laceblade

Heidi - As a child, I imprinted on the movie version of Heidi, which had Jason Robards & cast Jane Seymour as Fraulein Rottenmeier. This probably had a lot to do with the fact that I devoutly watched Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, every week (yeah, I know).
Heidi is a book about miserable people whose mental & physical woes are cured by the fresh air & impressive views of the Alps. Or possibly, faith in God.
There's a weird trick with this one. Despite the fact that I really don't believe in, "God has a plan, so everything will work out, you just need to trust him" & also tend to abhor the "person is paralyzed and then magically cured!!", it works for me in this book because the "cure" works first for people who are sad & visit the mountain. They eat good food, they get stronger by being outside. And after Heidi comes back from Frankfurt & becomes a little more "learned," people become less crabby/fearful both because they reconcile their relationships with God & also because they meet one another through Heidi, & are able to help solve one another's problems.
Peter's grandmother can never sleep at night because their house is rattling, & she's afraid it'll cave in. Heidi's irritable grandfather comes & patches it all up before the winter, & so Grandmother is able to sleep & grow a little stronger.
Also, Heidi's able to pull strings with her rich friends in Frankfurt to supply the Grandmother with soft bread she can eat (rather than the cheaper brown bread she can't really handle), & also transport the bed she herself slept on in Germany so that the Grandmother's head can be elevated at night.
It all works out, like some kind of feminist utopia. The book was written in 1880, so ymmv. I really liked it.

ATLA FCBD offering - I was so excited to read this because Faith Erin Hicks did the art!! GO FAITH!!! An excellent story for Free Comic Book Day, & we got to see Suki be a badass.

Journey Into Mystery featuring Lady Sif, volume 1: Stronger Than Monsters - borrowed from garrideb through our comics club. Sif is kind of like a lady-version of Thor. No prior knowledge of Asgard/Thor stuff is needed, which is good, because I've never seen his movies & am only aware of him as he appears in the Avengers movie. This was pretty decent! I put volume 2 on hold at the library, although I think the story was canceled after just two volumes.
It'll be interesting the next time I reread my beloved Runaways, as I've now read other stuff by most of the authors!

Sea Change - Continuing in my quest to read books from the 2013 Tiptree Award Shortlist. I'm going to be lazy & crib the Tiptree Award's description:

This debut novel tells a dark, fairy tale-like story of a young girl and her best friend, Octavius, who is an eloquent, intelligent kraken. When Octavius is captured, Lilly sets out to rescue him, bargaining with a greedy circus master, a witch, and a pair of gay bandits. She is transformed by her quest, giving up everything she has known, including her gender, to save her friend.

And it does pretty much that! An okay read, but this writing style didn't really grab me.

Angel & Faith, s10 #2 - Still okay-ish?! I'm feeling Faith's plot more than Angel's at the moment. I hope they team up again.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - This was a reread, although I didn't remember much of my first read except that I liked it, lol. AND I STILL LIKE IT. The gods, Yeine, political intrigue up the wazoo, this is just great. I know some people have griped about the writing, in how the narrator is flashing forward and back sometimes, but it really works for me as an honest first-person perspective, and that's how I feel when I'm reading it - not at all like I'm uncomfortable in the hands of an inexperienced writer.
I reread it so that I can read the rest of the trilogy. N.K. Jemisin is one of the Guests of Honor at this year's WisCon, which is why I'm try to hustle through some of her books before Memorial Day weekend. I'm really looking forward to the next one, especially because it gets away from the uber-privileged people of the first book. I'm eager to see what this world looks like from someone else's perspective.
I was stopped by two strangers - one on the bus & one on the street - who told me how much they love this book.

• What are you currently reading?
Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler. This is my first time reading this book; I read Parable of the Sower back in Summer 2012 I think.
While the story is still mostly told through Lauren's journals, there's now also some reflections by her daughter Larkin, writing way off in the future. Larkin's bitter about her mom caring more about Earthseed than about her, so she spends a lot of time criticizing her mother's decisions.
I'm torn with this as a writing method. On the one hand, it seems like kind of a lazy way to complicate your character/make the reader question their motives & decisions? But it also makes me really interested in Larkin.
I'm about halfway through, so [spoiler] just happened and things are sad.


