Eight Book Minimum: Keeping it quick (05/07/19)

[spindizzy]

1. Witchmark by C. L. Polk [Jump]


2. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay [Jump]


3. Hanger Volumes 1 and 2 by Hirotaka Kisoragi [Jump]


4. His Favorite Volume 1 by Suzuki Tanaka [Jump]


5. Hell's Highway by Gerri Hill [Jump]


6. Sawmill Springs by Gerri Hill [Jump]


7. Sarah's Scribbles (Adulthood is a Myth and Big Mushy Happy Lump) by Sarah Andersen [Jump]


8. Proper English by KJ Charles [Jump]

1. Witchmark by C. L. Polk [Top]
In news shocking to absolutely everyone, I had a lot of feelings about the queer fantasy mystery set in an pseudo-Edwardian setting! Too many feelings for this post; they'll be going live next month when I've revised the capslock down to a slightly more feasible level. The important thing to know is that I'm very invested in Miles Singer and his relationships with his sister, his best friend, and his partner in crime-solving, and that the story manages to combine moments of sweetness with utter bleakness and systemic horrors in a way that is utterly compelling.

2. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay [Top]
Hunger is Roxane Gay’s memoir of her relationship with her body and food – and of society’s relationship with her body and bodies like hers – and safety after being raped.

I don’t know what I can say about this that hasn’t already been said better, to be honest. Hunger is a rough read emotionally, as you’d expect, but it’s also fantastic. Roxane Gay tells the story of her body – the ways that she has used it, built it, changed it, rejected it, claimed it – and the way that society views and refuses to acknowledge it, even though it wants to acknowledge her.

If you can cope with the emotions this is going to stir up, I highly recommend it. Roxane Gay's take on media and society and herself are incisive, and acknowledge some of the complicated examples that, for example, the body positivity movement bring up. Definitely recommended.

[Caution warnings: rape, disordered eating, partner abuse, stalking]



3. Hanger Volumes 1 and 2 by Hirotaka Kisoragi [Top]
Did I ever mention that I like to pick up random manga at the library? Because that is a hazard that I forgot about until I left the library with Hanger. The premise as I understand it is that this world has a problem with superpowered drug addicts going on crime sprees, and the only thing that can combat them is the superpowered drug addicts that the police already caught, the Hangers, who are trading capturing bounties in exchange for time off their sentences. Our protagonist is the police minder for a Hanger, who wants to get through his one year tenure to earn enough money to pay off his parents' debts, while the Hanger in question is trying to drive him away as quickly as possible.

... It’s a weird series. It has the same "using your superpowers has a specific cost for each individual!" trope you might recognise from Darker Than Black or Gangsta, but it’s a BL manga so the costs range from "Must eat enough food to feed twelve people" to "Must bang IMMEDIATELY like this is an A/B/O fic" because why wouldn't that be a cost. And of course there are cults and murders and gang wars and trust issues and and the protagonist trying to earn the respect of the Hangers.

I'll be honest, I feel mostly ambivalent about Hanger. It feels very silly, for all that it's trying to be dark and dystopian, and while the action scenes and the occasional bursts of feelings are done well, the actual narrative holding them together is mainly strings of clichés played straight. Not one I recommend.

[Caution warnings: dubious consent, murder, child endangerment, suicide, drugs]

4. His Favorite Volume 1 by Suzuki Tanaka [Top]
His Favourite is theoretically about a teenager whose best friend keeps using him as an excuse to turn down dates, with the possibility that they actually have feelings for each other. In practice, it's a lot more cruel than that premise sounds. The love interest claims to be a sadist whose joy comes from bullying the main character and letting everyone hate him, and his Dark Secret is that when he was younger he used to be fat and awkward – which is handled with exactly the grace you'd expect. I think it's supposed to be a comedy, but the humour is a mismatch for me, and I don't recommend it.

[Caution warning: bullying, dubious consent, fat shaming]



5. Hell's Highway by Gerri Hill [Top]
I picked up the sequel to Devil’s Rock, which I had some opinions about, and this was A Mistake. Cameron Ross is still a bully; she is aware of it enough to mention that she’s a bully, but there’s no attempts to change that, and she also manages to make another character’s kidnapping and assault all about her and her feelings! The attempts to lampshade the fact that their computer is essentially infallible and magic just makes it more glaring! The plot holes are big enough to drive a weaponised motor home through! The side-characters are grossly underwritten! I still finished the entire bloody thing!

I reviewed it for The Lesbrary and yelled about it on twitter, but my recommendation is honestly don’t.

