Wednesday Reading Meme

I had sort of planned to read more comics today before posting, but I have a lot to today, & I think it's better I post now!

• What are you currently reading?
Anna Karenina. I read the first 12 chapters of Part 5 on the bus yesterday.
At this point, I guess I should warn ( for spoilers )

Still feeling 100% bored by the Levin chapters. Very glad that someone gave me a content warning for the rest of the book, but I'm kind of waiting in suspense for it to happen & wondering if I won't be able to attend when my book club discusses it -___-


• What did you recently finish reading?
Avengers: The Children's Crusade, which basically focuses on the Young Avengers, except when it doesn't. UMM. Overall, I liked reading about the Young Avengers kids & their interactions with each other. But this focused a lot on Dr. Doom and the Scarlet Witch, and Magneto was around for a while until he wasn't and it was just like, I DON'T CARE?! AND WOLVERINE, HOW COME YOU'RE SUCH AN ASSHOLE?! Is Wolverine always an asshole?! I don't even know.
So...yeah. It was okay. It was neat for the Hawkeyes to be together again. I now feel prepared to read the current Hawkeye series (involving both Clint Barton and Kate Bishop) and the NEW Young Avengers series that just started.
THAT ENDING, THO.

...I don't really know where to go next with my foray into U.S. superhero comics. I guess I should catch up with Batwoman & see if I still like it or not.

(current series) Young Avengers #1: What happened to Hulkling's earrings?! Why is Loki here? Is he a teenager, too? LOKI WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
Most of what I feel after reading this first issue is unease. Maybe I don't want this to be on my pull-list after all?

Young Avengers #2: omggggggg...so the recap is done by spoofing Tumblr. Pictures from last issue, with captions. Also with Tumblr tags, like, #SO MANY FEELS or #oh billy
Overall I liked #2 way better than #1! The overused metaphor of, "Our parents can't even UNDERSTAND that everything's totally fucked up & life makes no sense!" might get old fast.


Venus Capriccio, volume 1 by Mai Nishikata - So, Thursday evening I found myself at Half-Price Books, & they had about a billion volumes of manga, lots of it shojo. I was steered clear of some faily ones by a friend, & decided to put some on hold at the library. But I did buy 3 volumes of Venus Capriccio!
This is a cute little shoujo. The protagonist is Takami, who's tall & a tomboy. Her childhood friend is a boy named Akira, whose good looks almost make him look feminine. They met as children when Takami's parents had her start taking piano lessons in an attempt to feminize her.

While other people in the series (parents, potential love interests) try to tell Takami & Akira how to properly perform their gender, they never do it to each other. A lot of shoujo manga tropes get subverted here, & I kind of really, really love it.
Example: Early on, Akira has confessed his feelings for Takami, & she isn't really sure how she feels about it - does she like him back?! etc. But then a potential rival shows up who declares that she loves Akira more. She's also much shorter than Takami, dresses in skirts/etc., and expresses her femininity way differently than Takami does.
Rather than having an all-out cat fight or long-standing grudge, these two end up respecting each other. Takami actually wipes a tear away from her rival (in love)'s cheek - sort of like a stereotypical dude in shoujo manga!
Anyway, I love this, & I love it too when the characters play the piano. It makes me want to play again, too!

This manga was released in the US by CMX, a company that put out a lot of great shoujo. I miss CMX.


• What do you think you’ll read next?
I need to burn through parts 5 & 6 of Anna Karenina so that I can also get through the first part of C.J. Cherryh's Cyteen, which we're reading for beer_marmalade.

I also just picked up Avatar the Last Airbender: The Search, part 1, & I expect I won't make it through the week without devouring that.

is this a fucking joke or

I keep wanting to blog about what happened in the massage appointment I had last week & being unable to do so. So here are my tweets, along with tweets today about my acupuncture appointment.

Massage Appointment
(This is the second massage I've had. I have a lot of upper back pain. I believed this is b/c I have, as they say, a large rack.)
Massage this morning! "The reason this is painful is b/c you don't breathe deeply enough/from the right place."
CAN I JUST HAVE ONE BODY THING DONE RIGHT? CAN I BE DOING ANYTHING RIGHT? JFC.
So now, in addition to feeling anxious about when I eat/what I eat/how much I eat & how much pain it's going to cost me...
...I can also feel anxious LITERALLY EVERY TIME I DRAW BREATH that I'm not doing it correctly.
In conclusion, fuck everyone, & fuck everything.
But hey, now I can articulate what it is I like about makeup? It's something related to my body that I feel like I am "doing correctly."
And I give absolutely zero fucks about how un-feminist that makes me.


Acupuncture Appointment
So, Acupuncturist got all, "Wow, even when you follow your diet, you still have pain? What's different on days when you have pain?" with me.
She got all bent out of shape when I said, "It's chronic pain. It's much better than it was. I don't expect it to ever go away."
& wants to sell me more pills next time.
That's 3/3 with medical professionals this month. SOMETIMES PAIN IS MEANINGLESS & WON'T GO AWAY. SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT IT.
Sometimes people are already trying as hard as they fucking can, in every fucking way. Back off.

---

I feel angry, all the time.