Books and comics read in September 2013
Tuesday, 1 October 2013 11:02![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usuallyhats
Astonishing X-Men: Northstar*
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling
Hawkeye: My Life As A Weapon
Arthur King of the Middle March - Kevin Crossley-Holland
Whiteout: Melt
Journey into Mystery: Stronger Than Monsters
Stormlord Rising - Glenda Larke
Broken Homes - Ben Aaronovitch*
Fear Itself: Heroes For Hire
The Princess and the Goblin/The Princess and Curdie - George McDonald
Y: The Last Man: Unmanned
The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire 1832-1914 - Robert Bickers*
Rose Under Fire - Elizabeth Wein*
Ultimate Spider-Man: Irresponsible
(NB trying a new system: putting asterisks beside the things I talk about under the cut. (Def up for discussing non-asterisked things too, just never got around to writing anything down for them!) Also very minor spoilers for Rose Under Fire there; only really a problem if you want to read it completely cold!)
Astonishing X-Men: Northstar
aka the one where Northstar and Kyle get married! (Also there is a Nation X issue about them which swings wildly between clunky and cute, and Northstar's original coming out issue, which I had already read and therefore skipped.) Other than that I didn't really know what was going on or who anyone was, but mostly I quite liked it all the same, though all the relationship-drama-no-wait-marriage seemed a bit odd and rushed and weird. Playing spot-the-character-I-recognise in the wedding scenes was fun, though, and I heart Warbird. She's hilariously blunt and she defaults to solving problems via edged weaponry, I enjoy that in a character. Some of the art was a bit eh, but Phil Noto's wedding album variant cover was lovely. ♥
Broken Homes
I spoiled myself for this book as soon as I knew there was something to spoil myself for, and I'm glad I did. I don't like the spoilery thing, but I am reserving judgement until I see how it plays out in the next book, since the related thing I didn't like at the end of the first book went so much better than I expected. (She said, vaguely.) Other than that, I really enjoyed this: I agree with the criticism that the pacing is a bit weird, but I love the characters and the world and enjoy spending time with them so much that I'm not really bothered about the plot. Peter's nerdiness feels very natural and is constantly delightful. I also like how diverse this world is, and how it really doesn't feel as if the author defaults to "straight white male" for all new characters.
(ADDENDUM: Wrote all that before the Strange Horizons blowup, am now somewhat less trusting of Aaronovitch as an author. I mean, we'll always have "Battlefield", but still.)
The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire 1832-1914
I went to a talk on this book earlier in the year, since I know basically nothing about this bit of history, and picked up the book on the strength of that. Sadly I was a little disappointed. The book was a bit dry and dense compared to the talk, and I also felt that it was really western-, and specifically anglo-centric. I would have liked some more on the Chinese perspective, or indeed more acknowledgement that there is another perspective - there is some in the last chapter, but it was a bit late by then, and also some of it I was a little uncomfortable with, as it came off slightly as "white man tells Chinese people how to interpret their own history". (More than half a page challenging the narrative of "opening up" China to western trade would have been good, for example.) I think I'd've liked more of a social history focus, too, though at this point I think I need to acknowledge that I may have just wanted to be reading a different book.
Rose Under Fire
*flaps inarticulately about this book*
No, wait, I do want to say that I found it really interesting how much both this and Code Name Verity were about telling stories. They both have storytelling as a way of surviving, but CNV is all about stories that have to be kept secret, and about hiding the truth because telling the truth would be dangerous. RUF has some of that aspect too, but it's also about stories that need to be told, but that are too hard to tell. It's about Rose trying to find ways to tell her story and the story of the other women in the camp, when there are parts of it she can barely tell herself. Her healing process is shown through her ability to tell her stories more and more directly, and more and more publicly.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling
Hawkeye: My Life As A Weapon
Arthur King of the Middle March - Kevin Crossley-Holland
Whiteout: Melt
Journey into Mystery: Stronger Than Monsters
Stormlord Rising - Glenda Larke
Broken Homes - Ben Aaronovitch*
Fear Itself: Heroes For Hire
The Princess and the Goblin/The Princess and Curdie - George McDonald
Y: The Last Man: Unmanned
The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire 1832-1914 - Robert Bickers*
Rose Under Fire - Elizabeth Wein*
Ultimate Spider-Man: Irresponsible
(NB trying a new system: putting asterisks beside the things I talk about under the cut. (Def up for discussing non-asterisked things too, just never got around to writing anything down for them!) Also very minor spoilers for Rose Under Fire there; only really a problem if you want to read it completely cold!)
