February Books (Graphic Novels, Movie)
Mar. 2nd, 2009 12:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksI've been tracking my reading as I go this year in a post at the top of my LJ, which is new; under the cut, unedited, are the things I wrote about the things I read in February (books and graphic novels) and the one film I saw in a theatre.
Books:
12. The White Rose, Glen Cook. In tiny increments at work. Like, a paragraph at a time since December. I wanted to know how the plot came out, but really the latter two were so much less good than The Black Company that I think I am done with Glen Cook now.
not-13. My Miserable Lonely Lesbian Pregnancy, Andrea Askowitz. ... it's because she's making herself miserable. Seriously. Dude, the stereotype about lesbians is that we think about our emotions too much. Maybe consider that? Anyway, Anne Lamott this ain't. There is this specific kind of self-deprecating lesbian humor that causes me to wonder whether the person making it actually likes a) herself and b) women, and I have almost no tolerance for that in recent years. Query To Self: I didn't think I bounced off books this often. Apparently I do?
13. The Attack of the Two-Inch Teacher, Bruce Coville. When I am in a library, I have a habit of scanning the children's shelves to see what Coville they have in and then reading anything I haven't right there on the spot. They're so short I don't want to haul them home, and they generally take about fifteen minutes to read. Nothing beats Coville's warm, friendly, endlessly welcoming worlds for a relaxing break (unless the library has an uncommon book by Daniel Pinkwater). When I have children, I intend to buy his stuff in bulk. (ETA: I pretty much did buy his stuff in bulk at Boskone. There is something about buying stuff when you can hand money to the author...)
14. The Sinner, Madeline Hunter. Not the weakest of Hunter I've read, but by far the weakest of the only series of hers that had not previously made me want to throw anything at the wall. Readable, but so aggravating on gender and plot levels. Rrgh. I may be done with Hunter; time to find another writer to fill the same niche. (Nalini Singh?)
15. The Sun King: Louis XIV at Versailles, Nancy Mitford. My last unread Mitford bio. Better than the Voltaire, not as good as the Frederick, about on par with the Pompadour. Somewhat more structurally tangled than I might have liked and suffers from the usual Mitford-bio problem that if you do not know the genealogy/geography/sequence of battles/importance of family already this is not where you are going to get an explanation; but as always brings the people to life, collects truly impressive quantities of data and anecdote, and is brilliantly illustrated. I only wish there were more.
16. The Pride of Chanur, C.J. Cherryh. Delightful space opera romp like the classic first-contact novel turned inside out; I thought this was very clever because the alien POV gives one all the info necessary on the aliens, but one always knows what the human must be thinking, even though the aliens don't. Reminded me a lot of various Gundam series for some reason.
17. The Sharing Knife: Horizon, Lois McMaster Bujold. This feels to me like the last of these, which is good because I have essentially been reading them out of inertia. There is just not the emotional depth or the wit here of Bujold's best work, and Dag inches perilously close to Mary Sue-dom sometimes. Still, some fun things with the setting, and watching her do the logistics of large groups of people is an education in clarity of writing. If there are more, I would read one more, but that's really where my limit lies.
18. Ragamuffin, Tobias Buckell.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
50books_poc #6. Definitely better than the first, by a measurable margin: tighter plotting, wider scope, more shades of gray, fewer things in the plot that have been done before. Still not remotely emotionally involving, although I find the spaceship names splendid. Female protag but I have a couple few issues about women here. Will probably read the next-- I think I am doing Buckell on a one-book-arguing-for-the-next basis.
Notable Rereads: the Pamela F. Service YA post-apocalyptic Arthurian duology (not as good as when I was twelve); a great deal of Bruce Coville; Pratchett's Tiffany Aching trilogy; All-of-a-kind Family, Sydney Taylor.
Graphic Novels:
15-16. Samurai Deeper Kyo v.31-32, Akimine Kamijyo. HOTARU. Still my boy. Akira is being fairly awesome, too, but man, has Kamijyo never heard of pacing? Shounen fight into next fight into next fight GO all the time. Also, this entire series becomes somehow even more entertaining if one reflects that the Mibu are basically elves conceptually, and then one can sit there going wait that is a pimp-hat banjo-player everyone's-daddy crazy elf what.
