Eight Book Minimum: HAROLD. (28/12/19)
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ladybusinessI've got a STACK of reviews that queued up at The Lesbrary, so this installment of Eight Book Minimum is going to be a short tl;dr on so much f/f stuff!
1. On A Sunbeam by Tillie Walden [Top]
On a Sunbeam started life as a science fantasy webcomic that shifts between Mia's time at school and her relationship with the sweet and unusual Grace, and Mia as an adult, working on a building restoration crew in space and trying to find out what happened to Grace. It's really good, with the same slightly-surreal edges and restricted colour palette that I love in Tillie Walden's other works! It's full of family and affection, and I was seriously enamoured with the setting with its floating islands and ships shaped like fish. It's hopeful, and I am very much here for hopeful stories right now.
[Caution warnings: bullying, misgendering]
2. I Married My Best Friend to Shut My Parents Up by Naoko Kodama [Top]
I Married My Best Friend To Shut My Parents Up is a fake dating story that commits to its gimmick; a woman who is tired of her parents nitpicking her choice in partners and pressuring her to get married, so agrees to her friend's suggestion that they get married to stop them bothering her. It's a very fast read, and there seemed to be a lot of focus on the protagonist's chest, which weirded me out a bit, but I was very fond of both protagonists and how they looked out for each other and slowly fell in love. It's mostly light and funny, although there are scenes where the protagonist's mother yells homophobic abuse, and one where someone suggests passing her over for a promotion (in favour of an incompetent dude) because she might get married or pregnant, which SURE FEELS TOPICAL RIGHT NOW. But it's mostly cheerful, so if you're in the mood for f/f fake dating with all of the falling in love and misunderstandings that come with it, this is a good place to start!
[Caution warning: homophobia, harassment, misogyny, abusive parents]
3. Bloom Into You Volume 1 by by Nio Nakatani, translated by Jenny McKeon [Top]
Yuu, the protagonist of Bloom Into You wants a proper shoujo-manga style romance, but when she receives her first confession from a boy she feels... Nothing. She turns to another (female) student who she believes is also immune to romantic feelings – only for the student to also admit her love!
I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting what I got here. From the blurb I thought it was going to be a standard "Oh, I thought I was into boys, but turns out I'm into girls!" narrative, but what I actually got was what felt like an aromantic asexual protagonist who is genuinely baffled by the romantic feelings of those around her, and who feels betrayed when people turn out to have crushes on her! It doesn't use those words, and it's possibly that I'm reading too much into it, but I'm on the ace-spectrum and her confusion about people's reactions felt very familiar. I did like that Nanimi, the girl with a crush on Yuu, was fine with her feelings being unrequited, although the way that Yuu and Nanami use Nanami's attraction to fluster her struck me as unkind. I did appreciate the importance of their friends and classmates though, and the way that they took different things from their relationships with their friends to each other, such as Yuu giving Nanami a space to be flawed and imperfect.
(If you read this on comixology like I did, fair warning: the tones don't work particularly well on a tablet, so everything looks like it's got a checkerboard pattern. If things like that annoy you, I'd check the preview on whatever device you're going to be reading it on.)
I liked Bloom Into You, but I might need to get someone to give me spoilers so that I can relax enough to read the rest!
4. Eve and Eve by Nagashiro Rouge, translated by Stephen Christenson [Top]
I believe the entire summary I gave of Eve and Eve on GoodReads was "This is the weird horny trash I usually find in m/m manga and I almost respect it for that." The actual summary is that it's a single-creator anthology of primarily SFF f/f manga, and this is honestly a first for me! I usually have an easier time finding weird SFF m/m manga than f/f. ... But I am seriously not kidding about it being weird and horny. The art is mostly fine, although I do find "invisible vulva" about as confusing as "invisible cock" visually — today in "Things that I never thought I'd have to say!" The stories range in setting, genre and tone; it's primarily scifi, but there are fantasy and slice of life stories as well, ranging from serious to silly. There's also a surprising amount of magic/alien pregnancies, which I wasn't expecting when I went into it.
