Books and comics read in December 2013
Wednesday, 1 January 2014 15:19![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usuallyhats
*Avengers Assemble: Science Bros
Doctor Who: The Romance of Crime - Gareth Roberts
Ultimate Spider-Man: Cats and Kings
Ultimate Spider-Man: Ultimate Six
Ultimate Spider-Man: Hollywood
*Science Fiction Audiences: Reading Doctor Who and Star Trek - John Tulloch and Henry Jenkins
*The Shell House - Linda Newbery
*Stormlord's Exile - Glenda Larke
*JLA: Golden Perfect
*Nightwing: Year One
*Robin: Unmasked
*Teen Titans/Outsiders: The Death and Return of Donna Troy
The True Meaning of Smekday - Adam Rex
The Raven Boys - Maggie Stiefvater
Sense and Sensibility: Diaries and Screenplay - Emma Thompson
Runaways: Dead Wrong
*The Wonder Woman Chronicles Vol 2
Geist - Philippa Balantine
Demon Knights: The Avalon Trap
*The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver
The Travails of Jane Saint and Other Stories - Josephine Saxton
*Memoirs of a Spacewoman - Naomi Mitchison
Fear Itself: The Fearless
Bring Up The Bodies - Hilary Mantel
Blue Beetle: Reach for the Stars
Didn't finish: Magic For Beginners by Kelly Link. Given I have almost no patience with magical realism, I don't know why I thought I would like this. I mean, there was nothing actually wrong with it, it just wasn't for me.
Avengers Assemble: Science Bros
This was fun! Not amazing, but two solidly entertaining Avengers stories. The art wasn't the greatest (except for Natasha's flashbacks, I really liked it there), but it was fine, and at least Natasha's suit stayed fully done up all the way through her two issues. BABY STEPS.
Science Fiction Audiences
This was a little dense in places, but I did enjoy it a fair bit. I was interested to learn from the introduction that 70s Star Trek fans were often sneered at on the grounds of their perceived femaleness, which rather gives the lie to the idea that being mocked for one's nerdery is a uniquely male experience. Overall I liked the Star Trek half better than the Doctor Who half, which I found a little frustrating. (It didn't help that Tulloch dismissed the claim by one of the "young mothers" audience group that she loved Doctor Who and watched it every week on the grounds that she struggled to remember the names of some of the companions, but let a male self-proclaimed fan in the next section conflate Liz and Vicki without comment.) I thought the last chapter, on queer fans and Star Trek, was the strongest, but also the most depressing, as the excuses from the production team for the lack of queer visibility in Star Trek were very familiar, even though this book was published in 1995.
The Shell House
I loved Linda Newbery's books when I was a teenager and was really excited to find out she'd written something with gay characters in. Sadly it was a bit of a disappointment: the characters and their relationships didn't really ring true and the thematic elements never really gelled. It just felt... clumsy, which I wasn't expecting, and the ending was really unsatisfying. SADNESS. I mean, I read it all the way through in the space of a day, so it wasn't completely terrible, but it wasn't nearly as good as I wanted it to be.
Stormlord's Exile
This is the third book in a trilogy, so I basically knew what I was getting going in. The one thing I wanted from it was for at least one of the queer characters to survive. And whether they did or not is obviously a spoiler, so here are some spoiler bars: (skip) ...two out of three ain't bad? No, I'm actually pretty pleased with that, well done book. I've enjoyed this trilogy, even though I didn't really connect with the characters that much, which is usually a dealbreaker for me. And though not perfect, I feel like it was better than average at gender and sexuality? It did better at consent issues than I feared it might, and had some excellent female characters. It also had a trans character, which is sadly very rare, and though I wasn't 100% happy with every aspect of his portrayal, I was still really glad he existed. Also, I really liked all the twists and permutations the author put on her magic system: basically, all the powers are a form of water manipulation, but different characters have interestingly different strengths and weaknesses. So this trilogy is a cautious rec, with a warning for consent issues in the second one and the very nasty death of a child in the first.
