potentialities

What I've been reading

I read both volumes of Matt Fraction's The Defenders, a sort of unconventional team book that starts out all messy and then gets brilliant and then canceled in short order. Alas.

I reread Surfeit of Lampreys, and I do still love the Lampreys. Plus Roberta Grey, honorary Lamprey, of course.

I read A Game for Swallows: To Die, to Leave, to Return, a graphic memoir about the civil war in Lebanon. The pairing of the art style and the subject matter obviously owes a lot to Persepolis, and indeed this is what made me pick it up, but Abirached also does some really effective storytelling through maps and floorplans and uses lots of fields of repeated figures (like the cars on the cover) in a visually striking way.

I read Broken Homes, the new Peter Grant book, and well. I'm of two minds. As a book, it really is, structurally, broken, so even though there are lots of little fan-friendly yay! moments, they're all embedded in a framework of wait, what? Like, I mean, ( mild spoilers/premise of book ) Also, ( spoilers/speculation ) But mostly I love this series too much to be objective and I think everyone should read it.

I read New X-Men Volume 1, the beginning of Grant Morrison's run, and it was entertaining enough.

I read Harlequin Valentine, a graphic adaption of a Neil Gaiman story. I am really not in love with the art, which is allegedly supposed to be "a combination of digitally enhanced photo-realism and dynamic painting" but just looks like the slightly-classier version of the fanart which is just airbrushing over a photo and pretending you drew it. But, I mean, the pages themselves are fine, and it's a legitimate artistic choice, I just don't like it.

I reread Death and the Dancing Footman, which I think wins for the Ngiao Marsh book with the least-representative title. I mean, there is a footman, he dances, and logistically the solution of the mystery does involve him, but it doesn't give you a hint of the setup. This book was published in 1941 and all the characters are gearing up for war in one way or another and thinking about how odd it is to investigate one death so particularly when lots of people are going to be dying indiscriminately soon, which is not a subject that generally comes up in your English country house murder. Also, two of the guests in the house reference Busman's Honeymoon; they have good taste in detective novels.

I reread Colour Scheme, which is okay (and has a great title) but not my favorite of the Alleyn-hunts-spies-in-WWII-New-Zealand duology.

I reread Died in the Wool, which, by process of elimination, is. I had forgotten/not noticed how cool the structure of it is.

I reread Final Curtain, and I love Troy, I love her as a POV character especially, and I love her reunion with Alleyn after their long separation during the war. There is a gay character among the group of suspects—this is indicated via incredibly subtle hints, like one character actually saying "He's one-of-those, of course, but I always think they're good mixers in their own way," which managed to go right over my incredibly sheltered head at twelve or thirteen—which I do not love. Ngiao Marsh's ability to characterize has come on leaps and bounds since the last serious spate of extended homophobia in book four, so that's something. Something fairly repellant.

What I'm reading now

I just started rereading Swing, Brother, Swing.

What I'm reading next

I put a hold on A Tale for the Time Being, because it was the only title on the Booker longlist that looked interesting to me, and it just came in at the library, so we'll see. Also, the next Ngaio Marsh after this one is A Night at the Vulcan and I'm excited about that one, although I've reread it enough times already that I actually remember who the murderer is.

(I never remember the murderer. The solution to the mystery is the first thing I forget about a book. This compensated somewhat for my chronic shortage of reading material as a kid.)

I decided that the Wednesday reading meme should have a fannish counterpart, so I'm initiating Friday fics. Unlike my Wednesday reading posts, I'm not going to include absolutely everything I've finished with scathing write-ups of stuff I hated or was utterly bemused by, just things I think someone else should conceivably read if they're into that sort of thing.

Also this week I'm going to cheat and include things that I, strictly speaking, read before this week, because I enjoyed them and don't want them to be left out and also because I want this post to be longer and more interesting than it otherwise would be.

gonna make you have awful luck (1108 words) by sungabraverday
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo, Curse Workers Series - Holly Black
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Fantine (Les Misérables), Cosette Fauchelevent, Mme. Thénardier, Azelma Thénardier, Éponine Thénardier
Additional Tags: Not Happy, Alternate Universe - Curse Workers Fusion
Summary:

Cosette is a curse worker. Fantine is not. She tries to do the best thing for her daughter, but it's not going to turn out well.

Short and, well, not sweet.

The Perils of Walking in the Rue de l'Homme-Armé (3690 words) by raspberryhunter
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo, Les Misérables - All Media Types
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Montparnasse & Jean Valjean
Characters: Montparnasse (Les Misérables), Jean Valjean
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It
Summary:

In which Montparnasse finds that the perils of walking in the Rue de l'Homme Arme are twofold: first, that one might begin to think; and second, that one might come across a weak old man.

