Argh, I forgot about today's post entirely!
😭😭😭😭😭
That sorta sums up my writing lately.
I've been distracted, forgetful, and unable to focus.
I think it's the heat.
The past three or four days, I've just opened my current project, read over bits of it to remind myself where I am...and then...nothing... 😭
I hope it's just the heat.
Maybe only 23.1? There was almost no text whatsoever. 😭
Anyway, the book I finished reading (looking at?) just now was Legend of Mana - Art of Mana - 30th Anniversary SPECIAL ISSUE. And yes, that whole thing is apparently the title. What little text the book had was just image caption by Masaru Oyamada, the producer of the Seiken Densetsu series.
As an art book, it was actually more focused on the remaster/reissue of the game in 2021 than it was on the original release from 1999. (The 30th Anniversary part must be for the series as a whole...which means at least three different major game series started in 1996, in addition to the two biggest JRPG series starting in...wait, really? 1986? Dang, that's...I hadn't thought about just how early that really was. (Though it took three years for the first Final Fantasy to be translated into English and released in the US.) Back in 1986, I was still playing text-parser-driven adventure games like The Black Cauldron and the early King's Quest and Space Quest games...) Wait, maybe the earlier book from 2018 was the thirtieth anniversary and that's why this was a "special issue"...? 'Cause there's no way both 2 and 3 would have been on the Super Famicom if the first one came out in 1996--the Playstation had already been out for at least year by 1996!
I really loved Legend of Mana back on the PS1, but I've never had the nerve to pick up the new version; I know it got a mew translation, and I'm afraid they wimped out and changed all the elemental's names back to the mistranslations and shortened versions they had on the SNES version of Secret of Mana. Which may sound like a dumb reason to avoid the remaster, but...it was really frustrating playing Trials of Mana and hearing the Japanese voice work saying the proper names and then seeing the butchered SNES versions written on the screen. Especially since I know the real names better, having played Legend of Mana so many times!
Anyway, this art book was a little disappointing because it was mostly filling in gaps that had been left out of an earlier whole-series art book (of which I was unaware at the time and thus do not have) and focusing on the remastered art that hadn't been made yet during that earlier book. Also, it has the dippy-looking male player character on the front instead of the awesome-looking female player character. 😭
Oh well.
An expensive chunk of brief nostalgia, I guess.
Original language: Japanese
So, today I finished reading Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett, the first of the City Watch sub-series of Discworld novels.
I read the novel for this month's book club meeting, which is on Saturday, so I'm left wondering if I should maybe not start the next book in the series until after the meeting to keep from accidentally confusing myself. (I borrowed my brother's copy, ya see, which was a hardback of the "City Watch trilogy" which is pretty dating, since I believe there ended up being somewhere in the region of 6-8 City Watch books altogether. But anyway it seems silly to return it after only reading one out of the three books within, yeah?) Anyway, hilariously, this was a book I selected myself for the club to read, but I did so without so much as looking at a summary of what it was about, because I just knew I wanted to have us all read a Discworld novel, I thought the first in a sub-series made for a good jumping-on point, and I wanted it to be one I hadn't read before. (Which left off the Rincewind, Granny Weatherwax and Death sub-serieses, so...books that actually fit those qualifications were a bit more thin on the ground.) In any case, my total lack of research into the actual subject matter of this particular novel meant that I was quickly stunned to discover that it was the book that the first point and click adventure game had been (rather loosely) based on!
Obviously, since the game put Rincewind in the lead instead of a whole team of guards, most of it went quite differently, but the novel's final twist was still there, so...yeah, made for an odd experience. (Though it has been so long since I played that game that I no longer recall if it went into any great detail regarding why that cult wanted to summon a dragon or what happened to the hooded brethren in the end.) That game was my first exposure to the Discworld universe, so there's something weirdly appropriate, almost poetic even, about me having used this particular book to introduce it to however many others actually read it for the book club. (Meetings have had varied turnout, based mostly on how many people actually decide to read the book. If it hadn't turned out to be 800+ pages and I'd selected The Pickwick Papers, it would likely have been an empty house: most people would have seen the name "Charles Dickens" and scurried away to hide.)
So.
Not really much I feel the need to say about it, ultimately. It's a work of comedy-fantasy from the late 1980s, so some of it hasn't aged too gracefully, but most of it remains a solidly entertaining read.
I think to fill the time between now and the book club meeting, I'll read the three art-books I've gotten lately. (One for a video game, one for a movie, and one just a general collection of folklore-adjacent art by an artist whose work I've been following for years.)
Original language: English, and very British English at that
So, last night I finished reading After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz.
This book was a lot.
It's not terribly long, just very intense.
