laceblade

Charmed Life - I do like this world of magic, & the Chants, even Gwendolyn.

I usually dislike plots that can be resolved by two people simply talking to one another, so I spent most of the book just wanting Cat to TALK to Chrestomanci. Still, I like the world & more importantly, the writing, so I'll be reading more.


Alias, Vol. 2: Come Home - Still really enjoying the writing in this series, which is about Jessica Jones, a former super hero who's now a detective.

The use of frames/etc. is a little different, and I'm interested to see how it translates to TV when the Netflix show based on this series gets made. In the meantime, looking forward to volume 3.


For the Public Good by blamebrampton - This was recommended to me on twitter so long ago that I can't remember who recced it >_<
"Harry is loaned to the Muggle government to assist relations between the two governments after the London bombings. When his counterpart in the Communications team comes to him with evidence of a plot to expose wizarding Britain, he is all ears. And only in part because the messenger has such a familiar voice."

The counterpart in the Communications team is, of course, Malfoy. This takes place post-canon, & I really liked it. Catnip for me, sort of - tons of politics & bureaucracy, I actually found the Harry/Malfoy pretty sweet, & it was funny, too.
I'm going to look for more by this author.

Buffy #3 - I read this! Written by Nicholas Brendan, which is sort of notable. It was amusing enough, although I'm probably not as excited as other fans are.

Plume 1-4 - I picked these up in the $0.25 bin at the comics shop. It's apparently based on a webcomic. It gave me a lot of feelings reminiscent of Min-Woo Hyung's Priest manhwa, but I think I like this heroine a bit more. The art style is really great. I asked my comics guy to order the fifth issue for me, which wraps up this introductory arc. I believe this printing was funded by a Kickstarter; to read the rest, I'll need to read it here.

One Piece, vols. 10-12 (omnibus) - A decent continuation of the plot from the previous volume. I liked Luffy's superpower actually being used (as opposed to a glaring continuity error). I also liked Usopp finding the will to fight after thinking about facing his courageous friends afterward if he hadn't.
I enjoyed the closure to Nami's arc - she's my favorite character. It's fun to see the gang finally hanging out in the Grand Line, even if it's not going as they expected. I hope that Tashigi sticks around. She seems like an interesting character.
For 12, I felt pretty meh of the denoument of this arc?! But the next volume starts a new one!!

Homecoming - This series used to be a childhood favorite of mine, & I was in need of a comfort read.
I still really love this, & it came at a good time for me. I like how the kids respond positively to being treated like adults, how much they trust one another, the way the entire book is about class privilege, and how awesome Dicey is.
I'm glad this comfort reread held up for me.

Dicey's Song - This is another reread; it's probably been at least fifteen years since I'd last read it. Dicey defying her teacher over something she wrote made me remember why I identified with her so strongly.
Even though I knew what would happen, the ending still made me cry.
I love this family and the community they create. The truths everyone teaches one another are comforting.
I'm really glad to have returned to this series, & hope to keep progressing.

A Dangerous Inheritance - This was a good follow-up to "Innocent Traitor," which I'd read back in April, & focused on Lady Jane Grey.
This book picks up where that one left off, focusing on the life of Jane Grey's sister, Katherine. I found Katherine Grey to be pretty stupid, but luckily this book has two heroines. Interlaced with Katherine Grey's life is the story of Katherine Plantagenet, the bastard daughter of Richard III. Both Katherines live mostly unhappy lives, manipulated by the people around them due to their bloodlines. They fall in love with people they shouldn't. And they both have an unhealthy obsession with what happened to Richard III's nephews, famously known as the princes in the Tower.
I like Weir's historical fiction in part because I know she's an historian and a lot of her plots are based on facts. Her afterward reveals what she made up, and from where she found her facts.
I loved the small glimpses we got of Elizabeth I in this book, and I'm looking forward to reading the next book, which focuses on her: Captive Queen.

A True Novel, Book I - This is only the first "half," but the library only sends me one at a time, & at 450 pages I'm counting this as its own "book," even though I haven't read the second volume yet.

This is technically a retelling of Wuthering Heights. The characters are Japanese. It's a book about wealth, racism, westernization, the effects of World War II on Japanese society, and human nature.
I've consumed a lot of Japanese-created media, but this book is unlike anything I've ever read. Mastserful. I kept having to remind myself that it's fiction.

