Books and comics read in March 2013
Wednesday, 3 April 2013 14:40![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usuallyhats
Wonder Woman: Land of the Dead
Ultimate Spider-Man: Legacy
Swindled: from poisoned sweets to counterfeit coffee, the dark history of the food cheats - Bee Wilson
Saucer Country: Run
Swift - R.J. Anderson
Remarkable Creatures - Tracy Chevalier
Alias Ultimate Collection Vol 2
Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain - John Darwin
The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern
The Travels of Lady "Bulldog" Burton - Sandi Toksvig and Sandy Nightingale
The FitzOsbornes in Exile - Michelle Cooper
London Falling - Paul Cornell
Ms Marvel: Ascension
The Clockwork Rocket - Greg Egan
Demon Knights: Seven Against the Dark
Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?
Captain America: Man Out of Time
Teen Titans: Child's Play
Days of Blood and Starlight - Laini Taylor
The Town In Bloom - Dodie Smith
Eric - Terry Pratchett
Nomad: Girl Without A World
Spider-Woman: Agent of S.W.O.R.D.
Ultimate Spider-Man: Legacy
I liked this very much. The writing was gripping, and Peter's first scene with Norman Osborn was excellent: very tense. Peter's fear and feelings of helplessness came through beautifully, and the scene after that with Aunt May was also great - one of the things I love about Peter Parker is the way he wears his emotions on the outside (I thought Andrew Garfield did a great job with this aspect of him in the film). There was also some excellently witty dialogue (though I could've done without the extended "let's pretend we think Flash's gay, it will be hilarious" sequence) and I liked the "ghosts" that Green Goblin could hear talking to him. Sadly, it was a little marred by the art, which would have been fine, but MJ and Gwen were all big eyes and tiny waists, which got tiresome very quickly.
Swindled: from poisoned sweets to counterfeit coffee, the dark history of the food cheats
A fascinating wander through the history of food adulteration, covering food scares, weights and measures, the question of what adulteration exactly is, and more. Wilson makes it quite clear that food adulteration is an inevitable consequence of an unregulated free market in food, where producers maximise profits by using the cheapest ingredients (or "ingredients") they can get away with, thereby lowering costs and prices, by contrasting the parlous state of food on sale in Britain by the mid 1800s with the situation on the Continent (especially in France), where food was more tightly regulated and therefore much less adulterated. She also makes the link with poverty explicit: free marketeers can bang on about "consumer choice" as much as they like, but being forced to either buy cheap food that might well be harmful or even deadly, or to have no food at all, isn't much of a choice.
Remarkable Creatures
There was a fascinating fictionalisation of the story of Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot in here somewhere, but unfortunately it couldn't quite get out. I am always a bit wary of the idea of telling stories about real people through first person narration, but even apart from that I thought it actually hurt the book to have it told that way: the chapters from both Mary's and Elizabeth's points of view seemed weirdly self aware, as if they somehow knew what their legacy would be and how we'd view the way they were both treated, which would have been less of an issue with an omniscient narrator. They also both never really came alive as characters; as much as I wanted to, I really couldn't see their relationship as being as important and intense as I was being told it was. It was enjoyable enough to read, despite its flaws, but overall, I found it sadly lacking.
Ms Marvel: Ascension
Another thing I didn't like as much as I wanted to. :/ I was disappointed in it right from the off, because the first story (Ms Marvel Annual #1) was... not really about Carol. It was basically a Spider-Man story, with Carol as a supporting character/intermittent antagonist (she turned up to arrest him for being unregistered but ending up teaming up with him for the greater good (THE GREATER GOOD)). Also, Spidey called Carol "Gloria Steinem" in a way that was clearly meant to be an insult. SIGH. The art was pretty nice though. It was a bit ropier in the rest of the book, sadly: it got better as it went along, but I did find myself wondering if Carol owned ANY outfits that met in the middle. For normal wear that'd be fine, but surely if you're off on a covert mission in which you might die, you want trousers that'll stay up on their own and that you don't have to hitch up all the time? Anyway. The rest of the issues went into Carol's backstory a bit, and the plot eventually caught up with the first story, but it didn't really grab me, alas, and then it just stopped halfway through the plot. Boo.
Demon Knights: Seven Against the Dark
Like the other two things by Paul Cornell I read this month (London Falling and Saucer Country), I enjoyed this a great deal, particularly the way that the reader's and the characters' expectations were always being undercut, sometimes with hilarious consequences, and sometimes... really not. Recommended, especially to people interested in the nature of heroism and/or seeing an Amazon nut a triceratops.
Teen Titans: Child's Play
ALL MY TEEN TITANS FRUSTRATIONS. There were lots of moments in this that I liked, fun banter, Wonder Girl being awesome, but they were completely overwhelmed by the angsting and the squabbling and the angsting and the suffering and the dying and the angsting. SIGH. Why isn't Teen Titans: Happy Fun Times a thing? (I also felt that there was always at least one more character hanging around than there was really room for, though which one felt surplus to requirements tended to vary.)
Spider-Woman: Agent of S.W.O.R.D.
There's a discount bookshop in Cheltenham that always has tons of Marvel comics, so whenever I'm at my parents' I try to go in and pick up a few things more or less at random. I got this one because I've enjoyed Bendis' writing on Alias and Ultimate Spider-Man, and this seemed to sit neatly in the middle of that Venn diagram ("women named Jessica coping in the aftermath of traumatic events" plus "spider-people"). This turned out to be an excellent choice: I liked it a great deal and am sad there isn't any more. The art was great too; even when I wasn't sure I liked it exactly, I definitely respected it (Marvel seems to go in for experimental art a lot more than DC does). And having a real person model for Jessica worked very well, especially given the more realistic style: no ridiculous proportions or poses to throw me out of the story.