I was amused by the mangaka starting off this collection by having every possible apocalypse scenario hit, and I thought the story about school girls arguing about top/bottom discourse was funny even though I'm usually squicked by people shipping people they know, but the other stories were weird. One had a scene with extremely dubious consent involving a woman who inherited a curse that means she "has to" get pregnant by another woman, which is super cis-normative and ends very much in the "Oh but they love each other!" way that I've really not missed from reading m/m manga. Another was about two women choosing adultery instead of a relationship, which is not relevant to my interests. But on the whole, if you're in the mood for somewhat weird f/f manga and are used to invisible genitalia, this isn't too bad.
[Caution warnings: drugging, dubious consent, magic/alien pregnancies, adultery]
5. Whenever Our Eyes Meet [Top]
Whenever Our Eyes Meet is honestly the anthology that I wanted éclair to be. The stories all revolve around women in the workplace, and while the stories are sometimes very light in terms of actual plot, they mostly tend towards being sweet and full of feelings, which gives the anthology tonal consistency. I liked it a lot! My favourite story was "You Did Well!" about a pair of women who meet up every week to shout about their achievements and congratulate each other on how well they did, which is honestly the energy I need in my life.
[Caution warnings: sexual harrassment, age gaps, adultery]
6. Girl Friends Volume 1 by Milk Morinaga [Top]
Girl Friends has a classic set-up: Mariko is a brilliant student who's socially uncomfortable, until the fashionable and friendly Akko swoops into her life and turns it upside down. I liked the slow progression of their relationship, and the almost clinical way that Mariko approaches changing her image, up to and including taking notes on how her new friends dress so she can replicate it. It makes sense with her surprise at her own emotional intensity! I need to read the next volume, I'm just a bit stressed by the idea that it might end badly for Mariko!
7. Now Loading...! by Mikanuji [Top]
Now Loading...! is ridiculously cute. A young woman who loves mobile games finally gets a job working under the woman who created her favourite game, who turns out to be grumpy and socially awkward in equal measure. If you're avoiding romances where there's a power imbalance, I'd say skip this because it doesn't actually go into that at all, but apart from that it's really sweet! The characters try their bests and it still doesn't pay off, sometimes, but they look out for each other and it warms my heart.
8. Sensible Footwear: A Girl's Guide by Kate Charlesworth [Top]
Sensible Footwear (reviewed at the Lesbrary) is Kate Charlesworth's combination cook's tour of 20th century queer UK history and memoir of being a lesbian cartoonist born in 1950s Yorkshire. It covers so much – media, activism, the change in attitudes to queerness and how much work it took to bring about those changes! Visually it's kinda cool, because the history sections are laid out like a scrapbook of clippings and photos and sketches, although in the memoir there were so many people introduced and whisked away that I couldn't keep track of them all. There was just... So much that I didn't know! And I know that at least part of it was that I was at school during Section 28, but. Wow.
Although, as a queer woman from Lancashire, discovering that "bats for Lancashire" was a euphemism for queerness when Kate Charlesworth was growing up made my week.
[Caution warnings: Homophobia, the AIDs Crisis, sexual harassment, forced outing, references to historical treatment of queer people including aversion therapy and chemical castration.]
9. Heathen Volumes 1 & 2 by Natasha Alterici and Rachel Autumn Deering [Top]
Hypothetically, Heathen (reviewed here) is exactly my jam, because it follows a young lesbian Viking as she heads off to free a Valkyrie and fight the patriarchy. However, I have some complaints about it that started with "Why do all of the vikings wear bikinis or less?" and go all the way out to "No, you come back here and explain how the Vikings are embodying modern-day Christianity-based homophobia in a setting where they Christianity barely has a foothold." If it had been post-apocalyptic or second-world fantasy instead of historical fantasy, I might have just rolled with it as a kinda gross bit of the world-building, but I do have to side-eye putting a rant about how disgusting queerness is in the mouth of a Norse god, with all of the gender and sexuality nonsense that happens in Norse mythology!
