Aro book review: It Sounds Like This by Anna Meriano
This is a contemporary YA novel about a girl who plays flute in the school marching band, and despite her strong ambitions has to switch to tuba. I played flute in school concert bands for 8 years, so I enjoyed that aspect of it (even if the marching specific part was new to me)! It was a quick and enjoyable read, I finished the book in an evening.
There are a number of well-done sub-plots about family, friends, and bullying, and also, one about the main character questioning whether she is aspec. Another major character in the book, Bloom, is grey aroace, and through him she realises the attraction she has been feeling probably isn't romantic or sexual.
She hasn't decided on anything by the end of the book, and while I don't mind leaving characters still questioning, it would have been nice to have a bit more acknowledgement of this sub-plot at the end of the book.
But it did feel present throughout the story, with Bloom referencing his orientation is ways that felt natural, and some discussion I really appreciated about not always worrying about exactly what attraction you may or may not be feeling, and just spending time with the people you want to spend time with.
The only other little thing that didn't quite work for me personally was all the references to the school tests that are in the US - I didn't have any idea what they were for!
Overall, a nice example of some grey aroace and questioning aspec rep.
little known ophelia lore is that i was going to singing lessons from 2017-2020 but stopped due to pandemic financial strains. but i have been saving up and now i finally have enough to routinely spend on a lesson each week & i’m looking in to booking lessons again at my old studio >:3
I almost got it all right! My piano level has been especially atrocious lately so I am extremely relieved that there's ONE thing I can almost play well. (But my level has still gone down from before...)
(also if you saw a part of my face shh no you didn't)
so i went to an art museum recently that had an egon shiele exhibition and i was so struck by the fact that i had never heard of this man before (that I remember) but his style is so clearly influential in a lot of the art i see today
(paintings under cut for space and also nsfw)
also i saw this
and was like "well that's gay", then did a little digging and shiele scholars think so too based on actual historical knowledge (writings/friendships/etc). it's currently considered a self portrait (and a lot of his self portraiture is extremely Gender in a specifically faggy way) but it's part of a series of nudes that were specifically from 1910 when he was friends with openly gay men who modelled for him. also in trying to find a image of the painting above i found this one (also from that series)
if it were the one i saw initially i wouldn't have even had to look it up lmao