There's a family tree in the back - wish I'd known that all the way through.
I really hope they translate more of Mizumura's novels into English. In the meantime, I am very much looking forward to book II.

Heidi - As a child, I imprinted on the movie version of Heidi, which had Jason Robards & cast Jane Seymour as Fraulein Rottenmeier. This probably had a lot to do with the fact that I devoutly watched Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, every week (yeah, I know).
Heidi is a book about miserable people whose mental & physical woes are cured by the fresh air & impressive views of the Alps. Or possibly, faith in God.
There's a weird trick with this one. Despite the fact that I really don't believe in, "God has a plan, so everything will work out, you just need to trust him" & also tend to abhor the "person is paralyzed and then magically cured!!", it works for me in this book because the "cure" works first for people who are sad & visit the mountain. They eat good food, they get stronger by being outside. And after Heidi comes back from Frankfurt & becomes a little more "learned," people become less crabby/fearful both because they reconcile their relationships with God & also because they meet one another through Heidi, & are able to help solve one another's problems.
Peter's grandmother can never sleep at night because their house is rattling, & she's afraid it'll cave in. Heidi's irritable grandfather comes & patches it all up before the winter, & so Grandmother is able to sleep & grow a little stronger.
Also, Heidi's able to pull strings with her rich friends in Frankfurt to supply the Grandmother with soft bread she can eat (rather than the cheaper brown bread she can't really handle), & also transport the bed she herself slept on in Germany so that the Grandmother's head can be elevated at night.
It all works out, like some kind of feminist utopia. The book was written in 1880, so ymmv. I really liked it.

ATLA FCBD offering - I was so excited to read this because Faith Erin Hicks did the art!! GO FAITH!!! An excellent story for Free Comic Book Day, & we got to see Suki be a badass.

Journey Into Mystery featuring Lady Sif, volume 1: Stronger Than Monsters - borrowed from garrideb through our comics club. Sif is kind of like a lady-version of Thor. No prior knowledge of Asgard/Thor stuff is needed, which is good, because I've never seen his movies & am only aware of him as he appears in the Avengers movie. This was pretty decent! I put volume 2 on hold at the library, although I think the story was canceled after just two volumes.
It'll be interesting the next time I reread my beloved Runaways, as I've now read other stuff by most of the authors!

Sea Change - Continuing in my quest to read books from the 2013 Tiptree Award Shortlist. I'm going to be lazy & crib the Tiptree Award's description:

This debut novel tells a dark, fairy tale-like story of a young girl and her best friend, Octavius, who is an eloquent, intelligent kraken. When Octavius is captured, Lilly sets out to rescue him, bargaining with a greedy circus master, a witch, and a pair of gay bandits. She is transformed by her quest, giving up everything she has known, including her gender, to save her friend.

And it does pretty much that! An okay read, but this writing style didn't really grab me.

Angel & Faith, s10 #2 - Still okay-ish?! I'm feeling Faith's plot more than Angel's at the moment. I hope they team up again.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - This was a reread, although I didn't remember much of my first read except that I liked it, lol. AND I STILL LIKE IT. The gods, Yeine, political intrigue up the wazoo, this is just great. I know some people have griped about the writing, in how the narrator is flashing forward and back sometimes, but it really works for me as an honest first-person perspective, and that's how I feel when I'm reading it - not at all like I'm uncomfortable in the hands of an inexperienced writer.
I reread it so that I can read the rest of the trilogy. N.K. Jemisin is one of the Guests of Honor at this year's WisCon, which is why I'm try to hustle through some of her books before Memorial Day weekend. I'm really looking forward to the next one, especially because it gets away from the uber-privileged people of the first book. I'm eager to see what this world looks like from someone else's perspective.
I was stopped by two strangers - one on the bus & one on the street - who told me how much they love this book.

Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir - Weird has written lots of non-fiction about Tudors/British royalty. This was her first historical fiction, & it centers on the life of Jane Grey. Grey grew up in an abusive & politically ambitious home. Her story is pretty well-known in history, but this was still a good read. I enjoyed reading about the Tudors from a fresh perspective, & I'm planning to check out Weir's other historical fiction.