The art is scribbly and textured, which works perfectly for the story being told, and I'm very invested in both Aydis (our lesbian Viking) and Brynhild's stories! I would like to know more about the all-female sailors Aydis falls in with! I'm just somewhat narked by the unnecessary homophobia.
[Caution warning: homophobia]
10. Not Dead Enough by J.M. Redmann [Top]
I don't know whether it's good or bad that I didn't realise that Not Dead Enough was the tenth book in a series until after I'd read it. (No, really, I just assumed everyone had really complicated and thought-out backstories.) But for the most part it's an enjoyable mystery where the detective is aware of how much of a disaster she is and taking steps to remedy it, and the actual case is a convoluted web of connections and mistaken identities. I don't want to recommend it wholesale, as there is a bigoted abusive crime family that is a huge problem in the book and I completely understand not wanting to deal with that in your media, but on the other hand if you want to watch bigoted abusers get thrown around by middle-aged lesbians and threatened by a trans woman with a shot-gun, this isn't a bad bet!
[Caution warnings: Spousal abuse and murder, misogyny, homophobia, drug overdoses] [This review is based on an ARC from Netgalley.]
11. Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O'Connell [Top]
Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me is great. Freddy, a mixed-race high school student gets dumped by her girlfriend for the third time, and finally goes to seek some advice. Freddy's narrative voice is great – she's smart and witty and funny, with believably messy feelings – and the art does a beautiful job of using its limited colours to mark out what specifically she's paying attention to.
(It's probably Laura Dean.)
But overall, the focus on friendship and being a friend is lovely. It's not always happy story; Laura Dean is charming but everyone trapped in the orbit of her and Freddy deserves better. But the conclusion was hopeful and I cheered for Freddy so much.
[Content warning: cheating]
12. Changing Course by Brey Willows [Top]
Changing Course (reviewed here) feels like someone's f/f Star Wars/Star Trek fusion fic with the serial numbers filed off. A scavenger accidentally rescues the captain of a crashed spaceship, who convinces her to help look for survivors. It's not necessarily bad, but the pacing is uneven and every problem introduced is solved so quickly that there's not really any tension or depth, which makes the book feel a lot lighter than I'd have expected for a story about structural inequality and the risks of enslavement. It's not quite made up for by the romance either; the captain is supposed to be emotionally distant and restrained, and we never really get to see that.
That said, it does move quickly and the world-building it did was pretty cool. I was just a little more invested in the background characters and world than I was in the protagonists themselves.
[Caution warning: dying parent, slavery and enslavement, mentions of abuse and eating human flesh.] [This review is based on an ARC from Netgalley.]
I've been bouncing between books at a rate of knots since I last posted, because November accidentally turned into the month where I had to KonMari three quarters of a house. The good news is that I found a load of books I meant to read! The bad news is that I found a load of books I meant to read while I didn't have time to enjoy them!
Reading goal: 120/200 (13 new this post) Prose: 39/100 (2 new this post) (24/39 short stories)
Nonfiction: 6/12 (1 new this post; Sensible Footwear)
#ReadMyOwnDamnBooks: 39/100 (0 read this post)
#UnOfficialQueerAFBookClub 56/75 (13 new this post; see also literally everything in this post)
- On A Sunbeam by Tillie Walden [Jump]
- I Married My Best Friend to Shut My Parents Up by Naoko Kodama [Jump]
- Bloom Into You Volume 1 by by Nio Nakatani, translated by Jenny McKeon [Jump]
- Eve and Eve by Nagashiro Rouge, translated by Stephen Christenson [Jump]
- Whenever Our Eyes Meet [Jump]
- Girl Friends Volume 1 by Milk Morinaga [Jump]
- Now Loading...! by Mikanuji [Jump]
- Sensible Footwear: A Girl's Guide by Kate Charlesworth [Jump]
- Heathen Volumes 1 & 2 by Natasha Alterici and Rachel Autumn Deering [Jump]
- Not Dead Enough by J.M. Redmann [Jump]
- Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O'Connell [Jump]
- Changing Course by Brey Willows [Jump]
1. On A Sunbeam by Tillie Walden [Top]
On a Sunbeam started life as a science fantasy webcomic that shifts between Mia's time at school and her relationship with the sweet and unusual Grace, and Mia as an adult, working on a building restoration crew in space and trying to find out what happened to Grace. It's really good, with the same slightly-surreal edges and restricted colour palette that I love in Tillie Walden's other works! It's full of family and affection, and I was seriously enamoured with the setting with its floating islands and ships shaped like fish. It's hopeful, and I am very much here for hopeful stories right now.
