i haven't done the reading meme in two months O.O
What I just finished reading:
the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay, FINALLY. i figured out why i bogged down and stopped reading it last time. the second to last section is about kavalier during ww2, and because he's stationed in antarctica (he joins the navy and that's where they put him), and because everyone but him and the group's pilot is gassed in their sleep by a malfunctioning stove, pretty much the entire section is joe kavalier and this pilot slowly going crazy at the frozen bottom of the world. and that just wasn't that exciting to me.
as you can tell, i actually finished it the second go-round. and i really liked it! it's not totally a love letter to comics - which you might expect from a novel about comic book writers and artists and comic book history - but it is a love letter to the creative impulse and the need to tell stories and the ways in which those stories can save you. and it's also a little bit about survivor's guilt (kavalier is smuggled out of prague in 1939, and you might be able to guess what happens to the rest of his family) and how the choice that seems like a reasonable idea at the time can ultimately make you tremendously unhappy. it's kind of a downer book - i mean, jews, europe, ww2, gay boys, the rise and then fall of superhero comics - but it ends on a hopeful note. michael chabon writes like a man who loves to hear himself talk and wants you to know how much he knows, plus he'll do a flashback for four or five chapters before coming back to the present - some of the narrative is annoyingly circular like that - but overall i really liked it. in a lot of ways it's very affectionate.
What I am reading now:
sarah gailey's river of teeth - because hippos! - but i'm only like six pages in so i can't really judge it yet.
What I'm going to read next:
the memory trees, by kali wallace, which i expect to like because i really enjoyed shallow graves and, uh, the many thousands and thousands of words of spn fic of hers that i read.
i did not love having to go back to work today, partly because there was nothing for me to do - well, there's a bunch of stuff on my desk i could do, i just didn't want to do it, and fortunately it's not pressing - but mostly because i was really enjoying sleeping late and not having to get dressed until noon. and it is FUCKING COLD, like single-digits-at-night cold, and i just didn't want to get out of bed because my bed is cozy. there were eleven people in tax, including me, and the one partner who was there said "let's have pizza for lunch", so we had pizza. yum. but i still didn't have anything to do. tomorrow will be more of the same, yay.
the librarians is adorable but sometimes the plots are dumb. but the librarians themselves are so cute. THE VILLAIN HAS A LIGHTSABER. EEHEEHEE.
i didn't watch the doctor who christmas special, but i know there's a new doctor (a woman this time! exciting!). and peter capaldi was very kind to a wee fanboy who was apparently concerned about not liking the new doctor. what a lovely gesture. (i admit my favorite thing about that is the dalek he drew on the envelope.)
mysterious wrapped package temporarily clears out ferry terminal. mysterious wrapped package turns out to be... fruitcake. heh.
there's (apparently only one?) totally bizarre traffic circle triangle in dc. there's a wendy's in the middle of it. what happens on the fringes of planned cities when those cities outgrow the planning can be really cool, and sometimes it can be a giant mess.
there's a forest of chairs growing in the uk and no, this does not mean someone found a different door to narnia.
the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay, FINALLY. i figured out why i bogged down and stopped reading it last time. the second to last section is about kavalier during ww2, and because he's stationed in antarctica (he joins the navy and that's where they put him), and because everyone but him and the group's pilot is gassed in their sleep by a malfunctioning stove, pretty much the entire section is joe kavalier and this pilot slowly going crazy at the frozen bottom of the world. and that just wasn't that exciting to me.
as you can tell, i actually finished it the second go-round. and i really liked it! it's not totally a love letter to comics - which you might expect from a novel about comic book writers and artists and comic book history - but it is a love letter to the creative impulse and the need to tell stories and the ways in which those stories can save you. and it's also a little bit about survivor's guilt (kavalier is smuggled out of prague in 1939, and you might be able to guess what happens to the rest of his family) and how the choice that seems like a reasonable idea at the time can ultimately make you tremendously unhappy. it's kind of a downer book - i mean, jews, europe, ww2, gay boys, the rise and then fall of superhero comics - but it ends on a hopeful note. michael chabon writes like a man who loves to hear himself talk and wants you to know how much he knows, plus he'll do a flashback for four or five chapters before coming back to the present - some of the narrative is annoyingly circular like that - but overall i really liked it. in a lot of ways it's very affectionate.
What I am reading now:
sarah gailey's river of teeth - because hippos! - but i'm only like six pages in so i can't really judge it yet.
What I'm going to read next:
the memory trees, by kali wallace, which i expect to like because i really enjoyed shallow graves and, uh, the many thousands and thousands of words of spn fic of hers that i read.
i did not love having to go back to work today, partly because there was nothing for me to do - well, there's a bunch of stuff on my desk i could do, i just didn't want to do it, and fortunately it's not pressing - but mostly because i was really enjoying sleeping late and not having to get dressed until noon. and it is FUCKING COLD, like single-digits-at-night cold, and i just didn't want to get out of bed because my bed is cozy. there were eleven people in tax, including me, and the one partner who was there said "let's have pizza for lunch", so we had pizza. yum. but i still didn't have anything to do. tomorrow will be more of the same, yay.
the librarians is adorable but sometimes the plots are dumb. but the librarians themselves are so cute. THE VILLAIN HAS A LIGHTSABER. EEHEEHEE.
i didn't watch the doctor who christmas special, but i know there's a new doctor (a woman this time! exciting!). and peter capaldi was very kind to a wee fanboy who was apparently concerned about not liking the new doctor. what a lovely gesture. (i admit my favorite thing about that is the dalek he drew on the envelope.)
mysterious wrapped package temporarily clears out ferry terminal. mysterious wrapped package turns out to be... fruitcake. heh.
there's (apparently only one?) totally bizarre traffic circle triangle in dc. there's a wendy's in the middle of it. what happens on the fringes of planned cities when those cities outgrow the planning can be really cool, and sometimes it can be a giant mess.
there's a forest of chairs growing in the uk and no, this does not mean someone found a different door to narnia.