Posted October 28, 2014 by in General / 2 Comments
Aaand time for another Top Ten Tuesday! This week it’s a Halloween theme — not my favourite holiday, really; I’m a scaredy-cat at heart. Anyway, here’s the theme: “Top Ten Books/Movies To Read Or Watch To Get In The Halloween Spirit OR Top Ten Characters Who I Would Totally Want To Be For Halloween”. Aaand I’m gonna do the latter. Most of them are comics characters, because actually I’m really bad at visualising characters.
- Any Avenger. Comics/movies whatever. Especially one like female!Bucky or the Lady Avengers manips. Not that short red hair really suits me for anyone. Gimme a blond wig and I’ll do Carol Danvers? Scarlet Witch maybe?
- Batgirl. From Gail Simone’s run. I’d just need longer hair… lots longer. Like it used to be, in fact.
- Storm. Even mohawk!Storm. Maybe especially mohawk!Storm.
- A female assassin. Shush, Assassin’s Creed counts for this — there’re Assassin’s Creed books too.
- Kate Bishop. Young Avengers! We don’t need to imagine a female Hawkeye; we’ve got one. And I’d have a badass bow.
- Lara Croft. She has comics! It counts! Badass bow, again.
- Eowyn. Shield-maiden style, of course.
- Nazca. From The Lies of Locke Lamora. She’s badass and she should be celebrated.
- Zamira Drakasha. Scott Lynch again. Ditto!
- Sabriel. Or maybe Lirael. From Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom trilogy!
Lots of kick-butt ladies. I didn’t deliberately pick them to be mostly the ladies who fight; it’s just those are the ones I can see myself doing better. Not such a fan of the long dresses and so on.
Tags: books, comics, Gail Simone, J.R.R. Tolkien, Marvel, Scott Lynch, Top Tuesday
Posted October 20, 2014 by in Reviews / 0 Comments
Loki: Agent of Asgard, Al Ewing, Lee Garbett
I think I needed more of Journey into Mystery and general Thor comics to really understand what’s going on here, but it’s a fun ride anyway. It continues the kid!Loki storyline — except he’s all grown up now, thanks to Billy Kaplan of the Young Avengers. So we get to see Loki living in Midgard, with a fancy apartment and an unfortunate resemblance to Harry Styles. We get to see a bit more of the “new” Loki interacting with Thor, and the continuing saga of many Lokis that is the whole plot with Loki dying and then kid!Loki but it’s not really kid!Loki and —
Yeah, it’s confusing. But Loki’s capers are fun, and no doubt it’s going somewhere brain-twisty and fun. I like young!Loki a lot, and along with all the Hiddleston fangirls, just want to see that he’s been misunderstood and twisted into his role. And more than that, I hope Loki’s still playing with my head. I don’t really think we ever can or should get some kind of solid answer about where Loki stands on the moral continuum. He’s wildfire, unpredictable; the comics do take that aspect of the trickster Loki from Norse myth and play with it most excellently.
Oh, and the scenes with the Avengers in the tower are perfect.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, comics, Marvel
Posted October 17, 2014 by in General / 6 Comments
Readathon time! It doesn’t seem like it’s been long since the last readathon, but here we are again with the event coming up on Saturday-Sunday of this weekend. Naturally I’ve been working on my stack and trying to decide what to read. For once, I’m actually at my partner’s flat in Belgium for the readathon, which means a) I’ll probably be up for the whole thing because I have chronic insomnia here, and b) I only brought my ereader with me, no dead tree books. On the other hand, I have comics to borrow and a whole stack of library books too, so it’s not as though I’m short of reading material.
To reread:
-Robin McKinley, Rose Daughter.
–Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour.
-Guy Gavriel Kay, A Song for Arbonne.
–Mary Stewart, The Crystal Cave.
New:
–Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park.
–Keri Hulme, The Bone People.
-Robert MacFarlane, The Old Ways.
–Kurt Vonnegut, Galapagos.
To finish:
-James Morrow, This is the Way The World Ends.
Comics:
-Loki: Agent of Asgard.
-Thor.
-Winter Soldier.
Anyone else I know doing it?
Tags: books, comics, Guy Gavriel Kay, Lois McMaster Bujold, readathon, Robin McKinley
Posted October 15, 2014 by in General / 0 Comments
What have you recently finished reading?
Beauty and Chalice by Robin McKinley, both rereads. I love those books so much. It’s funny to think that I didn’t like Chalice thaaaat much the first time I read it, but it stayed on my mind and now I think it’s probably earned the title of “Comfort Read.”
What are you currently reading?
A huge mess, as usual, but mainly at the moment I’m reading Rose Daughter, Robin McKinley’s other Beauty and the Beast retelling, and Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park — I can’t believe I’ve never read Jurassic Park before. It’s actually better than I was led to believe? And the science is none too bad considering when it was written.
What will you read next?
The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart, probably, and then The Bone People, by Keri Hulme. I’ve got both of them out of the library here, so I need to get on with it. I need to read some of my partner’s comics, too — Thor, Winter Soldier, Loki: Agent of Asgard.
Tags: books, comics, Marvel, reading meme, Robin McKinley
Posted October 12, 2014 by in Reviews / 0 Comments
Death, Disability and the Superhero, José Alaniz
I haven’t completely finished reading this, as I’m not familiar with all the superheroes, etc, mentioned, and I kind of want to look at the source before I really engage with this. It’s not really something for a casual fan of comics — or rather, even a major fan of comics just for a bit of fun and goofiness. It actually looks deeply at some of the tropes and potential underlying meanings: in other words, it treats comics seriously as literature. Some people won’t like that just on principle: to me, it’s good. The stuff lurking behind what we read for fun is just as important to recognise and critique — maybe more so — than “serious” literature that’s written to have layers and layers of meaning.