JLA: Golden Perfect
I'm still not 100% certain how I felt about this one - the central story, ie the one I was reading it for, anyway. It was certainly interesting: the basic premise is that Diana, attempting to be scrupulously fair, goes against truth and as a consequence her lasso shatters and absolute truth goes wonky all over the world. It's fascinating to really examine the idea that fidelity to the truth is so central to who she is, and what that actually means, and I think I liked it? Maybe I need to read it again. (I know I hate Plastic Man, though. GO AWAY PLASTIC MAN.)
Nightwing: Year One
There were a few things I didn't like about this, particularly the way it seemed to be pushing Dick/Babs at the expense of Kory, which made no one look good (except of course Kory, but sadly she was Sir Not Appearing In This Volume), but basically it was DICK GRAYSON HAS A LOT OF FEELINGS, and that's the sort of thing I'm into, so thumbs up.
Robin: Unmasked
I read this to find out the background on Steph becoming Robin, and definitely enjoyed it (not least because the bit where Tim's father finds out he's Robin and there are Dramatic Confrontations appealed to one of my fictional kinks). There are some great moments for Steph herself (which I'd already seen on Tumblr, but never mind), Alfred was fantastic, and Tim himself is pretty adorable, it turns out. ♥
Teen Titans/Outsiders: The Death and Return of Donna Troy
This was certainly a comic that I read, yes indeed. I did like the issue in the middle where they're all mourning Donna, but otherwise, I wasn't keen on the "Death" half (especially (skip) the fact that another character dies and it's basically a throwaway moment and no one seems to care?) and the "Return" half was confusing even by comics standards.
The Wonder Woman Chronicles Vol 2
Wow, the "contains racism, sorry" warning at the beginning was DEFINITELY ACCURATE. D: Also I continue to be puzzled and annoyed by all the secret identity stuff. It really isn't necessary! But on cheerier notes:
1) that panel where Wonder Woman fools some Nazis with a fake Wonder Woman made out of ham actually makes a lot more sense in context.
2) there is a story told from the perspective of a Christmas tree. Which Wondy can talk to because she speaks the language of trees. At one point the baddies start an avalanche to crush the goodies and our tree is at the forefront of it, oh noes! The tree is sad because it doesn't want to crush anyone, but Wondy catches it and it swoons into her arms, and the day is saved. Hurrah!
The Lacuna
Stayed up until 2am two nights in a row reading this. NO REGRETS. It's written as a series of diaries and letters by an invented character called Harrison Shepherd, who spends a major portion of his life as cook and secretary in the household of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, before moving to America after the death of Trotsky. (He's half Mexican, half American, and though this dual identity is important to his character, I felt like Kingsolver did well at avoiding the clichéd "torn between his two identities!!!!" things.) I thought the Mexico-set first half was stronger, or possibly just more intense, but I loved the whole thing. I made the mistake of reading Goodreads reviews of it afterwards and spent a lot of time going NO YOU ARE WRONG at them. Lots of them seemed to find the protagonist boring, whereas I found him intensely likeable, and was very impressed that Kingsolver managed to make him so, despite the fact he spends the first half of the book erasing himself from his own narrative to the extent that he refers to himself in the third person on the rare occasions when he lets himself appear at all. And this self-erasure, this deliberate lacuna, is psychologically very plausible, given his personality, history and sexuality. I was tremendously invested in him: never before have I been more tempted to skip to the end and find out if everything works out OK. (I didn't.) And fair enough, whether you like the protagonist or not is a matter of taste (and it's possible that I overidentified with him, being a pretty private person myself), but some reviews described him as desexed, which... no. There's not any explicit sex scenes, but that's part of the point: it's one of the lacunae in his story. (There are obvious gaps where they would be.) His sexuality is one of the things he effaces and hides about himself, because it's the thirties/forties and he's gay. (SIDENOTE. I often read blurbs/books and think "it would be so great if [character(s)] were queer, but they won't be". ON THIS OCCASION I WAS GLORIOUSLY WRONG.) There is a whooooole lot of yearning, too. Anyway. This book is about a lot of things. Hope and art, loss and reclamation, writing, identity, owning yourself. The way understanding - of people, of history, of everything - is always incomplete, and sometimes we discover new things, but we can never quite see the complete truth. I thought it was wonderful. (Though, one note, I wouldn't recommend reading this specifically for Frida Kahlo or Diego Rivera. They're both significant characters, but the focus is really on Harrison Shepherd, not either of them. Also I'm not sure how well characterised they are - I have no reason to think they're out of character, but also no basis to say they're not.)