• What did you recently finish reading?
Saturn Apartments, volume 5 - It's been a while since I read 1-4, but I still really love this series. IN THE FUTURE people have abandoned Earth & live in rings surrounding Saturn. The protagonist, Mitsu, washes windows separating liveable ecosystems from SPACE. He himself lives in a dark under-city where there are no windows - he can't afford to live by them. Washing windows in space suits is a dangerous job.
I <3 this series a lot. This would be a nice series for those just beginning with manga, I think. For locals, I've read all the volumes from our local library system.

Hawkeye #11 - PIZZA DOG I LOVE HIM

X-Men #2 - As I said on Twitter, idk who the fuck anyone is, but I'm enjoying this just the same. Are there any gr9 stand-alones about Kitty Pryde or Jubilee out there in the world?

Angel & Faith #23 (What You Want, Not What You Need part 3) - UMM I'm really digging everyone and it's all apocalypse-y now. GILES' AUNTS FOREVER.


• What do you think you’ll read next?
Hopefully more manga, as I have a pile of it checked out from the library ^^;;;

• What are you currently reading?
Nothing, really? About to start Young Avengers #4

• What did you recently finish reading?
Killjoys comic preview from FCBD: This was really fast-paced, I think too much so?? mergh. Maybe I need to reread it :[

ATLA FCBD short: "Rebound," featuring Mai on the cover, :D after her breakup with Zuko, Mai's depressed & hanging out working in her aunt's flower shop, in the Fire Nation.
I am continually impressed by Gene Luen Yang's ability to write the ATLA characters true to form (here, in The Promise, & now in The Search), and also honestly look at how the political aftermath of the events would leave these kids, their families, & their societies. I see these comics as the true successor to the original show, rather than the slapped-together & sometimes irresponsible Legend of Korra.
(PS: Gene Luen Yang tweeted at me?!?!)

Saga #11 & #12 - lots of emotions in these two issues! I still love the dialogue, the art, ad the pacing. I'm sad this is going on hiatus for a while so they can build up a backlog. Does anyone know how long the hiatus is supposed to last?

Star Wars: The Assassination of Darth Vader, another short from FCBD. This was the flip side of the ATLA one about Mai. This takes place shortly before movie IV. Written by Brian Wood, basically a Vader monologue about what a badass he is, as we watch him kill his would-be assassins. Forgettable.

Willow: Wonderland, #5 (final) The end, by which I mean the final page, was great. I'm not sure I'll ever want to reread this, though.

Buffy Season 9, #19 (Welcome to the Team #4) - ( Spoilers )

Angel & Faith (& Spike) #20 - Working through some heavy shit in this issue. I still like it so much. I very much appreciate Spike's presence, & sort of wish he'd shown up earlier rather than having his own 5-issue spin-off. Buffy comics are pretty dialogue-heavy. It's a thing that irritates me a little when I compare them to other series.

Buffy Season 9, #20 (The Watcher) - a POV of Xander's manpain, but at least in the end I felt very justified by my disgust with him.

Angel & Faith #21 - I didn't think that the mission that started off the premise of this series would remain its focus, & now I'm just afraid to see what happens! We're now in the final arc. I'm scared/excited to keep reading, ;_; ( Spoilers ) With this, I'm now caught up on Buffyverse comics! \o/

Wild Ones, volume 2: There was a great triumphant moment at the end of this volume. So, obviously Sachie & Rakuto are working to keep their yakuza-ness a secret from their high school classmates. Due to some strange turns of events, this secret is basically threatened to be revealed. And in this AWESOME scene, Sachie is a total badass, and basically says, "Yeah, so I'm yakuza. What of it? You wanna go?" OMG THIS BAMF RN.
They walk it back a little by having Rakuto tell her classmates, "Oh, she was just acting for this school event, isn't she a great actress?! Hahaha."