Twelve Kingdoms #4 by Fuyumi Ono - A book that really gets into how to rule, particularly when the king is a teenage high school student from modern day Japan & has no idea what the local politics/life is like for her subjects. She's easily manipulated at first, but Yoko won't stay like that for long, obviously.
As before, basic editing errors make me grumpy at TokyoPop, but I really loved this book. I loved the growth of all three female characters. I really like how protagonists CHANGE in Ono's books.
This is the last one TokyoPop put out in the US, so I'll be switching to fan-translated versions to continue my progression in the series.

Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers - my first Sayers :*) There was a jarring second-person interlude which I really didn't care for, but I'd like to read more.

Ms. Marvel #3 - I continue to like this series, but don't have much to say about it?! I think I'm giving the first three issues to my youngest niece as part of her birthday present.

Captain Marvel #2 - Sort of annoyed by the appearance of Guardians of the Galaxy, who seem like they're only around to promote their movie? idk.

A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar - Full disclosure that Sofia used to be in book club with me, so I'm probably biased.
I was afraid I wouldn't like this book because a lot of people have described the prose as being "ornate"/etc. in a way that reminds me of Catherynne Valente. While I haven't read all of Valente's work, the parts I have read are things I really don't care for at all.
Not so with Samatar's book - I fuckin' loved this.
It's about falling in love with reading, & also about ghosts, about love, about so many things. I think this will be even better upon rereads. I wish for many more fantasies like this one.

Red Colored Elegy by Seiichi Hayashi - Pretty strongly disliked this, both the nonsensical story & the artwork.

Ultimate Comics Spider-Man vol. 2 by Brian Michael Bendis - This felt like a lot of setup, but I'm still interested in reading more to see what happens to Miles Morales.

Iron Man: The Mask in the Iron Man - graciously lent to me at comics club by garrideb, unfortunately I didn't care for this one at all, :/ Mid-1990s U.S. comics, WHAT ARE YOU?!

Kaze Hikaru, volume 19 - It is really difficult to jump back into this after being away for a while. I can't keep track of who anyone is in Osaka. I like how much time this series spends on politics. What I REALLY want is to know what's going to happen when shit goes down & everyone dies,

All Our Pretty Songs by Sarah McCarry - I read this because it's on this year's Tiptree Shortlist. It's a modern retelling of Orpheus. WOW at that ending, though. "I'm not a hero, I'm a bitch" - HAVE I EVER IDENTIFIED WITH A PROTAGONIST MORE THAN I DID IN THIS MOMENT?! Just, wow. The ending was glorious. I'm really looking forward to the next installment.

Since last time, I've read a lot. Mostly because it's been at least a month since I last wrote about books.

I still like Dykes to Watch Out For, & would like to read more (I've read 4 volumes). I was pretty excited by the appearance of Thea, a new character who uses crutches or a wheelchair, depending on what kind of day it is for her.
When she gets hired over Mo & another primary character, they gripe about their boss wanting to appear . But the truth is that Thea is simply more qualified.
It's a teaching moment for Mo & others. I hope Thea gets some storylines of her own, beyond just being a teaching moment, but it was still nice regardless.
The characters in this book make me feel lazy by their constant protesting, lol.

I didn't like Rebecca Ore's Gaia's Toys as much as I'd hoped. It's a place where the ideas are better than the writing.
I was more interested in where the characters ended up at the end, I guess, & I would have enjoyed more about that.

I finally read K-ON! College, the last (& final?!) installment of this series. It basically does what it says on the tin. I still prefer the anime to the manga, as the manga has some more pandery poses/etc. I never felt like that watching the show, though.
This series (mainly the anime, which has been extremely popular) is consistently held up as being meant for men, as being exploitative of teenage girls.
I have to say that I try to be perceptive about such things, & I don't see it.
I recently came across this post [will insert list when back at home & can pull it from tumblr ^^;] that cautions Western feminists from imposing their interpretations on media that are culturally Japanese.
It's something I continue to think about a lot.

I've finally dropped the Dengeki Daisy manga, after reading volumes 3 &4. It continues to spend too much time focus on the things that aggravate me, & too little on the few plot points I enjoy (both of which have been covered in previous posts). Maybe I'll return to it if I get bored, but not for a while, at least.

