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Jun. 19th, 2019 09:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Reading Meme
* What I Just Finished Reading?
E-Books [because I read everything on the Kindle at the moment]
The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey
This was disappointing. It started out being this great story about a female attorney in Bombay, India who had managed to survive a nasty marriage and was solving legal mystery....to a rather boring murder mystery that meandered and felt a tad...boilerplate.
I don't find murder mysteries that interesting. Perhaps I read too many of them at a certain point? This is possible. Once I figured out how to read in the third grade, I consumed books like well can't think of a fitting analogy, but I'm certain one will come to me at inopportune moment, most likely while I'm in bed trying to sleep.
At any rate, I binged mystery novels over about a twenty year time span.
So...needless to say I've read better murder mysteries. The writer does what I like to call the "contrived" confession, which never happens in reality but always happens in mystery novels. Be nice if it happened in real life -- then we wouldn't have to have a trial. Although they still have them in the novels. The heroine meets the villain in some confined place, is in jeopardy, and thinking they will end the heroine's life shortly or that there is no way the heroine has back-up on the way -- the dastardly foe decides to confess all with little to no prompting from the heroine -- explaining how it all went down and how they really were either the dastardly mastermind or the victim of the proceedings.
I wish writers wouldn't do this. I remember years ago trying to play a detective game on a computer -- and you had to ask just the right questions to get the right responses. It was a silly game and very frustrating. Also no visuals -- completely in MS DOS, this was the predecessors to the games people play now -- and on an Apple II computer. Even in that game, no one was going to confess -- well not unless you asked the computer the question that would trigger it.
I also worked in criminal defense. Visited a convicted hit man in prison. He was caught dead to rights, and still claiming he was innocent. No one is going to confess to you. They will either kill you or escape. Or call for an attorney. It's lazy writing. Also, too much telling -- I felt like the writer was telling me what happened a lot of the time.
The film Gosford Park sort of played with this device, which I thought to be rather clever. That's actually the only Robert Altman film I really enjoyed, although I did think Short Cuts was clever.
But I'm way off topic, swinging back to the review at hand. What I liked about the book?
* the friendship between Alice (the Englishwoman mathematician, whom Perveen meets in school) and Perveen (the heroine). Which may also be a budding romance, not certain. Alice is definitely gay, much to her parents despair -- they keep trying to curtail it and get her married off, but she fights them off and does her thing. Not so sure about Perveen --- who did fall in love, got married, contracted a venereal disease, separated from the nasty marriage and has gone on to become a lawyer.
* the relationship between Perveen and her father, which reminds me a lot of Nancy Drew, except her mother's still alive.
* the information about contract law, marriage law, and legal matters in India during the 1920s. That was fascinating. I wanted more of that and less of the mystery.
* the anti-romance with Cyrus, which I thought was a nice subversive deconstruction of romance novels.
* the descriptions of the differences/distinctions between Parsi and Muslim religion, and Hindu, Muslim and Zorastarian cultures. Wanted more of this as well.
What I did not like? The description isn't that good. Although the writer does manage to convey Indian culture and speech. But I never really got a good sense of Bombay itself. Also, as previously stated -- the mystery meandered and didn't hold my attention.
E-Comics:
[By the way, comicxology unlimited -- gives you discounts and you can borrow up to 50 comics at a time. That's how I'm doing this.]
* UnCanny X-men #20 - 2018 by Matthew Rosenberg -- geeze, a lot of characters are getting killed off during this run. To date, they've killed off one or two characters per book. Granted they aren't exactly major characters -- and honestly most of the major characters they've already killed off at least twice already. (It's bloody hard to take character deaths all that seriously in comic books. If you do, you clearly haven't been reading them for very long -- just wait, whichever favorite character they killed off -- will most definitely return at a future date.)
Anyhow, wasn't upset about these deaths -- forgot most of the characters who were killed off existed. And the big bloody one -- was long coming and a character I could do without.
I was highly anticipating this one, only to discover that what I wanted to happen or the sequence I was anticipating most likely will not happen until issue 21 or 22. (Ugh.) I'm tired of the fight scenes which don't go anywhere. That said -- they did a good job of building up to the reveal -- that everyone on the team has been expertly manipulated by a pair of telepaths to do their dirty work. Needless to say, they aren't happy.