[Caution warnings: bullying, misgendering]
2. I Married My Best Friend to Shut My Parents Up by Naoko Kodama [Top]
I Married My Best Friend To Shut My Parents Up is a fake dating story that commits to its gimmick; a woman who is tired of her parents nitpicking her choice in partners and pressuring her to get married, so agrees to her friend's suggestion that they get married to stop them bothering her. It's a very fast read, and there seemed to be a lot of focus on the protagonist's chest, which weirded me out a bit, but I was very fond of both protagonists and how they looked out for each other and slowly fell in love. It's mostly light and funny, although there are scenes where the protagonist's mother yells homophobic abuse, and one where someone suggests passing her over for a promotion (in favour of an incompetent dude) because she might get married or pregnant, which SURE FEELS TOPICAL RIGHT NOW. But it's mostly cheerful, so if you're in the mood for f/f fake dating with all of the falling in love and misunderstandings that come with it, this is a good place to start!
[Caution warning: homophobia, harassment, misogyny, abusive parents]
3. Bloom Into You Volume 1 by by Nio Nakatani, translated by Jenny McKeon [Top]
Yuu, the protagonist of Bloom Into You wants a proper shoujo-manga style romance, but when she receives her first confession from a boy she feels... Nothing. She turns to another (female) student who she believes is also immune to romantic feelings – only for the student to also admit her love!
I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting what I got here. From the blurb I thought it was going to be a standard "Oh, I thought I was into boys, but turns out I'm into girls!" narrative, but what I actually got was what felt like an aromantic asexual protagonist who is genuinely baffled by the romantic feelings of those around her, and who feels betrayed when people turn out to have crushes on her! It doesn't use those words, and it's possibly that I'm reading too much into it, but I'm on the ace-spectrum and her confusion about people's reactions felt very familiar. I did like that Nanimi, the girl with a crush on Yuu, was fine with her feelings being unrequited, although the way that Yuu and Nanami use Nanami's attraction to fluster her struck me as unkind. I did appreciate the importance of their friends and classmates though, and the way that they took different things from their relationships with their friends to each other, such as Yuu giving Nanami a space to be flawed and imperfect.
(If you read this on comixology like I did, fair warning: the tones don't work particularly well on a tablet, so everything looks like it's got a checkerboard pattern. If things like that annoy you, I'd check the preview on whatever device you're going to be reading it on.)
I liked Bloom Into You, but I might need to get someone to give me spoilers so that I can relax enough to read the rest!
4. Eve and Eve by Nagashiro Rouge, translated by Stephen Christenson [Top]
I believe the entire summary I gave of Eve and Eve on GoodReads was "This is the weird horny trash I usually find in m/m manga and I almost respect it for that." The actual summary is that it's a single-creator anthology of primarily SFF f/f manga, and this is honestly a first for me! I usually have an easier time finding weird SFF m/m manga than f/f. ... But I am seriously not kidding about it being weird and horny. The art is mostly fine, although I do find "invisible vulva" about as confusing as "invisible cock" visually — today in "Things that I never thought I'd have to say!" The stories range in setting, genre and tone; it's primarily scifi, but there are fantasy and slice of life stories as well, ranging from serious to silly. There's also a surprising amount of magic/alien pregnancies, which I wasn't expecting when I went into it.
I was amused by the mangaka starting off this collection by having every possible apocalypse scenario hit, and I thought the story about school girls arguing about top/bottom discourse was funny even though I'm usually squicked by people shipping people they know, but the other stories were weird. One had a scene with extremely dubious consent involving a woman who inherited a curse that means she "has to" get pregnant by another woman, which is super cis-normative and ends very much in the "Oh but they love each other!" way that I've really not missed from reading m/m manga. Another was about two women choosing adultery instead of a relationship, which is not relevant to my interests. But on the whole, if you're in the mood for somewhat weird f/f manga and are used to invisible genitalia, this isn't too bad.