I'm working from a rec-list of someone's fave fantasy novels, & a lot of them are women. I seem to be into fantasy more than SF lately (previously it had usually been the reverse for me!). The most recent entry was Princeless, so that's where I started. I really, really loved this. It opens with a young black princess interrogating her mother about princesses being locked in towers & saved by princes. She thinks it's stupid for fathers to purposely do this to their daughters (to secure marriages even when they can't afford dowries) - how can this happen?!
Turn the page, & Adrienne herself is locked in a tower by her father, in order to lure a prince to marry her.
Adrienne finds a sword under her bed (planted by her brother!), & convinces the dragon who guards her, Sparky, to "fight back against [their] mutual oppressors." THAT IS A LITERAL QUOTE.
She decides it's not enough for her to be free - she wants to help free her older sisters, also locked in towers.
IT'S JUST SO PERFECT. Really looking forward to reading more of this series.

Made it through Dawn of the Arcana #11. This ended up with an inevitable & cool plot development, but overall this series isn't doing much for me. Usually I don't mind panels without text, but in this book it just seems to emphasize that nothing's really happening, and people's feelings don't change over time (after volume 2, at least).

Plowed through The Hemingses of Monticello. I think this book could have benefited from more editing, particularly in the middle, but it was still a great work of non-fiction. Beware of the comments left by white people on Goodreads.

Black Widow & The Marvel Girls - Intended for children, I borrowed this from a member of my comics club. Basically, each chapter is Natasha having a plot with another female Marvel character. I got a much better sense for her from this than I did when I tried reading Winter Soldier about a year or so ago.
I still haven't read anything about Black Widow that makes me stan for her like Captain Marvel or Batwoman, but I'm willing to keep trying.

I read the second Twelve Kingdoms book, Sea of Wind, about Taiki. UGH I LOVED IT SO MUCH, so great, ugh. I <3 these books & can't really be coherent about them.

I read volumes 2-4 of G. Willow Wilson's Air. These felt a little messy to me, like I didn't always know what's going on. Interesting ideas, though?! I'm hoping Wilson's Ms. Marvel is held together a little better. I very much enjoyed the first issue, anyway. Kamala Khan is now tacked up on the wall of my cubicle, ;)

Read X-Men: FF in my continued efforts to read the arc that came before the current arc. Didn't really care for anything that was going on.

Jonathan Hickman's The Nightly News came highly recommended, and I really disliked it. This Goodreads review covers all the reasons why.
AND YET, it didn't stop me from borrowing Hickman's Pax Romana from the same comics club member, as the Vatican starts sending a time traveling army around. Hopeful that it will suck less!

Lastly, I read the first volume of Gail Simone's Red Sonja comic, & enjoyed it more than I expected to. I still don't get the chainmail bikini, but with 0 familiarity of the original series, Simone was able to make the characters & world feel very real. I plan to read more!

• What are you currently reading?
Robert Kennedy and His Times by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
There was obviously lots of Kennedy reminisces last week with the 50-year anniversary of JFK's assassination.
I bought this for $2 at the Memorial Library sale a couple months ago, during the Wisconsin Book Festival.
I like it quite a bit, just finished the chapter about the investigation committee into unions/etc., focusing on Jimmy Hoffa.
Overall, it's very sanitized, pretty obvious Schlesinger was a close family friend, etc.
For example, the mention of Rosemary going to live with nuns in Wisconsin is just a simple, "She got worse," with no mention of the attempted-and-botched lobotomy.
I empathize for RFK, who most people seemed to take as crabby & irritable if they didn't know him very well.

Very! Very! Sweet, volume 4. Only a chapter in, but I finally have this volume, which means I'll get from here to volume 8/the end in short order.

Hild by Nicola Griffith - It took about 70 pages for me to fall into this book. So far, I don't love it quite so much as some of her other stuff, but I'm sure she'll set me straight before the end.
Griffith is one of my favorite authors, & she and her wife are doing in a reading in my city next Tuesday at my favorite bookstore, so I'm pretty excited.


• What did you recently finish reading?
X-Men: Curse of the Mutants - This is essentially X-Men versus vampires. Jubilee becoming a vampire was interesting, but overall I disliked this.

