Lady Business

IT IS DONE, this is the last of my 2019 reading! Or at least, it's the stuff that's been hardest for me to review. Not because I didn't like it, but because it's hard to have feelings about things when *gestures at globals politics* But after this, it's all of the shiny new things that I've been reading in 2020, so that'll be fun!

This is also the post where I realised that my maths didn't add up with what I'd tracked with goodreads and had minor panics until I remembered that short fiction exists!

1. The Six Skills of Madame Lumiere by Marissa Lingen [Jump]


2. Fireside Quarterly July 2018 edited by Julia Rios and Elsa Sjunneson-Henry [Jump]


3. Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku Volumes 2 and 3 by Fujita [Jump]


4. Flying Witch Volumes 4-6 by Chihiro Ishizuka, translated by Melissa Tanaka [Jump]


5. The Girl From The Other Side: Siúil, A Rún Volumes 1-7 by Nagabe, translated by Adrienne Beck [Jump]


6. Módào Zǔshī by Mòxiāng Tóngxiù [Jump]


7. Artificial Condition and Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells [Jump]


8. Fate/Strange Fake Volumes 1 and 2 by Ryogho Narita [Jump]


9. Widdershins by Jordan L. Hawk [Jump]


10. Hex Vet Volume 1: Witches in Training and Volume 2: The Flying Surgery by Sam Davies [Jump]


11. Not For Use in Navigation: Thirteen Stories by Iona Datt Sharma [Jump]


12. Red River Volumes 1-6 by Chie Shinohara [Jump]


13. Love in Focus Volume 1 by Yoko Nogiri [Jump]


14. Behind the Scenes Volume 6 by Bisco Hatori [Jump]


15. Waves by Ingrid Chabbert and Carole Maurel [Jump]


16. Moonstruck Volume 1 by Grace Ellis, Shae Beagle, Kate Leth, Caitlin Quirk, Clayton Cowles [Jump]

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Darryl Cunningham's latest investigation takes us to the heart of free-world politics and the financial crisis, as he traces the roots of bankrupt countries to the domination of right-wing policies and the people who created them. Cunningham draws a fascinating portrait of the New Right and the charismatic Ayn Rand, whose soirees were attended by the young Alan Greenspan. He shows how the Neo-Cons hijacked the economic debate and led the way to a world dominated by the market. Smaller countries, such as Greece, have paid the price for joining a club that held impossible membership rules. He examines the neurological basis of political thinking, and asks why it is so difficult for us to change our minds – even when faced with powerful evidence that a certain course of action is not working. Cunningham's spare yet eloquent prose, perfectly complemented by the beauty and clarity of his artwork, delivers a devastating analysis of our economic world.

I'll be honest: two-thirds of Darryl Cunningham's Supercrash wasn't what I expected. From the cover and the blurb, I was expecting it to be a graphic non-fiction dissection of the financial crisis from 2008, and there definitely is a section on that, right in the middle. But it's bookended with a short biography of Ayn Rand and a summary of the political divide between parties in the UK and US, which I hadn't expected.

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Supercrash was informative, even if it felt like three books stapled together rather than one cohesive piece. But if you want a quick overview of the financial crash and don't mind the extra stuff padding it out, it's a pretty good place to start!

[Caution warnings: ableist and homophobic slurs, adultery, cruelty to and judgement of people in poverty, cults, pop psychology, references to suicide, spousal and medical abuse (including Fit For Work assessments and the way austerity literally kills people in the UK), unpunished financial fraud on a global scale. May leave you yelling EAT THE RICH by the midpoint.] [I'm sorry my caution warnings are a mess this time but SERIOUSLY IT WILL MAKE YOU WANT TO EAT THE RICH MORE THAN YOU ALREADY DO.]