There were actually two things about this book that if I'd noticed them beforehand, I probably wouldn't have bought it. The first, which is more excusable for me to have missed it, is that it's basically in internet formatting: unindented paragraphs separated by blank lines, a format that I absolutely detest on the printed page, where it sometimes actually gives me a headache. The second, for which I have no excuse, is that in the list of prizes and awards the book won, the back of the book mentions that it was a "Finalist for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction." Given my stress-related heart palpitations, I would have avoided anything labeled "political fiction" like the plague, but somehow I didn't notice that.
As usual, I feel that the back of the book still somehow managed to misrepresent the contents. One of the central sentences of the blurb on the back says "Through a series of cascading vignettes, the intertwined lives of real feminists at the turn of the twentieth century are mesmerizingly reimagined" followed by a list of a few of the most notable of them. (Which honestly probably shouldn't have listed Josephine Baker, since she basically just passes through the narrative in a single chapter. But she's one of the only non-white people in the book, which is presumably why the back of the book was so eager to mention her.) What it didn't mention--despite that the title of the book made it blatantly obvious--was that the vast majority of the real women depicted were not merely "feminists" but also lesbians/sapphics/whatever-other-name-you-can-come-up-with-for-women-who-love-women. That reluctance on the part of the novel's own marketing is appalling.
Anyway. As I said, this book was a lot. It covers from about the 1880s or so (early chapters jump around in time a bit, and/or give dates that are more symbolic than anything else) to 1928, ending with the publication of Virginia Woolf's Orlando. (Which is one of those novels where I loved the film adaptation, and so I am left wondering if reading the book would ruin the film for me, or if the deeper understanding would make it even better.) That was not a pleasant time to live in, especially for women, and even more so for women who loved women, so a lot of what happens in the novel is distressing.
I don't usually read literary fiction, being someone who mostly prefers to read for escapism, so it's hard for me to know how to react to this book. It was amazing, a real experience, and I'm not sorry I read it, but I didn't actually enjoy reading it. But enjoyment was definitely never the point.
Original language: English (but it contains a lot of quotes that the author translated out of French and Italian)
So, this morning I finished reading How To Fake It In Society by KJ Charles. Which part of me feels I ought to look at as a "guilty pleasure" and part of me is like "no, why should I feel guilty?"
Anyway. Funny(ish) story about the impulse buy for this one. There was a table that was half covered in Bridgerton novels, and half covered in similar period romances. Spotting this one out of the corner of my eye, I was immediately struck by the question "wait, is that two men?" And then I noticed the name of the author and knew that yes, it most emphatically was two men. And of course I ended up buying both of the KJ Charles novels that were on that table. 🤣 Because I've read an earlier series of her novels that were sort of Victorian urban fantasy, I suppose is the way to describe them. Absolutely adored them at the time, though I feel somewhat senile (despite only being 51) as I admit that I no longer quite recall the titles, except that they had to do with magpies.
In any case, this one had no fantasy elements, which makes it less like my "usual thing," but it was still delightful. Heavily researched, and with a firm eye on being period-appropriate (to the extent that the author's note at the end included a strong defense of the use of the period-accurate spelling of "kanguroo" instead of the modern "kangaroo") but without making the characters stiff or too alien to modern sensibilities. And I'm tempted to pick up a copy of the research book with all the info about the history of paints and colors, because just what was incorporated into this novel (the lead had earned his living making paints before suddenly becoming rich) was already fascinating, and it was necessarily just a fragment!
One thing I should say is that the title doesn't really fit the novel. While it's hard to classify truly which of the deuteragonists is the actual "lead," the narrative does slightly lean more on the side of Titus, who is thrust into Society against his will when he suddenly becomes wealthy, but he isn't "faking" it as just trying to "survive" it. If the narrative had leaned more on Nico's side, then the title would be more apt. I mean, it's a great title, it's just a little off for the actual contents of the book.
A minor quibble, to be sure. Because there really isn't any other kind to be had. Maybe it's not "deep" or "meaningful," but I am not someone who demands that of her reading. I wanted a pleasant story where the romantic leads are of the same sex, and that is what I got. I even got a mini-lesson in some of the crazy things pigments used to be made of, in the bargain. (Though I did already know about orpiment, because that featured at one point in The Apothecary Diaries.)
Original language: English
Hmm. Am I capitalizing the "r" in "record" or not?
Hrngh.
Well, it doesn't matter.
Anyway. Last night I finished reading Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous by Autumn K. England. (But it was late at night and I didn't want to take the time to post about it at that time.)
Another impulse purchase, because Barnes and Noble had it on a big table with a sign recommending it to fans of Stardew Valley and Studio Ghibli. Naturally, that had caught my eye, and reading the back of the book definitely suggested that I would enjoy it, so I picked it up. (Though I would not have done so if the back of the book hadn't made it clear that the lead is non-binary. That assurance guaranteed a non-hetero romance (well, in the sense of not male/female; in the most technical sense "hetero" just means "different," and enby is different from anyone who is binary, but...maybe I should have phrased it as "guaranteed any romance would be LGBTQ+", since non-binary is typically also placed under that umbrella) so I didn't have to worry about it turning on me.)