[Caution warnings: drugging, dubious consent, magic/alien pregnancies, adultery]
5. Whenever Our Eyes Meet [Top]
Whenever Our Eyes Meet is honestly the anthology that I wanted éclair to be. The stories all revolve around women in the workplace, and while the stories are sometimes very light in terms of actual plot, they mostly tend towards being sweet and full of feelings, which gives the anthology tonal consistency. I liked it a lot! My favourite story was "You Did Well!" about a pair of women who meet up every week to shout about their achievements and congratulate each other on how well they did, which is honestly the energy I need in my life.
[Caution warnings: sexual harrassment, age gaps, adultery]
6. Girl Friends Volume 1 by Milk Morinaga [Top]
Girl Friends has a classic set-up: Mariko is a brilliant student who's socially uncomfortable, until the fashionable and friendly Akko swoops into her life and turns it upside down. I liked the slow progression of their relationship, and the almost clinical way that Mariko approaches changing her image, up to and including taking notes on how her new friends dress so she can replicate it. It makes sense with her surprise at her own emotional intensity! I need to read the next volume, I'm just a bit stressed by the idea that it might end badly for Mariko!
7. Now Loading...! by Mikanuji [Top]
Now Loading...! is ridiculously cute. A young woman who loves mobile games finally gets a job working under the woman who created her favourite game, who turns out to be grumpy and socially awkward in equal measure. If you're avoiding romances where there's a power imbalance, I'd say skip this because it doesn't actually go into that at all, but apart from that it's really sweet! The characters try their bests and it still doesn't pay off, sometimes, but they look out for each other and it warms my heart.
8. Sensible Footwear: A Girl's Guide by Kate Charlesworth [Top]
Sensible Footwear (reviewed at the Lesbrary) is Kate Charlesworth's combination cook's tour of 20th century queer UK history and memoir of being a lesbian cartoonist born in 1950s Yorkshire. It covers so much – media, activism, the change in attitudes to queerness and how much work it took to bring about those changes! Visually it's kinda cool, because the history sections are laid out like a scrapbook of clippings and photos and sketches, although in the memoir there were so many people introduced and whisked away that I couldn't keep track of them all. There was just... So much that I didn't know! And I know that at least part of it was that I was at school during Section 28, but. Wow.
Although, as a queer woman from Lancashire, discovering that "bats for Lancashire" was a euphemism for queerness when Kate Charlesworth was growing up made my week.
[Caution warnings: Homophobia, the AIDs Crisis, sexual harassment, forced outing, references to historical treatment of queer people including aversion therapy and chemical castration.]
9. Heathen Volumes 1 & 2 by Natasha Alterici and Rachel Autumn Deering [Top]
Hypothetically, Heathen (reviewed here) is exactly my jam, because it follows a young lesbian Viking as she heads off to free a Valkyrie and fight the patriarchy. However, I have some complaints about it that started with "Why do all of the vikings wear bikinis or less?" and go all the way out to "No, you come back here and explain how the Vikings are embodying modern-day Christianity-based homophobia in a setting where they Christianity barely has a foothold." If it had been post-apocalyptic or second-world fantasy instead of historical fantasy, I might have just rolled with it as a kinda gross bit of the world-building, but I do have to side-eye putting a rant about how disgusting queerness is in the mouth of a Norse god, with all of the gender and sexuality nonsense that happens in Norse mythology!
The art is scribbly and textured, which works perfectly for the story being told, and I'm very invested in both Aydis (our lesbian Viking) and Brynhild's stories! I would like to know more about the all-female sailors Aydis falls in with! I'm just somewhat narked by the unnecessary homophobia.
