![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So, between recovering from my illness and doing stuff on wednesdays - it's been a few weeks.
I'm keeping up with the news a fair bit these days, following the union-public sector negotiations. It's looking more and more like we'll be striking this spring. Well, maybe we. I have no clue if my job will be picked. We'll see.
What I've recently finished reading
Peter Ackroyd: Queer City
Nicely written, though it felt mostly anecdotal.
Joshua Williams: The Flash: Lightning Strikes Twice
Great. More speedster villains.
Don Rosa: Hall of Fame bog 1.
Don Rosa: Hall of Fame bog 6.
Don Rosa: Hall of Fame bog 8.
Yes, I had a craving for good duck stories. The one with the Kalevala and the gigantic monster getting traumatized by modern day Helsinki is especially delightful.
Xavier Dorison: Long John Silver: Lady Vivian Hastings
Promising.
Chris Miskiewicz: Thomas Alsop vol. 2.
Yevgeny Zamyatin: We
I seem to be in a mood for classic dystopias. After I finished this, I ordered Kallocain from the library.
Yoshitoki Oima: A Silent Voice vol. 1.
I'm not sure this is for me, but I'm giving it one more volume to convince me. But to be honest, a series with a bully as the main character, a bully trying to make amends, but apparently he's only sorry for his behaviour because it ended with himself getting bullied as badly as he did it to another - yeah, no.
Sylvain Runberg: Darwin's Diaries: Death of a Beast
Oh, look - a werewolf!
John Arcudi: BPRD: King of Fear
Martin Jensen: Overleveren
I must admit that this book disappointed me a bit.
It's well-written in the sense that Martin Jensen is very skilled at vividly painting the medieval world. It's not that. It's... it is a sequel to the murder mystery series about Halfdan and Winston, wherein Winston became more and more of a minor character. A process that has continued in this book to the point where Winston just has a few tiny appearances.
The problem is that Halfdan doesn't feel like the protagonist either. He's the POV character, true, and through his eyes we follow the political machinations in England from the death of Cnut the Great to the arrival of William the Conqueror - and Halfdan, at this point in his story, is conveniently placed close enough to those in power to observe it, while he is small enough to not actually have any real influence himself. And that just - you could remove Halfdan and what little time is spent on his personal life and family - and you'd still have the book. The more I read the less invested I was, sorry to say.
I mean, the murder mysteries still had the political machinations, but they were in the background, while Halfdan's gradually learning and growing and finding himself was in the foreground. Now it's swapped around and it just didn't work for me.
Ann Leckie: Provenance
Sad to say I didn't like this one half as much as her Imperial Radch trilogy. It felt a lot flatter, and the e/em/eir gender neutral terms felt far more jarring to me than the previous books' consistent she. I mean, it was an interesting glimpse into another corner of the universe, but it felt like we kept getting told the main character was brilliant instead of being shown it, and most of the plot wasn't that engaging.
Leonora Christina Skov: Den, der lever stille
This is the sort of book that reminds me how lucky I am to have my parents and makes we want to catch a train going north just to give them a hug.
What I've recently watched
6. Altered Carbon season 1.
I read the book before watching the show and perhaps I shouldn't have. There were so many changes, and while some were purely cosmetic (like turning the Hendrix into the Raven and the changes to the torture scene) and others were the sort of expansion turning a first person pov into a tv show requires, I felt that the changes to Takeshi's story were pretty huge, and to me, it felt like the show spun off to tell an entirely different story, just using a framework from the novel when it felt like it. Oh well...
7. Black Panther
It's a gorgeous movie - I might have mentioned that before? But I must admit, it also feels like an incredible American movie in its worldview.
8. The Purge: Election Year
I find the Purge movies far more unsettling than most other dystopias out there. Maybe because they aren't really - their universe doesn't require huge societal changes to the same extent. It's just one night a year. Mind you, I'm wondering how there's still a population this many years in...
9. The Shape of Water
It's a very del Toro movie. It's gorgeous all the way. The story is a bit predictable, but then, it's not like del Toro usually makes movies with huge twist endings. He tells a story with as many tropes and as much aesthetic as he can, that's all. (And now that I've watched it, I can go watch the old BBC version of the play that it has been accused of plagiarizing. I noticed it floating around on youtube.)
What I'm reading now
Lightless by C.A. Higgins, which has been disappointing, and The Other Paris by Luc Sante.
What I'm reading next
Probably Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief and the second Monstress comic.
Total number of books and comics read this year: 33
I'm keeping up with the news a fair bit these days, following the union-public sector negotiations. It's looking more and more like we'll be striking this spring. Well, maybe we. I have no clue if my job will be picked. We'll see.
What I've recently finished reading
Peter Ackroyd: Queer City
Nicely written, though it felt mostly anecdotal.
Joshua Williams: The Flash: Lightning Strikes Twice
Great. More speedster villains.
Don Rosa: Hall of Fame bog 1.
Don Rosa: Hall of Fame bog 6.
Don Rosa: Hall of Fame bog 8.
Yes, I had a craving for good duck stories. The one with the Kalevala and the gigantic monster getting traumatized by modern day Helsinki is especially delightful.
Xavier Dorison: Long John Silver: Lady Vivian Hastings
Promising.
