laceblade

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?

Kitty Goes to Washington - WOW BOOK OF MY ID?! It's a continuation after the first Kitty book, obvs, EXCEPT NOW WITH CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS AND NIH RESEARCH AHAHAHA!!!! I cackle with glee when I read this :*)


• What did you recently finish reading?

Very! Very! Sweet, volume 1 - I bought volumes 5-8 of this manhwa back when Borders was going out of business, & they’ve sat on my shelf ever since. UNTIL NOW, when I finally figured out how to obtain books through my library’s outerlibrary loan system. I really, really enjoyed the first volume of this series, & I hope it only gets better.
Tsuyoshi is a spoiled brat from a Japanese family who’s always gotten whatever he wants. In volume one, his grandfather reveals that their rich/powerful family actually comes from a Korean ancestor who moved to Japan hundreds of years ago.
Tsuyoshi is unimpressed with this - reflecting on whether pouring a bottle of Coke into a swimming pool makes the liquid no matter water? - but his insolence gets his grandfather to spend the rest of his school years in Korea, where he’d like Tsuyoshi to meet a stubborn & badass Korean woman to be his wife.
Enter Be-Ri, the awesome girl who lives next door to Tsuyoshi’s newly built house.
Be-Ri likes to collect junk (aka: people’s garbage) & make things like cat trees or whatever else she can with it. I LOVE BE-RI AND HER GIVE-NO-FUCKS-ATTITUDE AND ALSO HER ENTIRE WARDROBE!!
Be-Ri and Tsuyoshi loathe one another upon first sight, so they clearly must be the series’ OTP!
Another wrench in this love story is that Be-Ri’s in love with the high school tenant who lives with Be-Ri & her family…& is also dating Be-Ri’s sister ;_____;
POOR BE-RI, ILU AND HOW AWESOME YOU ARE! So yeah, I'm excited to read more, even though 2-4 are going to take forever to arrive via outerlibrary loan system -_-

Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught Between Two Cultures - This was written by Kyoko Mori. idk if other people read Shizuko’s Daughter multiple times in adolescence, but I did. I’m not sure if it’s because her YA is ubiquitous in the US, or because she taught creative writing at St. Norbert’s, which is basically in Green Bay (where I grew up).
I loved this collection of essays, which makes up the memoir. For those who don’t know her story, Mori’s mother committed suicide when Mori was 12 years old. Her dad was abusive also, so there are several trigger warnings that come with this book :/
Her writing about the differences between US Midwestern & Japanese cultures is very well-done & sometimes amusing. I should probably note that as someone who relocated to the US because she never really felt like she belonged in Japan, or could ever express herself there, Mori holds pretty negative views of Japanese culture.
She lived/grew up there, so it’s not like I can fault her perceptions, although some things seem like they could happen in any culture (choosing to hide an illness from your family members) or are actually just wrong (referring to all manga as violent pornography).
Mori’s prose makes it worth it, though. I’d kind of like to reread Shizuko’s Daughter now since it’s been a while, and track down some of her other things, too. Looking back, I know she’s always been one of my favorite writers.

some songs that aren’t about love by jan - This was a Chihayafuru fic that I think littlebutfierce linked me to? Short & great - perfect snapshots of the characters, & I think it really captures the mood of the show, as well.

Revival #1 - Read this because were_duck kept talking it up. Zombie series that’s taking place in/around Wausau, WI. If not for the local bits, I might not be as interested, but for now I am. I’ve gotten the first trade from the library since reading issue 1, but haven’t read it yet.

Trillium #2 & 3 - Just as good as the first issue, not much else to say.

Saga #14 - This was a great issue. The scene with Lying Cat & Sophie was touching. I’m always excited for more Saga!

Dawn of the Arcana, volumes 4-8 - I’m getting a little bored with this series, but not enough to stop reading? The lack of detailed backgrounds feels lazy to me, and the political intrigue that first attracted me to the book forever seems like a carrot dangled in front of me instead of something I actually get to see :/ I also really don’t care for any of the characters, so that’s a pretty big :(

Kitty and the Midnight Hour - I ended up liking this a fair amount?! Or at least enough to continue with it. Kitty is a bamf, & I’m glad she’s able to upset some of the power structures in her life. Excited to see where things go.

Of Love and Other Demons - This was something I’d started a long time ago & finally finished by plowing through the second half. I love Marquez’s prose, but the premise here (priest commissioned to exorcise a 12-year-old girl with(out) rabies but falls in love with her instead) was pretty uncomfortable. I need to read Love in the Time of Cholera & also 100 Years of Solitude.

Alphonse Mucha - collection or art by Mucha. Last year at the end of the Laura Ingalls Wilder road trip I took with my mom & my sister, we stopped at the Czech Museum in Iowa. 30 minutes before closing, we only had time for their main exhibit, which was all Mucha. LOVE. I'm 50% Czech & am woefully uninformed about this part of my cultural history. I'd love to read more about the politics & history of Czechoslovakia (which I know is now two countries, but that's how it's always been referred to in my family).


• What do you think you’ll read next?
I have now given up predicting! Likely lots of training materials/etc. as I start a new job on Monday!! Maybe something for comfort since starting new jobs always = scary.