Also, the ambiguous moral question of the day -- which is shown in a sequence with Captain America. The problem with the Avengers and Captain America in the X books, is they...well, come across as hypocritical fascist bullies. I love the Avengers in the movie verse, I do not like them at all in the comic books. It's very odd. Marvel has done a better job with the Avengers in the movies, and a better job with the X-men in the comics. The closest things we've had to a really good X-men flick are: X-men Days of Future Past, and Logan and Deadpool (which don't quite count).
Anyhow the scientific ethical question (because at the end of the day, X-books are really speculative sci-fi graphic novels with superheroes) - is should the government vaccinate children who may have a mutant gene -- to prevent them from developing their mutant capabilities? Without the child's permission? Some people see this as an analogy to the anti-vacination debate - I think that's stretching things a bit. Considering this is genetic manipulation not prevention of a known illness. Be more analogous to vaccinating someone who shows homosexual tendencies or something unacceptable to societal standards. Or say another species or race.
Another better analogy is towards developing "powers" that you were genetically provided. Like all superhero comics, The X-men is mainly about power and empowerment, and how we use and abuse power. Unlike Steve Rogers, who appears to be at first defending the government's mutant vaccination program -- these kids are born this way, Steve chose to be injected with his powers. Which makes his appearance regarding the situation highly ironic. I seriously doubt he'd want someone removing his powers or Buckey's. That said, it is revealed that he may not be defending the government's program -- in reality he's questioning what the X-men are doing. Because apparently in their well-intended attempt to make the vaccination mute -- they trusted the wrong guy with the solution. Dark Beast's view was that he'd do it by ensuring that either the vaccine to eradict mutation killed the person vaccinated with it, or was rendered mute. (ie if you took it and didn't have the gene, you'd probably survive, if you took it and did have the gene, you wouldn't.) This shocks our team -- and they grab Dr. Nemesis (who could potentially undo it) and confront Dark Beast -- who confesses to it, and admits he had Mr. Sinister's assistance in more ways than one. Furious, Illyana, teleports Dark Beast's head into the ceiling, effectively hanging and decapitating him. (Fitting end to an ugly and annoying character. Don't he'll probably be back. They've killed him before.)
Anyway, that's not the big shocker -- the big one is when Emma, who is way over her head -- finally decides to send a distress call to the people she's mind-wiped. "Oh, don't be angry with me, Scott, darling. I'm giving you back all your memories of me -- so you can rush to my rescue. And while you're doing that, please forget the fact that I've been manipulating you for months to achieve my own ends..."
I really really want a confrontation between Scott and Emma. Particularly since he also has his memories of his younger self, who came forward in time and witnessed first hand all the ways Emma used him and his brother to further her own agenda.
I want that character moment -- for both of them. Will be really annoyed if I don't get it. The series has, however, been quite good with the other character moments to date -- Scott/Wolvie, Scott/Havok, Scott/Majick, Scott/Hope, etc. It's also very Scott centric -- which is why I'm enjoying it.
Age of X-man - Marvelous X-men Issue 5 -- found this series to be rather slow and sort of boring. It's a bit too preachy -- and feels like AU fanfic. (Actually most comics do at various points, par for the course.) Will be happy when it's over.
BoomComics Buffy Reboot #5 -- I may have reviewed this already? Can't remember.
CJL: Did they turn Xander into a vampire?
ME: Well...sort of.
What happened is that Dru decided it wasn't worth it and Xander was a weakling. Spike, identified with Xander's pain, and sired him instead. Dru wasn't happy but dealt. (I'm wondering if the writer is a Spike/Xander shipper? Definitely a Cordy/Spike shipper.) Annoyed, Dru dumped him on Giles doorstep. Giles called Buffy, Jenny, and Willow -- and they are trying to find a way to tether his soul to him so he doesn't turn completely -- basically they are turning into a version of Angel.
Plus side? Xander gets super-powers. Downside? He craves blood.
It would work better...if well, the art was better. I miss the other artist. And, what about Angel, you ask? Oh, he's off solving crimes as the vampire version of Phillip Marlow in Sunnydale sort of like Angel the Series, except he skipped over the whole Buffy/Whistler/Cordy/Doyle etc bit.
What I'm reading now?
Outside of hammering away at my novel...which is writing not reading, so never mind.
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
This is the first fictional novel by the 70 year old woman living out in the wilderness of Idaho...who used to write naturalist books about Africa with her ex-husband.
So far? It's the best written thing that I've read in a long time. (Granted that's not saying a lot considering what I've been reading). But it is well-written. The writer has established a distinctive voice, and I feel like I'm in the head of her characters. The descriptions are vivid for the most part, as are the characters.