Part of me wants to say this was successfully more "cozy" than the previous "cozy" book I read, but...I dunno, if it was truly "cozy" would I have spent so much of the last third or so of the book crying? On the other hand, it never got stressful to read and certainly didn't trigger my heart palpitations like You Can't Spell Treason Without Tea did, so...🤷🏻♀️
Regardless of its coziness levels (and admittedly most of the book was decidedly cozy), this book was thoroughly delightful. Mossley's Rest might actually be an even warmer, friendlier place than Pelican Town! The warning that our protagonist was given, early on, that the town's entire unmarried population would soon be descending on them en masse in the hopes of winning a romance with the newcomer was also very cozy farming sim. Well, except no one ever tells the player character that "we don't get much fresh blood in this town, so everyone is going to look to snag you asap" and it just sorta happens without anyone acknowledging why that's actually rather strange or wondering why none of those singles ever date each other. (Okay, some cozy life sims have a few of their bachelors end up in relationships if the player doesn't get them first, but it does seem to be pretty rare in the post-Stardew Valley cozy farming sim boom. I gather it wasn't unusual in the original Harvest Moon types (but I will admit that I have not yet played any Harvest Moon/Song of Seasons games...though I do own one of the latter that I haven't gotten around to playing yet) but when Stardew Valley inspired the wave of (mostly western) cozy farming sims, most of the new wave followed its lead, including no rival romances.)
...
Hmm. I distracted myself by going off on a tangent about rival romances in cozy farming sims and now I don't remember if I wanted to say anything else about the book.
Well, I guess I can add it later if I remember anything else I wanted to say.
Original language: English
Hm. 19 since May 1. That feels pretty small, doesn't it?
Oh well.
Anyway. This morning I finished reading Golden Terrace, Book One, by Cang Wu Bin Bai.
So, this was absolutely an impulse purchase: not long after that previous post where I said I was starting to feel weird about reading so many novels that had always been in English, I happened to go to the bookstore and once there I found myself actively looking for a new danmei to read. (Instead of doing my usual thing of picking titles in advance by way of reading their page on the publisher's website.)
I had been pretty meh about this one when I saw it on the website, so I hadn't planned on picking it up, but seeing it right while I was wanting a new read pushed me over the edge to buy it.
And I'm glad I did! If the second volume (it's only got two!) is as good as this one, it will probably end up on the short list of my favorites in the genre. Although, speaking of the genre, I'm not sure quite what this one's other genre is. Or rather, I have no idea what its other genre is called. Since "danmei" is pretty much just an umbrella term for all Chinese webnovels (and other media?) with leads in a gay romance, each work is also in some other genre. A lot of them are either xianxia or wuxia, Astrolabe Rebirth was sci-fi, Riverbay Road Men's Dormitory was a slice-of-life dramedy kind of thing, but this...? The closest genre I know of would be "palace intrigue" but since this is centered around two military men outside the palace (though one of them works directly for the emperor, so the palace is visited repeatedly), that's definitely not right, but I don't know what is. I'm sure it has a name (beyond "period drama") but I am ignorant of that name.
Anyway. I really enjoyed the relationship between the two leads. The back of the book oversold the "rivals-to-lovers" thing (unsurprisingly!), but that element is certainly there; I think their much more complicated situation is probably far superior to a standard rivalry situation. I also find it both entertaining and very realistic that these two men who were forced to marry each other argue repeatedly about who will play which role when they finally consummate the marriage. (One of them had known he preferred men for years, and the other was such a career soldier that he had never even thought about love and romance...but deep down he had definitely also already been gay (plus the uncle he admired highly who had practically raised him was gay, so he had that positive association) so the fact that they actually will end up happily married despite being forced into it (by a paranoid emperor who wanted to stamp out the one man's bloodline) is not super unrealistic.)
Hmm...I feel like there was something else I wanted to say, but now I can't think what it was.
...
Hnrgh....
...
*sigh*
Oh well.
If I think of it later, I can add it in.
Original language: Chinese
Okay, so I am currently playing Persona 3 Portable.
There are a couple of layers of reasons for this; the immediate layer of "why now" being that after finishing with Pokopia, I ended up dropping seven other games (in one case because it ran like garbage on the Switch, so I plan to try on the Switch 2 when my brother is done borrowing it, then on the Steamdeck if that doesn't work, but all the others I'm unlikely to return to) and wanted to pick something I knew I could and would actually complete (also I wanted to play some kind of Persona game this year because of the series' 30th anniversary, and it's awkward trying to play 1, 2 or 2 due to lack of modern console support). The less immediate reason, the reason I even owned a (physical) copy of it, is that when Persona 3 Reload was announced, I saw people on Discord talking about how awful it was that they had left out the female lead from the portable version. In talking about that, they gave examples of how much more personality the female player's dialog choices had, and I was won over to the idea that hey, maybe it was actually worth replaying to see her version of the story.
