Let's Get Literate! The Power of Song
Jul. 13th, 2015 04:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ladybusinessReading the last few weeks has been slow and plodding. I've been ill and tired so it takes me forever to read everything. Also, my focus is really shot. I read an entire volume of Hawkeye the other day and then realized I remembered the first issue in the collection and absolutely nothing else. I had to a) take a nap and then b) re-read, with lots of breaks, before I could retain what happened. Everything takes so much energy. This post took me three days to write, as well. Chronic illnesses, my friends: do not recommend.
The last few weeks:
Trailer Park Fae was a weird book; I reviewed it for B&N and said, "Trailer Park Fae is what you’d get if you mixed a Bourne film, a political thriller, and a weepy Lifetime movie about abusive, drunken trailer park fathers together, and shook vigorously." It was vaguely entertaining and pretty quick, but it was also in a weird pseudo-Shakespearean language that sounded like my attempts at writing in that meter back when professors thought it would be cool to make us write poetry to ~experience the magic of Shakespeare~. I'm not a poet. In fact, poets see me coming and they scream and run the other way. It straddled that place between "I like these specific things but only these." and "what the fuck is happening?" for me the entire time I read it.
I liked Robin a lot, but the book wanted it to be a shared story between her and Jeremiah. He was an entertaining as mud most of the time with all his sad man pain and ability to challenge any badass evil sidhe around with no consequence. Except, apparently, the Queen of Summer, because he has a dick? Maybe this is why I often dislike faerie stories. I'm confused why the Queen of Faeries can twist "men" to her will. This seems so weird and trapped in a rigid understanding of gender that it throws me out of the stories that employ the trope of leading men around by the libido while women roll their eyes at the dudes ~seduced~ by the faerie queen and stand immune. Faerie Land is way less gender diverse than I imagined (or maybe I am reading the wrong books?). I wanted this whole book to be about Robin and her backstory instead of Jeremiah and how he was so sad about his fridged wife, because she could have been developed more evenly across the book if he had been given less screen time to mope on the edges of tall buildings and ponder throwing himself to a possible death. A woman who can't sing for pleasure because it kills people in place of that? That's some angst I can get behind.
Lumberjanes #15 was so cute and I'm really digging the focus on Jen and the backstory involving the interpersonal relationships between adult women with complicated pasts! I'm smelling a romance. I assume there's two more issues of this arc to go, as Stevenson is leaving after #17. The comic is continuing, though, which is good for me. I never expected to love this comic so much. EIGHT VOLUMES PLZ.
Ms. Marvel#16 features Kamala struggling to save the people she cares about as the world ends and finally we get to see the meet up I know I've been wanting for 15 issues. It's pretty great, too. This comic is excellent because so many of the moments in it that are iconic for Kamala carry long term emotional resonance, even the ones that are awkward/weird. Perfect teenager.
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud was a book I read last year to get a better grip on the medium and decided to read again as I started cycling through a bunch of different nonfiction books on the topic of creating comics. It really does feel absolutely 101 to me at this point, and it's so obvious it's written in the 90s. The field is so drastically different now. Even Reinventing Comics, written in 2000, which I also finished recently feels similarly dated. There's a whole History of the Internet section that feels like McCloud indulging his inner nerd rather than communicating anything useful about comics. McCloud also has a lot of trouble with gender essentialism (and heterosexism to a lesser extent) in both of these books which makes them really feel like being punched in the face out of nowhere. I'm still reading Making Comics, so I'm not sure how it will compare to the other two. They're definitely valuable books, but the older they get the less useful some of the discussions are (especially about the future of comics) because comics as a medium are going to age out of his perspective.
We Should All Be Feminists was a speech Adichie gave that was later adapted into a book. It was a very cute book. Tiny! It was almost hidden by the books around it on the shelf at the library. I had listened to the speech, but reading the book was nice, too. It holds up pretty well, although there's some unnecessary binary framing around gender with "the loss of virginity usually involves two people of opposite genders" which a) erases queer people and, b) frames gender as a binary A and B rather than a spectrum. But otherwise it was good!
Trade Me by Courtney Milan was me giving her modern work a try after liking her historical romance series, Brothers Sinister. You have a girl in poverty looking for a break from the stress of living hand to mouth, a very successful rich boy with a problem, and an agreement to trade lives. The company in the book is Apple-Lite, the father was hilarious, and for some reason I never expect Milan's endings which meant I ended up liking this a lot. There's a trans character as the best friend, too, which surprised the heck out of me. She gets her own book soon! Into it.
I read Linesman as an ARC which was edited terribly (just because it's a digital file does not excuse handing out ARCs with this amount of weird errors, publishers). It was the second book (maybe third if I include Uprooted where the magic almost feels like a version of singing) where singing is a power characters have. Did not really result in Dude/Spaceship OTP as I predicted, which is a little sad, because it's less that the spaceships have feelings and more a ~metaphysical energy lines~ connected to the people and objects like ships that have feelings. We don't get to meet them, not really, it's left on a cliffhanger until the next book. In the end it's more like Dude/PURE ENERGY.
