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The hockey romance sub-genre of gay romance is fascinating for how it directly addresses the homoeroticism of a hypermasculine sport, and how it can massively screw with gay athletes. This story takes us out of the game itself—but for some moments—and tells us instead about what comes long after the game, and the scars it leaves behind. I like the leads, I love their chemistry, and the feeling that some things aren't irrevocably lost.

Then I read a description and ask a friend if I'm reading a romance novel or a real estate listing, and have to pause to recompose myself. There are a few moments I wish we could see, rather than get oblique references back to, and there are some spots that felt a little forced, but overall, this was an excellent book with a genuine emotional journey for the characters. And descriptions of naked or nearly-naked hockey players, even years past their prime, will never get old.

I love tarot as a means of storytelling, or an inspiration; divination isn't really my bag. The readings Charlie presents offer a step outside of the late Edwardian societal standards of the Waite-Smith cards and accompanying book, while also telling us about their path to accepting their queerness and their self-discovery—Charlie's own "Fool's Journey", as it were. These two intertwined stories provide a strong through-narrative for both the way they ground their interpretations of cards, as well as how finding those meanings helped Charlie embrace their self.

The true charm of this text was the amount of research and the additional sources Charlie quotes all over. Audre Lorde's discussion of the erotic as a source of knowledge shows up in discussing The Empress, while James Baldwin and adrienne maree brown are cited throughout as well; I often set aside this book to go hunt down a quote, or paused to read a cited article in full, and it was worth the effort. This book's endnotes and bibliography are a fantastic starting point for other research on gender & sexuality... always a treat.

While I deeply appreciated this text, and I'm sure I'll come back to it again at some point (if only for that bibliography), I have to admit that I'm sometimes less than thrilled with texts which center queerness as an ideal identity—and Radical Tarot has some of the same weaknesses as others I've encountered. As a memoir of embracing a nonbinary identity & finding truth in one's existence outside of the gender norms of cisheteronormative society, I felt like the author is sometimes too quick to reject embracing one's own gender in favor of the idea of the superiority of being an outsider. They've designed an explicitly non-binary deck, and often go out of their way to reject masculinity; I jokingly refer to this sometimes as "the penis is evil & must be punished" as a mentality that some sections of the non-binary & queer space fall into, where any form of representation of the masculine must be rejected to ensure there is no association with dominant power structures.

In all, it's a good book, a solid exploration of tarot's symbology for folks who find the dominant culture repressive, and possibly more insightful about the author than they necessarily intended, but never dull or trite. There's plenty to appreciate here, and plenty to reflect upon.

My journey into fantasy began with a hole, and a hobbit, and so on and so forth. I read about children getting lost in the back of a wardrobe, and all their adventures. Eventually, I found books about great magic and the risks of working mighty deeds; but those stories were all rooted in Tolkien's concepts.

By the time I picked up A Game of Thrones, I had read enough gory fantasy to not be necessarily shocked by the way characters died, or the actions they took, but I hadn't necessarily put together that it's the War of the Roses and a horror series to boot. Admittedly, now, I find the fandom around ASOIAF far more interesting than the novels themselves, and I have spent hours and hours listening to talented storytellers in their own rights explain the layered imagery of these novels.

But I gotta admit, I don't love these books. They're just not for me.

Mendelson really wants you to understand that the classic "'til Death do us part" marital vows are the singular greatest structure in marriage, ever. To the extent that she talked about other traditions, she basically claims this is unique; I don't recall the Ketubah even getting a mention, but that might be wrong! To the extent that she mentioned other traditions of similar structured statements, it was mostly to dismiss them as fundamentally inferior. I picked up this book hoping for a cross-cultural investigation of what marriage means, and why claims of shared duty matter even outside of a single tradition, and what I found instead was a relatively uncritical series of observations that really only made sense from the perspective of a straight, Christian woman (particularly who has grown up under Catholic rites) who has only ever seriously considered a marriage in that context.

Before I get to my primary complaint, though, I have a particular gripe with the claim that "taking vows" means getting married. I have never heard that phrase used to signify a marriage, I've only ever heard it in terms of joining a religious order. If someone says, "oh, I'm going to be taking vows next week," I'm going to congratulate them and then ask what monastery or convent they found that inspired them to such service. We'd both have quite a shock at what the other meant or expected.

Coming from a Jewish background, the idea of a contract underlying a marriage is hardly new, and hardly originated in Christendom. Taking one example I'm familiar with, the Jewish marriage contract (ketubah), originally a matter of making sure the bride was financially protected, originates in antiquity. This isn't as romantic as Mendelson wants to push the Sarum Rite as, but admittedly the Sarum Rite is also not as romantic as she's gauzily stated―and then, to her credit, expanded on, but not until she'd already built it up as words that were said out of love over obligation.

For my real fury, though, there's the throwaway remark about how great Obergefell was of a ruling, because now the gays can take part in this tradition too! In one paragraph, the entire history of Loving and the fight against antimiscegenation laws, and the through-line to Obergefell is summed up as, "Great! Now you get to use these too!" No thought was given to how many centuries of couples who were denied that recognition, to examples of gay marriages performed hundreds of years ago, or of how different a meaning marital vows might have for people whose right to have their relationship recognized has been a matter of political violence and continued strife even in the years since 2015―the idea that being in a loving relationship can be a rebellious or subversive action. Instead, the entire concept of what these vows might mean to groups who were historically denied recognition is simply ignored in favor of focusing on how important the words are.

In a year where womens' agency is coming under threat, when the improvements to how we understand equality in American society over the past hundred years seem to be standing on shaky ground, and powerful groups are threatening to invoke the power of the state to harm minorities, maybe we needed a little more insight, and a little less personal meditation. After all, what does it mean to commit yourself to a relationship when that relationship will go unrecognized by the legal system and by strangers at every possible moment? That's a question that she simply doesn't consider within the scope of her study, and it would lend a great deal more relevance and weight to this book if she did.