[Caution warning: homophobia]
10. Not Dead Enough by J.M. Redmann [Top]
I don't know whether it's good or bad that I didn't realise that Not Dead Enough was the tenth book in a series until after I'd read it. (No, really, I just assumed everyone had really complicated and thought-out backstories.) But for the most part it's an enjoyable mystery where the detective is aware of how much of a disaster she is and taking steps to remedy it, and the actual case is a convoluted web of connections and mistaken identities. I don't want to recommend it wholesale, as there is a bigoted abusive crime family that is a huge problem in the book and I completely understand not wanting to deal with that in your media, but on the other hand if you want to watch bigoted abusers get thrown around by middle-aged lesbians and threatened by a trans woman with a shot-gun, this isn't a bad bet!
[Caution warnings: Spousal abuse and murder, misogyny, homophobia, drug overdoses] [This review is based on an ARC from Netgalley.]
11. Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O'Connell [Top]
Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me is great. Freddy, a mixed-race high school student gets dumped by her girlfriend for the third time, and finally goes to seek some advice. Freddy's narrative voice is great – she's smart and witty and funny, with believably messy feelings – and the art does a beautiful job of using its limited colours to mark out what specifically she's paying attention to.
(It's probably Laura Dean.)
But overall, the focus on friendship and being a friend is lovely. It's not always happy story; Laura Dean is charming but everyone trapped in the orbit of her and Freddy deserves better. But the conclusion was hopeful and I cheered for Freddy so much.
[Content warning: cheating]
12. Changing Course by Brey Willows [Top]
Changing Course (reviewed here) feels like someone's f/f Star Wars/Star Trek fusion fic with the serial numbers filed off. A scavenger accidentally rescues the captain of a crashed spaceship, who convinces her to help look for survivors. It's not necessarily bad, but the pacing is uneven and every problem introduced is solved so quickly that there's not really any tension or depth, which makes the book feel a lot lighter than I'd have expected for a story about structural inequality and the risks of enslavement. It's not quite made up for by the romance either; the captain is supposed to be emotionally distant and restrained, and we never really get to see that.
That said, it does move quickly and the world-building it did was pretty cool. I was just a little more invested in the background characters and world than I was in the protagonists themselves.
[Caution warning: dying parent, slavery and enslavement, mentions of abuse and eating human flesh.] [This review is based on an ARC from Netgalley.]
Currently Reading
I've been bouncing between books at a rate of knots since I last posted, because November accidentally turned into the month where I had to KonMari three quarters of a house. The good news is that I found a load of books I meant to read! The bad news is that I found a load of books I meant to read while I didn't have time to enjoy them!
- Fate/Strange Fake Volume 3 by Ryohgo Narita — I have almost hit the point where I don't have to text my spousal unit "DID THAT REALLY JUST HAPPEN" every twelve pages, which I think means either this series is getting less weird or I'm finally getting into the swing of things.
- These Savage Shores by Ram V and Sumit Kumar — I am very here for the anti-colonialist destruction of the East India Company and their imported literal vampires, I'm just saying.
- Magic For Liars by Sarah Gailey — I'm enjoying it but also I'm SO STRESSED by how tense I feel, augh.
- Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerads — This is honestly the way that I like my unreliable narration. It's not necessarily that the character is wrong about what's happening, but the world itself is wrong around them.
- Queen of Coin and Whispers by Helen Corcoran — THREE QUEER KIDS TRYING TO CHANGE THE WORLD VIA POLITICS. ONE OF THEM IS A VERY STRESSED QUEEN. ONE OF THEM IS AN ACCOUNTANT. THE ACCOUNTANT HAS THREATENED AT LEAST TWO PEOPLE AND I LOVE HER.
Reading Goals
Reading goal: 120/200 (13 new this post) Prose: 39/100 (2 new this post) (24/39 short stories)
Nonfiction: 6/12 (1 new this post; Sensible Footwear)
#ReadMyOwnDamnBooks: 39/100 (0 read this post)
#UnOfficialQueerAFBookClub 56/75 (13 new this post; see also literally everything in this post)
no subject
Date: 2019-12-29 10:43 am (UTC)Thanks for the warning about Heathens, I think I'd have exactly the same reaction!
Everything you're reading rn sounds AWESOME.