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So, I think we'll be doing this a bit differently this year.
Books
Suzanne Collins: The Hunger Games
I did not have high expectations when I sat down to read this. Mostly because for quite some time it has seemed as if, every time I picked up some bestselling, everybody's crazy about it kind of book - it turned out to be crap. Not just not as good as everybody was saying, but actual crap. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that this is a fairly good book - not brilliant, but solid entertainment with a heroine who actually has some brains for a change and the author seemed to know what she was doing. I doubt I'll find my way into the fandom any time soon, but I've put myself on the waiting list for book two at the library, so there's that.
E.M. Forster: Maurice
Frances Hardinge: Fly by Night
Johannes V. Jensen: Kongens Fald
Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish professional writing would come with non-con warnings.
Hanus Kamban: Gullgentan
I picked up this short story collection because the text on the back compared it to Kafka and Borges and apparently the titular short story had been the Faeroe Islands nominee for the Nordic Council's Literature Price (it didn't win). Let's just say I was disappointed. The opening short story was realistic, a predictable boy becomes a man by being seduced by local woman whose husband is out of town (of the island) story that we've all seen 117 times before. Most of the rest was fantastic (the remainder being historical) - as in magical realism, gothic, science fiction - the titular short story "The Gold Girl" was a bit of gothic horror that seemed very eager to show off it's writer's knowledge of classic literature. But what none of these stories were, well, let's just say they're more the sort of thing I would have expected to read in Himmelskibet than to find being hailed as up for a price. It's not that they're bad, they're just - ultimately not that original. Not that good. Ultimately, what reading this short story collection accomplished was to make my expectations of Faeroese literature plummet, because if this is what is put up for a price, well, it doesn't leave me wanting to read what was found not even good enough for that.
China Mieville: Railsea
Lisbeth Smedegaard Andersen: Det begyndte med Jomfru Sørensen - kvindeskæbner gennem 200 år
It's funny - while I was reading this book, it struck me, how this might be about women's destinies, but the way it's told - the author tells the story of her own ancestresses up to her grandmother - the way it's told actually leaves out a group of women. Dismisses them completely. And, considering this is the group that I fully expect to stay in, the women who never reproduced, inside or outside of marriage, well. And of course, if you set out to tell women's history through family history, that would easily happen, but - but now I'm wondering about them. I wonder if there is a book about the spinster, the shadow aunts, the happily Saphic duos - something that actually looks at them, not just as the failures any history traced through descendants must make them seem, dead ends as they were. I wonder.
Wallace Stegner: The Spectator Bird
The Urban Fantasy Anthology (ed. Peter S. Beagle & Joe R. Lansdale)
So, this was a mixed bag - some good stories, some not so good. A couple I had read before. At least one which quite frankly didn't come across as any sort of fantasy to me. My favourite was Susan Palwick's Gestella, a nasty little werewolf tale.
Kit Whitfield: In Great Waters
I liked this well enough - the story wasn't that fantastic (actually, it was kind of predictable), but the worldbuilding was quite good. Mind you, now I'm wondering what they do with female bastards. Surely it would be a waste to just burn them?
Comics
Brian Michael Bendis: New Avengers: The Search for the Sorcerer Supreme
Brian Michael Bendis: New Avengers: Powerloss
Ed Brubaker: Captain America: Winter Soldier
Garth Ennis: War Stories vol. 2.
John Kenn Mortensen: Flere post-it monstre
Take a look.
Regis Loisel: Le grand mort: Blanche
Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá: Daytripper
I quite liked this comic. It tells the story of a man and the many ways he (didn't) die - basically, each chapter touches upon an important day in his life, told achronologically, and at the end of each chapter, he dies. And it works quite well. It's a good story.
Hiroaki Samura: Blade of the Immortal: Blood of a thousand
Hiroaki Samura: Blade of the Immortal: Cry of the worm
Hiroaki Samura: Blade of the Immortal: Dreamsong
Naoki Urasawa: Monster: Welcome Home
Naoki Urasawa: Monster: I'm Home
Naoki Urasawa: Monster: Scenery of the Doomsday
I want to recommend this manga. It's a thriller and opens in Germany towards the end of the Cold War. We follow Tenma, a brilliant Japanese neurosurgeon working in Germany. One day, he saves a small boy's life - whereupon the ten-year-old child turns around and kills all of Tenma's not-particularly nice superiors and then he disappears. Years later, the child, Johan, resurfaces, and events lead to Tenma basically trying to hunt him down and stop him, while the police in turn are hunting Tenma, convinced that he's the killer. And it's complicated and with a lot more twists and turns than that. But it's a very good story. I liked Tenma - he's something as rare even in fiction as a genuinely good person, and I liked other characters, like Grimner, the mysterious (and mostly nice, except if his Hulk-like alter ego surfaces) man with a past at the same orphanage (with a propensity for unethical experimentation) as Johan, and like Inspector Lunge, a police officer chasing Tenma, sort of Javert character.
Norihiro Yagi: Claymore: The Witch's Maw
Norihiro Yagi: Claymore: The Deep Abyss of Purgatory
Norihiro Yagi: Claymore: The Battle of the North
Total number of books and comics read this month: 26
Currently reading: Xenos by Dan Abnett and Politik der forandrede Danmark by Kaare R. Schou
Books
Suzanne Collins: The Hunger Games
I did not have high expectations when I sat down to read this. Mostly because for quite some time it has seemed as if, every time I picked up some bestselling, everybody's crazy about it kind of book - it turned out to be crap. Not just not as good as everybody was saying, but actual crap. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that this is a fairly good book - not brilliant, but solid entertainment with a heroine who actually has some brains for a change and the author seemed to know what she was doing. I doubt I'll find my way into the fandom any time soon, but I've put myself on the waiting list for book two at the library, so there's that.