Wild Ones, volume 3: More of the same. It's like...there's not a lot going on in this series that's special? Mostly the same shoujo. I'm a little creeped out by how much time Sachie's grandfather & Rakuto spend talking about who Sachie should/shouldn't be spending her time with, instead of allowing her to make those decisions herself. ("I don't want my granddaughter to grow up to be with someone in the yakuza...") Also some typical shoujo things, where a dude with strong feelings for a girl ends up in awkward body positions where he's directly over her body, etc., in images that look a little disturbingly like a prelude to sexual assault (but it never goes there).
There's a satisfying moment in this volume, too. Rakuto is asked to perform a pointless rescue mission of Sachie. He's being "tested" & there are a lot of arbitrary rules to follow. In the end, he's about to miss rescuing her by the certain time limit, but then Sachie stands up to her captor, says, "There's no rule saying that I have to wait to be rescued," & jumps out the window (into Rakuto's arms). Immediately afterward, the captor says something about Rakuto always saving her, and Sachie is defiant, saying, "No! We save each other."
MANGA, YOU ARE WORKING MY WAY INTO MY HEART.
Thus far, the series has not really addressed the seedy work performed by all of the men surrounding Sachie's life. I'd like to know way more about their ties to their community, whether they actually kill people, etc.

Wild Ones, volume 4: The feature of Sachie shooting a fake gun at a festival GIVES ME LIFE. STOP TEASING ME, MANGA. I want Sachie going on missions with her yakuza crew, pwning people.
Anyway, Sachie leaves her home to go to a festival WITH SOMEONE ELSE. Even though she'd rather be with Rakuto, SHE CAN'T SAY NO.
Back at her grandfather's place, all the men bemoan her absence, & remember how before she came to live with them, they ate instant meals every day. THANKS FOR ESTABLISHING THE ONLY GIRL IN THIS SERIES MAKES EVERYONE'S MEALS DESPITE GOING TO CLASS AT HIGH SCHOOL. Has anyone ever made a list of all manga in which girls provide food FOR EVERYONE?
This is a reason why I like xxxHolic - Watanuki is the one doing all domestic tasks (he's the dude protagonist).
It turns out that Sachie can't stay away for a single night. Rakuto shows up in Okinawa to essentially kidnap her home. (He literally picks her up and steps directly back on to the train he came from, sending both of them farther away from home instead of towards it.)
The end of the last chapter epitomizes what I both love & hate about this series. Sachie drops her wallet & then gets into an altercation when one dude tells her to step off because he's part of a yakuza clan.
Sachie's face turns angry & bamf-like, and she yells, "Turns out that we're part of the same world!" But then you turn the page & Rakuto shows up to say, "I told you so many times to go straight home. What am I going to do with you, Sachie?" UGH.

Venus Capriccio, volume 2: I'd forgotten that Akira is a little exoticised for his "beauty" (whenever the word "beautiful" is used, Takami, the narrator, makes sure to say "even though he's a guy"). He is beautiful in part BECAUSE he is part European, apparently.
Anyway, Takami gets a job at a restaurant, so Akira gets one there, too, to "watch her." Takami's grumpy about this. When she accidentally serves people the wrong salad, he intervenes to apologize on her behalf & also serve the correct food.
He arranges his schedule to match hers to walk her home & calls someone else to do it when he is unavailable.
One night, some hoodlums show up in the restaurant & hit on her. Takami is handling it, but there's no need because Akira shows up to spill water on their heads.
They leave, and he berates Takami. "You're still a girl, Takami. Wake up and recognize that. You're too vulnerable. It's dangerous for you to be walking the streets alone at night..."

It's so gross. I feel like Venus Capriccio and Wild Ones are both communicating the same message: It's romantic for a boy to step in & control a girl's life: Who she sees, where she goes. There isn't room for any men in a girl's life except for her romantic interest. And any misfortune she experiences for daring to [exist outside the shelter of home after sunset / talk to men / etc.] is absolutely her fault.

If anyone's wondering why I prefer series with just girls & no men lately (i.e., K-On!, AKB0048, etc.), this is a huge reason why.
The volume picked up a little after that - I still enjoy watching Akira and Takami play the pinao. I enjoy this series' art. I just still had some smoldering rage going on.

Some Glee fics:
drowning in your dizzy noise by timorous_scribe - Santana and Rachel, three fail-starts and one take-off. Assumes events up to 4x17 'Guilty Pleasures.' (NSFW)

Mixed Media by parsnips - Cooper Anderson lands a role on a show called White Collar, & so obviously the entire Glee Club becomes involved in the White Collar fandom. Blaine-centric, which I usually don't enjoy, but this fic is HILARIOUS & I loved every part of it.
He's a professional. He knows about pointing.