X-Men: With Great Power - Following the previous volume, this was also written by Victor Gischler. I'm glad to get a little familiar with him, as he's going to be taking over the writing for Angel & Faith when Buffy season 10 starts up.
This included some more recognizable characters (Spider-Man), and the team is dealing with PI. I liked the art much more in this volume than Curse of the Mutants, in part because it was much less objectifying of women. While I found Xavier's manpain flashback sentiment in the last issue annoying, I appreciated him communicating to Jubilee that she'll be able to find a way to live with her new condition.
My goal in reading these was to get the backlog for the current series headed by Brian Wood. Given the revelation a couple weeks ago, I haven't decided yet whether I'll be continuing. In the meantime, I'll keep trying to get through the previous arc via the library.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, 1-17 or so, + micro 1-8 + Infestation 1 & 2, + Eastman's 2012 annual: I've been behind on this for...years?! But I keep buying the single issues, resulting in general guilt :/
Luckily, I really enjoyed these (yes, some were rereads). I loved TMNT as a kid. I'm pretty sure my parents still have my turtles/Casey Jones/Bebop & Rock Steady action figures. As a child, one of my ambitions (in addition to being Batman) was to be a TMNT myself.
Anyway, these are dark-ish. Mutant turtles fight ninjas! April is a research intern! I roll my eyes a little at the Splinter/turtles/Shredder were Japanese men reincarnated, but overall these are pretty fun to read. I still have more to catch up on.
I found Infestation 1 & 2 subpar except for the art, & kind of loathed the art in Eastman's annual.

Mama Might Be Better Off Dead: The Failure of Health Care in Urban America - The title is sort of self-explanatory, but this book has a white investigative journalist telling the story of Jackie Bates, a black woman living in Chicago who provides care for her 3 children, husband who's on kidney dialysis & abuses drugs, ailing deadbeat father, and her diabetic grandma who's in crisis. The book was published in 1993, although it's obviously still relevant today. Complex bureaucracy consistnetly fails the Bates family. I particularly liked the chapter focusing on the Orthodox Jewish doctor who refused to discuss do-not-resuscitate orders with the family because he didn't agree with it himself. While distant with the Bates, Abraham follows him to his practice where he treats other Jews, and his demeanor is totally different.
But the Bates family never finds a practitioner who's on their level.
The book also spends a chapter talking about black people's fear of research, and also how consent given by poor people is often less informed than consent given by middle class whites - with whom many educated doctors can better related. Like The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, there's a voyeuristic feel here - a white woman telling a black family's story. I wonder what Jackie's kids will feel when they grow up and read this book, intimately discussing their family's mental health, drug problems, etc. Still, it was put out by an academic publisher and is less of a fame thing than Skloot's book.
The book is highly relevant to my job, glad to have read it.

The Hemingses of Monticello - I waited until only days before this was due back at the library, so of course I didn't finish it (have since checked it out again so I'll be able to continue!). I think this is a pretty well-known book, but Gordon-Reed's goal is basically to tell the story of the Hemings family - a family of slaves living in Virginia at the time of the American Revolution. Sally Hemings had numerous children with Thomas Jefferson. I only made it through the first 9 chapters, so 14-year-old Sally and one of Jefferson's daughters had just joined him in Paris, where he's hanging out, still upset over his wife's death.
It'd be easy to focus on Jefferson, and while I've always found him an interesting person, I'm really appreciative that Gordon-Reed refuses to let this story belong to anyone but the Hemingses.
I'm looking forward to reading more of this.

Adaptation - I think I like this the most out of the books I've read by Malinda Lo so far. We read this for beer_marmalade. Very fast-paced, love the characters. Complicated, government conspiracies, a coming out story, lots of good stuff.

Dengeki Daisy, vol. 1 - Teru's brother was a hacker before he died. On his death bed, he gave a phone to her so that she could communicate with his friend DAISY - another hacker like himself who will always listen to Teru's problems now that she's alone, & will help her out of binds.
The real-life Daisy is a 24-year-old janitor at her school, although they both pretend they don't know he's Daisy.
When Teru breaks a school window, she has to "work off" her debt.
I grow tired of shoujo manga plots where the heroines become indentured servants to men.
It seems weird at first for a girl to be soe dependent on a guy she's never met but still tells all her problems to, & yet I did the same thing in middle/high school with a guy I'd met in an internet chat room, so this story has enough for me to continue for now.

Wild Com - a volume of short stories by Yumi Tamura, the manga-ka behind my beloved Basara.
I really loved the first story, in which people with elemental powers try to save others around them. The theme is "try your best no matter what," which happens a lot in manga but never fails to be incredibly moving to me!
The other stories were strange & weird but more forgettable.