Memoirs of a Spacewoman
Some pretty old-school sf with a female lead, which I would have liked, but sadly it was full of gender essentialism and also made the occasional foray into casual racism. SIGH.
Bring Up The Bodies
This didn't blow me away like Wolf Hall did, possibly because it was more of a known quantity, but I still liked it very much. Mantel is excellent at making her historical characters feel both strange and familiar: they're clearly different from modern day people, operating under different cultural expectations and assumptions, but they're also very present and vivid people, who have nicknames and pass remarks on each other's hats. My mother, who lent this to me, commented that she found Cromwell too likeable, but to be honest, I didn't: understandable, yes, but he's too implacable to be likeable. He may not want his enemies to suffer unnecessary, but he has no qualms about a degree of suffering that he has deemed necessary.
Doctor Who: The Romance of Crime - Gareth Roberts
Ultimate Spider-Man: Cats and Kings
Ultimate Spider-Man: Ultimate Six
Ultimate Spider-Man: Hollywood
*Science Fiction Audiences: Reading Doctor Who and Star Trek - John Tulloch and Henry Jenkins
*The Shell House - Linda Newbery
*Stormlord's Exile - Glenda Larke
*JLA: Golden Perfect
*Nightwing: Year One
*Robin: Unmasked
*Teen Titans/Outsiders: The Death and Return of Donna Troy
The True Meaning of Smekday - Adam Rex
The Raven Boys - Maggie Stiefvater
Sense and Sensibility: Diaries and Screenplay - Emma Thompson
Runaways: Dead Wrong
*The Wonder Woman Chronicles Vol 2
Geist - Philippa Balantine
Demon Knights: The Avalon Trap
*The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver
The Travails of Jane Saint and Other Stories - Josephine Saxton
*Memoirs of a Spacewoman - Naomi Mitchison
Fear Itself: The Fearless
Bring Up The Bodies - Hilary Mantel
Blue Beetle: Reach for the Stars
Didn't finish: Magic For Beginners by Kelly Link. Given I have almost no patience with magical realism, I don't know why I thought I would like this. I mean, there was nothing actually wrong with it, it just wasn't for me.
Avengers Assemble: Science Bros
This was fun! Not amazing, but two solidly entertaining Avengers stories. The art wasn't the greatest (except for Natasha's flashbacks, I really liked it there), but it was fine, and at least Natasha's suit stayed fully done up all the way through her two issues. BABY STEPS.
Science Fiction Audiences
This was a little dense in places, but I did enjoy it a fair bit. I was interested to learn from the introduction that 70s Star Trek fans were often sneered at on the grounds of their perceived femaleness, which rather gives the lie to the idea that being mocked for one's nerdery is a uniquely male experience. Overall I liked the Star Trek half better than the Doctor Who half, which I found a little frustrating. (It didn't help that Tulloch dismissed the claim by one of the "young mothers" audience group that she loved Doctor Who and watched it every week on the grounds that she struggled to remember the names of some of the companions, but let a male self-proclaimed fan in the next section conflate Liz and Vicki without comment.) I thought the last chapter, on queer fans and Star Trek, was the strongest, but also the most depressing, as the excuses from the production team for the lack of queer visibility in Star Trek were very familiar, even though this book was published in 1995.