The most delightful fix-it, worked in the most unexpected of ways, and splendid Hugo pastiche, to boot.

More Than Bliss (15785 words) by tristesses
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Avengers (2012)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Loki/Natasha Romanov
Characters: Natasha Romanov, Loki (Marvel)
Additional Tags: Dom/sub, Femdom, Masochism, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Chastity Device, Mind Games, Whipping, Subspace, Hurt/Comfort, discussion of suicide, Aftermath of Torture
Series: Part 1 of Ball and Chain
Summary:

The first time she sees Loki again, Natasha nearly puts a bullet in his skull. The second time, he threatens to kill her. By the third time, she has him on his knees and begging for her touch, and what's more, he likes it.

This is the first part of a series and the whole series is amazingly, smolderingly hot. I was really craving kinky Natasha/Loki right after I saw Avengers and there wasn't anything and apparently I just gave up slightly too quickly.

What I've been reading

I reread Death in Ecstasy, which was my least favorite Ngaio Marsh so far. The drugs subplot seriously strained my credulity—I don't consider myself to be an expert on heroin, by any means, but I can't find any evidence that anyone has ever smoked it in cigarettes. The main plot about the cult-y little church where they hand out these mysterious heroin cigarettes is not that much more realistic or engaging either. Also, this is the first book in my reread where Marsh's homophobia puts in an appearance, which is gross, especially since it's not just some throwaway characters but actually Alleyn and Fox (Foxkin nooooooo!) who get together to sneer at the poor harmlessly swishy acolyte boys nursing massive crushes on the tinpot cult leader. I mean, they are both hopeless doofuses but all this disproportionate animus makes me want to like them somehow anyway.

The next Ngaio Marsh I reread, though, was Vintage Murder, which is quite good. It's the first time she develops Alleyn as a character on his own, without the crutches of Nigel Bathgate (who will fade out of the books shortly) or even my beloved Foxkin, except in some adorable letters that Alleyn writes him. She does rely on two subjects that she loves: the theatre (again) and New Zealand (for the first time), including some breathtaking scenery porn. Alleyn makes astounding leaps in his ability to negotiate tricky social situations and control his impulses to be a total IRL troll, or maybe that's just limited to when he's hanging around with Nigel Bathgate, whose pigtails he takes such an inordinate amount of pleasure in pulling.

I reread Artists in Crime, which is an old favorite that I've reread lots of times and I still pretty much love it. I adore Troy, of course, but Lady Alleyn is the best.

I read Ann M. Martin's new book, Better to Wish, the opening part of a four-book family saga. It was good, although it feels like a much longer book was abridged to hit middle-grade length. (Why didn't I think of that? /lazywriter)

I read The Blue Faience Hippopotamus based on a recommendation from hermionesviolin (and her mom!), and it is, indeed, adorable. ♥

What I'm reading next

Hopefully more books than this week. It was a busy week.

What I've been reading

I read Point of Dreams, the sequel to Point of Hopes, which has everything I loved about that book, plus the mystery is set in a theatre, something which might as well have been taken from a checklist of things I love. I am still bemused by how un-shippy Nico/Philip is in the actual text—not only do they get together off-page, but even when their relationship is occasionally made the focus in this book, it's about 90% how-are-we-perceived-as-a-couple/how-am-I-perceived-in-pursuing-this-relationship to maybe 10% shippy feels. Which is explored in an interesting way, but I can see that I'm going to have to turn to fanfic if I want any shippy feels. That's okay, because fanfic is good at shippy feels and less good at murder mysteries or ridiculously intricate worldbuilding.

I read Invisibility, David Levithan's new book co-written with Andrea Cremer, an author I wasn't familiar with, and it was thoroughly mediocre. In Every Day, a book I liked but wasn't thrilled by, the mechanism of the central speculative conceit is never explained or understood at all and the characters just grapple with how it affects them. The first hundred pages or so of Invisibility are like that, but then they do introduce the magical system of the world and it's just incredibly generic and blah. The central het romance is also really boring—I mean, sure, you would probably fall instantly head over heels with the first person of the appropriate sex whom you were able to interact with in any shape or form, but that doesn't make it interesting to read about (or explicable from her perspective). If anything about the blurb for this book sounds remotely interesting to you, read Holly Black's Curse Workers series instead for a similar premise that is approximately ten thousand times better executed.

I read Casanova: Gula, and I continue to dig it.

I read Neil Gaiman's new book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and for all some of the blurbs and early reviews were a bit hyperbolic and I didn't in fact think it was the best book in the known universe I really, really liked it. It has a lot in common with Among Others, another semi-autobiographical-novel-with-magic. It's good about what it's like to be seven, but also what it's like to remember what it was like to be seven.