• What do you think you’ll read next?
idk. Likely more comics. I don't want to knock on comics b/c they can be super important & meaningful, but I'm still feeling not up to the emotional complexity of novels.
The Anna Karenina book club next meets during WisCon, & I had to return my copy to the library a while. I am not feeling compelled to finish it, especially as someone mentioned that more [redacted] happens.
I also stopped reading Kokoro for that reason, too.
I have more Wild Ones manga waiting for me at the library.

Doing this meme along with wild_irises and bcholmes and the folks at shouldbereading.wordpress.com.

• What are you currently reading?
Well, I'm still reading the books I discussed last time although I dropped God's War, it just wasn't doing it for me.
So from last time, that's still The Rescuers, I've Been Trying to Reach You (Glee fic), and The North Remembers (Game of Thrones fic).

Since then, I've added:
Struck by Lightning by Chris Colfer - a companion to the movie of the same name, which he wrote & starred in. So far I like this more than I liked The Land of Stories but there are still a few things that irk me about his writing style. I'm assuming I'll enjoy it best on film, but like I said, I'm liking this book a lot more than his first one, and am generally enjoying it.

Gokinjo Monogatari (Neighborhood Story), a manga series by Ai Yazawa (manga-ka of Paradise Kiss and NANA)
This series has not been released in the US, so I'm reading a version that was translated by fans on my laptop.
Mikako and her neighbor Tsutomu attend an arts school in Tokyo, and have been next-door neighbors since they were children. They've been friends forever but have only recently started to consider whether their feelings for one another might be more-than-friends.
I love everything I've ever read by Yazawa and this is no different. I'm so excited to read more!!

Balance of Power, a ff7 fic written by Frank Vederosa and Jen. It takes place post-game, when Wutai and Junon are vying to fill the power vacuum left by the Shinra Corporation. It focuses on Tifa and Cid. 10+ years ago, when Vederosa was popular, I often looked at this fic and then stopped reading it because the politics were too hard for me to follow.
Now I'm all GIVE ME THE POLITICS!!
The writing is not stellar and there are a lot of cliches. The plot is moving too slowly for me at the moment BUT there is enough here for me to keep going.
I'm trying to figure out how to post my thoughts on the old FF7 fic I'm rereading/reading for the first time. I guess a series of DW posts would be best; it'll likely take me years to get through everything I'd like to get through.
The front page at that link has a 5-paragraph description of the fic's premise, which is unfortunately way more interesting than anything that's happened in the fic.

I read a lot of Vederosa's stuff back in the day, but I can't remember whether I read any of Jen's, so I might look into that if I can find an archive of her fic. (Did she run the Rocket Town archive??) This is the problem with a hella old fandom :[


• What did you recently finish reading?
Those Yuletide recs I already linked to. I've read a few other people's Yuletide recs. I'm reading a bunch of fic.

Plant Your Hope With Good Seeds by river_soul - ASoIaF fic, AU where Sansa & a chest of gold DO get traded for Jaime Lannister in Clash of Kings, and she meets up with Robb and her mom.

Warm the Lonely Nights by valiant - set after "Glee, Actually," Sam goes to New York for New Year's Eve to hang out with Kurt and Rachel. NC-17.
Part 2. Part 3.
I'd like to draw little hearts around valiant's fic forever. Her Kurt and her Sam are just perfection, imo.


I did catch up with Buffy Season 9 and Angel and Faith and its spin-offs (Spike: A Dark Place, and Willow: Wonderland).
Buffy Season 9 had been taking a few turns with Buffy trying some new things, but is turning "inward" again with her going "back" to slaying and hanging around Xander and Dawn.
I was annoyed by the two issues focusing on Billy the Vampire Slayer. Even though Billy seems like a cool character & I'm glad he's around, I was grumpy about the Buffy series having the focus shift away from Buffy. BUT. Digging it now.

Angel & Faith had been slightly more boring than it had been in the first few issues, but then PLOT TWIST happened and it's exciting.
ALSO: GILES'S AUNTS ARE LITERALLY THE BEST, I should look for fanfic about them because omg. Best.

I've been incredibly bored by Spike: A Dark Place. At 4 out of 5 issues, not much has happened. Taking a single character away from everyone else and putting them into their own mini-arc is not exciting for me. I like Buffy because of the ensemble. Most of the characters are boring on their own.
idk what they're doing with Spike after this 5-issue mini-arc - is he going to rejoin Buffy, go on to the Angel & Faith title, or what? I'm not sure.