17. 20th Century Boys v.1, Naoki Urasawa. Yay not reading in scanlation. Yay being able to hold the volume. Yay pro translation. Boo unnecessarily spoilery back cover and cast page. Boo translated sound effects-- they are too distracting when they cover as much of the page as they do here. Still the Best Manga Ever Written, and I mean that absolutely literally. I remain utterly in awe of Urasawa's pacing. Also, and as always, Kanna.
Notable Rereads: Gunnerkrigg Court v.1, Tom Siddell. Now in lovely hardcover with high-quality paper instead of having to scroll down and wait for the page to finish loading. I kind of miss his snarky bottom-of-the-page notes, though. As a chunk, this is much more linearly structured, creepy, and eerily beautiful than it is as a three-times-a-week update.
Movie:
Vivre sa Vie (My Life to Live), dir. Jean-Luc Godard, Museum of Fine Arts, with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sovay. My first Godard. I decided to see this mostly as an attempt to see whether I actually find French New Wave interesting, or whether it is all like unto My Night at Maud's (dir. Rohmer), an experience I still remember as the most genuinely boring film I have ever seen. Either the New Wave grows on one, or I have grown up some, or Godard is better than Rohmer or hits my personal tastes more closely, or some combination of all of those; I am not sure I could describe Vivre sa Vie as enjoyable, precisely, but it was indeed very interesting and I admire it more the more I think about it. Anna Karina stars as Nana, a young woman who drifts through clerking into prostitution. The narrative arc of the film seems conventional and isn't-- it's a mask for a meditation on the meaning of communication, the purposes of speech, the freedom or not of the soul. I am not sure I agree with its conclusions, but it does set up a remarkably complex philosophical dialectic with clarity, grace, and emotion. Also, the cinematography is gorgeous.
In concluson: Wow, I read even less this month than I did last month. Of course, this month was shorter, but I also felt very tired and fried for much of it, and my household was making huge life decisions. Next up: Westmark, and making a dent in the pile of things people have lent to me.
Books:
12. The White Rose, Glen Cook. In tiny increments at work. Like, a paragraph at a time since December. I wanted to know how the plot came out, but really the latter two were so much less good than The Black Company that I think I am done with Glen Cook now.
not-13. My Miserable Lonely Lesbian Pregnancy, Andrea Askowitz. ... it's because she's making herself miserable. Seriously. Dude, the stereotype about lesbians is that we think about our emotions too much. Maybe consider that? Anyway, Anne Lamott this ain't. There is this specific kind of self-deprecating lesbian humor that causes me to wonder whether the person making it actually likes a) herself and b) women, and I have almost no tolerance for that in recent years. Query To Self: I didn't think I bounced off books this often. Apparently I do?
13. The Attack of the Two-Inch Teacher, Bruce Coville. When I am in a library, I have a habit of scanning the children's shelves to see what Coville they have in and then reading anything I haven't right there on the spot. They're so short I don't want to haul them home, and they generally take about fifteen minutes to read. Nothing beats Coville's warm, friendly, endlessly welcoming worlds for a relaxing break (unless the library has an uncommon book by Daniel Pinkwater). When I have children, I intend to buy his stuff in bulk. (ETA: I pretty much did buy his stuff in bulk at Boskone. There is something about buying stuff when you can hand money to the author...)
14. The Sinner, Madeline Hunter. Not the weakest of Hunter I've read, but by far the weakest of the only series of hers that had not previously made me want to throw anything at the wall. Readable, but so aggravating on gender and plot levels. Rrgh. I may be done with Hunter; time to find another writer to fill the same niche. (Nalini Singh?)
15. The Sun King: Louis XIV at Versailles, Nancy Mitford. My last unread Mitford bio. Better than the Voltaire, not as good as the Frederick, about on par with the Pompadour. Somewhat more structurally tangled than I might have liked and suffers from the usual Mitford-bio problem that if you do not know the genealogy/geography/sequence of battles/importance of family already this is not where you are going to get an explanation; but as always brings the people to life, collects truly impressive quantities of data and anecdote, and is brilliantly illustrated. I only wish there were more.
