Reading Wednesday Meme: Hangover Edition

[laceblade]

• What are you currently reading?
Right now I'm reading The Fox Woman by Kij Johnson. I'm on page 68, and I'm struggling really hard. It's set in Heian Japan & written by a white woman from the US, and I just have a really hard time getting past this cultural appropriation. I feel weird reading it. I keep thinking of a post by yeloson's post: When you cut away the wrapper, appropriation is telling other people's stories for your entertainment & profit, not theirs.

I bought this book & Fudoki a while ago, used. I've read some of Kij Johnson's short stories and I liked her writing style quite a bit. I think the short stories were more recent than these books, though.

This kind of reminds me of Cat Valente's Yume no Hon. What's up with contemporary US sf/f authors appropriating Japanese culture? idk.
Anyway, I'll try a little harder. I'll also give Fudoki a chance at some point, to see if it's better.
I'm not sure if I'll be finishing The Fox Woman. I'll likely be selling it.


• What did you recently finish reading?
Buffy season 9, #16 (?) Whatever the most recent issue is: Still feeling pretty "meh" about things. Glad to see things swoop back to these characters, but overall meh.

Radical Reinvention by Kaya Oakes, which I blogged about here.


• What do you think you'll read next?
Young Avengers Presents is waiting for me at the library, so I'm going to get that.

A few weeks ago, I erupted over drinks with friends when they revealed they'd started a book club to discuss Anna Karenina & not invited me. It turns out they haven't actually met yet, so I have time to read part I & join them for their first meeting. I'm reading the most recent edition, as specified by JacquelynGill, who tells me it makes a huge a difference.

While a little despondent the other day, I stood in the library plucking random books from shelves: a few by Alison Wein, Henry James's The Wings of the Dove, Geraldine Brooks's March. idk if I'll read them or when.

In comics, I have a new Saga to read & need to read the two most recent issues of Captain Marvel.
When asking my comics guy if it's too soon to add the new X-Men comic by Brian Wood about girls to my pull list, he said, "You know Brian Wood's been writing a storyline already, right?
I hadn't!
He had been about to mark a bunch of them down to $1, so I got X-Men issues 30-35 with Brian Wood as the author. I guess some of the characters in this story will appear in the new X-Men that I want to be reading? WE'LL SEE.

Comments

[the_andy]

We read Fudoki for book group and I remember liking it well enough. Though bookgroup itself was a little odd: since Kij is local and some people had worked with her she was invited and attended. And it was at our place!

[ariad]

I second that "meh" toward Buffy S9. I think the last issue I read was #14, but I haven't bothered to keep up with releases (or the Willow series that is apparently happening) because it's just so hard to care. I actually didn't care about any of S8, either. Ugh.

Re: new X-Men comic, YES!! I'm not very up-to-date with 616, but at an SDCC panel with Marjorie Liu, the topic of female characters came up, and she said she'd pitched an all-female team of Mystique, Elektra, X-23, and Black Widow but was told that it wouldn't sell (and the entire room wept). So it's nice to see that somebody is getting to do an all-female team.

[oyceter]

I remember reading and liking both Fox Woman and Fudoki, though I think I liked Fudoki better. But this is also before the cultural appropriation Wiscon thing, and I haven't reread since, so YMMV.

[jesse_the_k]

I was totally lost in the Fox Woman, which is why I was so blown away by the The evolution of trickster stories among the dogs of North Park after the Change.

Haven't read March, yet but can personally rave about Geraldine Brook's Caleb's Crossing which has a fab audiobook version, ijs.