laceblade: Fanart of Revolutionary Girl Utena, holding sword and looking at viewer. (Utena fanart)
laceblade ([personal profile] laceblade) wrote2013-07-03 06:18 am

Reading Wednesday: on time!

• What are you currently reading?
Nothing at this given moment. Was reading some Wherever You Go, There You Are by John Kabat-Zinn last night.
At one point I was encouraged to practice meditation to deal with chronic pain & other issues.
I'm still trying to suss out some routines between this & traditional Catholic prayer.
I have a hard time reading more than a few pages of this book at a time without rolling my eyes, although it doesn't usually make me angry like Pema Chodron did. My personality feels very much not pre-disposed to meditation, but I keep trying to find some techniques anyway, I guess.

• What did you recently finish reading?
Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler. Just fantastic. I was expecting this to end a little more unfinished, as I know there was a 3rd book planned before she died, but it's still very satisfying.
I expect to reread this & Parable of the Sower many times.

Special A, vols. 1-2 - Ugh. Yet another series where a girl has a male rival in school, who will inevitably end up being her love interest. There's nothing special going on here, and my library doesn't have volume 3 (though it has later volumes!). Drop.

Basara, volume 1 - This came up in a discussion about a possible post-apocalyptic/dystopian anime/manga panel at WisCon 38. [personal profile] meganbmoore also mentioned this on Twitter and I was like, "UGH but the art is so 1990s and awful with ridiculous jaw lines and etc."
VOLUME ONE IS SO GOOD OMFGGGGGG.
In a post-apocalyptic Japan where everything's basically a desert, a pair of twins is born. Their tribe's prophet intones, "This is a child of destiny!" and Sarasa grows up believing the child of destiny is her brother Tatara - her tribe thinks so, too!
They suffer under a despotic king, waiting for the day that Tatara will lead a revolution to overthrow their corrupt society.
Then, Tatara's head gets chopped off.
So Sarasa cuts her hair, binds her chest, and becomes Tatara for her tribe.
UGH SO GOOD, SO EXCITED TO READ MORE.

• What do you think you’ll read next?
Bringing on a mini-vacation with me: Under the Banner of Heaven, The Summer Prince, a feminist Catholic book, Basara manga, & Shugo Chara! manga.

RANDOM: [personal profile] j00j & I were talking about how there's lots of depictions of comfort food in fantasy novels, but had trouble coming up with sci-fi examples. [personal profile] j00j made a post soliciting examples, which is here.
"[H]ow much science fiction is there with appealing food descriptions? It's not all Gagh and replicators and food pills/amyloid/protein gruel, right?"
oyceter: teruterubouzu default icon (Default)

[personal profile] oyceter 2013-07-03 06:15 pm (UTC)(link)
Ahahaha, I keep trying to read stuff on mindfulness meditation both due to therapist recs and also seeing stuff about it in the news, but all the philosophical stuff makes me feel so distrustful of it!
skygiants: Nice from Baccano! in post-explosion ecstasy (maybe too excited . . .?)

[personal profile] skygiants 2013-07-03 10:24 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh man, I love Basara so much! Yumi Tamura's brain is AMAZING in the most glorious over-the-top wonderful fashion, and she has a mind for EPIC SET PIECES like nobody's business.
torachan: (Default)

[personal profile] torachan 2013-07-05 05:30 am (UTC)(link)
Basara is so great! Her current series 7 Seeds is even better, though.

As for Special A, I have heard nothing but badness about it, so yeah.
meganbmoore: (Default)

[personal profile] meganbmoore 2013-07-05 06:01 pm (UTC)(link)
I made it further than you in Special A, but only because I had more on hand. At the time, I was mostly seeing good reports on it, though it doesn't seem to be liked much now.

BASARAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

I haven't read 7 Seeds yet, but her 2 volume series Chicago was also pretty good.