I read Captive Prince: Volume One, the first part of that online original slavefic turned traditionally published original slavefic that a lot of people are raving about it and I was…less than impressed, let us say. Far be it from me to set myself up as some kind of authority on where Your kink is not my kink shades over into Your kink has unfortunate implications that you do not necessarily seem to be aware of, but I was really off put by the seemingly endless descriptions of how much contempt our titular captive prince has for the effete, made-up "pets" who comprise his fellow slaves in a hostile nation, who are somehow completely different from the slaves they had back home, because he says so, that's why. There is nowhere near as much tropey goodness as I was expecting, nor is the political intriguing plot solid enough to stand as a different kind of novel that just happens to feature slave tropes.

What I'm reading next

God, I don't know, I might read volume two of Captive Prince to see if it gets a lot better or if all the rabid fans are just on crack. And hopefully also some books that I legitimately enjoy. All this kink I'm not into reminds me that I need to reread Kushiel's Avatar for that Phèdre/Hyacinthe story I owe Bevy…

What I've been reading

I read the fifth and sixth Accursed Kings books, The She-Wolf of France and The Lily and the Lion, both of which were great. The Lily and the Lion actually pretty much wraps everything up for the important characters who are still alive in an epilogue, so I can see why the English language publishers figured that they could amputate the seventh book, but I am reading it in French anyway. (Incidentally, Team Alexandriz produces extremely high-quality pirated French ebooks. In case this is relevant to anyone else's interests.)

I read Guys & Dolls, the only collection of Damon Runyon's short stories that my library has, which inspired me to leave the following GoodReads review in pastiche, as I absolutely cannot get enough of the way that man turned a sentence: Damon Runyon is nothing less than our American P. G. Wodehouse, and if there is any higher compliment I can be paying him it is not coming to me at this precise moment, but if it is striking me sometime in the future I will not hesitate to edit it in, as I am not wishing to understate the matter.

I read two Caroline Cooney books that my library has in its ebook collection, Freeze Tag and Fatality. These are basically some of my favorite YA popcorn books. She characterizes very crisply.

I read (George), an E.L. Konigsburg book that just didn't work for me at all, and it does not seem that I am totally alone in this as I had to request it from outside my library system. The weirdest thing about this book (which is really quite weird, so there is plenty of competition) is how many other people are reading it completely wrong, to judge by the number of reviews and shelvings of it as a piece of realistic fiction about mental illness, a reading that I don't think is supported by the text and is anti-confirmed by authorial statements of intent, which I happened to have access to since...

... I also read TalkTalk (the printed version) a collection of Konigsburg's speeches throughout the course of her career, or at least until 1995, when it was published. I understand that there is a video version under the same name, but I can only find it on VHS so I can't watch it. A fair bit of interesting stuff about her writing and career.

I read Celebrating Children's Books: Essays on Children's Literature in Honor of Zena Sutherland for E. L. Konigsburg's contribution, "Ruthie Britten and Because I Can", those being her answers to the question "Why do you write children's books?", and I enjoyed it very much.

What I have put down in disgust rather than read

I thought The Marble in the Water was going to have another piece by Konigsburg because it was catalogued that way in WorldCat. It turned out just to have a really misleadingly-formatted table of contents where it looked like a selection of chapters by different authors but those authors were actually the subjects of criticism by the sole author, a David Rees. As his critical style consists of making unsupported Word of God pronouncements about everything and as I was not in sympathy with a single one of his judgments I put this book back down again very quickly.

What I'm reading next

I actually know this one this week! The third book in The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey, who is actually Daniel Abraham and George R. R. Martin's assistant, Ty Franck, writing under a collective name, just came out and I'm definitely going to be reading that.

What I've been reading

I read the latest two Roma Sub Rosa books and also the second collection of short stories. I'm still not sure what the materialistic explanation for some of the supernatural-seeming goings-on in The Judgment of Caesar is actually supposed to be, but I totally ship Cleopatra/Caesar/Ptolemy now. Bisexual incestuous threesomes are my preferred method of conflict resolution.

Then I was in a very Latinate mood and I flicked through X-Treme Latin, one of Henry Beard's collections of ridiculous things translated into Latin. I'm a sucker for any old dumb joke if it's translated into Latin. Also, 'SpongoRobertum QuadratoBracatum'.

I reread T-Backs, T-Shirts, COAT and Suit, which is still the only place I have ever heard or seen thongs referred to as "t-backs". Kind of middling Konigsburg, but I do like Chloë and her dieresis as a narrator. And at least all the items in the unwieldy list title are of equally great significance to the plot, unlike some other titles I could mention. Well, t-shirts are iffy compared with the others, but I'll let them slide.