Willow's mini-arc has only had one issue so far, but I feel like that the same as I do about Spike's: boring when she's off on her own, even if she has way more purpose/a plot than Spike did.


• What do you think you’ll read next?
Roger Ebert's The Pot and How to Use It, a rice cooker cookbook, should be waiting for me at the library when I get back home after a week at the parents' house.
Otherwise I'd really like to get through the books I've got in progress right now ^^;

Lots of comics!reading. Prompted by: Borders going-out-of-business sales, living 2 blocks from a comics shop, multiple bad pain days.

I don't really do heavy synopses; sorry if that's what you're looking for.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: Campus Apocalypse - 4-volume manga series by Mingming. An AU!Evangelion in which everyone attends school, and fights in a virtual reality world with guns.
The art style was mediocre, but it was emotionally satisfying in that the kids - Kaworu, Rei, Shinji, Asuka, etc. all stand up for each other in a way they never do in the actual Evangelion series. I found the plot mostly nonsensical.

I'm not upset that I read it, but I don't think I'll be keeping it. Anybody want it? I'll send it to you for the cost of shipping.

Codename Sailor V by Naoko Takeuchi, volume 1 of 2. The titular Sailor V character is Sailor Venus, one of Sailor Moon's friends/fellow fighters in the Sailor Moon series. Sailor V was a pre-cursor to the Sailor Moon saga, and I enjoyed reading it (I've been wanting to for a long time!). Minako is ready to kick some ass right from the beginning in a way that takes a few issues before Usagi feels the same way in the sister series.
This was fun to read in a cracktastic way - there isn't much in the way of "deep, meaningful plot." Still, it was a fun ride, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of it.

Sailor Moon, vol. 1 also by Naoko Takeuchi, a U.S. reprint by Kodansha. I'm one of the rare people who has all 18 volumes of Tokyopop's initial print of Sailor Moon. The original printing was pretty small (shorter, thinner than the average manga book), and the glue job was actually the worst I've ever seen in manga.

This re-release by Kodansha used the art touch-ups from the Japanese reprint. So a lot of the art looks cleaner, more in proportion, etc. If you're interested in side-by-side comparisons with the original, you can check that out here. Some of the changes I like, but one thing I liked about the original was when characters "go faceless," or their features - eyes, nose, etc. - disappear in moments of high drama, when characters are attacking or shouting or etc. So, while I'm really really glad about the re-print, I'll be saving my old tomes even though they're falling apart.

I won't recap the plot/premise because most of you know it (and if you don't, you can read such a review here.)

Buffy, Season 9 - Only one issue so far, but it looks like it's going to be a better ride than Season 8 was (this will have fewer characters, much less EPIC of a plot, etc). I like reading these a lot; the comedic timing of the show still transfers, and I like re-visiting these characters.

Angel & Faith - It's hard to talk about this much without giving away massive, massive spoilers for the end of Buffy Season 8, so let's just say that based on first issue, I like this even more than Buffy season 9. It's Angel and Faith, captured perfectly in comics form, doing what I like watching them do best - struggle with redemption for the terrible things they've done.
This takes place on the same timeline as Buffy Season 9.

Batwoman - with DC revamping 52 of its titles, I figured I'd jump on board with a few of them. For Batwoman, I read the Batwoman: Elegy compilation, and have now read the first issue of the new series. I'd say this is worth reading for the art style alone: it's gorgeous. As bonus points, Batwoman herself is a lesbian, which is much-appreciated in the sausagefest wasteland that is Most of DC's Other Titles. I've heard this team had a hard time sticking to a schedule during Elegy, so I hope that they can keep it up.
Either way, I highly recommend checking out Batwoman: Elegy, which tells her backstory. Our library has multiple copies.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - A decent first issue, imo. I like the art style, there are heaps of nostalgia for me, as I owned lots of TMNT action figures in my youth and enjoyed the gritty 80s movies (or was it early 90s??). They're putting a few twists on things: April O'Neill is a lab researcher instead of a reporter, Raphael seems estranged from his fellow turtles in the present although we don't know why, etc.
As a warning, there is a page of domestic violence in the first issue, although I don't think it will be a continuing storyline.


Next week I intend to check out Wonder Woman and the new Ultimate Spiderman.
I have piles of manga to read, too. I left Borders more than once carrying armfuls, ^^;