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sword_logici've been in a major reading slump for a long time now, and somehow last year i started to read a bunch of nonfiction, which i'd never really gone for before, ever. i also had a realization today while mulling over the histrom i'm about 75% of the way through that i really like the problem-solving more than the romance itself, lol. anyways! words about words.
the first Fashion As Subject NF book i read, back in 2023, was Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style by W. David Marx, and it was fantastic. really fascinating look at fashion culture broadly in japan, how it came to be, and how japan and the US got into a funny sort of recursive loop with ivy style. in particular, i found it really interesting to learn about the role that fashion magazines-as-catalogs have played in japanese fashion (sub)cultures since the beginning; i saw lots of echoes of lolita fashion there.
partway through 2024 i decided to start checking out whatever books on menswear i could get my hands on; i have very often grabbed coffee table type books mostly at random from the statewide resource-sharing library network and just flipped through them to look at the photos without reading, but i ended up getting The Suit: Form, Function, and Style by Christopher Broward without realizing it was actually A Book and i started to read it on a whim — and read it cover to cover while thoroughly enjoying the experience. from there on out i picked up a whole bunch more coffee table books but actually sat down to read them; many of the books i checked out on savile row were really just nauseatingly, gung-ho-ly imperialistic God Save The Queen (oops!) tripe, which was really jarring after the very thoughtful and thorough way that The Suit examined all the ways that menswear at its core and to its roots is inextricable from english imperialism.
i also read all of G. Bruce Boyer's books, which were all compilations of various articles he'd written, so it was a melange of repeated, adapted articles. his voice is so funny and dry that i enjoyed the repeats, anyways, and i'd gladly read a million more essays and articles by him. True Style was the best "essay collection" of the lot, and the most recent; i really appreciate his non-prescriptive approach to "dressing" "well" and finding what works for you.
other fantastic books worth mentioning: Black Ivy by Jason Jules & Marsh Graham (i just checked it out again earlier this week — phenomenal collection of photos with thoughtful, concise captions) and Tartan + Tweed by Caroline Young (fantastic history of scotland's relationship to its most famous native textiles, and thoroughly unafraid to repeatedly underline just how brutally england has ravaged scottish culture, traditions, lands, and people in every way).
i also read Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab, which i just finished today and did not like. this book didn't meet me where i'm at and i'm not the intended audience. i feel generally confident in setting boundaries so i was curious to see what this book had to say, and it didn't have anything to say that i resonated with. i also felt like it got strangely into victim-blaming after a certain point. it also included pretty much nothing about interrogating how you respond to others' boundaries, nor did it leave much middle ground for situations where you do need nuance in navigating a boundary, but instead lumped all such situations into the basket of "porous (bad) boundaries" and wagged a finger at you. boundary-setting and -enforcing is a game of nuance and negotiation, not all-or-nothing warfare.
last year was one of those years in which i had to do a lot of very aggressive self-care in the form of basically forcing myself to do things that are good for me (i guess this "works" or "whatever" since i'm "doing better now" 🙄), and part of that was giving a genuine college try to getting out of my reading slump. i should say, i have been reading fanfiction this whole time, lmao. i just wasn't coming across books that seemed even remotely interesting to me in any way.
partway through the year i asked some dear pals to recommend me a book that's engaging and fun, but not mindblowing; something that i'll chew through and ultimately forget about. the RESOUNDING recommendation was Sarah J. Maas's A Court Of Stupid Fairies Faeries. and i ended up reading them! they were the first novels i'd read in well over a year. they were indeed very engaging; the author has a very good sense for tension and motion of the plot, and i very genuinely enjoyed the way that the main character was introduced in the first book, as well as her really fascinating, thorny, super fucked-up family relationship. i feel like she lost a lot of what made me like her in subsequent books, but again, the pacing and general motion were engaging enough that i read through them all pretty damn quickly.
they are unbearably heterosexual. they do this thing that i really hate that i see really often in fic where everyone's constantly making sex jokes to and about each other as a "sign" of how "close" they are but it comes off as really bizarre, forced, and stilted, like the author's trying so hard to wink-wink-nudge-nudge You The Reader and it's so offputting. the third book had genuinely the funniest personality shift for the main character where she went from generally a pretty determined sort of person to Puny Mortals, You Cannot Comprehend My Dark Powers Or The Handsomeness Of My Mate Who Smirks And Purrs. Also I Can Sprout Wings Which Are Sexy And Cool Because Of My Powers.
however, i do think the way that the author handles the main character's romance throughout the series is really interesting, and i don't think i've seen anything like it before; i'd certainly like to see it more. keeping this vague in case anyone does want to read the fae/b/o books but iykyk. i can also respect that the worldbuilding and magic system were kept just vague enough for the author to be able to rule-of-cool whatever was necessary, rather than getting in the weeds about what can or can't be possible.
in any case, i'm glad i read these if only because i'm glad i read anything. i read all the above NF afterwards, so i feel like i should give these books credit for starting me on my way out of this slump.
cat sebastian's Page & Sommers novellas happened to cross my desk last month, and i ended up reading them both and liking them quite a bit. i generally avoid WWII-era things in fiction and nonfiction for a massive list of reasons, but i liked her regency romances very much so i figured i'd give these a shot. i really liked that the romance took a back seat to the mystery — they were definitely Mystery Novellas with a side of romance, and the post-war england setting wasn't as offputting as i thought it would be. particularly in the second book, there were some interesting points made about how the older generations, by 1948, would have lived through an absolutely boggling series of cultural, social, and political changes from the turn of the century through the end of WWII, and i hadn't thought about that before. i've enjoyed both the cast and the mystery in both of these books, and i'm looking forward to more in this series.
yesterday i started reading The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by K.J. Charles, and i'm also liking it so far, and again i'm way more into the mystery than the romance. the romance isn't terrible or anything, i don't actively dislike the MC or the LI, but i am VERY invested in whatever these smugglers are up to and who's going to end up finding the one piece secret treasure. i'm definitely interested in looking for other books by this author once i finish this one.
it feels good to be reading again! it's been really good to get into reading nonfiction; i'm finding it very easy to pick up and put down rather than getting sucked in like i do with novels or longfic.