Chris Miskiewicz: Thomas Alsop vol. 2.
Yevgeny Zamyatin: We
I seem to be in a mood for classic dystopias. After I finished this, I ordered Kallocain from the library.
Yoshitoki Oima: A Silent Voice vol. 1.
I'm not sure this is for me, but I'm giving it one more volume to convince me. But to be honest, a series with a bully as the main character, a bully trying to make amends, but apparently he's only sorry for his behaviour because it ended with himself getting bullied as badly as he did it to another - yeah, no.
Sylvain Runberg: Darwin's Diaries: Death of a Beast
Oh, look - a werewolf!
John Arcudi: BPRD: King of Fear
Martin Jensen: Overleveren
I must admit that this book disappointed me a bit.
It's well-written in the sense that Martin Jensen is very skilled at vividly painting the medieval world. It's not that. It's... it is a sequel to the murder mystery series about Halfdan and Winston, wherein Winston became more and more of a minor character. A process that has continued in this book to the point where Winston just has a few tiny appearances.
The problem is that Halfdan doesn't feel like the protagonist either. He's the POV character, true, and through his eyes we follow the political machinations in England from the death of Cnut the Great to the arrival of William the Conqueror - and Halfdan, at this point in his story, is conveniently placed close enough to those in power to observe it, while he is small enough to not actually have any real influence himself. And that just - you could remove Halfdan and what little time is spent on his personal life and family - and you'd still have the book. The more I read the less invested I was, sorry to say.
I mean, the murder mysteries still had the political machinations, but they were in the background, while Halfdan's gradually learning and growing and finding himself was in the foreground. Now it's swapped around and it just didn't work for me.
Ann Leckie: Provenance
Sad to say I didn't like this one half as much as her Imperial Radch trilogy. It felt a lot flatter, and the e/em/eir gender neutral terms felt far more jarring to me than the previous books' consistent she. I mean, it was an interesting glimpse into another corner of the universe, but it felt like we kept getting told the main character was brilliant instead of being shown it, and most of the plot wasn't that engaging.
Leonora Christina Skov: Den, der lever stille
This is the sort of book that reminds me how lucky I am to have my parents and makes we want to catch a train going north just to give them a hug.
What I've recently watched
6. Altered Carbon season 1.
I read the book before watching the show and perhaps I shouldn't have. There were so many changes, and while some were purely cosmetic (like turning the Hendrix into the Raven and the changes to the torture scene) and others were the sort of expansion turning a first person pov into a tv show requires, I felt that the changes to Takeshi's story were pretty huge, and to me, it felt like the show spun off to tell an entirely different story, just using a framework from the novel when it felt like it. Oh well...
7. Black Panther
It's a gorgeous movie - I might have mentioned that before? But I must admit, it also feels like an incredible American movie in its worldview.
8. The Purge: Election Year
I find the Purge movies far more unsettling than most other dystopias out there. Maybe because they aren't really - their universe doesn't require huge societal changes to the same extent. It's just one night a year. Mind you, I'm wondering how there's still a population this many years in...
9. The Shape of Water
It's a very del Toro movie. It's gorgeous all the way. The story is a bit predictable, but then, it's not like del Toro usually makes movies with huge twist endings. He tells a story with as many tropes and as much aesthetic as he can, that's all. (And now that I've watched it, I can go watch the old BBC version of the play that it has been accused of plagiarizing. I noticed it floating around on youtube.)
What I'm reading now
Lightless by C.A. Higgins, which has been disappointing, and The Other Paris by Luc Sante.
What I'm reading next
Probably Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief and the second Monstress comic.
Total number of books and comics read this year: 33
From:
no subject
American how? I haven't seen it, or not yet at any rate.
Also, I hope you get to go on strike! Going on strike is totally on my bucket list. : )
From:
no subject
American in - I mean, it's a superhero action movie, it's a given (pretty James Bond-ish at times, though), but - thinking about it, Black Panther is a conversation about race (mostly as Americans conceive it) vs. nation. Which should take precedence, so to speak, with Wakanda - isolationist and fiercely proud of its traditions - playing the nation side. Which, of course, the movie comes to the conclusion - perhaps unsurprising, since it is an US movie - that of course race matters more. That the social construct of race as viewed through a US pov is more important than the way the rest of the world has chosen to organize itself, along nations, tribes, ethnicities, etc.
Also, I find the movie's implication that a country that explicitly had absolutely nothing to do with the slave trade, which has not even the usual share of the guilt of that the African countries that sold slaves has - and which is, quite coincidentally, rich and powerful and mostly just wants to keep minding its own business - and yet the movie concludes that this country owes the US (specifically the African American population, but still, the US). Owes them. There is a rather amusing scene at the end with Wakanda sending aid to inner city US kids, and it is fun, but - I can't help feeling that the idea of a country, which coincidentally has a valuable natural ressource, should be viewed like that - I find it a bit troubling, considering how things usually have ended when superpowers started feeling that another nation's ressources belonged to them. The colonization of America being an excellent example, I suppose.
I dunno. I don't even know if I'm saying this in a way that makes sense, and frankly, I try not to get involved in any discussions. It's a gorgeous movie, if perhaps a bit too CGI at times, and entertaining, but I am definitely not the intended core audience of this one, you know?