I hadn't realized just how different it would be, but that's not actually what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to talk about was this random thought I just had about the foreign exchange student that the player character forms an S.Link with.
As translated, he's from France (with an accent so overstated that it borders between comically overstated and downright offensive) but I don't know if he always was, or if in Japanese he was American and they changed his name to make him French instead. Either way, what just struck me randomly was how absurdly stupid his dialog is in translation. (More observant people were probably struck by this straight away, but I have a disturbing tendency not to think about this sort of thing while I'm engaging with media; I only tend to think about these things afterwards, and while I'm reading/watching/playing something I mostly only think about things like where the plot might go next.) The character, Bebe, is overwhelmingly in love with Japan and its culture, so in the English translation of the game, he is constantly tossing in Japanese words then repeating them in English. Common enough in American media when dealing with an otaku character...but he's supposed to be speaking Japanese, or the player character wouldn't understand him!!! So wtf? How are we supposed to interpret his dialog? Is he actually tossing out French (or English, if he was originally American) words and then recalling the Japanese word he was looking for?
Or was he just given the most absurdly stupid translation possible?
😰
Pretty sure the answer is number two, there.
Which sucks, because he's one of the few boys the player can't force the heroine to date (I assume, since his S.Link is so far unchanged from the original version).
I absolutely do not intend to force the heroine to date any of the boys, ofc. (Especially not Shinjiro! I know what happens in the end if she's dating him, and it's actually pretty twisted! (Especially since Akihiko is obviously into him! Don't be denying the doomed yaoi, Atlus!)) If she can't date Aigis then she will not date. (Given the ending of the game, isn't it better for her not to date anyone anyway?)
Anyway. That was my random and pointless thought about one small aspect of the Switch port of a PSP reworking of a PS2 game from like 2006. (Which I haven't played since its first release, 'cause why would I have wanted to replay it with that ending?)
I decided to go ahead and finish up reading that ebook short story collection off Project Gutenberg. There were only a couple stories left, so....
The collection is called The Golden Slipper, and Other Problems for Violet Strange by Anna Katherine Green.
The ebook itself doesn't say when it was written, and I've forgotten (and don't feel like bothering to look it up at the moment) but I'm wanting to say in the neighborhood of 1900-1910. There isn't electricity, only gas lighting, and there's no mention of WWI, but there do seem to be automobiles, so...my detailed knowledge of the early years of the 20th century is too sparse to be helpful. Or rather, too absent. I have some general knowledge of that period, but very few details, because my interest in history has always been further away from the present than that.
Trying to pin down when it was written is also compounded by the difficulty that despite being set in New York, the author seems to have been English: British spellings are used, and one man on surrendering himself for a murder asked if the procedure was to take him directly before the magistrate. (Or something like that. Key detail being that he said "magistrate" rather than "judge.")
Anyway.
Much better than the earlier ebook of mystery stories from about the same time period. The mysteries themselves were not always particularly good or mysterious (one problem with a short story mystery is that when one extraneous character is introduced partway through the story, then you know that they're the culprit!), but despite the heroine's wealthy status, they were at least not particularly classist. Racism had little to no opportunity to arise (though that in itself is actually rather racist), but there was still some internalized misogyny, though at least it wasn't too bad.
Honestly, my biggest problem with it was something also shared by the other one, by Baroness Orczy, which is that an "explanation" for the female detective was provided at the end. An explanation and an end to her detecting: she had a purpose, and having fulfilled it, she no longer needed to take on cases. Frustrating, to say the least. Male detectives in this period were surely never given an explicit reason to be taking cases (aside from it literally being their job, as I'm sure there were plenty of stories written about police detectives) nor a reason to stop taking those cases. When a reason was provided, it would surely have been to serve justice or to prevent injustice, or similar aphorisms along those lines. Not to seek the chance to prove her beloved's innocence (Baroness Orczy's Lady Molly) or to earn money to pay for something very expensive that was necessary for her disowned sister to regain a comfortable life (Violet Strange). Maybe that was a necessity for writing about a female detective at the time. I don't know. But I do know that as a modern reader I found it frustrating.
Still, at least in this case the stories were okay and I don't regret having read them.
Original language: English
[Hmm. Been a lot of that lately. I wonder if there's anything on my to-read shelf (other than 3/4 of a danmei novel that won't get its final volume until September) that isn't originally written in English? I'm starting to feel weird about bothering to list that at this point, it's been so long since the last one that was originally in any other language...]
Finished reading another book today: Bromantasy by Máire Roche.
The text on the back (and the tagline on the front) pushed this a bit too hard as comedy (when in fact comedy was merely one element, and not even the largest of them), and definitely spelled out too much of the plot, so I went in expecting something a bit different than it actually was.
However, it was still quite delightful. Sweet and charming, for the most part. Though some of the "fantasy versions of modern stuff" like talking about reading news scrolls as "scrolling" felt like some degree of forced or exceptionally dating or both. But maybe that's just me. 🤷🏻♀️
Not sure which book off the to-read shelf I want to read next.