And the story moves a long at a nice clip. It's a mystery, there's a death, but mainly it deals with how a young girl manages to survive in the marshland completely on her own and why.
I'm enjoying it at any rate.
As an aside -- it's odd, all the fictional (non-comic) books I'm reading are by women, and all the comics seem to be by men. Both make the same mistakes regarding the genders...or the gender they aren't, which is also interesting. I'm guessing it's hard to write about or understand someone who isn't like us? But isn't that the whole point of writing fiction -- to attempt to do so? I guess it depends on the writer -- some want to share their perspective and explain themselves, other's want to figure out what someone else thinks and understand someone else, some both.
2. Struggling with restless legs at the moment, blame my mother for bringing it up -- that and dehydration.
Tired. Have not been sleeping well. Most likely weather related, the humidity fires up the arthritis which fires up the sciatica, which drives a needle of hot pain into my left knee.
Doctor suggested knee to ankle pillow -- been hunting on Amazon. Not sure, think I found something -- currently using a regular pillow. Doctor is actually pretty good for a change, even if she's a bit blood test happy.
* What I Just Finished Reading?
E-Books [because I read everything on the Kindle at the moment]
The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey
This was disappointing. It started out being this great story about a female attorney in Bombay, India who had managed to survive a nasty marriage and was solving legal mystery....to a rather boring murder mystery that meandered and felt a tad...boilerplate.
I don't find murder mysteries that interesting. Perhaps I read too many of them at a certain point? This is possible. Once I figured out how to read in the third grade, I consumed books like well can't think of a fitting analogy, but I'm certain one will come to me at inopportune moment, most likely while I'm in bed trying to sleep.
At any rate, I binged mystery novels over about a twenty year time span.
So...needless to say I've read better murder mysteries. The writer does what I like to call the "contrived" confession, which never happens in reality but always happens in mystery novels. Be nice if it happened in real life -- then we wouldn't have to have a trial. Although they still have them in the novels. The heroine meets the villain in some confined place, is in jeopardy, and thinking they will end the heroine's life shortly or that there is no way the heroine has back-up on the way -- the dastardly foe decides to confess all with little to no prompting from the heroine -- explaining how it all went down and how they really were either the dastardly mastermind or the victim of the proceedings.
I wish writers wouldn't do this. I remember years ago trying to play a detective game on a computer -- and you had to ask just the right questions to get the right responses. It was a silly game and very frustrating. Also no visuals -- completely in MS DOS, this was the predecessors to the games people play now -- and on an Apple II computer. Even in that game, no one was going to confess -- well not unless you asked the computer the question that would trigger it.
I also worked in criminal defense. Visited a convicted hit man in prison. He was caught dead to rights, and still claiming he was innocent. No one is going to confess to you. They will either kill you or escape. Or call for an attorney. It's lazy writing. Also, too much telling -- I felt like the writer was telling me what happened a lot of the time.
The film Gosford Park sort of played with this device, which I thought to be rather clever. That's actually the only Robert Altman film I really enjoyed, although I did think Short Cuts was clever.
But I'm way off topic, swinging back to the review at hand. What I liked about the book?
* the friendship between Alice (the Englishwoman mathematician, whom Perveen meets in school) and Perveen (the heroine). Which may also be a budding romance, not certain. Alice is definitely gay, much to her parents despair -- they keep trying to curtail it and get her married off, but she fights them off and does her thing. Not so sure about Perveen --- who did fall in love, got married, contracted a venereal disease, separated from the nasty marriage and has gone on to become a lawyer.
* the relationship between Perveen and her father, which reminds me a lot of Nancy Drew, except her mother's still alive.
* the information about contract law, marriage law, and legal matters in India during the 1920s. That was fascinating. I wanted more of that and less of the mystery.
* the anti-romance with Cyrus, which I thought was a nice subversive deconstruction of romance novels.
* the descriptions of the differences/distinctions between Parsi and Muslim religion, and Hindu, Muslim and Zorastarian cultures. Wanted more of this as well.
What I did not like? The description isn't that good. Although the writer does manage to convey Indian culture and speech. But I never really got a good sense of Bombay itself. Also, as previously stated -- the mystery meandered and didn't hold my attention.
E-Comics:
[By the way, comicxology unlimited -- gives you discounts and you can borrow up to 50 comics at a time. That's how I'm doing this.]
