Wednesday Reading Meme
Life sucks a bit. I thought my cold was nearly gone the last few days of last week, was even well enough to go with 
lysanatt to a concert one day and out for dinner with some of the people I went to Switzerland with a few years ago the next, except then it came back with a vengeance this weekend, so now I am staying home from work again. Which is embarrassing and makes me feel guilty.
I suspect my cold might be a mild flu.
lysanatt, please tell me I didn't infect you?
(Also, it's been keeping me so much indoors, that I still don't have a Kyogre. I had been thinking I'd at least have time for a few visits to Fisketorvet, try my luck there, but I am beginning to suspect that won't happen. And I still haven't been to see Downsizing and suspect I'll end up having to wait for the dvd. Things suck in general right now, okay?)
What I've recently finished reading
Holly Black: Lucifer: Cold Heaven
It's okay. It feels a bit like HB wants to tick off as many elements from Carey's comics as she can get to, but that's fine. I enjoyed the visit to the Dreaming.
Elan Mastai: All Our Wrong Todays
Either I just read a fairly lackluster time travel story about a guy called Tom Barren, or I read a slightly more engaging, but ultimately not that much better story about an honestly very unsympathetic man named John Barren having an epic breakdown of some sort.
If it's the time travel story, well, then I am frankly underwhelmed. This is apparently the author's first novel after having written several screenplays, and I feel that his science fiction alternate 2016 shows this. It's a very visual alternate world, flying cars and super tech and frankly shallow, showing us a world where the whole world has grown mostly identical, but people's lives haven't changed much beyond better tech. Later in the book we are presented with a supergenius who has apparently singlehandedly invented, well, everything - which is the sort of sf trope I thought had died decades ago, but apparently not. (It doesn't help that the time travel plotline doesn't really add any twists we haven't seen before, and then there's the thing with the three major male characters, who are all assholes in various ways, and who ruins the lives of their women love interests.)
The story of John Barren the architect, who has some sort of epic breakdown and proceeds to think he's a time traveller from a parallel time who fucked up the world, well, that works a bit better for me. I still don't particularly like it - the main character is an asshole and at one point rapes his own girlfriend - but I do think the text mostly supports that interpretation. Especially since the book is kept in the first person, making an unreliable narrator a logical thing to suspect (funny how the time travel plot resurfaces when John is all alone and far from both doting family and new girlfriend), and later on Tom, John and a third personality called Victor even have an epic struggle over who is to be in control.
Mind you, I don't think the author intended anything beyond the lackluster time travel story. Which I honestly think would have worked better as a movie. Oh well..
Jan Guillou: Ordets makt och vanmakt: mity skrivande liv
I primarily read this autobiography, because I've been reading Guillou's family saga series and the last couple of books have been focusing on a single character, which I've been suspecting of being, well, himself. Having read this and his wikipedia page, I'm beginning to think the character is, well - his personal Mary Sue, I suppose. Autobiographical novel as he retrospectively would have liked it to be? A bit more exciting than real life.
Daniel Branca: Disney's Hall of Fame: Daniel Branca
My recent Yuletide writing left me in the mood for good old-school Disney comics. There's some nice Magica ones in this, even if I can't help but feel it slightly jarring to have internet in this 'verse. There's something eternally 50s about Duckburg to me.
Richard K. Morgan: Altered Carbon
I liked this well enough. I must admit, I didn't really find the plot - a fairly standard detective noir story complete with femme fatales and other tropes - particularly new, but I liked the setting and I liked the main character. That said, perhaps - having first read the author's fantasy trilogy "A Land Fit For Heroes" - I feel that the entire concept of the stacks and sleeve technology, well - the book focuses a lot on social inequalities between the ultra-rich and the normal (and poorer) people (and is way too fixated on brothels and prostitutes in its plot for my taste), while certain other aspects of the sleeve tech that seems obvious to me is never even touched on (yes, I am talking about anything LGBT+). Oh well. It's only the first book in a trilogy. There's time.
Brian Michael Bendis: Death of Spider-Man
Brian Michael Bendis: Death of Spider-Man Fallout
So, I read these because I want to read the Miles Morales comics and needed the background for Peter Parker being gone. And while the actual death of comic just left me wanting to slap the ultimate version of Steve Rogers - then again, that one is an asshole - the fallout one? The funeral? Ouch.
What I've recently watched
4. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
It's fun. Fairly forgettable, but it's got Charlie Hunnam, who is always a pleasure, and it's basically Arthurian High Fantasy done as a heist movie, so. Fun.
5. Tom of Finland
Somebody please STOP FUCKING KILLING JAKOB OFTEBRO. Ahem, that said - interesting. Maybe a bit - there seems to be a certain collection of standard tropes of gay biopic movies and it hits them all? But it's a nice movie, it has lovely scenes (I loved the bit with the Jewish printer.)
What I'm reading now
Peter Ackroyd's Queer City. I might need to read some of his fiction.
What I'm reading next
Either a Russian dystopic novel from the early 20th century or a new Danish novel set in Medieval England. Anybody want to vote for either one?
