Sidetracks - January 26, 2015

[helloladies]

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag.

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➝ RED ALERT, our very own bookgazing has partnered with myfriendamy to launch irregularlyscheduled. This is super exciting and I'm sure I'm going to end up with about a zillion more shows to watch.

➝ Oh, Oscar season. Because it tends to ignore genre up ballot, I tend to catch up with the nominees months after the winners have been announced after they've been talked to death and I can piggyback off everyone else's reviews and explications. The diversity critiques this year are also extremely on point, and the oversights have been pointed out by people much more knowledgeable about film than myself. But I really liked How to Fix the Oscars: Seeded Nominations! which came out a few weeks ago (I will note that I don't like naming things after SEASONS, because I have been properly trained by strict Australians to not be a conceited American). I'm sure this is totally infeasible for tons of reasons but I really like sorting things into neat categories so it appeals to my organizational side, and I really like the idea of the blockbuster slot actually managing to get solid genre stuff into consideration. TOO BAD all the actual changes the Academy makes will be useless and boring.

➝ Would You Ditch A Comic Because Of The Art? is a question I was surprised by the answer to in the comments (I expected way more Y's). I've dropped several comics due to the art; most recently Pretty Deadly which I found unreadable due to the ways the lines were drawn or something (migraine city). Older material examples: I couldn't handle Maus, either because it was too bold. It was like someone forgot to close their HTML tag. I'm sure this means I'm going to some sort of literary hell now.

➝ Whether you make it or not is never about talent. Inspiration!

➝ On Reviews by forestofglory was really great to read, because I am totally in the "Books I've Read" category when it comes to reviews. Otherwise, I mostly look for whether the reviewer likes the book (ratings, summary paragraphs, gifs). But if it's a reviewer I trust a lot to warn throughly for spoilers, like nymeth, I often read all their reviews. I've got very specific requirements for what makes me read a book review, but they're really of more use to me after I've read the book in question. Although, I might note when a book is getting tons of reviews (positive or negative) among my circle of review friends and bump it up based on that type of buzz, too.

➝ Mockingjay Is 2014′s Top-Grossing Film; Female-Led Films Take Top Spot Two Years in a Row. I love that this film took out Guardians of the Galaxy for 2014's box office, which I was positive was a lock. To this I have to say, Marvel, where's my Black Widow movie? GET IT TOGETHER.

Book Acquisitions

Purchased: None
Gifts: Wild Magic, Alanna: The First Adventure, and In the Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce (I GUESS THIS IS A MASSIVE HINT, HUH, SUSAN?? ♥ )
Added TBR: Find Me by Laura van den Berg, Updraft by Fran Wilde, Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, You're Never Weird on the Internet - Almost by Felicia Day, reV by Madeline Ashby, Dark Orbit by Carolyn Ives Gilman, Cold Iron by Stina Leicht, Walk on Earth a Stranger by Rae Carson, An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

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➝ I'm so excited that Cass has started a new blog about books and publishing from a queer perspective! Add Queerly Seen to your feedreader, like, NOW.

➝ In her blog post On Sexism and Awards Justine Larbalestier references the work Ana did in Gender Balance in YA Award Winners since 200 in YA. Her post touches on the way our culture award jurors to value male stories, but also makes a point about how a dominant reading trend towards realism affects the way awards are given out:

As I’ve noted, what we’re overwhelmingly taught to read, once we leave children’s books behind, is realism. So that’s what most of us are best at reading.

I’ve heard reports from frustrated genre loving friends on juried awards where the other jurors literally did not know how to read the fantasy, science fiction, romances etc. The non-genre reader jurors saw a book with a dragon in it and instantly decided it was derivative rubbish. Read a book where someone’s learning magic and said “Well, isn’t that just Harry Potter all over again?” They wondered why books were marred by “inserting” vampires/ghosts/werewolves/etc into the story.

They did not have the reading skills to recognise the ways in which this particular dragon book, and this particular learning magic book, this particular vampire/ghost/werewolf book was doing something that had never been done in that genre before because they’d never read that genre before. They had no idea. All these book read the same to them. Ditto with romance. They could not see how that particular romance was basically reinventing the genre because they’d never read a romance before.

➝ Zetta Elliott has made a list of all theAfrican American MG & YA published in the US in 2014. There were 40. That's out of an estimated 3,000 YA novels published in the US each year.

➝ If you're able to buy books and those figures make you want to dig out your wallet, you might find it useful to take a look at this handy themed gift guide that We Need Diverse Books put together just before Christmas.

➝ Or, if you're interested in diverse non-fiction, try The Best Multicultural Books of 2014.

➝ Check out this cool breakdown of Beyonce's feminist actions & social contributions (it's got sources — be still my heart).

➝ A bit of interesting information about the actor behind Ridley Scott's alien mask.

➝ These illustrations of magical ladies by NanoMortis are amazing! Love how the palette combines dark and light colours to such great effect. I especially like the bottom one which looks like Maleficent conjuring up fire with her violin playing.

➝ These illustrations by Christian Schloe remind me of some of Salvador Dali's work.

➝ And prepare to be astounded by what some people can do with buttons.

Comments

[bookgazing]

I'm surprised by the comments on that article about whether art can turn you off a story too. The art is such a huge part of the story if you can't get into the art I'm not sure it'd be a very enjoyable experience to read. I think a lot of different styles & I can appreciate that story can affect style but that doesn't necessarily mean I want to look at the art for those stories just because I understand why the style was chosen. It's a bit like experimental fiction - sometimes I love it but sometimes I just get why the writer chose to present their story that way but it doesn't work for me as a reader. I don't think I drop out of film often because of the visuals though but that might be because I'm not very adventurous about exploring different styles of film :P

[susanhatedliterature.net]

More for the Feedly! Honestly, how am I ever supposed to read everything I want to? When will someone offer to pay be to browse the interwebs.

Also, yes, those buttons are pretty amazing.

[theliteraryomnivore.wordpress.com]

When it comes to comics, art is such a huge part of it that I think it would be odd if it wasn't able to turn you off. I can muscle through some lackluster art—Gotham City Sirens, Fearless Defenders—but if it's simply too much, it's too much.

[readingtheend.pip.verisignlabs.com]

I am WELL excited about both Queerly Seen and Irregularly Scheduled Viewing. It is a happy time to be a blogger!

[marenfuga]

One of my major issues transitioning from reading exclusively manga to a more balanced graphic diet is that the art turns me off like crazy. Sometimes I can't even deal with the number of frames per page or the amount of dialogue. And the palettes of colors! There's so much to it than simply the text or the idea behind.

I'm mesmerized by those button-thingies, btw.