WWW Wednesdays (June 12th)

• What are you currently reading?
I am reading three books, mainly - Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Secret of the Nagas by Amish Tripathy, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. Enjoying all of them immensely. Americanah is actually my first by Adichie, even though I own Half of a Yellow Sun. I kept meaning to read it but didn't, and now I wonder why because she's absolutely brilliant. The Secret of the Nagas is just as interesting as the first book in the Shiva trilogy, and I'm actually very into one of the romance sub-plots right now - and I rarely like any of the romantic plots or sub-plots in the books I read. The Neil... well. It's by Neil Gaiman. What else do you need to know?

• What did you recently finish reading?
Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman. Which is, admittedly, a short read. It's also very funny and I absolutely recommend it! I think it's very much a "dad" book, and can imagine my brother reading to my niece all too easily. Before that, I read Margaret Stohl's Icons, which I picked up without reading the synopsis because I liked the Caster Chronicles (by Stohl & Kami Garcia) and when she came to our store a couple of years ago she was really nice. Icons is about aliens, so I might not have picked it up otherwise, but I'm so glad I did because (1) I do enjoy Stohl's writing, (2) I love her characters, and (3) they're PoC! Huge plus, that. I was hugging the book with joy when I realised it.

• What do you think you’ll read next?
Next in my list... I already have Amish Tripathy's Oath of the Vayaputras waiting on my shelves, as well An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison (Ellen Forney's Marbles put this in my radar sometime ago). And the first volume of Sunny, the new Matsumoto Taiyo. I also have a few YA dystopias that I've been meaning to read for sometime now, so I'm not sure which I'll read first.



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April's Books

BOOK BOUGHT
♥ xxxHolic (6), CLAMP
♥ xxxHolic (19), CLAMP
♥ The Odyssey, Homer (trans. Robert Fagles)
♥ The Aeneid, Virgil (trans. Robert Fitzgerald)
♥ The Immortals of Meluha, Amish Tripathi
♥ The Secret of the Nagas, Amish Tripathi
♥ The Oath of the Vayaputras, Amish Tripathi
♥ Son of Poseidon, Rick Riordan
♥ Blade of the Immortal (24), Hiroaki Samura
♥ Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom, Brendan Halpin & Emily Franklin
♥ It's Our Prom (So Deal With It), Julie Anne Peters
♥ Rats Saw God, Rob Thomas
♥ Fragments, Dan Wells

MAGAZINES BOUGHT
♥ Frankie, May/June 2013


BOOKS GIVEN AWAY/BOUGHT FOR OTHERS
♥ This Is How Happy Looks Like, Jennifer E. Smith
♥ The Elite, Kiera Cass

BOOKS RECEIVED
♥ And the Mountains Echoed, Khaled Hosseini
♥ Butter, Erin Lange
♥ The Bunker Diaries, Kevin Brooks
And a whole bunch of YA advanced copies that I haven't sorted through yet ^^;
I'll include them in the May list.

BOOKS READ
♥ xxxHolic (6), CLAMP
♥ xxxHolic (7), CLAMP
♥ xxxHolic (8), CLAMP
♥ xxxHolic (9), CLAMP
♥ xxxHolic (10), CLAMP
♥ xxxHolic (11), CLAMP
♥ xxxHolic (12), CLAMP
♥ xxxHolic (13), CLAMP
♥ xxxHolic (14), CLAMP
♥ xxxHolic (15), CLAMP
♥ xxxHolic (16), CLAMP
♥ xxxHolic (17), CLAMP
♥ xxxHolic (18), CLAMP
♥ xxxHolic (19), CLAMP
♥ Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom, Brendan Halpin & Emily Franklin
♥ It's Our Prom (So Deal With It), Julie Anne Peters
♥ This Is What Happy Looks Like, Jennifer E. Smith
♥ And the Mountains Echoed, Khaled Hosseini
♥ Happy!, Grant Morrison
♥ Stag's Leap: Poems, Sharon Olds
♥ More Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops, Jen Campbell


Note: hi, I haven't been on LJ much (or at all) these days. When I do attempt to post updates it's been on DW instead. Will try to cross-post when I can.

WWW Wednesdays (April 10th)

• What are you currently reading?

It's Our Prom (So Deal With It), by Julie Anne Peters. It's about three best friends who are involved in planning an alternative prom, one where the "freaks and geeks and individuals" would feel welcome. The problem with this is, (1) Azure is more invested in the idea of the alternative prom than Luke and Radhika, (2) both Azure and Luke are secretly in love with Radhika, (3) Radhika really has other, bigger problems to deal with, and (4) they're on an extremely limited budget, in need of more sponsors, and are being challenged by the adults who want them to plan a more "traditional" kind of prom. I have to admit that I'm taking a longer time finishing this than I normally would have - because of xxxHolic taking up all my time - but on the occasions I pick this up instead of breathing in manga, I do enjoy it.

• What did you recently finish reading?

xxxHolic (19), by CLAMP. This is the last volume. Although of course, I heard that CLAMP are continuing the series this year? Anyway. Volume 18 & 19 are the saddest of them, dealing with both Watanuki's inability to forget Yuuko and decision to wait for her, and the consequences of that decision. Two moments stuck out to me the most; the first is Watanuki and Himawari talking on the phone, and him asking about her husband. The last scene with them talking in the manga, they were saying they loved each other. And then there's this scene where he's still exactly the same as that last scene, and she's a grown, married woman. The second scene is after the sequences of that dream Watanuki had of Yuuko, when he was talking about it with Doumeki at the porch, and remembered that it wasn't the Doumeki he went to school with that he was talking to - it was Doumeki's great grandson. Ahh... well. After reading this volume, I immediately looked up fanfiction, because I. NEED. MORE. Building up a list of favourite xxxHolic fics on my LJ now.