Ultimate Spider-Man: Legacy
Swindled: from poisoned sweets to counterfeit coffee, the dark history of the food cheats - Bee Wilson
Saucer Country: Run
Swift - R.J. Anderson
Remarkable Creatures - Tracy Chevalier
Alias Ultimate Collection Vol 2
Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain - John Darwin
The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern
The Travels of Lady "Bulldog" Burton - Sandi Toksvig and Sandy Nightingale
The FitzOsbornes in Exile - Michelle Cooper
London Falling - Paul Cornell
Ms Marvel: Ascension
The Clockwork Rocket - Greg Egan
Demon Knights: Seven Against the Dark
Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?
Captain America: Man Out of Time
Teen Titans: Child's Play
Days of Blood and Starlight - Laini Taylor
The Town In Bloom - Dodie Smith
Eric - Terry Pratchett
Nomad: Girl Without A World
Spider-Woman: Agent of S.W.O.R.D.
Ultimate Spider-Man: Legacy
I liked this very much. The writing was gripping, and Peter's first scene with Norman Osborn was excellent: very tense. Peter's fear and feelings of helplessness came through beautifully, and the scene after that with Aunt May was also great - one of the things I love about Peter Parker is the way he wears his emotions on the outside (I thought Andrew Garfield did a great job with this aspect of him in the film). There was also some excellently witty dialogue (though I could've done without the extended "let's pretend we think Flash's gay, it will be hilarious" sequence) and I liked the "ghosts" that Green Goblin could hear talking to him. Sadly, it was a little marred by the art, which would have been fine, but MJ and Gwen were all big eyes and tiny waists, which got tiresome very quickly.
Swindled: from poisoned sweets to counterfeit coffee, the dark history of the food cheats
A fascinating wander through the history of food adulteration, covering food scares, weights and measures, the question of what adulteration exactly is, and more. Wilson makes it quite clear that food adulteration is an inevitable consequence of an unregulated free market in food, where producers maximise profits by using the cheapest ingredients (or "ingredients") they can get away with, thereby lowering costs and prices, by contrasting the parlous state of food on sale in Britain by the mid 1800s with the situation on the Continent (especially in France), where food was more tightly regulated and therefore much less adulterated. She also makes the link with poverty explicit: free marketeers can bang on about "consumer choice" as much as they like, but being forced to either buy cheap food that might well be harmful or even deadly, or to have no food at all, isn't much of a choice.
Remarkable Creatures
There was a fascinating fictionalisation of the story of Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot in here somewhere, but unfortunately it couldn't quite get out. I am always a bit wary of the idea of telling stories about real people through first person narration, but even apart from that I thought it actually hurt the book to have it told that way: the chapters from both Mary's and Elizabeth's points of view seemed weirdly self aware, as if they somehow knew what their legacy would be and how we'd view the way they were both treated, which would have been less of an issue with an omniscient narrator. They also both never really came alive as characters; as much as I wanted to, I really couldn't see their relationship as being as important and intense as I was being told it was. It was enjoyable enough to read, despite its flaws, but overall, I found it sadly lacking.
Ms Marvel: Ascension
Another thing I didn't like as much as I wanted to. :/ I was disappointed in it right from the off, because the first story (Ms Marvel Annual #1) was... not really about Carol. It was basically a Spider-Man story, with Carol as a supporting character/intermittent antagonist (she turned up to arrest him for being unregistered but ending up teaming up with him for the greater good (THE GREATER GOOD)). Also, Spidey called Carol "Gloria Steinem" in a way that was clearly meant to be an insult. SIGH. The art was pretty nice though. It was a bit ropier in the rest of the book, sadly: it got better as it went along, but I did find myself wondering if Carol owned ANY outfits that met in the middle. For normal wear that'd be fine, but surely if you're off on a covert mission in which you might die, you want trousers that'll stay up on their own and that you don't have to hitch up all the time? Anyway. The rest of the issues went into Carol's backstory a bit, and the plot eventually caught up with the first story, but it didn't really grab me, alas, and then it just stopped halfway through the plot. Boo.
Demon Knights: Seven Against the Dark
Like the other two things by Paul Cornell I read this month (London Falling and Saucer Country), I enjoyed this a great deal, particularly the way that the reader's and the characters' expectations were always being undercut, sometimes with hilarious consequences, and sometimes... really not. Recommended, especially to people interested in the nature of heroism and/or seeing an Amazon nut a triceratops.
Teen Titans: Child's Play
ALL MY TEEN TITANS FRUSTRATIONS. There were lots of moments in this that I liked, fun banter, Wonder Girl being awesome, but they were completely overwhelmed by the angsting and the squabbling and the angsting and the suffering and the dying and the angsting. SIGH. Why isn't Teen Titans: Happy Fun Times a thing? (I also felt that there was always at least one more character hanging around than there was really room for, though which one felt surplus to requirements tended to vary.)
Spider-Woman: Agent of S.W.O.R.D.
There's a discount bookshop in Cheltenham that always has tons of Marvel comics, so whenever I'm at my parents' I try to go in and pick up a few things more or less at random. I got this one because I've enjoyed Bendis' writing on Alias and Ultimate Spider-Man, and this seemed to sit neatly in the middle of that Venn diagram ("women named Jessica coping in the aftermath of traumatic events" plus "spider-people"). This turned out to be an excellent choice: I liked it a great deal and am sad there isn't any more. The art was great too; even when I wasn't sure I liked it exactly, I definitely respected it (Marvel seems to go in for experimental art a lot more than DC does). And having a real person model for Jessica worked very well, especially given the more realistic style: no ridiculous proportions or poses to throw me out of the story.
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