The Secret to Superhuman Strength

[cornerofmadness]

The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


If I wasn't reading this for some prompt about exercise I wouldn't have finished. To be fair while I liked Dykes to Watch Out For, I did not care for Fun House nor was I thrilled with this. Let me be honest I don't care for memoirs or books about exercise and this is both.

And like Fun House I thought it was very long winded and meandering and the use of Coleridge and other literary people to highlight points in her life got old fast. It was over used and started getting a bit pretentious. (which was the exact same complaint I had for Fun House)

We see Alison use exercise, meditation and drugs/alcohol to cope with a myriad of things. Even exercise when used as a maladaptive coping mechanism isn't healthy which is addressed here. She does yoga, karate, running, biking, HITT, Pilates among others. And it goes decade by decade from her childhood in the 1960s up to the 2020s.

So if you have more patience for a string of relationship implosions, talk of exercise and being such a workaholic vacations seem stupid, give it a try. The art is fine (I'm also thinking I've gone to the wrong all female events. I've never seen as many women running naked at them as she has drawn but then again it was the 70s for her) But I can safely say I'm done with her memoirs. I'm not the audience for them.





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She Persisted: Sally Ride

[cornerofmadness]

She Persisted: Sally Ride by Atia Abawi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


When a prompt about women astronauts hit my reading challenge I ran to the library and interlibrary loaned this. However, not having children I didn't know the arcane system of how they list things meant this was middle grade (barely, it skews very young) But since the library expended money and time to get me this I read it in spite of being vastly too old for the demographic.

But that hardly matters. Sally Ride was my hero in college. When my medical school entrance interviewers asked me who was my hero I said Sally, much to their obvious disappointment I didn't choose some man. And that is why this series of She Persisted books are so important. You can't become what you can't see and as I'm typing this the American government is actively removing women's names/accomplishments from web pages and museums where we aren't wanted.

Sally Ride faced that in her career in science as I did in my own fifteen years after her. This is of course a very light treatment of Sally's accomplishments and life because of the young age group it's aimed at but it doesn't shy away from the fact that Sally faced down misogyny often using her own words from interviews. Sally had multiple degrees in science, including physics which made her a prime candidate to be an astronaut. She was athletic. And sadly she died relatively young.

This is a great book for the middle grade crowd and hopefully has a place in many school libraries.



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