Air: Letters from Lost Countries by G. Willow Wilson. Since she's going to be writing Ms. Marvel when it starts coming out in 2014, I wanted to be a little more familiar with Wilson's work. So far I've only previously read the stand-alone "Mystic" comic, meant for kids, which I didn't really like.
Air is about a flight attendant who's afraid of falling. Her love interest is an inpersonation-chameleon, and either a terrorist himself, or running from terrorists - or both.
There's a lot going on here, & I'll be reading more.

• What are you currently reading?
Kaze Hikaru, volume 2. I read volume 1 a while ago, & I think I totally forgot to mention it. Anyway, a shoujo romance about the Shinsengumi. The protagonist is a girl who disguises herself as a boy to avenge the deaths of her father & brother.
My previous exposure to the Shinsengumi is the anime “Peacemaker Kurogane,” which I loathed b/c I thought was horribly paced, & also hated the protagonist.
So I know the Okita Souji is a bamf. Souji is the protag’s love interest in this series.
I’m not really digging this thus far, but I have a bunch of volumes checked out, so I’ll be reading at least a bit more, unless I get too frustrated!

• What did you recently finish reading?
Kitty Goes to Washington - So, in addition to the inclusion of congressional hearings & NIH research, I also feel like I’m just settling into this series’ ‘verse.
I really appreciate that the protagonist compares lycanthropy to a non-fatal chronic illness, & when being questioned by a confrontational senator, she talks about how depression is more likely, but it’s hard to know whether the depression is caused by the illness itself or by all of the life modifications one must make to to keep living with a non-fatal chronic illness.
And uh, as a person who’s gone through some heavy depression due to hugely anxious-making life modifications that were necessitated by a non-fatal chronic illness, HELLO, OVER-IDENTIFICATION WITH THE PROTAGONIST!

Especially after the events of the first book, I really love Kitty encountering other communities of vampires/were-animals, other ways of coping with her changed life, other possibilities.

I also like that she’s referred to non-werewolves more than once as “her pack.”
This is a thought I’d first encountered in Teen Wolf, one of the things that I like about that often-heinous TV show.

Very, Very, Sweet!, volume 2 - I don’t have much to say about this volume except that I still like it. It portrays the frustrations of trying to communicate in another language quite well, imo.

Revival, volume 1 - aka, zombie comic set in Wausau, WI. This series is pretty violent, BUT I appreciate its commitment to diversity & its locale, so I’ll probably keep up with it, although I think I don’t like it well enough to buy the comics in trade.

Kokoro - This is a classic of Japanese literature, set at the end of the Meiji era. It’s pretty dark, focusing heavily on death & suicide, with insights into human nature/etc. It’s difficult to discuss without spoiling the whole thing!
Anyway, this was part of a collection of Japanese literature I won in a Con or Bust auction, so I’m excited to read more of them in the future.

• What are you currently reading?

Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn - littlebutfierce has talked this series up, and I'm about 1/5 through the first one. It's a quick read, like many romance novels (although I'm not sure yet whether this will be romance?!). Kitty is a werewolf who accidentally starts a supernatural talk radio show. She gives a lot of life advice to vampires/werewolves/humans. I do find it really comforting to read the advice she gives to other people. It's like having a pocket therapist. Her relationship with her pack's alpha, specifically him forcing sex when in wolf form, makes me uncomfortable. But this seems to make Kitty uncomfortable too, so I'm willing to keep reading to see how things develop in terms of pack-dynamic.


• What did you recently finish reading?

A College of Magics by Caroline Stevermer - I really, really loved this. I've already checked out the sequel from the library. I think this will become a favorite for me, & I expect to return to it many times.

Trillium #1 - I picked up this series at the comic book store based on the cover. It's a split comic, with the first half being from the perspective of Nika, a scientist in the year 3797. She wears space suits and is trying to diplomatically harvest some specific flowers to save humanity from a disease that's already cut it down to 4,000 people. Flip the comic over, and the other half is about an ex-WWI soldier in 1921 who joins an expedition to Peru. After his party is attacked and killed, he climbs to the top of an Inca Temple, where he inexplicably meets Nika at the summit. I'm pretty excited to read more of this.

Dawn of the Arcana, volumes 1-3 = This is a new manga series I started. The protagonist, Nakaba, enters into a political marriage that nobody expects to last. The kingdoms of Balquat and Senan are constantly warring, and have political marriages to institute a false peace, which typically last about two years. There's also a race of oppressed people called the Ajin, who are part-animal and slowly starting a rebellion.
Nakaba has red hair, which brings shame to to her and the families she's been in her entire life.
The English translation is by Alexander O. Smith, whose work I enjoy (especially the Vagrant Story video game). There are very few words per page, which makes these volumes quick reads. The interpersonal developments (love triangle) can be a little dramatic, and I'm not wild about the art, but the politics and translation make this a pretty enjoyable read.