Or rather, what I most wanted to read next on my to-read shelf was a fantasy alternate history that promised (among other things) Napoleon leading an army of the dead, only it turned out to be book two in a series so I really need to get myself to a bookstore and find part one first. 😅 I really need to pay more attention to things like that in the future...
Original language: English
And I've finished reading Life, The Universe and Everything (still by Douglas Adams, obv) now.
So.
Thoughts are...hmm.
This one is a little bit of a jolt to read now, because I've read the other version of the main story now.
See, the tale of the Krikkit robots started out as a script for a Doctor Who movie starring the fourth Doctor (Tom Baker), but the BBC rejected it, and so Adams reworked it into the Hitchhiker's Guide universe instead. But a few years back, one of the modern Doctor Who screenwriters adapted that script into a novel with Adamsian prose. So my brain is sort of jumbling them together awkwardly. 😅 In most ways, it's more fitting as part of the Hitchhiker's universe, since it's inherently pretty goofy, and yet it's also sort of an awkward fit, since the story is much more adventurous and "dealing with a terrifying enemy" than the usual tale from the lives of Arthur Dent and co. Not to mention the oddity of slotting Slartibartfast of all people into the role of someone traveling about and trying to correct problems caused by time-travel. (I kind of wonder if maybe the BBC was actually deeply offended by the Krikkitmen story, and that's why the fifth Doctor (Peter Davison, who actually had a cameo in one of the episodes of the Hitchhker's Guide TV show) is dressed in what is essentially a cricket uniform.)
Uh.
Anyhow.
A few thoughts on the trilogy on the whole:
Firstly, these novels are actually quite short! I'd forgotten that. These days, he'd probably have trouble publishing them at that length.
Second, I found myself noticing various places throughout where the standard grammar rules we're told to observe at all costs were relaxed or outright ignored. (There was even a place where there were lines of dialog from two people were in the same paragraph! Thankfully, only the one, and it was very clear about the switch in speakers, but still, I was stunned.)
Third, he uses a lot of single-line paragraphs. Also ending a paragraph in the middle of someone's line of dialogue so that they're still speaking in the next line. Or lines plural. Things like this:
"Words of dialogue," Arthur said.
"Um, I mean," he added.
"Uh, that is," he continued.
Like that. Only not as dumb and pointless. And with a lot more spluttering nonsense noises. I found that quite surprising. (But again, it was always very clear who was speaking. Which is the truly important part!)
Anyway. Classic of sci-fi comedy, as always.
Not much else to say, since this is just me making a note about what I finished reading and when.
Now the question is "do I tackle one of the ever-multiplying books on my to-read shelf next, or do I finish off that ebook of short stories?"
Original language: English, of course
And this morning I finished (re)reading The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams.
Not a lot to say, because what is there to say?
Well, except that, being more familiar with the TV version, seeing the concluding conversation (since this book and the TV show end at the same place in the story) expanded to add a couple of the Golgafrinchan girls was...disquieting. The conversation being between the two of them was appropriate to the focus throughout the story on their friendship (let us not forget that it was Arthur and Arthur alone who Ford took the risk of saving from the doomed Earth!) and the simplicity of the exchange gave a nice tone to the ending.
For that matter, the entire notion that Ford and Arthur would decide to hook up with Golgafrinchan girls despite their disgust with the entire Golgafrinchan race is troubling. It implies that having zero regard for their partners is their standard position. I'm sure that wasn't the intent, but that's how it comes off, regardless of intent.
But it was written in the 1980s. What can ya do? 😭😭
(This is, of course, one of the reasons I don't plan to reread So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, because a hetero romance is a fairly big part of that one. Though as I recall Arthur does at least treat her as more or less an equal, a proper partner, not just a...)
Anyway.
Onwards!
Original language: English
So, got through the book I borrowed from my dad on the 4th.
Well.
I got through most of the first novel in that book and then I bought my own new copy of the entire series (in a single hardback that actually cost less than the one I borrowed from my dad did originally) because my dad's copy was super-musty as it dates to like 1986 and I was afraid it would make me sick.
Uh.
Anyway.
The book was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, which I chose to reread at this moment because it's our book club book for June. (Epicly, I got to choose the one for July! Though my first thought had been to go Victorian so people could download a free ebook from Project Gutenberg, only it turns out The Pickwick Papers is over 800 pages long, and the book club put a 400 page limit on selections. 😰 Even if it hadn't, I'd never ask other people to read 800 pages...)
