Reading
Before I start, I just looked up on reviews on Dragon Bound, the last installment of the Dragon series, and found that most people gave it 4 stars, and the series as a whole got 4-5 stars, AND people who'd read only "Bound" said that they figured out what was going on quickly, and wanted to go pick up the rest of the series. WOOT WOOT!
Now, back to the portion of this blog where I talk about other stuff. >.>
(But first: Holy shit, you guys, July is going to be AWESOME. I get my baby Grey, AND "A Little Weird" comes out! I won't know which to celebrate first!)
I've gotten back into reading comics lately! This hasn't been good for my wallet, but has been good for my brain. I'd forgotten how much I LIKE comics.
I shall talk about my favorites. :D
Hawkeye
You can find the first trade paperback (a trade paperback is when they collect x number of issues, nowadays in order, compile them, and publish them) on shelves now, or at Amazon here. I love Hawkeye. The art makes him look like everyman (which... well, he's an archer, he shouldn't), and the facial expressions, other characters, the sheer storytelling in the art itself is fantastic. Hawkeye is about Hawkeye, and what he's doing when he's not an Avenger. The book makes it a point to show that unlike most of the other Avengers, he's human. He's always bandaged or getting beaten up or whatever. Best of all, though, it shows him trying to do good stuff (and sometimes failing) and his flaws and problems and friends and so on. It's incredible. I LOVE it. He's still being a good guy, but he also messes up. YES.
Kelly Sue DeConnick
This writer gets special mention because I've decided to pick up anything and everything she writes. Tight plotlines, interesting character, and like Hawkeye she really succeeds in showing the human side of things. (This author is married to the guy who writes Hawkeye. I think this is awesome.) The superhero who's trying to take her cat to the vet, for instance, but there are dinosaurs to stop downtown. Damn it! So she hands the cat carrier to a taxi driver, says the cat is actually Spider-Man and the driver needs to get Spidey to the vet (which is secretly an Avengers outpost, she says) and she's makign the taxi driver an unofficial Avenger. He's ecstatic, and does so. This slayed me! Ah, how superheroes get stuff done... This all happened in Captain Marvel, which Sue seems to have left, now. :( I'm looking for where else she turns up... If she writes it, I'll buy it.
Avengers Assemble
Written by the same guy who writes Hawkeye, so of course I love it! There are the usual team-big-fight-oh-no-plot lines, but they're interspersed and, better, interwoven with a human aspect. Every character seems like themselves, rather than a cookie cut-out. (This is, sadly, not guaranteed in comics, especially when the authors swap out every year or less.) The storyline where Bruce Banner swallowed poison and might die? KILLED ME. Oh, boys! (This can also be found in trade paperback now.)
Saga
This isn't a superhero story. My comics girl said, "You should read this," and handed me a hardcover version of a trade paperback. She said, "It's like Romeo and Juliet in space, but no one dies."
The art is breathtakingly gorgeous. Paintings more than comics art. It's two aliens from different species who are having a baby, and there's all sorts of people after them. Their people are at war. The things this book says about people at war, about how the people caught in the middle are hurt, about superstition and where it comes from, about moral compasses -- it's incredible. There are no 'bad guys' here, even when you don't want someone to succeed. You know why they're doing it: you understand. It's flat out amazing. The second trade paperback (hardback?) is coming out soon, and I can't wait.
Books
But I'm not just reading comics these days, oh no. When am I ever? ;-D
Seduce me at Sunrise by Lisa Kleypas (historical romance)
I picked this up because I love gypsies. I like the sense of community, of wandering, the mystery. I even like the way they traditionally look and what they wear. Gypsies fascinate me.
I'd picked up another book by Kleypas about another gypsy, and really liked it. This is the second in the series.
I... just can't get into it. I did, at least, figure out why. After 10-15 pages we've only seen our hero and heroine interact once (in a melodramatic way I didn't care for), and we've only seen any people interact with any other people maybe two other times. It's all recap. Some of that recap was interesting: I learned why our hero was living with these people when he's a gypsy. That made me like him a lot. I loved that part. The rest of it was recapping about the heroine's older brother (...why?) and younger sister (the star the last book: again, why?) and LOTS of narrative explaining instead of showing. Pretty much all of that could have been sprinkled throughout the book, after I get hooked on the characters. So, sadly, I think I'll be putting this one down. It may get better, but if it feels like a chore to get to the better parts, forget it.