Cross Game manga - I read the final volume, which was poignant & great. Overall this was a nice series and I'm glad I tried something new.

Last issue of Buffy season 9: Was pretty good! I still liked Angel & Faith more, but Buffy season 9 was a pretty big improvement over season 8. The editor's notes at the end said there won't be any details about season 10 until New York Comic-Con, so for now there's a wait -_-


• Abandoned
Soul Eater manga. I was trying to get through volume 10 & just DID. NOT. CARE. about what anyone was talking about. It's this thing that plagues me in a lot of shounen manga - people standing around talking forever about the intricacies of how the ENEMY'S POWER works, & blah-blah. I started reading this b/c I liked the art & feel super drawn to Maka. There's not enough Maka to hold me in, unfortunately. I'm dropping this for good! Maybe I'd try the anime again some day. The action sequences are way more interesting that way.


• What do you think you’ll read next?
Who the eff knows, lol. I guess I got more Dawn of the Arcana from the library! I've also organized my Turtles comics. I'm over a year behind on those & really need to catch up & decide whether to keep buying, so (like I've been saying for months), I'd like to catch up on those & just decide. TURTLES IN A HALF SHELL...TURTLE POWER!

• What are you currently reading?
Constantine's Sword by James Campbell, - Still chipping at this. Campbell's tendency to talk about his personal life (including really creepy fixation on his mom?!?!?) is aggravating & frequent.

The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith/aka JK Rowling. I snagged this from the library & it's due back next week because I think they all have 14-day limits due to so many people checking them out.
The chapters are short & manageable. As with The Casual Vacancy, I actually just LIKE Rowling's prose, & this one seems a little less doom/doom/doom-focused than TCV.


• What did you recently finish reading?
Soul Eater, volumes 6-9 - As I mentioned last time I blogged about this series...I think I've decided I'm only in this for the art style. The plot does absolutely nothing for me, & Maka is the only character who feels like actual person.
Once I finish with the series I'm on right now (Soul Eater, Cross Game, Basara), I'm going to need to find some manga I really love (maybe some of the ones I own & haven't read yet, sob). Of the ones I'm reading right now, I only have a lot of love for Basara. idk if it's me having a rough time or manga. It seems like a lot of manga publishers in the US keep rereleasing older stuff in larger omnibus formats. Have we exhausted all the good stuff from Japan?!
I doubt it, I guess. Many manga companies have gone under, & others are struggling. Rather than gamble on new shit, they'd prefer to release things they know will sell well -_-
AH WELL. I know I haven't read every good series ever. I'm looking forward to wrapping these series up (I have a thing about completion) so I can move on to other things, more interesting characters, etc. (again, Basara excepted)

Pantomime by Laura Lam, read for beer_marmalade. This is the first book I've read about an intersex person. The protag, Micah, is complex and really fun to read about. The prose is not great, & the dialogue is often awful. I liked the way the story was told: present-as-Micah, past-as-Iphigenia. I might be interested enough to pick up the sequel, whenever it comes out.
I really wish I'd known this WASN'T stand-alone when I picked it up, as it made for a really unsatisfying ending.

Saga, #13 - This finally came back from hiatus! I am behind on all my other comic series, but I devoured this immediately after purchasing it. As before, I just love everything about this series. The art, the lettering, the story, the characters, the writing, just - GAH, SO GOOD.


• What do you think you’ll read next?
I'll be focusing on The Cuckoo's Calling, as I hope to read all of it before it's due back at the library.

• What are you currently reading?
Soul Eater, volume 5 - It's been a long time since I read 1-4! While I enjoy some of the character designs, I feel like I'm only here for Maka & Soul, and wholly uninterested in everything/everyone else :/

A Woman Wrapped in Silence - Basically a fanfiction about Mary (mother of Jesus) written in the 1940s, in verse. I've owned this since buying it at St Meinrad while on there on a retreat, in high school, but never got past the first 10 pages or so. I picked it up after attending a mass led by a woman priest. Progress is slow because I can be easily irritated by most poetry.