I've read the book before, but one thing that really struck me was just how much better I know the TV and radio versions. It kept throwing me when the dialog was just slightly different! But it's always fun getting to hear the dialog in lots of other voices in my head. 😁
Anyway, I will obviously be going straight into The Restaurant at the End of Universe, 'cause even if the trilogy didn't feel like "it's not a full story if you stop without all three" that ending was actually very...not an ending. 😅
I wonder if anyone in the book club will have actually stopped there, or if they'll all have finished the whole trilogy? (Hopefully they'll stop after the trilogy. So Long and Thanks for All the Fish is kinda uneven, and I actually have never read Mostly Harmless because I was warned about how it ended.)
Before the 4th, I got about 2/3ish through that short story collection, so I'll probably finish it up after Life, The Universe and Everything. Probably. Who really knows, though? That'll be, like, next week. Anything could happen.
Hmm. Wait. Will it be next week? Or will it be, like, Friday? I have to wait at the service station tomorrow while they work on my car, so I'll probably get a lot more reading done than usual (and a lot less writing 😭😭 even though I've been doing pretty well on that new fic!) so I might get through a lot quicker than usual....
Enh, what will be will have weasels on its face.
Original language: English
Yup, finally cleared away the decimal points!
Hilariously, the "two graphic novels" I said would do the job actually turned out to be three! (One was so short it wasn't really noticeable in the clear plastic sleeve with the others...)
Anyway! Yesterday and the day before (didn't post about it yesterday because I didn't want to muddle an IWSG post day 😅) I read the following three works by Mira Ong Chua:
My Lover is a Merperson (I Think) - this is the super-short one which is probably only about 20 pages (they're not numbered and I don't think it's worth counting them manually) at most. It is what it says in the title: a young man suspects his non-binary lover might secretly be a merperson, and he acts on his suspicions in a sweet but goofy way. Pleasant and fluffy. 🥰
24/7 Magical Maiden Mimi - this one is short, but much more substantial than the previous one. In a world where being a magical girl is an annual gig, an unpopular teenage boy has his turn at the role, and after he accidentally transforms back into himself in public, he finds himself pressured by his classmates to attend school as Magical Maiden Mimi. With results not all as he expects, obviously.
The Cosmic Ballad of Layla + Airy - much longer, almost (but not quite) twice the length of an average volume of manga. This is the one the Kickstarter was actually for; the other two were just add-ons. This is a sci-fi-with-magic romp wherein the galaxy's cutest adventurer phrases a wish badly and accidentally ends up transformed into an almost exact duplicate of the galaxy's hottest rock star. Hijinks (and romance) naturally ensue. It kind of feels like a love letter to early '90s anime/manga (especially Airy's hair, which is very Gourry to me) but with modern LGTBQIA+ sensibilities. So, like, all the best things. 😁
I've backed some previous Kickstarters of Mira Ong Chua's in the past--the first was Road Queens, I'm pretty sure--and while they're often not quite what I was expecting them to be (Road Queens being an excellent example of that), they're always been quite good, and these three continue that trend. Though of course I had forgotten about the add-ons entirely by the time they arrived, so I didn't even have any expectations for them! 🤣
Anyway, I've started reading an ebook of public domain mystery short stories to fill in the gap until I can borrow the next book club book from my dad (since I can leave off a short story collection partway through without feeling like it's a DNF), and if it keeps going as it started, it should be light years better than the last one! (Not that that is a high bar to clear!)
Also, I have to brag this somewhere, and no one cares so it might as well be here: yesterday I needed to distract myself from reality by getting lost in writing. I ended up starting work on a fanfic that I had wanted to plan more fully first...and ended up writing 12.5k words! It feels a bit abbreviated, like there ought to be twice as many scenes setting up events and everything, but...🤷🏻♀️ That's what second drafts are for, right?
Oops, almost forgot! Original language: English
Someday, I will learn how to title posts effectively. Unfortunately, today is not that day.
I'm not at my best right now; I've had a (fairly mild) headache for almost two weeks at this point. I need to go to like the Urgent Care center or something, but in the middle of a heat wave on a sunny day is...well, I have serious heat issue, so I can't go unless someone drives me, and my ride is busy today, so...tomorrow, hopefully. (Which will be "today" when this post actually posts.)
Uh.
Anyway.
I think the suggested topic was about changes we would want to make to the publishing industry.
As I am determinedly an amateur writer, I don't have any contact with the publishing industry as a writer, but there is something I'd like to change as a reader!
I'm not sure when--just in the last few years, I think--someone decided that colons should be followed by capital letters, and it is driving me up the freaking wall. It's so wrong--no, so stupid! It's the same sentence, so why would it be capitalized?
I know that's pointless and shallow, but...
...I don't have much to say about my own writing, as my game jam VN script has turned into a slow slog through a not-jam VN script (because the concept didn't actually fit the jam) and other than that I've only been working on proofreading past works and planning future ones, so...there just isn't much to say.
Finished the next book off my ever-growing to-read shelf. 😅 (Two more arrived in the mail just a few days ago... 😅)
This book was Can't Spell Treason without Tea by Rebecca Thorpe. (Hmm. Maybe the 'w' should be capitalized...?)