This makes me want Cale/The Drej Titan A.E. fanfic and I refuse to be ashamed.
The people who can work with the energy are basically space magicians. This is a book about control of space magic and space magicians and the main space magician is woobied out the wazoo, although for what it was they did an okay job of examining the gaslighting/abuse the main character goes through. It had way too many politics not given enough context; I was constantly playing catch up and not in a good way. There's in medias res and then there's...this book, which was a haphazard, stumbling mess for at least the first 200 pages. It finally evened out only to jettison itself into more confusing politics and space magician shenanigans, which were all communicated awkwardly. Perhaps someone better at politics, mutinies, and corporate takeovers would get more out of this, but I needed like, sixteen maps (or the book needed to be edited again for better clarity). Plus, there's not really much tension if your main character can solve every single dramatic moment by singing sweetly to the nearest spaceship.
My positive feelings about the book are over at B&N. Distance made me grumpy because I wanted to like it more than I did. Like a sucker, I'm totally going to read the sequel.
And I've finally read the three collected volumes of Hawkeye, after months of culture shoving it at me. Honestly, what got me into it finally was Kate Bishop. I can't believe everyone trying to hand sell me this series way back when the first trade came out didn't start with Kate Bishop immediately. Clint was okay. I honestly found the second volume a little uncomfortable due to Clint's behavior toward the women in his life. I like fandom's MCU Clint much better.
That said, KATE BISHOP IS THE BEST. The third volume: wow. I've also found a new favorite artist and need to hunt down everything Annie Wu has done, ever. And now I go on to read all about Kate Bishop. Did I say I was going to read all the Captain America comics? Okay, well, he may have to wait for me and Kate Bishop to become besties.
This is the week I read The End of All Things by John Scalzi. I have my ARC. I have my feelings. I'M READY. (It's a lie. I'm not ready. I'm so not ready I haven't even read The Human Division which is also happening this week. Does anyone else go through this anxiety over series they love having new books but being utterly terrified you won't love them and it'll ruin everything and you'll sink into a deep sadness and your love for the series will never recover? And so, the books come out and you get them but never read this? I'm such a weirdo. Why am I this way?)
The last few weeks:
- Trailer Park Fae by Lilith Saintcrow
- Lumberjanes #15 by Noelle Stevenson, Brooke A. Allen, & Shannon Waters
- Ms. Marvel #16 by G. Willow Wilson & Adrian Alphona
- Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
- We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Trade Me by Courtney Milan
- Linesman by S.K. Dunstall
- Reinventing Comics by Scott McCloud
- Hawkeye Vol. 1: My Life as a Weapon by Matt Fraction, David Aja, & Javier Pulido
- Hawkeye Vol. 2: Little Hits by Matt Fraction, David Aja, Francesco Francavilla, Steve Lieber, & Jesse Hamm
- Hawkeye Vol. 3: L.A. Woman by Matt Fraction, Javier Pulido, & Annie Wu
Trailer Park Fae was a weird book; I reviewed it for B&N and said, "Trailer Park Fae is what you’d get if you mixed a Bourne film, a political thriller, and a weepy Lifetime movie about abusive, drunken trailer park fathers together, and shook vigorously." It was vaguely entertaining and pretty quick, but it was also in a weird pseudo-Shakespearean language that sounded like my attempts at writing in that meter back when professors thought it would be cool to make us write poetry to ~experience the magic of Shakespeare~. I'm not a poet. In fact, poets see me coming and they scream and run the other way. It straddled that place between "I like these specific things but only these." and "what the fuck is happening?" for me the entire time I read it.
I liked Robin a lot, but the book wanted it to be a shared story between her and Jeremiah. He was an entertaining as mud most of the time with all his sad man pain and ability to challenge any badass evil sidhe around with no consequence. Except, apparently, the Queen of Summer, because he has a dick? Maybe this is why I often dislike faerie stories. I'm confused why the Queen of Faeries can twist "men" to her will. This seems so weird and trapped in a rigid understanding of gender that it throws me out of the stories that employ the trope of leading men around by the libido while women roll their eyes at the dudes ~seduced~ by the faerie queen and stand immune. Faerie Land is way less gender diverse than I imagined (or maybe I am reading the wrong books?). I wanted this whole book to be about Robin and her backstory instead of Jeremiah and how he was so sad about his fridged wife, because she could have been developed more evenly across the book if he had been given less screen time to mope on the edges of tall buildings and ponder throwing himself to a possible death. A woman who can't sing for pleasure because it kills people in place of that? That's some angst I can get behind.
