Taxes

We paid our taxes today, plus a $319 fee to TurboTax.

I don't mind paying taxes, though I do mind that so much of what I pay goes to billionaires and to this ridiculous war. 

I do mind that the process of paying taxes is so complicated that we need either professional help or this extremely expensive program to pay them. Other countries manage without this bullshit. Why not us?

(I know why not us, it's a rhetorical question. Why not us because tax companies bribe the government to keep the system in place.)

Passover 2026

Dr Skull got sick shortly after I did, but we both recovered in time to have the Seder last night.

I had to do all the cooking, sadly, but mostly everything turned out well. Though I forgot to make the asparagus, and the horseradish I bought was painfully hot.

My carrot tsimmes was a big hit. I put the recipe on my cooking blog.

We also had matzo ball soup, boiled potatoes with dill, roast chicken, matzo, and various desserts of affliction, including chocolate-covered matzo, fruit slices, and coffee cake.

Dr Skull, Uncle Charger, and the kid had slivovitz at the end of the meal, but I was too tired.

Chag Pesach Sameach!

Making Progress

I feel much better today but I had terrible fever dreams all night, waking up several times feeling deeply awful. It was like the dreams were telling me I'd wasted my entire life and it was too late to do anything about it. 

This is not at all true, of course. I've done pretty much exactly what I wanted with my life, married the perfect person, had a wonderful kid and a great job, and am continuing to live precisely how I like: reading books, writing books, hanging out with my family, throwing a ball for the dog. I'm guessing fever and toxins made my brain think otherwise?

Anyway, no fever this morning, no body aches, only the usual headache. Let's hope that's all over.

Ooof

Our Passover Seder was supposed to be tonight but I am down with either the flu or Covid. I haven't tested for either yet. According to the internets, it's probably the flu.

We've rescheduled for Saturday.

Ugh.

Dialects of English

You'll remember I wrote a post about the insistence on only one dialect of English being "real," or an actual language; and how this foible is because Americans love to have what they consider legitimate reasons for bigotry.

Here's evidence that this is an actual problem. White Americans -- especially conservative White Americans -- are either unable or unwilling to understand AAVE in courtroom settings, which is contributing to unequal justice under the law. 

Court reporters have to be able to transcribe what is being said in a courtroom with at least 95 percent accuracy. According to this article, court reporters tested on AAVE can only transcribe what is being said with less that 83% accuracy. 

In 31 percent of the 2,241 transcriptions, researchers found, the court reporters’ errors changed the content of what the speaker was saying, misinterpreting either who was involved, what was happening, when it happened, and/or where it happened.

Further, juries either can't or claim they can't understand what black witnesses are saying in court.

As the article puts it, there's a real lack of "willingness" to understand AAVE.

This might be an actual lack of comprehension, of course. When I taught World Lit, I would often teach Frederick Douglass's Narrative of a Life, which is written in perfect SAE of the time. That dialect was often well above the literacy level of my students, who could often barely read what they called "modern" English (English written since the year 2000). Still, they never complained they couldn't understand what Douglass was saying (even when it was clear they could not). 

I would also give them half a dozen narratives from the WPA slave narrative collections in the Federal Library. The WPA collectors deliberately transcribed these narratives in the language, the dialect, spoken by the former slaves -- in AAVE, in other words, from the 1930s. (There's a pdf collection here.)

When I would assign these, some of my students (I won't say conservative, although they probably were, being this was a freshman class in Arkansas; they were definitely white kids) would insist they "couldn't" read the narratives. "They're not in English," they would insist.

Mind you, these are Arkansas kids. Most of them grew up speaking Southern English, which has its roots in AAVE. I'm not saying they were all liars. At least one of them I know for a fact just wasn't too bright. They could barely read SAE written in the 21st century, so maybe they actually couldn't understand this text (a sample):

I wuz 'borned in Orange County and I belonged ter Mr. Gilbert Gregg near Hillsboro. I doan know nothin' bout my mammy an daddy, but I had a brother Jim who wuz sold ter dress young missus fer her weddin. De tree am still standin what I set under an' watch ' em sell Jim. I set dar ant I cry an' cry,  specially when dey puts de chain on him an carries him off, an' I ain't neber felt so lonesome in my whole life. I ain't neber hyar from Jim since an' I wonder now sometimes if'en he's still livin.

But maybe they and the other students who complained were just not willing to understand what they saw as "not English." Maybe their point was Black people who couldn't speak in the standard English of the time had no right to be heard.

I also remember a smart (white, conservative) kid, very likeable, from my History of the English Language class who wrote, very nicely, in my end of the semester evaluation that as much as he realized I was educated and intelligent, I was wrong when I taught in the class that different dialects of English were just that, different dialects. Speaking proper English, he said, was moral issue. 

Speaking anything but standard English, that implies, is immoral. Is a sin.

You can see why this might be a problem when people who don't speak SAE show up in court seeking justice. (It's not just Black people who don't speak SAE, and of course some Black Americans do speak SAE. That's not the point here.) When we speak about systemic injustice, this is what we mean. This injustice is baked into the system, and it is approved of and enforced by a sizable percentage of our population, some of whom are lawyers, some of whom sit on juries, and many, many, many of whom are police officers. 

Or ICE agents, but probably that's less important, since ICE agents aren't really interested in what anyone has to say, in SAE or AAVE or the dialect of the Intermountain West or whatever.

My kid is Flying Home

So far no trouble with TSA or ICE in the airport, but then they both pass as white cis males, so.

We've been taking care of Rosen, whom Dr Skull loves so much he wants to adopt her. But Jasper is afraid of her, so much so that she won't go in the room where the litter box is. (They've had two fights so far, both of which Jasper lost.) 

So unless I figure out a place to put a second litter box, that's probably not a solution.

Also, the kids love Rosen and don't really want to give her up. It's too bad, because Rosen is a great cat and she does indeed really love Dr Skull, who misses Junti (who was his cat) terribly.

Dr Skull with Rosen

Rereading Books

Apparently some people think you should never re-read books, because, and I am summarizing, there are so many books out there to read, why would you ever waste time re-reading?

I do read a lot of new (or new to me) books, but for me one of the pleasures of reading is re-reading. I especially like to reread a book that I haven't read in years. It's kind of like parallax vision, maybe? I remember what I thought or how I understood a book when I was 20 or 30; how will I see or understand the same book now? I'm a different person now, so I understand the book/see the book differently.

I'd go so far as to say you haven't really understood a book if you haven't read it more than once. This is especially true for me, I think, because I read really fast (though I don't skim unless the book is terrible and I'm trying to see if it's worth finishing). When I'm gulping down a book because I want to know what happens, I don't always spend a lot of time thinking about what's happening. Re-reading lets me do that.

I also like to reread a book I've read maybe a dozen times. It's like watching your favorite movie or listening to a favorite song. I enjoy the beats and the scenes because I know them so well.

Recently I've discovered the joy of listening to a book that I've read a dozen times. The audiobook of Nobody's Fool, for example -- listening to that was such a different experience from reading it. Same for Jo Walton's Thessaly trilogy.

What about y'all? Do you re-read?