This was a pretty good read, but I think the cover over-sold its "cozy" nature. Because, yes, the two heroines were looking to have a nice cozy, romantic life together running a book-and-tea shop. But also the one's past as a guard to a particularly vicious ruler and the other's present as the most powerful mage in the world (plus dragon attacks on the town) led to a lot of not-even-slightly-cozy incidents. And the climactic events were actually downright stressful to read. Like, we're talking they triggered my heart palpitations, they were so stressful. That kind of thing.
It's just book one of a series--and some events were left unresolved--so here's hoping the rest are a lot cozier. (At least the particular cause of the stress in this one should be unlikely to repeat itself...) I won't be likely to go looking for book two anytime soon, though. Next time I have room on my shelf to go out looking for a sequel to something I've recently read, it'll be the next book in the series that started with The Jasmine Throne. (Because I need to know how that is going to play out!)
Anyway.
Next up are the two books that arrived the other day, because they are graphic novels from a Kickstarter, and just the thing I need to get the decimal points out of my reading tally! 🤣 Though then there may be a slight gap before I can start anything further, since I won't be able to start this month's book club reading until I borrow it from my dad on the 4th. (I do have my own copy somewhere in this house, but...finding it would probably take weeks. 😰)
Original language: English
Ugh.
I should definitely stop buying books on a whim just because they sound good.
The book should have been good.
The concept was great: a sapphic sequel to Pride and Prejudice (one of my all-time favorite books) featuring Mr. Darcy's sister and one of Elizabeth Bennet Darcy's sisters.
What could go wrong, right?
And yet, I struggled to finish the first chapter.
I was already unimpressed by the book's characterization of Georgiana Darcy and the way it took an "easy out" by claiming that she hadn't actually been trying to elope with Wickham, but that he had been blackmailing her after seeing her kissing a girl. But I figured I could deal with it. That it would surely pull me in after Miss Bennet arrived.
Then Georgiana referred to her brother by name. But she didn't call him "Fitzwilliam" or any variation thereon.
She called him "Darcy."
I...
I...
How in the flying $@&@! does a sequel to Pride and Prejudice get published in which the author couldn't be bothered to get one of the main characters' names right?!?!?
Yes, I know "Fitzwilliam" feels like a very strange name to a modern reader. And yes, I was disappointed to learn that was his name the first time I read Pride and Prejudice, as my little teenage heart had been quite smitten by Mr. Darcy, a definite first for a words-on-the-page-only character. But I would still never write fanfic (and that is absolutely what this book was!) without getting his name right!
I spent a day agonizing about whether or not to force myself to keep reading.
I have decided against it. There is just no reason to torture myself like that.
Hopefully the next book off my shelf will be better. (Though everything on my to-read shelf at least has the advantage that it's not a lazy sequel to a piece of classic literature. There is one that seems to be doing a riff on a piece of classic literature, but as I haven't actually read Water Margin, that's fine, because even if that riff is egregious in comparison, I won't know. But that's not LGBTQIA+ (as far as I can tell) so it's for next month or later.)
(Thankfully, the two impulse buys I made last time I was at the bookstore are guaranteed to be better than this was, because I've read other books by that author, and quite enjoyed them.)
Original language: English
So, finally finished reading the very lengthy The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri.
A fantasy with a setting inspired by the traditional culture of India, which was a refreshing change for me: I've mostly ended up reading things in settings inspired by Medieval Europe (so overused!), feudal Japan, or ancient China. The Indian setting was excitingly different from what I'm used to (though I was probably mentally mispronouncing most of the names 😭) while still having just enough touch of the familiar, since I have read some Hindu folklore/mythology, and seen some movies set in India (though typically not before the 19th century, but...)
I discovered the book via a conversation between two other people in a Discord server, as one was providing recommendations to the other for sapphic fantasy novels. This one the recommender mentioned as being one they had "bounced off" because it was too "high fantasy" for them. I, personally, thought "high fantasy" typically referred to Tolkien and similar authors, and I'm fine with that style of fantasy (The Hobbit is one of my perennial favorite books), so I figured "yep, sounds like a good match for me," especially since the plot as described on the back of the book sounded interesting. Having read it, I now suspect that the recommender was thinking more of Game of Thrones than Lord of the Rings when they said "high fantasy." (Not that I've ever read or watched any of Game of Thrones, but it does have a certain reputation...) There was a lot more human violence--some of it particularly awful in concept (thankfully, there were very few visceral details in the violence) as the villain has a religious zeal for burning women alive--than I was expecting, and a lot more political wrangling and manipulation than I had any expectation of, since I went in with an inaccurate understanding of the novel's genre.
