laceblade

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.

• What are you currently reading?
Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh. This is the first thing I've ever read by this author. We're reading the first 1/3 of the book for beer_marmalade.
I'm grumpy that the back cover of my copy ruins a major spoiler that hasn't happened yet in the first third of this book :[ I'm glad I powered through the first multi-page info dump. I HATE STRAIGHT-UP INFO DUMPS IN SCI-FI NOVELS UGH. I probably retained nothing.
Aside from the info dumps, this novel is dense-but-great. Lots of politics & trying to outmaneuver people. PARLIAMENTARY PROCEDURE. Also huge ethical issues to think about, like human cloning and etc. It's a great intersection of interesting things for me, & I sort of feel like this book was written specifically for me.
I wish my brain were a little more with it right now, because I feel like I'm missing stuff.

Anna Karenina - need to finish part 5 today. This book club meets in a bar tomorrow, instead of someone's apartment (ty baby jesus).


• What did you recently finish reading?
Captain Marvel #11. I just love this current story arc so much, & I want Filipe Andrade to do the artwork for this series FOREVER. Captain Marvel talking to her cat. Using assistive technology! Dealing with medical bullshit and mundane life stuff in addition to being a superhero. I <3 it.

The Last of Us #1 of 4. By Faith Erin Hicks & Nick Druckman. FEH is one of my all-time faves. I've been reading her stuff since Demonology 101 was being posted online (it's a web comic). This 4-part series is a prequel to a PlayStation 3 game that's coming out in June. I don't have a PS3 unfortunately, but this game looks really good. As for the comic:

It has been nineteen years since a parasitic fungal outbreak infected and wiped out the majority of the world's population. In Boston, one of the last remaining quarantine zones, a young girl named Ellie is being transferred to the military prep school that all orphaned teenagers must attend upon turning thirteen.

So, yeah. Post apocalyptic society with a group of freedom fighters in the background. Ellie fights hard, and also seems to be suffering PTSD. I loved this so much I immediately reread it. Very excited for the next issue, & sad it won't come out 'til May 29th. And now I want to buy a PS3 so I can play this game :3 (and Final Fantasy XIII, I guess)

Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Search, part 1. This picks up right where The Promise left off. (The Promise picked up right where season 3 ended.) Gene Luen Yang did a great job with the first one, & is still killing it.
We start off with a simple premise: as the gaang try to lead the Four Nations with a bunch of adults, one of the adults says that families are like nations. Zuko worries about his ability to lead the Fire Nation, given that his dad's in prison and Azula has been institutionalized. He decides to focus on his missing mother.
I'm down with finding out what happened to Ursa (his mom), but I'm a little annoyed that Zuko is at the center of the super serious plot like last time.
This series also tells Ursa's story in flashbacks, while Zuko tries to find her in the present. Grateful that Ursa is getting a lot of screentime in her own right.
Disappointed that Toph isn't around for this arc. I still feel that everyone's characterization is spot-on, as is the humor. It's like watching the show.

Mara #3 - We got a little more explanation here, but mostly I really think it'd be better to read these issues all in a row. It's getting hard to keep track of wtf is going on. This series really isn't written to be read one issue at a time. Makes me grateful for things like Saga and Hawkeye, which definitely are.

Hawkeye #1-4 - W O W. I don't even know whether I can be coherent about it.


• What do you think you’ll read next?
More Cyteen, more Anna Karenina, more Hawkeye comics.

I'll need to go buy the new issue of Saga that just came out today. The Internet says Apple won't allow people to buy it through its store due to its depiction of gay sex. They seemed to have no problem with the het sex in previous issues!
Anyway, this makes me glad to buy physical issues of comic books from the brick & mortar store a few blocks from my apartment, instead of big corporations through the Internet.

When I was single for approximately 20 years, I swore to myself that I would remember how much Valentine's Day sucked when I was bitter and alone. Now that I am still bitter (or at least cynical) and in a relationship, I honor this vow by not making a big deal about Valentine's Day. I'll probably hang out with Antoine tomorrow, but I usually hang out with him on Thursdays anyway. We won't buy each other expensive gifts.

BUT, in the past, I think my mom used to give me Valentine's Day card. Since coming to college, I give her a lot of crap because I no longer get anything for Valentine's Day, nor St. Nick Day, etc., but she does remind me that she sent my brother and sister packages while they were at college. KTHX.

But today, I received a package in the mail containing what was supposed to be a Christmas present for me, but ended up being delayed until now (due to the comic book shop having to order, etc.). And that is the graphic novel Zombies Calling, by Faith Erin Hicks (smuu).

The book is short - it feels like 100 pages or so. It's a comedy about college students using "The Rules" (truths learned from zombie movies) to try and survive a zombie invasion on their campus. As is typical of works by Hicks, the graphic novel contains carefully inked and soulful drawings, funny one-liners, and a bit of social commentary for good measure.

At first, I loved Faith's completed online comic, Demonology 101. I've since been following her stuff for years. She shares killthehubble, a sketchblog on LiveJournal with another artist, but most of the artwork is hers. She also maintains demonology101, with information about her current comics projects.

I highly recommend Ice, which is on-going. The art is much more mature and evolved from the stuff from Demonology 101 (not to discredit D101 - I loved it - but Ice definitely shows a marked improvement).

So, check out Zombies Calling, and help support an awesome artist! Zombies Calling has its own website here, where, among other things, you can find a link to the first 15 pages of the comic.