• What do you think you’ll read next?

I am starting on - or will start on The Crane Wife by Patrick Ness, Redshirts by John Scalzi, and Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom by Emily Franklin and Brendan Halpin. All for work, but since I chose them specifically, of course I'm also looking forward to them! My only concern is the stack of ARCs that just came to my table that need reading... that's work, too, I guess.

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Blaze (or Love in the Time of Supervillians) by Laurie Boyle Crompton

Here's the thing - I wanted to like this book so badly. I was interested in it when I saw the cover and read the synopsis in a catalogue. I immediately chose to highlight this this title and ordered accordingly, and true enough - it sells. The cover's pretty cool, and I loved that the protagonist is obsessed with superhero comics.

[spoilers & ranting below] 

Then I started reading it, and. Just a few pages in, that same protagonist is referring to another girl as a slut. That alone made me want to throw the book against a wall. But I continued reading, and - she goes on to refer to this other girl as a slut, as does her two "best friends", one of whom takes a picture of Blaze, half-naked, and sends it to Mark, the guy Blaze isn't even dating at the time. I knew about the photo based on the synopsis in the catalogue and on the back of the book, mentioning that Mark (the non-boyfriend) would end up posting it online, but I guess I thought that it would be a photo Blaze willingly took and sent, rather than an extreme thing her friend did. Oh, and Blaze ended up having sex with Mark, without using a condom. It made me think of Sarra Manning's Adorkable, when the girl had said something like, if you can't talk openly about sex you're probably not mature enough to be having it. Blaze and Mark aren't exactly in a "lets talk about it" kind of relationship, but she definitely comes off as immature.

Mark is painted as a guy whose only redeeming quality are his athletic abilities (which Blaze doesn't really care about) and his looks, so most of the time I found myself wanting to step into the book and yell at Blaze to get past that/him. Oh, yeah, and then Mark, the douche, posted Blaze's photos online without seeming to realize the possible consequences, because, of course, posting a picture of an underage girl half naked on a site viewed by everyone in school = being made into a fictional villainous character in an amateur comic. And yay, more slut shaming ensues! Even after having the entire school turn against her because of her supposed "slutty" behavior, Blaze still thought of herself as "not a REAL slut" like that other girl, you know, the "real" slut. Gah.

But. I like that Blaze isn't one of those characters who wishes they were like everyone else - she's content with being the comics geek who one day wants to draw her own comics. I like that she grows up, even if just a little, throughout the span of the book. I like her relationship with her brother, and what she does to help her mother out despite being resentful about her parents' divorce. I like how protective her brother and his friends are of her, especially after it looked like her friends weren't going to stand by her at all. And I do appreciate that the author tries to talk about slut shaming, in a way - my favorite part was when Blaze and Catherine (the supposed school slut) have a talk, and it was revealed that Catherine, too, was a victim of gossip. I liked that it talked of how people shouldn't just believe everything they hear, but it didn't erase the discomfort and anger I felt reading girls branding each other sluts. It didn't even touch on the fact that calling a girl a slut - whether or not she has slept with someone, or several someones, or the entire football team - is wrong, no matter what. So the conversation at the end redeemed the book somewhat, but it wasn't enough.

WWW Wednesdays (April 3rd)

• What are you currently reading?

Fragments, by Dan Wells. This book starts off a few months after the events of Partials, which ended with Kira heading for ParaGen to find out more about who or what she is. While the first book focuses mostly on Kira's PoV, Fragments has both Kira and Marcus (her boyfriend, who remains on the island community at the end of Partials) - Kira is exploring ParaGen and searching for answers, while Marcus and the rest of the humans are at the brink of what might be the next Partial War. It's a slower read than the first book, especially during Kira's PoV, but the more I read it the more I enjoy the world-building in this series.

• What did you recently finish reading?

xxxHolic (10), by CLAMP. This is probably my favourite volume after Volume 6. In the latter, I enjoyed the story about the lonely woman/ghost, and the one with the twin sisters. In volume 10, I loved the arc involving the sacrifices Watanuki and Doumeki made for each other, and the lesson Watanuki learned about the nature of sacrifice. I guess my reasons for loving these stories in particular (over others in this series) is personal, but I also think that they shed some light on Watanuki's character. All the characters in this series are so wrapped in secrets and seem to be wearing a mask even when with the people they're closest to, that at the moments where the masks crack - like in the story with the lonely ghost - it's even more heartbreaking. This series is very different from the live action that made me start reading it in the first place, but it's already up there with Natsume Yuujincho when it comes to my favourites.

• What do you think you’ll read next?

It's Our Prom (So Deal With It), by Julie Anne Peters. For work, and also because Julie Anne Peters is one of my favourite YA writers. This one is about three friends who are planning an alternative kind of prom, where the "freaks, geeks and individuals" wouldn't feel left out. It's also a story of first (unrequited?) love, as two of the friends are in love with the third. I'm going to be reading it with Brendan Halpin and Emily Franklin's Tessa Masterton Will Go to Prom when the latter finally arrives in store :)

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