Honestly, The Jasmine Throne doesn't seem to me to be "high fantasy" at all; the presence of magic and magical beings was quite limited. In that sense, it would seem to me to fall more into the "low fantasy" category, since most people and aspects of society function in a non-magical way. For most of the book, the only touch of magic in the daily lives of the people is "the rot," a disease in which plants are growing in people's bodies. But as it's presented as a blight, a disease, it often sounds less magical than it is. What this novel does have in common with the "high fantasy" works mentioned above is the grand, sweeping landscape and story ahead, as this is just the first novel out of...uh...actually, I have no idea how many. 🤷🏻♀️ I'll find out how many there are eventually, because I need to find out how the story ends, 'cause that villain is especially horrible, and I need to see him get his. (Ooh, I hope the series is already complete, or will be soon...having to wait years to see that villain destroyed would be painful...) In any case, I can't pick up book two until there are a few fewer books on my to-read shelf than there are at present, 'cause there literally isn't room on it for a book of this size. (I honestly picked this over the other sapphic novels on the shelf because it was the largest, and removing it would add space for the two books that were on my front table waiting to join the to-read shelf...and I just picked up two more books yesterday...darn you, Barnes & Noble, stop putting interesting-looking books on tables where I can't miss them!)
Anyway, since this isn't a review, just me talking to my future self to remind me what I read and when...I just have one other thing to say. I always give a cursory glance to the Acknowledgements section of a book, just to see if there's anything interesting beyond the usual thanking family, friends, colleagues and publishers. And there was, this time, as the author also mentioned her pets: two bunnies, named Lan Zhan and Wei Ying, and a pet of unspecified species named Asami. 🥰 Two MDZS-named pets and one that I took to be Legend of Korra inspired. This author knows how to win my heart. 🥰
Original language: English
Or 10.4? I dunno. I need to figure out how to get rid of the decimal points in my count...but that will have to wait until July. 😅
Anyhoo, I am actually in the middle of a 500+ page tome right now (probably will take me another 2-3 days to finish reading it, between current speed through it and what's going on irl right now for me), but I needed some light bathtub reading. (Light both in the sense of the physical book and in the sense of its contents!)
So, I decided to go with a printed webcomic, specifically Slice of Life, Season One. I got it as an add-on to the Kickstarter for Aces and Aros, and I admit I hadn't realized it was signed until it was too late to change my mind about reading it in the bath. 😅 (Thankfully, nothing happened to it.)
Anyway, I don't have a lot to say about it: it was wholesome, charming and heartwarming...though with some angst and stuff as well. I think the character I most connected with was Ravyn, the unpopular twin sister of the cheerleader Lucy, one of the two leads. Ravyn is a hardcore otaku with no friends, who is constantly ignored and overlooked, even by the twins' father. I really felt for her, and I think her suffering will only get worse. 😭 But hopefully she'll recover after she gets out of the toxic cess pit that is high school...
Anyway, yeah. Good. Will read more later (after getting more volumes to read... 😅)
Original language: English
Or maybe only 10.1? I dunno. But if it's 10.2 then a standard manga/webtoon/etc volume will get it to 10.5, and then an extra large manga volume could get it to 11. Or something? I dunno.
What I do know is that the comic anthology I read today was waaaaay too short to count for anywhere near as much as the webtoon volumes I read earlier this month.
Anyway. Whatever number I assign to it, what I read today was Aces and Aros (which identifies itself as "Vol. 1" but whether or not they actually run a Kickstarter for a volume two is not a given), an anthology centered on the asexual and aromantic spectrums. Both of which I am on.
But the problem with trying to do an anthology centered on asexuality and aromanticness (uh...is that even remotely how I should form that form of the word?) is that the stories all just sort of end up being either semi- (or entirely) autobiographical or they end up being little mini-lessons on just what asexual and/or aromantic means and/or why it's not a problem in need of a cure. Which...y'know, I don't need a lesson, nor do I need to be told that it's okay to be ace and/or aro, because I'm past that point; I figured myself out when I turned forty, and I don't need to be reassured that I'm not broken. So, despite that this is one of those rare cases where my own orientation gets representation, it's also...frustratingly lacking in actual stories. (Even the autobiographical ones are so focused on the writer's process of understanding/embracing their position on the asexuality spectrum that there isn't really time for much else in the narrative.)
So...yeah. It didn't really do much for me, unfortunately. It'd be great for a teenager still coming to terms with their own asexuality, but...🤷🏻♀️
The tragedy about writing about asexuals and aromantics is that unless they specifically say in the course of the story that they're asexual or aromantic, then it's impossible to tell if they're ace, aro, or just not presented with a love interest in the course of the story. 😭 Which is especially a problem when you're writing about an asexual/aromantic living long before those terms were coined. Like, in my Atalanta and Ariadne books, Atalanta is aroace, like me, but the terms don't exist yet because she lives in Bronze Age Greece, so trying to telegraph the actual nature of her orientation is not gonna be easy. (In the rough drafts of the later novels I did attempt it, though who knows if it worked in the roughs I wrote back in 2014 (before I had figured out my own asexuality), but I'll just have to hope I can make it work whenever the new drafts get that far...)
Original language: English