Astonishing X-Men: Northstar
aka the one where Northstar and Kyle get married! (Also there is a Nation X issue about them which swings wildly between clunky and cute, and Northstar's original coming out issue, which I had already read and therefore skipped.) Other than that I didn't really know what was going on or who anyone was, but mostly I quite liked it all the same, though all the relationship-drama-no-wait-marriage seemed a bit odd and rushed and weird. Playing spot-the-character-I-recognise in the wedding scenes was fun, though, and I heart Warbird. She's hilariously blunt and she defaults to solving problems via edged weaponry, I enjoy that in a character. Some of the art was a bit eh, but Phil Noto's wedding album variant cover was lovely. ♥
Broken Homes
I spoiled myself for this book as soon as I knew there was something to spoil myself for, and I'm glad I did. I don't like the spoilery thing, but I am reserving judgement until I see how it plays out in the next book, since the related thing I didn't like at the end of the first book went so much better than I expected. (She said, vaguely.) Other than that, I really enjoyed this: I agree with the criticism that the pacing is a bit weird, but I love the characters and the world and enjoy spending time with them so much that I'm not really bothered about the plot. Peter's nerdiness feels very natural and is constantly delightful. I also like how diverse this world is, and how it really doesn't feel as if the author defaults to "straight white male" for all new characters.
(ADDENDUM: Wrote all that before the Strange Horizons blowup, am now somewhat less trusting of Aaronovitch as an author. I mean, we'll always have "Battlefield", but still.)
The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire 1832-1914
I went to a talk on this book earlier in the year, since I know basically nothing about this bit of history, and picked up the book on the strength of that. Sadly I was a little disappointed. The book was a bit dry and dense compared to the talk, and I also felt that it was really western-, and specifically anglo-centric. I would have liked some more on the Chinese perspective, or indeed more acknowledgement that there is another perspective - there is some in the last chapter, but it was a bit late by then, and also some of it I was a little uncomfortable with, as it came off slightly as "white man tells Chinese people how to interpret their own history". (More than half a page challenging the narrative of "opening up" China to western trade would have been good, for example.) I think I'd've liked more of a social history focus, too, though at this point I think I need to acknowledge that I may have just wanted to be reading a different book.
Rose Under Fire
*flaps inarticulately about this book*
No, wait, I do want to say that I found it really interesting how much both this and Code Name Verity were about telling stories. They both have storytelling as a way of surviving, but CNV is all about stories that have to be kept secret, and about hiding the truth because telling the truth would be dangerous. RUF has some of that aspect too, but it's also about stories that need to be told, but that are too hard to tell. It's about Rose trying to find ways to tell her story and the story of the other women in the camp, when there are parts of it she can barely tell herself. Her healing process is shown through her ability to tell her stories more and more directly, and more and more publicly.
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no subject
Date: 1 Oct 2013 12:03 (UTC)What, she's almost afraid to ask, was the Ben Aaronovitch blow up?
no subject
Date: 2 Oct 2013 08:26 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2 Oct 2013 15:22 (UTC)So yeah, agree. Though I've got to say that Moon Over Soho is one of the things that's making me trust what he's going to do with a certain character in the next book even less.
no subject
Date: 3 Oct 2013 13:55 (UTC)I really thought said character was going to be written off and never heard from again after book one, so I have a little bit of hope based on that, but... not as much now as I used to.
no subject
Date: 3 Oct 2013 14:14 (UTC)no subject
Date: 7 Oct 2013 12:26 (UTC)no subject
Date: 1 Oct 2013 18:00 (UTC)How are you enjoying Ultimate Spider-Man? I read a couple of volumes of it by mistake recently (the library keeps sending me the wrong one when I try to get Miles' third volume) and I thought it was pretty cute.
no subject
Date: 2 Oct 2013 08:34 (UTC)It is cute! And funny too. It has the odd misstep and the art is pretty eh ("where are her internal organs? And what are those things on her chest? And why so many crop tops?" etc), but I'm definitely enjoying it enough to keep working my way through it (I'm up to volume... seven, I think?).
no subject
Date: 2 Oct 2013 15:43 (UTC)Yeah, I tried to start at the beginning once and I found the art too unappealing. The volumes I got sent by mistake were from near the end of the run and were illustrated by Sara Pichelli and Chris Samnee and some other people I am forgetting, but looked much nicer.
no subject
Date: 3 Oct 2013 13:59 (UTC)no subject
Date: 3 Oct 2013 19:36 (UTC)