books and comics read in August 2013
Monday, 2 September 2013 11:02![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usuallyhats
Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites
The Last Stormlord - Glenda Larke
Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century ed. Justine Larbalestier
Star Trek Voyager: Fire Ship - Diane Carey
Runaways: Dead End Kids
Inventing the Victorians - Matthew Sweet
Slow River - Nicola Griffith
Judge Anderson: Anderson, PSI Division
Whiteout: Volume 1
Eye of the Labyrinth - Jennifer Fallon
Moving Pictures - Terry Pratchett
Untold - Sarah Rees Brennan
Didn't finish: Besieged - Rowena Cory Daniells. I feel like I was being slightly unfair to this book by not finishing it, because I got the impression (partly from reviews) that a lot of the stuff I found tiresome (one really sexist society! one gender essentialist society!) was going to be challenged, but it still wasn't fun to read about, and I didn't really like the characters. There are just too many good books to waste time on ones I don't like all that much, especially when they're the first in a giant trilogy, you know?
Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites
This was a lot gorier than I usually like, but I nevertheless loved it: it takes a seemingly ridiculous premise - a group of dogs (and a cat) who team up to fight supernatural evil - and really makes it work. It's played completely straight, and is excellently written. And the art! So so beautiful.
Fire Ship
JANEWAY. JANEWAY JANEWAY JANEWAY. JANEWAY? JANEWAY!
Inventing the Victorians
Uses an interesting series of anecdata to bust myths about what "the Victorians" were like. Very readable, but given the title I was hoping for more on how and why these myths came to be.
Judge Anderson: Anderson, PSI Division
I thoroughly enjoyed Dredd, especially Anderson's role in it, so I thought I 'd give this a try. It was very good! Interesting, well told stories, with solid art. But it did also confirm my feeling that 2000AD is just not really my sort of thing, as a general rule: I'll stick to picking up the more highly recommended collections if I see them in the library, rather than going out of my way to read it.
Eye of the Labyrinth
This is the sequel to a book I talked about last month and my feelings on it are pretty similar. If anything, there was MORE stuff in this one that I disliked, and yet I could not stop reading it. WITCHCRAFT. *requests book three from the library*
Untold
AAAAAH YAY. I loved Unspoken and I loved this too. This one was much angstier than its predecessor (though still with plenty of snarky dialogue), but that's ok, it's just so the third one can be about how everyone got through it all and was happy, right? Right? There was lots of stuff about loneliness and failing to communicate, and about the difference between being able to depend on someone and being dependent on them. I did start to get a bit annoyed about Kami and Jared's inability to talk to each other about their feeeeelings, but then I realised that this of course makes perfect sense: they have no experience of actually TALKING to each other (or anyone else, really, especially Jared) about that sort of stuff, and they have to deal with the fact that what they think they know about each other's feelings is now based only on supposition and guesswork. Also, ANGELA and HOLLY and LILLIAN and RUSTY, you are all the BEST. (Kami is ALSO the best.)
The Last Stormlord - Glenda Larke
Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century ed. Justine Larbalestier
Star Trek Voyager: Fire Ship - Diane Carey
Runaways: Dead End Kids
Inventing the Victorians - Matthew Sweet
Slow River - Nicola Griffith
Judge Anderson: Anderson, PSI Division
Whiteout: Volume 1
Eye of the Labyrinth - Jennifer Fallon
Moving Pictures - Terry Pratchett
Untold - Sarah Rees Brennan
Didn't finish: Besieged - Rowena Cory Daniells. I feel like I was being slightly unfair to this book by not finishing it, because I got the impression (partly from reviews) that a lot of the stuff I found tiresome (one really sexist society! one gender essentialist society!) was going to be challenged, but it still wasn't fun to read about, and I didn't really like the characters. There are just too many good books to waste time on ones I don't like all that much, especially when they're the first in a giant trilogy, you know?
Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites
This was a lot gorier than I usually like, but I nevertheless loved it: it takes a seemingly ridiculous premise - a group of dogs (and a cat) who team up to fight supernatural evil - and really makes it work. It's played completely straight, and is excellently written. And the art! So so beautiful.
Fire Ship
JANEWAY. JANEWAY JANEWAY JANEWAY. JANEWAY? JANEWAY!
Inventing the Victorians
Uses an interesting series of anecdata to bust myths about what "the Victorians" were like. Very readable, but given the title I was hoping for more on how and why these myths came to be.
Judge Anderson: Anderson, PSI Division
I thoroughly enjoyed Dredd, especially Anderson's role in it, so I thought I 'd give this a try. It was very good! Interesting, well told stories, with solid art. But it did also confirm my feeling that 2000AD is just not really my sort of thing, as a general rule: I'll stick to picking up the more highly recommended collections if I see them in the library, rather than going out of my way to read it.
Eye of the Labyrinth
This is the sequel to a book I talked about last month and my feelings on it are pretty similar. If anything, there was MORE stuff in this one that I disliked, and yet I could not stop reading it. WITCHCRAFT. *requests book three from the library*
Untold
AAAAAH YAY. I loved Unspoken and I loved this too. This one was much angstier than its predecessor (though still with plenty of snarky dialogue), but that's ok, it's just so the third one can be about how everyone got through it all and was happy, right? Right? There was lots of stuff about loneliness and failing to communicate, and about the difference between being able to depend on someone and being dependent on them. I did start to get a bit annoyed about Kami and Jared's inability to talk to each other about their feeeeelings, but then I realised that this of course makes perfect sense: they have no experience of actually TALKING to each other (or anyone else, really, especially Jared) about that sort of stuff, and they have to deal with the fact that what they think they know about each other's feelings is now based only on supposition and guesswork. Also, ANGELA and HOLLY and LILLIAN and RUSTY, you are all the BEST. (Kami is ALSO the best.)