• What did you recently finish reading?
W.I.T.C.H. graphic novel, volumes 1 & 2 - I still feel about the same toward this as I did while I was in the middle of volume 1. I <3 the art, but feel the writing is a little sub-par? Still unconvinced I'll reread these later, but I'm reserving "putting it in the sell pile" judgment until I read all 8 volumes I've acquired (half from the library).

Shugo Chara-chan, volume 1 - This is a 4-panel comedy manga spun-off from Peach-Pit's Shugo Chara! Its about the guardian characters, mostly gags. It wasn't amusing enough to hold my attention, & I ended up skimming half the volume & returning volumes 2-4 to the library unread.

Basara, volume 8 - This series continues to be pretty great overall. Starting to feel some dread about how certain revelations are going to be handled. I do like its dealing with the realities of power/etc. - examining what characters are going to do once they get what they think they want, how different territories are governing themselves (or being governed) if the aftermath of the apocalypse, etc.

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene - What survives of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene is short, so this book has an introduction & a preface, and after the straight-up translation of the gospel, a line-by-line commentary.
The commentary discusses the idea of the "divine feminine" in the context of Mary revealing this super spiritual scripture, as opposed to the other way I've encountered it in the past ("feminine divinity means subjugating yourself to men").

This gets a little gender essentialist, which happens often when I read women in relation to the Bible.
Example is discussing the Marys hanging out at the Crucifixion - this gets brought up a lot! ONLY THE WOMEN STAYED, etc.

Are men less courageous than women? Perhaps they have less fear of death, but more fear of suffering? There are no simple answers to this. Yet it is worth noting that it is often mostly women who are present in great moments of life such as this, at deathbed and at birth. Husbands and fathers are more often absent. Surely this would not be seen as desertion (of which they are often accused), but rather as an indication of the great difficulty of the masculine mind (and some feminine minds as well) experiences when it feels powerless in the face of suffering that it can neither combat nor alleviate.

...OR it's because women are socialized to be caretakers?? jfc.

After MM has seen the risen Christ & spoken with Him, she goes back to the Apostles to a) tell them about it so that Christianity starts spreading afterward, and b) tells them about all kinds of other mystical stuff. Their immediately reaction is pretty predicable:

Having said all this, Mary became silent;
for it was in silence that the Teacher spoke to her.
Then Andrew began to speak, and said to his brothers:
"Tell me, what do you think of these things she has been telling us?
As for me, I do not believe
that the Teacher would speak like this.
These ideas are too different from what we have known."
And Peter added:
"How is it possible that the Teacher talked
in this manner with a woman
about secrets of which we ourselves are ignorant?
Must we change our customs,
and listen to this woman?"

& then LOL at leaving this gospel out of the Bible. :( :( :(

At some point, the author digresses into this own interpretation of the Ten Commandments, which is a little more expansive than their general interpretation. I'll use my favorite of his - Honor the Sabbath - as an example. The first part = common interpretation, second paragraph = more mind-blowing to me.

You may rest from all your doing, working, and producing. Human beings are not only made for work, but also for repose - that holy repose that is fully savored after good work, not only on the Sabbath, but every day.

On the day of the Sabbath, all human beings will become equal, for there are no more employers and employees. This law is intended to free us from the bounds of another law, that of dominator and dominated. On the Sabbath, there are no more professors and students, no more lords and serfs. There are only the children of God, sons and daughters of the One Light.

WHOA, right?!

The author's reinterpretation of the Beatitudes are a little similarly radical. The Beatitudes = well-loved by many people who ID as Christian & are also compassionate about social justice.

Yeshua is not saying, "Blessed are you, unhappy victims, be happy in your martyrdom." He is saying, "Do not let yourself be stopped by persecution, slander, and all sorts of violence. Use this as a challenge and opportunity for growing in consciousness and love."

While I'm not typically a fan of "hard times are there to make you stronger" interpretations of life, I do like interpretations of the Gospels that are about Jesus saying, "You're better than that, & if you really believe in me, then DO something about it."

Overall, I enjoyed reading this, although the latter half of the book got into philosophical stuff that I'll freely admit I didn't understand. I think I even skimmed some of it.
I have another commentary/analysis/etc. of the Gospel of Mary Magadalene waiting for me at the library, & I'm hoping that it will be a little more accessible to me.


• What do you think you’ll read next?
More manga, & I should starting reading Pantomime by Laura Lam. It's our next beer_marmalade book.