Lumberjanes #15 was so cute and I'm really digging the focus on Jen and the backstory involving the interpersonal relationships between adult women with complicated pasts! I'm smelling a romance. I assume there's two more issues of this arc to go, as Stevenson is leaving after #17. The comic is continuing, though, which is good for me. I never expected to love this comic so much. EIGHT VOLUMES PLZ.
Ms. Marvel#16 features Kamala struggling to save the people she cares about as the world ends and finally we get to see the meet up I know I've been wanting for 15 issues. It's pretty great, too. This comic is excellent because so many of the moments in it that are iconic for Kamala carry long term emotional resonance, even the ones that are awkward/weird. Perfect teenager.
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud was a book I read last year to get a better grip on the medium and decided to read again as I started cycling through a bunch of different nonfiction books on the topic of creating comics. It really does feel absolutely 101 to me at this point, and it's so obvious it's written in the 90s. The field is so drastically different now. Even Reinventing Comics, written in 2000, which I also finished recently feels similarly dated. There's a whole History of the Internet section that feels like McCloud indulging his inner nerd rather than communicating anything useful about comics. McCloud also has a lot of trouble with gender essentialism (and heterosexism to a lesser extent) in both of these books which makes them really feel like being punched in the face out of nowhere. I'm still reading Making Comics, so I'm not sure how it will compare to the other two. They're definitely valuable books, but the older they get the less useful some of the discussions are (especially about the future of comics) because comics as a medium are going to age out of his perspective.
We Should All Be Feminists was a speech Adichie gave that was later adapted into a book. It was a very cute book. Tiny! It was almost hidden by the books around it on the shelf at the library. I had listened to the speech, but reading the book was nice, too. It holds up pretty well, although there's some unnecessary binary framing around gender with "the loss of virginity usually involves two people of opposite genders" which a) erases queer people and, b) frames gender as a binary A and B rather than a spectrum. But otherwise it was good!
Trade Me by Courtney Milan was me giving her modern work a try after liking her historical romance series, Brothers Sinister. You have a girl in poverty looking for a break from the stress of living hand to mouth, a very successful rich boy with a problem, and an agreement to trade lives. The company in the book is Apple-Lite, the father was hilarious, and for some reason I never expect Milan's endings which meant I ended up liking this a lot. There's a trans character as the best friend, too, which surprised the heck out of me. She gets her own book soon! Into it.
I read Linesman as an ARC which was edited terribly (just because it's a digital file does not excuse handing out ARCs with this amount of weird errors, publishers). It was the second book (maybe third if I include Uprooted where the magic almost feels like a version of singing) where singing is a power characters have. Did not really result in Dude/Spaceship OTP as I predicted, which is a little sad, because it's less that the spaceships have feelings and more a ~metaphysical energy lines~ connected to the people and objects like ships that have feelings. We don't get to meet them, not really, it's left on a cliffhanger until the next book. In the end it's more like Dude/PURE ENERGY.
This makes me want Cale/The Drej Titan A.E. fanfic and I refuse to be ashamed.
The people who can work with the energy are basically space magicians. This is a book about control of space magic and space magicians and the main space magician is woobied out the wazoo, although for what it was they did an okay job of examining the gaslighting/abuse the main character goes through. It had way too many politics not given enough context; I was constantly playing catch up and not in a good way. There's in medias res and then there's...this book, which was a haphazard, stumbling mess for at least the first 200 pages. It finally evened out only to jettison itself into more confusing politics and space magician shenanigans, which were all communicated awkwardly. Perhaps someone better at politics, mutinies, and corporate takeovers would get more out of this, but I needed like, sixteen maps (or the book needed to be edited again for better clarity). Plus, there's not really much tension if your main character can solve every single dramatic moment by singing sweetly to the nearest spaceship.
My positive feelings about the book are over at B&N. Distance made me grumpy because I wanted to like it more than I did. Like a sucker, I'm totally going to read the sequel.
And I've finally read the three collected volumes of Hawkeye, after months of culture shoving it at me. Honestly, what got me into it finally was Kate Bishop. I can't believe everyone trying to hand sell me this series way back when the first trade came out didn't start with Kate Bishop immediately. Clint was okay. I honestly found the second volume a little uncomfortable due to Clint's behavior toward the women in his life. I like fandom's MCU Clint much better.
That said, KATE BISHOP IS THE BEST. The third volume: wow. I've also found a new favorite artist and need to hunt down everything Annie Wu has done, ever. And now I go on to read all about Kate Bishop. Did I say I was going to read all the Captain America comics? Okay, well, he may have to wait for me and Kate Bishop to become besties.
This is the week I read The End of All Things by John Scalzi. I have my ARC. I have my feelings. I'M READY. (It's a lie. I'm not ready. I'm so not ready I haven't even read The Human Division which is also happening this week. Does anyone else go through this anxiety over series they love having new books but being utterly terrified you won't love them and it'll ruin everything and you'll sink into a deep sadness and your love for the series will never recover? And so, the books come out and you get them but never read this? I'm such a weirdo. Why am I this way?)