E.M. Forster: Maurice
Frances Hardinge: Fly by Night
Johannes V. Jensen: Kongens Fald
Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish professional writing would come with non-con warnings.
Hanus Kamban: Gullgentan
I picked up this short story collection because the text on the back compared it to Kafka and Borges and apparently the titular short story had been the Faeroe Islands nominee for the Nordic Council's Literature Price (it didn't win). Let's just say I was disappointed. The opening short story was realistic, a predictable boy becomes a man by being seduced by local woman whose husband is out of town (of the island) story that we've all seen 117 times before. Most of the rest was fantastic (the remainder being historical) - as in magical realism, gothic, science fiction - the titular short story "The Gold Girl" was a bit of gothic horror that seemed very eager to show off it's writer's knowledge of classic literature. But what none of these stories were, well, let's just say they're more the sort of thing I would have expected to read in Himmelskibet than to find being hailed as up for a price. It's not that they're bad, they're just - ultimately not that original. Not that good. Ultimately, what reading this short story collection accomplished was to make my expectations of Faeroese literature plummet, because if this is what is put up for a price, well, it doesn't leave me wanting to read what was found not even good enough for that.
China Mieville: Railsea
Lisbeth Smedegaard Andersen: Det begyndte med Jomfru Sørensen - kvindeskæbner gennem 200 år
It's funny - while I was reading this book, it struck me, how this might be about women's destinies, but the way it's told - the author tells the story of her own ancestresses up to her grandmother - the way it's told actually leaves out a group of women. Dismisses them completely. And, considering this is the group that I fully expect to stay in, the women who never reproduced, inside or outside of marriage, well. And of course, if you set out to tell women's history through family history, that would easily happen, but - but now I'm wondering about them. I wonder if there is a book about the spinster, the shadow aunts, the happily Saphic duos - something that actually looks at them, not just as the failures any history traced through descendants must make them seem, dead ends as they were. I wonder.
Wallace Stegner: The Spectator Bird
The Urban Fantasy Anthology (ed. Peter S. Beagle & Joe R. Lansdale)
So, this was a mixed bag - some good stories, some not so good. A couple I had read before. At least one which quite frankly didn't come across as any sort of fantasy to me. My favourite was Susan Palwick's Gestella, a nasty little werewolf tale.
Kit Whitfield: In Great Waters
I liked this well enough - the story wasn't that fantastic (actually, it was kind of predictable), but the worldbuilding was quite good. Mind you, now I'm wondering what they do with female bastards. Surely it would be a waste to just burn them?
Comics
Brian Michael Bendis: New Avengers: The Search for the Sorcerer Supreme
Brian Michael Bendis: New Avengers: Powerloss
Ed Brubaker: Captain America: Winter Soldier
Garth Ennis: War Stories vol. 2.
John Kenn Mortensen: Flere post-it monstre
Take a look.
Regis Loisel: Le grand mort: Blanche
Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá: Daytripper
I quite liked this comic. It tells the story of a man and the many ways he (didn't) die - basically, each chapter touches upon an important day in his life, told achronologically, and at the end of each chapter, he dies. And it works quite well. It's a good story.
Hiroaki Samura: Blade of the Immortal: Blood of a thousand
Hiroaki Samura: Blade of the Immortal: Cry of the worm
Hiroaki Samura: Blade of the Immortal: Dreamsong
Naoki Urasawa: Monster: Welcome Home
Naoki Urasawa: Monster: I'm Home
Naoki Urasawa: Monster: Scenery of the Doomsday
I want to recommend this manga. It's a thriller and opens in Germany towards the end of the Cold War. We follow Tenma, a brilliant Japanese neurosurgeon working in Germany. One day, he saves a small boy's life - whereupon the ten-year-old child turns around and kills all of Tenma's not-particularly nice superiors and then he disappears. Years later, the child, Johan, resurfaces, and events lead to Tenma basically trying to hunt him down and stop him, while the police in turn are hunting Tenma, convinced that he's the killer. And it's complicated and with a lot more twists and turns than that. But it's a very good story. I liked Tenma - he's something as rare even in fiction as a genuinely good person, and I liked other characters, like Grimner, the mysterious (and mostly nice, except if his Hulk-like alter ego surfaces) man with a past at the same orphanage (with a propensity for unethical experimentation) as Johan, and like Inspector Lunge, a police officer chasing Tenma, sort of Javert character.
Norihiro Yagi: Claymore: The Witch's Maw
Norihiro Yagi: Claymore: The Deep Abyss of Purgatory
Norihiro Yagi: Claymore: The Battle of the North
Total number of books and comics read this month: 26
Currently reading: Xenos by Dan Abnett and Politik der forandrede Danmark by Kaare R. Schou
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Anyway, Jomfru Sørensen is a good book - a bit sad, because the narrative is built around the author's grandmother's last year of life, but a perfectly decent read. It just got me thinking about other things. Actually, I halfway considered trying to mail KVINFO, asking if they have any recommendations for a book or two about my subject of interest. I mean, if anybody knows, it would be them, right?
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Oh, I'm glad for that bit of warning, I didn't know it was structured that way. Asking KVINFO is a really good idea. If you do track something down, you know I'd love to know.