My local comic store does this comic book of the month thing, where they offer money off whatever they think the best new graphic novel is. I buy them as a way to try out new genres and creators that I might otherwise skip! ... And then I read the ones that are obviously relevant to my interests as soon as I get them, and everything else gets put on a bookcase and immediately forgotten. But my decluttering adventures mean that they've sifted back to the top of my TBR pile, so here's a few that I've tried recently.

1. Grimoire Noir by Vera Greentea and Yana Bogatch [Jump]


2. The Great North Wood by Tim Bird [Jump]


3. Something City by Ellice Weaver [Jump]


4. Livestock by Hannah Berry [Jump]


5. Rosalie Lightning by Tom Hart [Jump]


6. The Fade Out: Act One by Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Elizabeth Breitweiser [Jump]


7. Why Art? by Eleanor Davis [Jump]


8. The Realist by Asaf Hanuka [Jump]


9. Supercrash by Darryl Cunningham [Jump]


10. The Motherless Oven by Rob Davis [Jump]


11. Cats of the Louvre by Taiyo Matsumoto, translated by Michael Arias [Jump]

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Reading Goals

Reading goal: 131/200 (11 new this post) Prose: 39/100 (0 new this post)
Nonfiction: 9/12 (3 new this post; The Realist, Supercrash, and I think The Great North Wood counts?)
#ReadMyOwnDamnBooks: 48/100 (9 read this post)
#unofficialqueerafbookclub: 56/75 (0 new this post)

First published in the 1980s and 90s, Waki Yamato’s renowned adaptation of Murasaki Shikibu’s 11th-century literary masterpiece is still gorgeous to behold and is considered one of the greatest novel-to-manga adaptations of all time. Prince Genji falls in love with his stepmother, and so begins a forbidden love that will make him suffer his whole life. Genji's love story involves him falling for many women and begins with his love for Princess Fujitsubo — his father's wife, and his stepmother. And Genji will cross that line which he should never cross.

I'm going to be upfront with you: I don't recommend Tale of Genji: Dreams at Dawn. It's a manga adaptation of Murasaki Shibiku's Tale of Genji, following the son of an emperor who falls in love with his stepmother (who is apparently the spitting image of his dead birth mother), and pursues several other women in an attempt to find a replacement for her. Including the ten-year-old cousin of his stepmother, who he takes in as his ward, who will – according to character summary at
the back of the book – become his wife when she's older.

Yeah, that was the face that I made too.

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As an introduction to one of the world's oldest works of fiction, it's fairly interesting, but I don't think I would read this for its own merits.

[Caution warnings: incest, mentions of grooming in future volumes, dubious consent, death of parents] [This review was based on an ARC from Netgalley.]

Once upon a time a boy from a noble family fell in love with a girl from the gutter. It went as badly as you’d expect.

Seventeen years later, Susan Lazarus is a renowned detective, and Templeton Lane is a jewel thief. She’s tried to arrest him, and she’s tried to shoot him. They’ve never tried to talk.

Then Templeton is accused of a vicious double murder. Now there’s a manhunt out for him, the ports are watched, and even his best friends have turned their backs. If he can’t clear his name, he’ll hang.

There’s only one person in England who might help Templeton now...assuming she doesn’t want to kill him herself.

Gilded Cage is the follow-up to KJ Charles' Any Old Diamonds and The Rat-Catcher's Daughter, and I could probably get half of it's intended audience by just yelling "FRIENDS TO LOVERS TO ENEMIES TO LOVERS" and "THERE'S ONLY ONE BED" and "SUSAN LAZARUS IS THE DONE-WITH-THIS-SHIT PROTAGONIST WE DESERVE." The actual summary is that once upon a time, Susan Lazarus was the common girl in love with the son of a lord, which went about as well as you could expect. Seventeen years later, he's a jewel thief, she's a private investigator, and when he gets framed for a murder that he didn't commit, she's the only person he can turn to to clear his name.

There's the messy emotions I was looking for!

( Cut for spoilers for Any Old Diamonds )