I read/reread Neil Gaiman's Make Good Art Speech with the bonus fancy typography for gift-giving and such. It is very attractive as a physical object and it is a nice speech.

I read Holly Black's new middle-grade book, Doll Bones, which is nicely creepy but I felt like the kid characters were a little too self-aware or too articulate about being right on the cusp of being Too Old to Play With Dolls. It's a fine line to walk and I tend to prefer not saying anything outright that you can imply vaguely instead.

I read Why Read the Classics?, which collects the titular essay and 35 introductions/essays/bits of literary miscellany by Calvino, who is of course always interesting about anything, including the books I haven't read yet or never plan to.

I really enjoyed Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature by Emma Donoghue, an entertaining survey of implicit or explicit lesbians in literature, grouped into six categories or tropes: the Travesties (that is, cross dressers, in both directions), the Inseparables, the Rivals, Monsters, Detection and Out. I particularly liked that she included a lot of medieval and Renaissance materials, since that's one of my things.

The Shadow of the Sun is A.S. Byatt's first novel and the last one I hadn't read. My copy has a nice new introduction by the author, who is always good at writing about people who write and writing about her own writing. As for the book itself, well…it's like a dry run at the Frederica Quartet, only all the characters are seriously 100x more annoying. (I loved the Frederica Quartet, but let me tell you, it was certainly not because of how completely non-annoying the protagonists were.) Byatt is so worried about making her girl-who-goes-to-Cambridge character a Mary Sue that she goes overboard in the opposite direction, making her a dull and incurious slab. Meanwhile, the older academic who grooms her, seduces her, dominates her (although not, mysteriously, employing any of the breathlessly-alluded-to-but-never-elaborated-upon sadistic practices with which he makes his wife's life a misery during his affair with her), impregnates her and finally entraps her is so goddamn creepy that I could throw up. On the other hand, it is Byatt, so it is all beautifully written with lots of nicely observed little moments.

I also read On Histories and Stories, which collects some of Byatt's essays about writing, including her own.

What I'm reading now

I have this book, Antigones, which looks great, except the beginning is all about Hegel and I hate Hegel so it's kind of a slog.

What I'm reading next

If I knew, I'd probably be reading it now instead of posting here. I think I may just amputate this part of the meme in the future unless I have something specific in mind.

I succumbed to peer pressure and (*cough*) other temptations and signed up for a kink bingo card. This should be fun. :D

Ganked from aesc, it's the post your favorite bit of poetry meme! Except that I am notoriously incapable of having a single favorite of anything, so this is just the poem that's been running through my head today.

Dream-Pedlary

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

If there were dreams to sell,
What would you buy?
Some cost a passing bell;
Some a light sigh,
That shakes from Life's fresh crown
Only a rose-leaf down.
If there were dreams to sell,
Merry and sad to tell,
And the crier rang the bell,
( What would you buy? )

The italics that were in the original have been misplaced, because I suck. Sorry. :(

Mary Anne and the Original Problem Children, written for wisdomeagle, who is just that awesome
Baby-Sitters Club/Bible crossover. G. 4,112 words.
Janine's extra-credit time machine lands Mary Anne with a pair of interesting sitting charges: Cain and Abel. Yes. Seriously.

You can tell it's a good summary when it has the words "Yes. Seriously." in it. (So, yes, I continue to fail at summaries on a regular basis.)

From when Ari suggested the idea to when I posted it, a mere sixteen hours elapsed, which is how I can tell that this is the best plotbunny ever.

( Read the rest )

My Sam has left me! His lame excuse was that he needs to attend "classes" so he does not "flunk out of school" and "become a hobo living in a cardboard box". Which, okay, but if it were a cardboard box with internet access, that wouldn't be so bad, right?

Now who will keep me up until five in the morning (or later!) playing the Sims? Who will play tennis with me and hit balls into the net while coming up with dorky catchphrases? Who will talk to me for hours about how Kaidoh is hot?

Well, okay, we can do that one over IM. But it's not the same.

My dad and I revived the daddy-daughter film experience and saw Snakes on a Plane yesterday. He has no idea to whom all his base are belong, is unaware of how his hed is attached, and generally would not know a viral internet meme if it bit him, but he instantly grasped the appeal of Snakes on a Plane, namely: there are snakes, and they are on a plane. Seriously, if you are sick of the whole Snakes on a Plane phenomenon, listening to your father repeating the phrase with a sort of awe will make it amusing all over again.

There were only like, six of us in the audience, but hey, we had fun.