Books and comics read in September 2017
Wednesday, 4 October 2017 20:26![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usuallyhats
The Fictional Mother - Tansy Rayner Roberts
Please Look After This Angel and other winged stories - Tansy Rayner Roberts
Running Through Corridors, Volume 2: The 70s - Rob Shearman and Toby Hadoke
The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart - Stephanie Burgis
In Other Lands - Sarah Rees Brennan
The Fifth Elephant - Terry Pratchett
The Sword in the Stone - TH White
Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor: A Matter of Life and Death
The Burning Page - Genevieve Cogman
Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet: The People's Revolution
Around India in Eighty Trains - Monisha Rajesh
The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart
This children's book about a dragon who gets turned into a human girl and discovers a taste for chocolate was a sheer delight. Aventurine is a gloriously spiky heroine: Stephanie Burgis does a great job at making her both dragon and girl simultaneously. And I loved her confident, smart friend Silke - so pleased to hear that the sequel will focus on her.
In Other Lands
I loved this book when it was The Turn of the Story and I love it now. It's SO funny, and yet also SO moving - the characters ring so true and the humour is never at their expense. Elliot's ongoing outrage at the tropes of fantasyland is a continual delight. And the misandry of Serene and her society is really well handled: it's hilarious and pointed, but it also considers the effect of being friends with someone who doesn't consider you entirely a person, without falling into the trap that this kind of reversal can where it implies that we only care about sexism when it's turned on men. (It helps that we see that yes, Serene IS affected by the misogyny of human society.) In short: this book is great, ten out of ten would read again.
Didn't finish: A Rising Man
My major problem with this book was basically that I hated the main character. He was sexist and classist in ways that I'm not sure the author was aware of, and racist in ways that I'm pretty sure he was. I was never sure whether the author was going for "less racist than the other white people in this book, what a hero" (which given the setting was a low bar, plus running the risk of using racism to make a white guy look good), or just "look how racist this guy is", which is a legit choice, but I didn't think the book was well written enough to pull it off. The writing really wasn't great: there was so much exposition, mostly conveyed through people explaining the ins and outs of their lives and situations to the main character for several paragraphs. People don't talk like that! D:
Please Look After This Angel and other winged stories - Tansy Rayner Roberts
Running Through Corridors, Volume 2: The 70s - Rob Shearman and Toby Hadoke
The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart - Stephanie Burgis
In Other Lands - Sarah Rees Brennan
The Fifth Elephant - Terry Pratchett
The Sword in the Stone - TH White
Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor: A Matter of Life and Death
The Burning Page - Genevieve Cogman
Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet: The People's Revolution
Around India in Eighty Trains - Monisha Rajesh
The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart
This children's book about a dragon who gets turned into a human girl and discovers a taste for chocolate was a sheer delight. Aventurine is a gloriously spiky heroine: Stephanie Burgis does a great job at making her both dragon and girl simultaneously. And I loved her confident, smart friend Silke - so pleased to hear that the sequel will focus on her.
In Other Lands
I loved this book when it was The Turn of the Story and I love it now. It's SO funny, and yet also SO moving - the characters ring so true and the humour is never at their expense. Elliot's ongoing outrage at the tropes of fantasyland is a continual delight. And the misandry of Serene and her society is really well handled: it's hilarious and pointed, but it also considers the effect of being friends with someone who doesn't consider you entirely a person, without falling into the trap that this kind of reversal can where it implies that we only care about sexism when it's turned on men. (It helps that we see that yes, Serene IS affected by the misogyny of human society.) In short: this book is great, ten out of ten would read again.
Didn't finish: A Rising Man
My major problem with this book was basically that I hated the main character. He was sexist and classist in ways that I'm not sure the author was aware of, and racist in ways that I'm pretty sure he was. I was never sure whether the author was going for "less racist than the other white people in this book, what a hero" (which given the setting was a low bar, plus running the risk of using racism to make a white guy look good), or just "look how racist this guy is", which is a legit choice, but I didn't think the book was well written enough to pull it off. The writing really wasn't great: there was so much exposition, mostly conveyed through people explaining the ins and outs of their lives and situations to the main character for several paragraphs. People don't talk like that! D: