June Reading
Jul. 11th, 2019 09:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brokenmnemonicAs someone gifted me a paid membership for the next few months, I should probably actually try posting occasionally. My week's rather been on fire and the weather has me feeling exhausted all the time, so I don't have a lot of brainpower in play at the moment...
By way of a holding pattern, I thought I'd post up a list of the things I read in June. It's mostly a cut-and-paste from a thread I maintain on Goodreads for tracking what I've read since the start of the year, which is what the serial numbers refer to.
June was a bit of a slow month for reading; VidUKon took up a lot of my time, and I've been hiding in computer games quite a lot for various reasons.
361. A Death in Chelsea by Lynn Brittney ★★★
I think this must be the second book in the series; the setup is interesting, the murder mystery is relatively simple but told at a good pace, and there's a potentially interesting mix of characters... but it feels like this is a sequel to the book where all of the initial set-up and recruiting for this unusual police unit was done, and that I'm expected to know already what the relationships between the characters are. That lack of familiarity worked against me. I did like watching the late-middle-aged working class women working as experts, contributing to the case and even going undercover, though - yes, there were plenty of bright young things breaking molds (or trying to) but the fierce working class grandmothers sticking it to the criminals and demonstrating their expertise in unexpected areas were a genuines delight.
362. The Wild Storm #23 by Warren Ellis ★★★★
363. The Vatican Rip by Jonathan Gash ★★★
364. Hack/Slash vs Chaos #5 by Tim Seeley ★★
I'd maybe enjoy this comic series more if I knew or cared who the majority of the crossover characters are. Unfortunately, I don't.
365. The Sleepers of Erin by Jonathan Gash ★★★
366. Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt #5 by Kieron Gillen ★★★★
I don't read all that many superhero comic book titles, and this was an interesting cross-dimension adventure with a gay MC, which isn't as common in comics as it should be.
367. The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang ★★★★★
This was recommended to me by a friend (the same person who poked me to join Goodreads in the first place) and it's an excellent contemporary romance novel. I don't read many contemporary romance novels, as I've found a lot aren't to my taste, but this had really interesting characters. The female protagonist is an autistic statistician/computer modeller who identifies and predicts consumer shopping trends, which I think makes this the first romance novel I've read where either of the main characters was autistic. In some ways, this was a gender-swapped version of Pretty Woman - the male protagonist is an Asian-American man (actually, Vietnamese/Swedish American citizen) who's taken up sex work to help pay his mother's medical bills, and who very much wants to be a tailor/dressmaker/clothing designer, but is busy helping his mother run her dry-cleaning business. The characters are well-written, and there are a lot of topics touched on I found I enjoyed reading about - tensions around family expectations, for example.
368. Quidditch Through The Ages by Kennilworthy Whisp (JK Rowling) ★★★
369. The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary ★★★★★
I read this as a result of a review on Goodreads from soemone I know through VidUKon who made it sound excellent, and I'm very glad she reviewed it. The basic set-up is that Tiffy needs somewhere to live, having broken up again with her dodgy boyfriend; the place she finds that she can afford is a flatshare, but with a catch - there's only one bed. However, the person renting the flat, Leon, is a nurse at a palliative care facility, who works nights, and the advertised offer for the flatshare is that although they'll be bedsharing, Leon lives with his girlfriend on the weekend and works nights, so he's out of the flat from 6pm until 9am every weekday and all day on the weekends. The person who rents off him - which is Tiffy - therefore has the run of the flat all weekend and in the evenings from 6pm to 9am, so they'll never actually see each other, and they end up communicating by post-it note. The notes are quite funny, because the two of them are very different. It's quickly apparent that there's more going on, though - Tiffy's relationship with her ex was abusive, but she only realises how much as the book's unfolding. Leon has some similar issues in his life; his brother's in jail on an armed robbery charge for a crime he didn't commit, and he has experience of abusive relationships because his father left when he was 2, and his mother has a history of dating appalling men when he was growing up. For a book with some difficult topics, it's actually a remarkably sweet story, because Tiffy and Leon are genuinely nice people, and their friends are interesting people in their own right. Leon's mixed-race, which isn't a big thing but is a thing that's acknowledged in the book; Tiffy is also not the typical fainting wispy English rose, either - she's about six feet tall, and likes baking and her food. One of the things that I liked about both of them is that actually they both enjoy their food - they like cakes and fish and chips and takeaways - and there's absolutely no implied judgement that either is overweight or striving to become a thin poster-model. (And both end up modelling at one or more points in the book, but ... well, that's crochet for you.)
370. The Lamplighter's Love by Delphine Dryden ★★
This might've been better as a novel, but as a novella, I really didn't like it. 19-year-old woman works her way up through a steampunk guild to become Lamplighter for London (something like steampunk air traffic control for ground traffic), a ten-year job that wears people out to the extent that a thankful nation gives them a title and guaranteed income when they retire. On the verge of being offered the job, having spent two years training with the current Lamplighter, a guy she finds attractive, it turns out the guild is going to screw her over by giving her two-thirds of the work and most of the responsibility but minimal pay and no end-of-term benefits, unlike the obnoxious bloke who's going to be doing the other part of the job, who also decides to blackmail her. So, faced with this horrible glass ceiling and dire thoughts, she... decides to marry the 29-year-old retiring Lamplighter and become a countess instead. This feels like either porny fanfic that should've just been a couple of scenes and instead comes off badly as a novella, or a story that might've worked as a novel - giving the female protagonist more agency, making a relationship between a 19-year-old and a 29-year-old feel a little more balanced - but which really didn't work when truncated down to 20,000 words and three sex scenes.
371. Army of Darkness/Bubba Ho-Tep #4 by Scott Duval
I admit it, I want this to be the new Bruce Campbell film.
372. Red Sonja #5 by Mark Russell ★★★★
This has been an entertaining read so far, and a more interesting challenge for Sonja than a lto of the Red Sonja comics have been. I'm a little iffy on her suddenly having a live relative introduced in this (presumably so they can be under threat as a plot device) but watching her trying to master grand strategy and politics is a great learning experience for everyone, especially the nation-conquering emperor she's driving to distraction.
373. The Walking Dead #192 by Robert Kirkman ★★★★
374. The Good Pilot, Peter Woodhouse by Alexander McCall Smith ★★★
375. The Dreaming #10 by Simon Spurrier ★★★
376. Spider-Gwen: Ghost Spider #9 by Seanan McGuire ★★★★
This series has been very low-key and character-driven, as Gwen Stacy tries to work out what she wants her life to be - and how she wants her spider-powers to be used - and the effect it has on her friends. Gwen's still dealing with the aftermath of the Into the Spider-Verse movie, and has all the baggage that goes with apparently having been in prison, so the comic focuses very much on her trying to settle her mind on what she wants her place to be, and what she wants to achieve. This is one of my favourite comic book reads each month.
377. Domino: Hotshots #4 by Gail Simone ★★★
378. House Arano (The Aurigan Coalition) by Kiva Maginn ★★★
379. Barbarella/Dejah Thors #4 by Leah Williams ★★★★
There's been a lot of exposition throughout this mini-series, but fundamentally it's all about Barbarella and Dejah Thoris meeting, respecting (and being attracted to) each other, and trying to save the world. The writing's been more interesting than I expected - I like that Dynamite are doing their best to work with the licenses they've picked up, but a fair number of their comics tend to involve a lot of fight scenes, whereas this has been going in a very different direction. It feels rather deeper than the average Barsoom-related comic.
380. American Gods: Moment of the Storm #3 by Neil Gaiman ★★★
381. Star Trek: The Q Conflict #4 by Scott Tipton ★★★
382. Star Trek: The Q Conflict #5 by Scott Tipton ★★★
This isn't as clever as I think it perhaps thinks it is - and at least one of the super-powered alien races in it feels as if its being written with a very different nature to that shown in canon - but I find I'm enjoying the little character moments between the mixed-up crews, which do feel true to the canon characters.
383. House of Whispers #10 by Nalo Hopkinson ★★★★
This is consistently one of the most interesting and evocative comic titles I read each month. Set variously in New Orleans and the Dreaming, this works with a lot of things you don't see in comics often - the protagonists include a voodoo goddess and her worshippers, her alligator-god husband, various obea and characters from the Dreaming series of comics like the Corinthian. This is very much rooted in the New Orleans African-American community, and the human characters include some fascinating people like Alter Boi, a gender-fluid character living as queen of a house in a fashion similar to what I've heard was the case with drag queen houses in the 80s, while also acting as the voodoo goddess' ride in the human world. It's bringing in folklore characters I know a little about, like Ananse, and is such a great change of pace, setting and backdrop to the majority of comics I see advertised.
384. James Bond: Origin #10 by Jeff Paraker ★★★★
I wasn't expecting a huge amount from this James Bond title, but this is a franchise that Dynamite have worked hard to bring in some writers to work on who have interesting ideas, like Greg Pak, and it hasn't been as overblown or simplistic as I was worried it might be. I'm particularly enjoying this origin series because it goes back to when Bond was first considered for recruitment by the secret service, as a teenager during WWII. The comic's exploring how he learned to do some of the things that became signature aspects of his character in later stories - like how he became such a good card player - and features a good mix of successes and failures. He's a long way from being the seemingly unflappable and unbeatable character of the films.
385. James Bond 007 #8 by Greg Pak ★★★★
386. Firefly #7 by Greg Pak ★★★★
This mini-series/series is rooted in Mal and Zoe having to atone for some of the things they did during the war, and while there's been a lot of fighting going on, the exploration of what they did, and why, and how they try and reconcile itwhile in the middle of all kinds of trouble is rather fun.
387. Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter ★★★
388. Vegetables and Vaccines by Seanan McGuire ★★★
389. Sun Sets Weeping by Seanan McGuire ★★★★
390. Tea Time for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith ★★★
I always enjoy the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books; they're such a gentle, good-natured read in most cases, and the way Precious consistently acts as if people are inclined to be generally good is charming.
By way of a holding pattern, I thought I'd post up a list of the things I read in June. It's mostly a cut-and-paste from a thread I maintain on Goodreads for tracking what I've read since the start of the year, which is what the serial numbers refer to.
June was a bit of a slow month for reading; VidUKon took up a lot of my time, and I've been hiding in computer games quite a lot for various reasons.
361. A Death in Chelsea by Lynn Brittney ★★★
I think this must be the second book in the series; the setup is interesting, the murder mystery is relatively simple but told at a good pace, and there's a potentially interesting mix of characters... but it feels like this is a sequel to the book where all of the initial set-up and recruiting for this unusual police unit was done, and that I'm expected to know already what the relationships between the characters are. That lack of familiarity worked against me. I did like watching the late-middle-aged working class women working as experts, contributing to the case and even going undercover, though - yes, there were plenty of bright young things breaking molds (or trying to) but the fierce working class grandmothers sticking it to the criminals and demonstrating their expertise in unexpected areas were a genuines delight.
362. The Wild Storm #23 by Warren Ellis ★★★★
363. The Vatican Rip by Jonathan Gash ★★★
364. Hack/Slash vs Chaos #5 by Tim Seeley ★★
I'd maybe enjoy this comic series more if I knew or cared who the majority of the crossover characters are. Unfortunately, I don't.
365. The Sleepers of Erin by Jonathan Gash ★★★
366. Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt #5 by Kieron Gillen ★★★★
I don't read all that many superhero comic book titles, and this was an interesting cross-dimension adventure with a gay MC, which isn't as common in comics as it should be.
367. The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang ★★★★★
This was recommended to me by a friend (the same person who poked me to join Goodreads in the first place) and it's an excellent contemporary romance novel. I don't read many contemporary romance novels, as I've found a lot aren't to my taste, but this had really interesting characters. The female protagonist is an autistic statistician/computer modeller who identifies and predicts consumer shopping trends, which I think makes this the first romance novel I've read where either of the main characters was autistic. In some ways, this was a gender-swapped version of Pretty Woman - the male protagonist is an Asian-American man (actually, Vietnamese/Swedish American citizen) who's taken up sex work to help pay his mother's medical bills, and who very much wants to be a tailor/dressmaker/clothing designer, but is busy helping his mother run her dry-cleaning business. The characters are well-written, and there are a lot of topics touched on I found I enjoyed reading about - tensions around family expectations, for example.
368. Quidditch Through The Ages by Kennilworthy Whisp (JK Rowling) ★★★
369. The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary ★★★★★
I read this as a result of a review on Goodreads from soemone I know through VidUKon who made it sound excellent, and I'm very glad she reviewed it. The basic set-up is that Tiffy needs somewhere to live, having broken up again with her dodgy boyfriend; the place she finds that she can afford is a flatshare, but with a catch - there's only one bed. However, the person renting the flat, Leon, is a nurse at a palliative care facility, who works nights, and the advertised offer for the flatshare is that although they'll be bedsharing, Leon lives with his girlfriend on the weekend and works nights, so he's out of the flat from 6pm until 9am every weekday and all day on the weekends. The person who rents off him - which is Tiffy - therefore has the run of the flat all weekend and in the evenings from 6pm to 9am, so they'll never actually see each other, and they end up communicating by post-it note. The notes are quite funny, because the two of them are very different. It's quickly apparent that there's more going on, though - Tiffy's relationship with her ex was abusive, but she only realises how much as the book's unfolding. Leon has some similar issues in his life; his brother's in jail on an armed robbery charge for a crime he didn't commit, and he has experience of abusive relationships because his father left when he was 2, and his mother has a history of dating appalling men when he was growing up. For a book with some difficult topics, it's actually a remarkably sweet story, because Tiffy and Leon are genuinely nice people, and their friends are interesting people in their own right. Leon's mixed-race, which isn't a big thing but is a thing that's acknowledged in the book; Tiffy is also not the typical fainting wispy English rose, either - she's about six feet tall, and likes baking and her food. One of the things that I liked about both of them is that actually they both enjoy their food - they like cakes and fish and chips and takeaways - and there's absolutely no implied judgement that either is overweight or striving to become a thin poster-model. (And both end up modelling at one or more points in the book, but ... well, that's crochet for you.)
370. The Lamplighter's Love by Delphine Dryden ★★
This might've been better as a novel, but as a novella, I really didn't like it. 19-year-old woman works her way up through a steampunk guild to become Lamplighter for London (something like steampunk air traffic control for ground traffic), a ten-year job that wears people out to the extent that a thankful nation gives them a title and guaranteed income when they retire. On the verge of being offered the job, having spent two years training with the current Lamplighter, a guy she finds attractive, it turns out the guild is going to screw her over by giving her two-thirds of the work and most of the responsibility but minimal pay and no end-of-term benefits, unlike the obnoxious bloke who's going to be doing the other part of the job, who also decides to blackmail her. So, faced with this horrible glass ceiling and dire thoughts, she... decides to marry the 29-year-old retiring Lamplighter and become a countess instead. This feels like either porny fanfic that should've just been a couple of scenes and instead comes off badly as a novella, or a story that might've worked as a novel - giving the female protagonist more agency, making a relationship between a 19-year-old and a 29-year-old feel a little more balanced - but which really didn't work when truncated down to 20,000 words and three sex scenes.
371. Army of Darkness/Bubba Ho-Tep #4 by Scott Duval
I admit it, I want this to be the new Bruce Campbell film.
372. Red Sonja #5 by Mark Russell ★★★★
This has been an entertaining read so far, and a more interesting challenge for Sonja than a lto of the Red Sonja comics have been. I'm a little iffy on her suddenly having a live relative introduced in this (presumably so they can be under threat as a plot device) but watching her trying to master grand strategy and politics is a great learning experience for everyone, especially the nation-conquering emperor she's driving to distraction.
373. The Walking Dead #192 by Robert Kirkman ★★★★
374. The Good Pilot, Peter Woodhouse by Alexander McCall Smith ★★★
375. The Dreaming #10 by Simon Spurrier ★★★
376. Spider-Gwen: Ghost Spider #9 by Seanan McGuire ★★★★
This series has been very low-key and character-driven, as Gwen Stacy tries to work out what she wants her life to be - and how she wants her spider-powers to be used - and the effect it has on her friends. Gwen's still dealing with the aftermath of the Into the Spider-Verse movie, and has all the baggage that goes with apparently having been in prison, so the comic focuses very much on her trying to settle her mind on what she wants her place to be, and what she wants to achieve. This is one of my favourite comic book reads each month.
377. Domino: Hotshots #4 by Gail Simone ★★★
378. House Arano (The Aurigan Coalition) by Kiva Maginn ★★★
379. Barbarella/Dejah Thors #4 by Leah Williams ★★★★
There's been a lot of exposition throughout this mini-series, but fundamentally it's all about Barbarella and Dejah Thoris meeting, respecting (and being attracted to) each other, and trying to save the world. The writing's been more interesting than I expected - I like that Dynamite are doing their best to work with the licenses they've picked up, but a fair number of their comics tend to involve a lot of fight scenes, whereas this has been going in a very different direction. It feels rather deeper than the average Barsoom-related comic.
380. American Gods: Moment of the Storm #3 by Neil Gaiman ★★★
381. Star Trek: The Q Conflict #4 by Scott Tipton ★★★
382. Star Trek: The Q Conflict #5 by Scott Tipton ★★★
This isn't as clever as I think it perhaps thinks it is - and at least one of the super-powered alien races in it feels as if its being written with a very different nature to that shown in canon - but I find I'm enjoying the little character moments between the mixed-up crews, which do feel true to the canon characters.
383. House of Whispers #10 by Nalo Hopkinson ★★★★
This is consistently one of the most interesting and evocative comic titles I read each month. Set variously in New Orleans and the Dreaming, this works with a lot of things you don't see in comics often - the protagonists include a voodoo goddess and her worshippers, her alligator-god husband, various obea and characters from the Dreaming series of comics like the Corinthian. This is very much rooted in the New Orleans African-American community, and the human characters include some fascinating people like Alter Boi, a gender-fluid character living as queen of a house in a fashion similar to what I've heard was the case with drag queen houses in the 80s, while also acting as the voodoo goddess' ride in the human world. It's bringing in folklore characters I know a little about, like Ananse, and is such a great change of pace, setting and backdrop to the majority of comics I see advertised.
384. James Bond: Origin #10 by Jeff Paraker ★★★★
I wasn't expecting a huge amount from this James Bond title, but this is a franchise that Dynamite have worked hard to bring in some writers to work on who have interesting ideas, like Greg Pak, and it hasn't been as overblown or simplistic as I was worried it might be. I'm particularly enjoying this origin series because it goes back to when Bond was first considered for recruitment by the secret service, as a teenager during WWII. The comic's exploring how he learned to do some of the things that became signature aspects of his character in later stories - like how he became such a good card player - and features a good mix of successes and failures. He's a long way from being the seemingly unflappable and unbeatable character of the films.
385. James Bond 007 #8 by Greg Pak ★★★★
386. Firefly #7 by Greg Pak ★★★★
This mini-series/series is rooted in Mal and Zoe having to atone for some of the things they did during the war, and while there's been a lot of fighting going on, the exploration of what they did, and why, and how they try and reconcile itwhile in the middle of all kinds of trouble is rather fun.
387. Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter ★★★
388. Vegetables and Vaccines by Seanan McGuire ★★★
389. Sun Sets Weeping by Seanan McGuire ★★★★
390. Tea Time for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith ★★★
I always enjoy the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books; they're such a gentle, good-natured read in most cases, and the way Precious consistently acts as if people are inclined to be generally good is charming.