The Genius of Dogs (Non-fiction)
If you like dogs, you should read this book. Full stop. It's a science book written for the layman about dogs, how they were domesticated and what that did to them, how they're similar or different than their wolfy cousins and, mostly, the incredibly amazing things they are born able to do -- like communicating with humans! As a dog trainer I already had a high respect for dogs, but this book just catapulted them into the stratosphere, in my opinion. So. Cool. And entertaining! It was an easy read. Fun even if you're just looking at what domestication does!
The Alex Studies by Irene Pepperberg (Non-fiction)
I started reading this because I'm interested in training my African Grey to communicate, and I was hoping this would tell me how. It has! It's been a fascinating book, but really slow reading: it isn't written for the layman, or at least not well. It's specifically about the research, how they taught him what they needed to know, what the results are, and what the implications of that are. Every so often you get a glimpse of what things were actually like. Pepperberg mentions once that even his "wrong" responses weren't random: they were things like him saying, "Tray!" and then flinging the tray of items they were questioning him on across the room. It's things like that that give me a better glimpse into the Grey mind, and I wish there were more of them. Still, it's stunning to see how much he was able to do, and the explanations of what that actually means. Neat stuff, if you have the patience to slog through the discussion!
Hikimo: Bonded by CB Conwy (m/m romance, BDSM variety)
I started this because I read both "Alphabet Soup" and "A Russian Bear" by the same author and quiet enjoyed them. "AS" was my favorite, with light pain stuff (I can't stand sadomasichism even when people are having fun, but I love bondage and power plays) and heavier bondage and power play stuff, and LOTS of character growth. That's my kink, character growth. ;) "ARB" was also fun, slightly heavier on the pain (I'm really sensitive to it, so ended up skimming a lot of scenes), but still with the power play and bondage and character growth. Not as much here as in "AS", but still enough to make me happy.
I was hoping for more of the same with "Bonded," plus it has aliens! :D But I couldn't quite get past the love-at-first-sight (even though it had to do with bonding -- I kept thinking, "Why isn't this guy asking questions about this? If I felt that sudden and powerful attraction to an alien, I'd be horny and freaked out."), and the aliens -- who are carefully staying separate from the humans -- somehow are using casual human language (as if they'd grown up here), which threw me out of the story repeatedly. Plus, there's little description of them. They look a bit like elves (my description, not Conwy's), but... what do they wear? I have no idea. My brain kept supplying unhelpful images.
If aliens and bonding is your kink, you might really like this. I couldn't get into it, and so didn't finish it. Maybe it was an earlier book? Dunno. But I'd recommend "Alphabet Soup" or "A Russian Bear"!
The African Grey Parrot Handbook by Mattie Sue Athan (non-fiction)
I bought this book because it came highly recommended. It was awful. As a dog trainer, I expect the following things from anything to do with animals:
1. Tell me the possible problem, and likely the causes.
2. Tell me how to avoid that.
3. Tell me how to fix it if I can't avoid it.
Athan was great at the first step, but stopped there. I walked away feeling like there was no way to stop an African Grey from being neurotic. Everything was statements like, "During the juvenile period, your bird may start developing fear behaviors. Make sure to take care of this right away or it will damage your bird's personality." What's missing: When is the juvenile period? How do I spot fear behaviors before they're totally obvious? What do I do to 'take care of it'? Or this: "When your bird is showing fear body language, remove it from the area." NO PROBLEM. What does that look like? As a dog trainer, I know that most people can't spot body language in their dog. I'm assuming I may or may not be able to spot it in the bird. She gives no hint what it might look like. The closest she gets to answering these types of questions throughout the book is telling you what NOT to do. Don't give the bird a time out. Don't give them the "evil eye." Don't wiggle your hand if the bird tries to nip when they step up. Do wiggle your hand if the bird tries to nip when they step up. (I'm serious.) Do ignore problem behaviors. Do put your bird in the cage and leave them there if you're in a "problem stage." (No description of what this is, when it happens, or how long it might last.) Don't put your bird in the cage for long periods of time (like, weeks or months -- say, the length of time I would expect a "stage" to last). Don't expose them to too many things. Don't shelter them. Keep them in a quiet room. Keep them in the main room.
Do you see my problem? Yeah. I'm waiting on some other books to arrive.
Up next: "The Warded Man" (fantasy) and an untold numbers of bird books.
JB