16. The Pride of Chanur, C.J. Cherryh. Delightful space opera romp like the classic first-contact novel turned inside out; I thought this was very clever because the alien POV gives one all the info necessary on the aliens, but one always knows what the human must be thinking, even though the aliens don't. Reminded me a lot of various Gundam series for some reason.
17. The Sharing Knife: Horizon, Lois McMaster Bujold. This feels to me like the last of these, which is good because I have essentially been reading them out of inertia. There is just not the emotional depth or the wit here of Bujold's best work, and Dag inches perilously close to Mary Sue-dom sometimes. Still, some fun things with the setting, and watching her do the logistics of large groups of people is an education in clarity of writing. If there are more, I would read one more, but that's really where my limit lies.
18. Ragamuffin, Tobias Buckell.
50books_poc #6. Definitely better than the first, by a measurable margin: tighter plotting, wider scope, more shades of gray, fewer things in the plot that have been done before. Still not remotely emotionally involving, although I find the spaceship names splendid. Female protag but I have a couple few issues about women here. Will probably read the next-- I think I am doing Buckell on a one-book-arguing-for-the-next basis. Notable Rereads: the Pamela F. Service YA post-apocalyptic Arthurian duology (not as good as when I was twelve); a great deal of Bruce Coville; Pratchett's Tiffany Aching trilogy; All-of-a-kind Family, Sydney Taylor.
Graphic Novels:
15-16. Samurai Deeper Kyo v.31-32, Akimine Kamijyo. HOTARU. Still my boy. Akira is being fairly awesome, too, but man, has Kamijyo never heard of pacing? Shounen fight into next fight into next fight GO all the time. Also, this entire series becomes somehow even more entertaining if one reflects that the Mibu are basically elves conceptually, and then one can sit there going wait that is a pimp-hat banjo-player everyone's-daddy crazy elf what.
17. 20th Century Boys v.1, Naoki Urasawa. Yay not reading in scanlation. Yay being able to hold the volume. Yay pro translation. Boo unnecessarily spoilery back cover and cast page. Boo translated sound effects-- they are too distracting when they cover as much of the page as they do here. Still the Best Manga Ever Written, and I mean that absolutely literally. I remain utterly in awe of Urasawa's pacing. Also, and as always, Kanna.
Notable Rereads: Gunnerkrigg Court v.1, Tom Siddell. Now in lovely hardcover with high-quality paper instead of having to scroll down and wait for the page to finish loading. I kind of miss his snarky bottom-of-the-page notes, though. As a chunk, this is much more linearly structured, creepy, and eerily beautiful than it is as a three-times-a-week update.
Movie:
Vivre sa Vie (My Life to Live), dir. Jean-Luc Godard, Museum of Fine Arts, with
sovay. My first Godard. I decided to see this mostly as an attempt to see whether I actually find French New Wave interesting, or whether it is all like unto My Night at Maud's (dir. Rohmer), an experience I still remember as the most genuinely boring film I have ever seen. Either the New Wave grows on one, or I have grown up some, or Godard is better than Rohmer or hits my personal tastes more closely, or some combination of all of those; I am not sure I could describe Vivre sa Vie as enjoyable, precisely, but it was indeed very interesting and I admire it more the more I think about it. Anna Karina stars as Nana, a young woman who drifts through clerking into prostitution. The narrative arc of the film seems conventional and isn't-- it's a mask for a meditation on the meaning of communication, the purposes of speech, the freedom or not of the soul. I am not sure I agree with its conclusions, but it does set up a remarkably complex philosophical dialectic with clarity, grace, and emotion. Also, the cinematography is gorgeous. In concluson: Wow, I read even less this month than I did last month. Of course, this month was shorter, but I also felt very tired and fried for much of it, and my household was making huge life decisions. Next up: Westmark, and making a dent in the pile of things people have lent to me.
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Date: 2009-03-02 07:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-02 09:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-02 12:49 pm (UTC)My daughter's almost six, and I'm trying to figure out what chapter books to try to hook her on after we finish the Rainbow Fairies (I am *so* ready to be done with those!). She's not quite up to reading chapter books on her own yet, but she's very close, and we run through a couple of short books a week as bedtime stories.
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Date: 2009-03-04 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-04 07:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-04 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-04 04:14 pm (UTC)