6. Sawmill Springs by Gerri Hill [Top]
I reviewed Sawmill Springs for The Lesbrary (I'll link to it when it goes live!) but it's probably my favourite of Gerri Hill's novels – although considering the problems that I've had with her work in the past, maybe that's damning with faint praise. A Houston detective and an FBI agent independently decide to move to the small town of Sawmill Springs for a quieter life, which is immediately disrupted by a string of murders. The pacing is bad (we're talking "chapter transition from discovering a corpse to the middle of a sex scene" levels of bad), and what I thought was foreshadowing of a deeper mystery was actually just plot holes, but apart from that it was a mostly enjoyable mystery with a romance that seemed to actually be built on chemistry! I did livetweet it, as I have done with most of Gerri Hill's books, but the main message is "Eh, I've read worse."



7. Sarah's Scribbles (Adulthood is a Myth and Big Mushy Happy Lump) by Sarah Andersen [Top]
My feelings on Big Mushy Happy Lump and Adulthood is a Myth are much like my feelings on Herding Cats: it’s cute and funny and relatable! The cartoony art style works great for it! I would retweet entire bunches of these! I don’t think I’d have paid for either of these, but I’m glad I found them in the library! If you like Sarah Andersen’s comics on twitter, it’s nice to read them all together, but I don’t think you’d miss anything from just browsing her archives.

8. Proper English by KJ Charles [Top]
I reviewed Proper English here on Lady Business, and The Lesbrary! It's a) a country house murder mystery, that is b) a prequel to Think of England, and c) stars Pat and Fen, two of the side characters from Think of England. OF COURSE I LOVE IT. The narration was funny, the romance was sweet, the murder victim honestly couldn't have deserved it more... The pacing felt off for both the mystery and the romance, but I was invested in the characters enough that I kept reading anyway. I liked it, and I continue to be here for queer manor house mysteries.

Currently Reading

• Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado — Friend of the Business forestofglory is hosting a short story reading challenge this month (There's a hashtag!), so I'm using this as an excuse to go through all of the anthologies I bought and never finished. So far it's good and at least as weird as I expected.


• Artificial Condition by Martha Wells — I got about three chapters in and then had to just lie on the floor having intense feelings about Murderbot for a while, so it's going well!

Reading Goals

Reading goal: 90/200 (10 new this post) Prose: 31/100 (24/31 short stories) Nonfiction: 3/12
#ReadMyOwnDamnBooks: 35/100 (1 read this post)
#unofficialqueerafbookclub: 35/75 (8 new this post; Witchmark, Hunger, Hanger, His Favorite, Hell's Highway, Sawmill Springs, Proper English)

Comments

[hippogriff13]

The self-styled bastard boyfriend love interest in "His Favorite" (whom everyone else thinks is a too-good-to-be-true prince type) mellows quickly enough that I think it only takes another two or three volumes, if that, for him to stop actively setting up the unfortunate plain-looking protagonist to be hated by every girl in the school and blamed for their inability to get anywhere with the irresistibly rich and handsome Bastard Boyfriend. BB never actually gets around to doing anything non-consensually sexual to Plain-Looking Protagonist, either, despite a few hints of dishonorable intentions early on. So even at its most questionable this series is a bit less queasiness-inducing than, say, the what-started-out-as-dubcon-turns-into-a-genuine-romance-between-a-playboy-and-a-nerd initial volumes of the more R-rated (and ultimately more fully developed character-wise) "Don't Be Cruel." The comedy in "His Favorite" comes mostly from the supporting characters, such as P-LP's two buddies (the dumpier of whom unexpectedly turns out to be not-quite-dating his female childhood friend, who's not only nice but one of the prettiest girls at a neighboring school) and the impossibly noble, handsome, and altruistic guy who actually is just as much of a prince as everyone thinks BB is, but keeps getting sidetracked from his efforts to court P-LP by having to help little old ladies cross the street, etc. (By the time he gets a few rescue-free moments to make his case, P-LP has already realized that he's developed romantic feelings toward BB [who's also started feeling and acting more genuinely lovey-dovey toward his former target]. So P-LP turns him down fairly tactfully and the two of them become platonic friends.) At some point BB and P-LP even go public as boyfriends (I forget whether this is deliberate or they're accidentally outed somehow), and BB manages to charm the previously P-LP-hating girls into deciding that this is at least better than losing BB to a rival girl. So they grudgingly start supporting the new BL couple, at least to the extent of protecting them from encroaching girls from other schools (much like the girls in the non-BL series "Handa-kun," who are all crazy about the obliviously insecure title character, and draw straws to see who will get to take photos of the handsome Handa during the class trip to Kyoto while the rest of the girls make sure no female students from other schools get anywhere near him). Basically, I'm saying that if you can get "His Favorite" from the library, it might be worth skipping ahead a couple of volumes (there are ten of them out so far) and seeing if you like it any better once the characters have evolved a bit.