José Alaniz has written a very thorough work here. I really don’t know enough to critique it, but I enjoyed reading it even where I thought I might disagree if I knew the material better (or had been reading it with more of a critical eye). It was really nice to engage with something intellectual like this that took a genre I’m coming to love seriously.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, comics, non-fiction
Posted September 30, 2014 by in Reviews / 2 Comments
Gambit: Once A Thief, James Asmus, Clay Mann, Diogenes Neves
I vaguely remember Gambit from watching X-men cartoons as a kid, I think. But I don’t remember him well enough to just jump in like this and actually care about Gambit’s inconsequential adventures that’re his own damn fault for messing with stuff he doesn’t understand for the heck of stealing something. I mean, sure, if that’s Remy’s character, then… okay? But I know he has fans, and surely they’re for something more substantial than this? Right?
So yeah, not impressed with this. The art is great, but the stories are just… I had difficulty, honestly, remembering the names of the two dimensional characters he was running into.
Not one for me, I think.
Rating: 1/5
Tags: book reviews, books, comics, Marvel
Posted September 28, 2014 by in Reviews / 0 Comments
FF: vol. 1, Fantastic Faux, Matt Fraction, Mike Allred, Laura Allred
I think this one definitely requires more background. It might be volume #1 of the FF Marvel Now books, but it clearly follows an ongoing story involving the Fantastic Four and… possibly a lot of other people? I had no idea who a lot of these people were, other than Johnny Storm and Scott Lang. (Where does that fit with Young Avengers? Isn’t he Cassie’s dad, and isn’t he dead? Or did he come back amidst the timeline crossing?)
Anyway, there were fun aspects to this — the line “All of you pale before our hetero-normative cisgendered classification of family!” is a winning one, and there’s some other good one-liners. Which I’d kind of expect from Matt Fraction, really. There was a really nice bit where he fit in a trans* character, dealt with sensitively, yet in such a normal way — it barely caused a blink, and yet it worked well. I liked that bit a lot. Oh, and She-Hulk is great.
Overall, though, I don’t have enough context to really enjoy this. Too bad the library’s collection of comics is generally spotty.
Rating: 2/5
Tags: book reviews, books, comics, Marvel
Posted September 27, 2014 by in General / 12 Comments
I haven’t gone on such wonderful buying sprees this week, but I did go to two different libraries (go on, guess how many library cards I have). So it is not particularly a small haul, all the same. And I did get some books — my partner spoils me.
Ebooks
I read Graceling a few years ago, and liked it well enough, but I wasn’t bowled over. I’m going to give Kristin Cashore another chance, evidently; my ex-housemate Ru will be pleased with me. The Language of Spells was a somewhat random choice, while Fair Game is necessary for me to read last week’s review copy of Fair Play.
Review copies
I tried to have restraint this week, see?
Library books
More Heyer, which surprises no one; I keep meaning to read Sarah Addison Allen and since I’ve misplaced Garden Spells, I may as well start there; archaeology! paleontology! and… Matt Fraction. My usual hectic mix.
What’s everyone else been up to?
Tags: books, comics, non-fiction, SF/F, Stacking the Shelves
Posted September 25, 2014 by in General / 0 Comments
What have you recently finished reading?
FF: Fantastic Faux, by Matt Fraction. Which is heavily linked to the Fantastic Four title in the Marvel Now lineup, which I haven’t read, so made very little sense. On the other hand, Fraction deals very deftly with a transgendered character, making it so normal and the transition so well done that it barely registers as a big issue at all.
And you’ve gotta love the line “All of you pale before our hetero-normative cisgendered classification of family!”
What are you currently reading?
The Fellowship of the Ring. Oh, Tolkien. Oh, Frodo.
The Enchantment Emporium (Tanya Huff). Can’t remember if I mentioned this last week, but so far it’s very fun. I do have to switch my brain onto the Mary Stewart/Georgette Heyer cousin-marrying-is-okay frequency, but I do have that frequency, so that works. Casually queer, all kinds of family stuff, interesting magic.
What will you read next?
Well, Tolkien aside, I’m gonna dig back into We Are Here (Michael Marshall Smith) and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (Thomas Sweterlitsch), since I’m halfway through both and certainly owe a review for the latter.
Tags: books, comics, Marvel, Michael Marshall (Smith), reading meme, Tanya Huff
Posted August 28, 2014 by in General / 0 Comments
What have you recently finished reading?
The Selfish Genius (Fern Elsdon-Baker). It critiques Richard Dawkins from the point of view of another scientist who is also an atheist, which makes it quite interesting — the title is meant to be just a glib reference rather than a particularly accusation. I need to write a review of this, but I’m going to mull it over a bit longer first.
What are you currently reading?
As usual, way too much. I most recently picked up We Are Here, a thriller by Michael Marshall; I’ve read some of his SF before, but not his thrillers. So far, I’m enjoying the writing style, but I don’t know how much I’m going to like the thing as a whole.
There’s also Black Unicorn (Tanith Lee), which is, shockingly, my first Tanith Lee read. I’m intrigued so far. It’s quite short, so no doubt I’ll finish it soon.
What will you read next?
Well, I got a book on photosynthesis and its importance for/impact on our world today — Eating the Sun (Oliver Morton) — which, along with my books on genetics, prompted my dad to suggest I must be planning to create Groot and Rocket from Guardians of the Galaxy. So just for that, I think that might be up next.
Tags: books, comics, Marvel, Michael Marshall (Smith), non-fiction, reading meme, SF/F, Tanith Lee