Total number of books and comics read this year: 19
This entry was originally posted at https://oneiriad.dreamwidth.org/483979.html, where it currently has
comments.
lysanatt to a concert one day and out for dinner with some of the people I went to Switzerland with a few years ago the next, except then it came back with a vengeance this weekend, so now I am staying home from work again. Which is embarrassing and makes me feel guilty.
I suspect my cold might be a mild flu.
lysanatt, please tell me I didn't infect you?
(Also, it's been keeping me so much indoors, that I still don't have a Kyogre. I had been thinking I'd at least have time for a few visits to Fisketorvet, try my luck there, but I am beginning to suspect that won't happen. And I still haven't been to see Downsizing and suspect I'll end up having to wait for the dvd. Things suck in general right now, okay?)
What I've recently finished reading
Holly Black: Lucifer: Cold Heaven
It's okay. It feels a bit like HB wants to tick off as many elements from Carey's comics as she can get to, but that's fine. I enjoyed the visit to the Dreaming.
Elan Mastai: All Our Wrong Todays
Either I just read a fairly lackluster time travel story about a guy called Tom Barren, or I read a slightly more engaging, but ultimately not that much better story about an honestly very unsympathetic man named John Barren having an epic breakdown of some sort.
If it's the time travel story, well, then I am frankly underwhelmed. This is apparently the author's first novel after having written several screenplays, and I feel that his science fiction alternate 2016 shows this. It's a very visual alternate world, flying cars and super tech and frankly shallow, showing us a world where the whole world has grown mostly identical, but people's lives haven't changed much beyond better tech. Later in the book we are presented with a supergenius who has apparently singlehandedly invented, well, everything - which is the sort of sf trope I thought had died decades ago, but apparently not. (It doesn't help that the time travel plotline doesn't really add any twists we haven't seen before, and then there's the thing with the three major male characters, who are all assholes in various ways, and who ruins the lives of their women love interests.)
The story of John Barren the architect, who has some sort of epic breakdown and proceeds to think he's a time traveller from a parallel time who fucked up the world, well, that works a bit better for me. I still don't particularly like it - the main character is an asshole and at one point rapes his own girlfriend - but I do think the text mostly supports that interpretation. Especially since the book is kept in the first person, making an unreliable narrator a logical thing to suspect (funny how the time travel plot resurfaces when John is all alone and far from both doting family and new girlfriend), and later on Tom, John and a third personality called Victor even have an epic struggle over who is to be in control.
Mind you, I don't think the author intended anything beyond the lackluster time travel story. Which I honestly think would have worked better as a movie. Oh well..
Jan Guillou: Ordets makt och vanmakt: mity skrivande liv
I primarily read this autobiography, because I've been reading Guillou's family saga series and the last couple of books have been focusing on a single character, which I've been suspecting of being, well, himself. Having read this and his wikipedia page, I'm beginning to think the character is, well - his personal Mary Sue, I suppose. Autobiographical novel as he retrospectively would have liked it to be? A bit more exciting than real life.
Daniel Branca: Disney's Hall of Fame: Daniel Branca
My recent Yuletide writing left me in the mood for good old-school Disney comics. There's some nice Magica ones in this, even if I can't help but feel it slightly jarring to have internet in this 'verse. There's something eternally 50s about Duckburg to me.
Richard K. Morgan: Altered Carbon
I liked this well enough. I must admit, I didn't really find the plot - a fairly standard detective noir story complete with femme fatales and other tropes - particularly new, but I liked the setting and I liked the main character. That said, perhaps - having first read the author's fantasy trilogy "A Land Fit For Heroes" - I feel that the entire concept of the stacks and sleeve technology, well - the book focuses a lot on social inequalities between the ultra-rich and the normal (and poorer) people (and is way too fixated on brothels and prostitutes in its plot for my taste), while certain other aspects of the sleeve tech that seems obvious to me is never even touched on (yes, I am talking about anything LGBT+). Oh well. It's only the first book in a trilogy. There's time.
Brian Michael Bendis: Death of Spider-Man
Brian Michael Bendis: Death of Spider-Man Fallout
So, I read these because I want to read the Miles Morales comics and needed the background for Peter Parker being gone. And while the actual death of comic just left me wanting to slap the ultimate version of Steve Rogers - then again, that one is an asshole - the fallout one? The funeral? Ouch.
What I've recently watched
4. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
It's fun. Fairly forgettable, but it's got Charlie Hunnam, who is always a pleasure, and it's basically Arthurian High Fantasy done as a heist movie, so. Fun.
5. Tom of Finland
Somebody please STOP FUCKING KILLING JAKOB OFTEBRO. Ahem, that said - interesting. Maybe a bit - there seems to be a certain collection of standard tropes of gay biopic movies and it hits them all? But it's a nice movie, it has lovely scenes (I loved the bit with the Jewish printer.)
What I'm reading now
Peter Ackroyd's Queer City. I might need to read some of his fiction.
What I'm reading next
Either a Russian dystopic novel from the early 20th century or a new Danish novel set in Medieval England. Anybody want to vote for either one?
Total number of books and comics read this year: 19
This entry was originally posted at https://oneiriad.dreamwidth.org/483979.html, where it currently has
comments.