The Shell House
I loved Linda Newbery's books when I was a teenager and was really excited to find out she'd written something with gay characters in. Sadly it was a bit of a disappointment: the characters and their relationships didn't really ring true and the thematic elements never really gelled. It just felt... clumsy, which I wasn't expecting, and the ending was really unsatisfying. SADNESS. I mean, I read it all the way through in the space of a day, so it wasn't completely terrible, but it wasn't nearly as good as I wanted it to be.
Stormlord's Exile
This is the third book in a trilogy, so I basically knew what I was getting going in. The one thing I wanted from it was for at least one of the queer characters to survive. And whether they did or not is obviously a spoiler, so here are some spoiler bars: (skip) ...two out of three ain't bad? No, I'm actually pretty pleased with that, well done book. I've enjoyed this trilogy, even though I didn't really connect with the characters that much, which is usually a dealbreaker for me. And though not perfect, I feel like it was better than average at gender and sexuality? It did better at consent issues than I feared it might, and had some excellent female characters. It also had a trans character, which is sadly very rare, and though I wasn't 100% happy with every aspect of his portrayal, I was still really glad he existed. Also, I really liked all the twists and permutations the author put on her magic system: basically, all the powers are a form of water manipulation, but different characters have interestingly different strengths and weaknesses. So this trilogy is a cautious rec, with a warning for consent issues in the second one and the very nasty death of a child in the first.
JLA: Golden Perfect
I'm still not 100% certain how I felt about this one - the central story, ie the one I was reading it for, anyway. It was certainly interesting: the basic premise is that Diana, attempting to be scrupulously fair, goes against truth and as a consequence her lasso shatters and absolute truth goes wonky all over the world. It's fascinating to really examine the idea that fidelity to the truth is so central to who she is, and what that actually means, and I think I liked it? Maybe I need to read it again. (I know I hate Plastic Man, though. GO AWAY PLASTIC MAN.)
Nightwing: Year One
There were a few things I didn't like about this, particularly the way it seemed to be pushing Dick/Babs at the expense of Kory, which made no one look good (except of course Kory, but sadly she was Sir Not Appearing In This Volume), but basically it was DICK GRAYSON HAS A LOT OF FEELINGS, and that's the sort of thing I'm into, so thumbs up.
Robin: Unmasked
I read this to find out the background on Steph becoming Robin, and definitely enjoyed it (not least because the bit where Tim's father finds out he's Robin and there are Dramatic Confrontations appealed to one of my fictional kinks). There are some great moments for Steph herself (which I'd already seen on Tumblr, but never mind), Alfred was fantastic, and Tim himself is pretty adorable, it turns out. ♥
Teen Titans/Outsiders: The Death and Return of Donna Troy
This was certainly a comic that I read, yes indeed. I did like the issue in the middle where they're all mourning Donna, but otherwise, I wasn't keen on the "Death" half (especially (skip) the fact that another character dies and it's basically a throwaway moment and no one seems to care?) and the "Return" half was confusing even by comics standards.
The Wonder Woman Chronicles Vol 2
Wow, the "contains racism, sorry" warning at the beginning was DEFINITELY ACCURATE. D: Also I continue to be puzzled and annoyed by all the secret identity stuff. It really isn't necessary! But on cheerier notes:
1) that panel where Wonder Woman fools some Nazis with a fake Wonder Woman made out of ham actually makes a lot more sense in context.
2) there is a story told from the perspective of a Christmas tree. Which Wondy can talk to because she speaks the language of trees. At one point the baddies start an avalanche to crush the goodies and our tree is at the forefront of it, oh noes! The tree is sad because it doesn't want to crush anyone, but Wondy catches it and it swoons into her arms, and the day is saved. Hurrah!
