![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
And the second half of June
Jul. 2nd, 2013 03:43 pmGraphic Novels
God Save the Queen by Mike Carey and John Bolton. I've read some of Mike Carey's novels, and there are parts that I like about them, but they're never immersive, I can always feel something off in the prose/the treatment of women even when I don't bother to pinpoint exactly what's wrong. This was sort of the same, sad and sweet and funny, but the main character just didn't feel complete. On the other hand, someone gets killed with a spoon.
Tales from outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan. If I was the sort of person who forced books upon people, I would mail this to Feste in a heartbeat. It's eerie and disorienting and beautiful in very quiet ways. The illustrations remind me a lot of Quint Buchholz (the random german painter whose postcards I collect). It's about traditions and homes and comfort, I think.
Strange Girl: Girl Afraid by Rick Remender. On Feste's recommendation. There are some lovely dynamics in this book, and an interesting premise, and at least one laugh out loud on the bus and make people look at me funny line but I accidentally went ahead and read the author's notes and it turns out, he's a creep with some weird assumptions about women and gender.
Graphic, but not a novel.
Design and the Modern Kitchen: counterspace by Juliet Kinchin with Aidan O'Connor. A MOMA exhibition book about the evolution of kitchen. Notable for having the same juicer that was in the Supersizers eat the 80s episode.
Neither novel nor graphic
Proof by David Auburn. Unexpected introduced me to this play, and I remembered adoring it so when I saw it at a library sale, I picked it up to re-read. It makes me want to stage things. It's about math and depression and family and belief and it's awesome. I stumbled a little bit at first, I had lost the knack of reading plays. But unlike riding a bicycle was for me, it was a knack that was easy to pick up again.
Novels:
You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down by Alice Walker. I'd read all but the last story of this collection many many years ago and kept not managing to read the last story. It wasn't because I didn't like the author, but because it was a very particular printing of this book that always made me think of college, which wasn't a trip I go on without very good reasons. You see, this was a The Women's Press Fiction edition. I went through most of my college library and read all the books that had that distinct slanting black and white lines, giving myself a crash course in feminist lit. But finish it I did, and so it moves from the unread to the read bookshelves.
Weight by Jeanette Winterson. I love the idea of the canongate the myths series, and I loved penelopiad with a purity akin to spiritual. And Jeanette Winterson's another one of those authors I've imprinted on (like Byatt). But this was so much whitespace that it made me think of writing papers in highschool and college, mucking with margins and font until the actual content was a teeny square floating in a white vastness.
Sever by Lauren Destefano. Dystopian/apocalyptic young adult fiction. Third in the series. I don't have anything especially nice or especially negative to say.
Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead by Alan Deniro. Some of these shorts blew me away. "Our Byzantium" "Cuttlefish" and "Salting the map" are some of my favorite things I've read this year. Unfortunately, not all the stories were of the same caliber, so it was a very rollercoaster experience.
Kraken by China Mieville. This should have been my wheelhouse. But it didn't seem to know what to do with itself, and to cover up that, it just kept throwing new elements at the wall to see what would stick. And there's awesome elements. Cult-collectors, the overlapping myths of a city, someone who goes by the name Marginalia (but every calls her Marge), familiars going on strike. Final verdict, a bit of a slog, but I enjoyed most of it.
God Save the Queen by Mike Carey and John Bolton. I've read some of Mike Carey's novels, and there are parts that I like about them, but they're never immersive, I can always feel something off in the prose/the treatment of women even when I don't bother to pinpoint exactly what's wrong. This was sort of the same, sad and sweet and funny, but the main character just didn't feel complete. On the other hand, someone gets killed with a spoon.
Tales from outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan. If I was the sort of person who forced books upon people, I would mail this to Feste in a heartbeat. It's eerie and disorienting and beautiful in very quiet ways. The illustrations remind me a lot of Quint Buchholz (the random german painter whose postcards I collect). It's about traditions and homes and comfort, I think.
Strange Girl: Girl Afraid by Rick Remender. On Feste's recommendation. There are some lovely dynamics in this book, and an interesting premise, and at least one laugh out loud on the bus and make people look at me funny line but I accidentally went ahead and read the author's notes and it turns out, he's a creep with some weird assumptions about women and gender.
Graphic, but not a novel.
Design and the Modern Kitchen: counterspace by Juliet Kinchin with Aidan O'Connor. A MOMA exhibition book about the evolution of kitchen. Notable for having the same juicer that was in the Supersizers eat the 80s episode.
Neither novel nor graphic
Proof by David Auburn. Unexpected introduced me to this play, and I remembered adoring it so when I saw it at a library sale, I picked it up to re-read. It makes me want to stage things. It's about math and depression and family and belief and it's awesome. I stumbled a little bit at first, I had lost the knack of reading plays. But unlike riding a bicycle was for me, it was a knack that was easy to pick up again.
Novels:
You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down by Alice Walker. I'd read all but the last story of this collection many many years ago and kept not managing to read the last story. It wasn't because I didn't like the author, but because it was a very particular printing of this book that always made me think of college, which wasn't a trip I go on without very good reasons. You see, this was a The Women's Press Fiction edition. I went through most of my college library and read all the books that had that distinct slanting black and white lines, giving myself a crash course in feminist lit. But finish it I did, and so it moves from the unread to the read bookshelves.
Weight by Jeanette Winterson. I love the idea of the canongate the myths series, and I loved penelopiad with a purity akin to spiritual. And Jeanette Winterson's another one of those authors I've imprinted on (like Byatt). But this was so much whitespace that it made me think of writing papers in highschool and college, mucking with margins and font until the actual content was a teeny square floating in a white vastness.
Sever by Lauren Destefano. Dystopian/apocalyptic young adult fiction. Third in the series. I don't have anything especially nice or especially negative to say.
Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead by Alan Deniro. Some of these shorts blew me away. "Our Byzantium" "Cuttlefish" and "Salting the map" are some of my favorite things I've read this year. Unfortunately, not all the stories were of the same caliber, so it was a very rollercoaster experience.
Kraken by China Mieville. This should have been my wheelhouse. But it didn't seem to know what to do with itself, and to cover up that, it just kept throwing new elements at the wall to see what would stick. And there's awesome elements. Cult-collectors, the overlapping myths of a city, someone who goes by the name Marginalia (but every calls her Marge), familiars going on strike. Final verdict, a bit of a slog, but I enjoyed most of it.