The Lacuna
Stayed up until 2am two nights in a row reading this. NO REGRETS. It's written as a series of diaries and letters by an invented character called Harrison Shepherd, who spends a major portion of his life as cook and secretary in the household of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, before moving to America after the death of Trotsky. (He's half Mexican, half American, and though this dual identity is important to his character, I felt like Kingsolver did well at avoiding the clichéd "torn between his two identities!!!!" things.) I thought the Mexico-set first half was stronger, or possibly just more intense, but I loved the whole thing. I made the mistake of reading Goodreads reviews of it afterwards and spent a lot of time going NO YOU ARE WRONG at them. Lots of them seemed to find the protagonist boring, whereas I found him intensely likeable, and was very impressed that Kingsolver managed to make him so, despite the fact he spends the first half of the book erasing himself from his own narrative to the extent that he refers to himself in the third person on the rare occasions when he lets himself appear at all. And this self-erasure, this deliberate lacuna, is psychologically very plausible, given his personality, history and sexuality. I was tremendously invested in him: never before have I been more tempted to skip to the end and find out if everything works out OK. (I didn't.) And fair enough, whether you like the protagonist or not is a matter of taste (and it's possible that I overidentified with him, being a pretty private person myself), but some reviews described him as desexed, which... no. There's not any explicit sex scenes, but that's part of the point: it's one of the lacunae in his story. (There are obvious gaps where they would be.) His sexuality is one of the things he effaces and hides about himself, because it's the thirties/forties and he's gay. (SIDENOTE. I often read blurbs/books and think "it would be so great if [character(s)] were queer, but they won't be". ON THIS OCCASION I WAS GLORIOUSLY WRONG.) There is a whooooole lot of yearning, too. Anyway. This book is about a lot of things. Hope and art, loss and reclamation, writing, identity, owning yourself. The way understanding - of people, of history, of everything - is always incomplete, and sometimes we discover new things, but we can never quite see the complete truth. I thought it was wonderful. (Though, one note, I wouldn't recommend reading this specifically for Frida Kahlo or Diego Rivera. They're both significant characters, but the focus is really on Harrison Shepherd, not either of them. Also I'm not sure how well characterised they are - I have no reason to think they're out of character, but also no basis to say they're not.)
Memoirs of a Spacewoman
Some pretty old-school sf with a female lead, which I would have liked, but sadly it was full of gender essentialism and also made the occasional foray into casual racism. SIGH.
Bring Up The Bodies
This didn't blow me away like Wolf Hall did, possibly because it was more of a known quantity, but I still liked it very much. Mantel is excellent at making her historical characters feel both strange and familiar: they're clearly different from modern day people, operating under different cultural expectations and assumptions, but they're also very present and vivid people, who have nicknames and pass remarks on each other's hats. My mother, who lent this to me, commented that she found Cromwell too likeable, but to be honest, I didn't: understandable, yes, but he's too implacable to be likeable. He may not want his enemies to suffer unnecessary, but he has no qualms about a degree of suffering that he has deemed necessary.
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no subject
Date: 1 Jan 2014 19:17 (UTC)That Donna Troy comic was really weird, especially the whole part where she became a space goddess. I liked the George Perez art, though!
Wonder Woman making a ham decoy and talking to swooning trees sounds hilarious.
Oh, P.S., I am now reading Soon I Will Be Invincible! I am only like 60 pages in but I like it so far.
no subject
Date: 1 Jan 2014 22:59 (UTC)Right? I have no idea what happened in it. Which seems appropriate for Donna, based on what I know about her, actually...
The early Wonder Woman comics swing rapidly back and forth between "slightly dull", "really offensive" and "HILARIOUS SHENANIGANS"!
Yay! I remember I liked it more the further into it I got, so hope that works for you too!
no subject
Date: 1 Jan 2014 23:06 (UTC)Haha, right, Donna has something like 3 origins, none of which make much sense. :P
Yay, I will look forward to that, then!
no subject
Date: 2 Jan 2014 17:37 (UTC)no subject
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Date: 3 Jan 2014 10:07 (UTC)