* UnCanny X-men #20 - 2018 by Matthew Rosenberg -- geeze, a lot of characters are getting killed off during this run. To date, they've killed off one or two characters per book. Granted they aren't exactly major characters -- and honestly most of the major characters they've already killed off at least twice already. (It's bloody hard to take character deaths all that seriously in comic books. If you do, you clearly haven't been reading them for very long -- just wait, whichever favorite character they killed off -- will most definitely return at a future date.)
Anyhow, wasn't upset about these deaths -- forgot most of the characters who were killed off existed. And the big bloody one -- was long coming and a character I could do without.
I was highly anticipating this one, only to discover that what I wanted to happen or the sequence I was anticipating most likely will not happen until issue 21 or 22. (Ugh.) I'm tired of the fight scenes which don't go anywhere. That said -- they did a good job of building up to the reveal -- that everyone on the team has been expertly manipulated by a pair of telepaths to do their dirty work. Needless to say, they aren't happy.
Also, the ambiguous moral question of the day -- which is shown in a sequence with Captain America. The problem with the Avengers and Captain America in the X books, is they...well, come across as hypocritical fascist bullies. I love the Avengers in the movie verse, I do not like them at all in the comic books. It's very odd. Marvel has done a better job with the Avengers in the movies, and a better job with the X-men in the comics. The closest things we've had to a really good X-men flick are: X-men Days of Future Past, and Logan and Deadpool (which don't quite count).
Anyhow the scientific ethical question (because at the end of the day, X-books are really speculative sci-fi graphic novels with superheroes) - is should the government vaccinate children who may have a mutant gene -- to prevent them from developing their mutant capabilities? Without the child's permission? Some people see this as an analogy to the anti-vacination debate - I think that's stretching things a bit. Considering this is genetic manipulation not prevention of a known illness. Be more analogous to vaccinating someone who shows homosexual tendencies or something unacceptable to societal standards. Or say another species or race.
Another better analogy is towards developing "powers" that you were genetically provided. Like all superhero comics, The X-men is mainly about power and empowerment, and how we use and abuse power. Unlike Steve Rogers, who appears to be at first defending the government's mutant vaccination program -- these kids are born this way, Steve chose to be injected with his powers. Which makes his appearance regarding the situation highly ironic. I seriously doubt he'd want someone removing his powers or Buckey's. That said, it is revealed that he may not be defending the government's program -- in reality he's questioning what the X-men are doing. Because apparently in their well-intended attempt to make the vaccination mute -- they trusted the wrong guy with the solution. Dark Beast's view was that he'd do it by ensuring that either the vaccine to eradict mutation killed the person vaccinated with it, or was rendered mute. (ie if you took it and didn't have the gene, you'd probably survive, if you took it and did have the gene, you wouldn't.) This shocks our team -- and they grab Dr. Nemesis (who could potentially undo it) and confront Dark Beast -- who confesses to it, and admits he had Mr. Sinister's assistance in more ways than one. Furious, Illyana, teleports Dark Beast's head into the ceiling, effectively hanging and decapitating him. (Fitting end to an ugly and annoying character. Don't he'll probably be back. They've killed him before.)
Anyway, that's not the big shocker -- the big one is when Emma, who is way over her head -- finally decides to send a distress call to the people she's mind-wiped. "Oh, don't be angry with me, Scott, darling. I'm giving you back all your memories of me -- so you can rush to my rescue. And while you're doing that, please forget the fact that I've been manipulating you for months to achieve my own ends..."
I really really want a confrontation between Scott and Emma. Particularly since he also has his memories of his younger self, who came forward in time and witnessed first hand all the ways Emma used him and his brother to further her own agenda.
I want that character moment -- for both of them. Will be really annoyed if I don't get it. The series has, however, been quite good with the other character moments to date -- Scott/Wolvie, Scott/Havok, Scott/Majick, Scott/Hope, etc. It's also very Scott centric -- which is why I'm enjoying it.
Age of X-man - Marvelous X-men Issue 5 -- found this series to be rather slow and sort of boring. It's a bit too preachy -- and feels like AU fanfic. (Actually most comics do at various points, par for the course.) Will be happy when it's over.
BoomComics Buffy Reboot #5 -- I may have reviewed this already? Can't remember.
CJL: Did they turn Xander into a vampire?
ME: Well...sort of.
What happened is that Dru decided it wasn't worth it and Xander was a weakling. Spike, identified with Xander's pain, and sired him instead. Dru wasn't happy but dealt. (I'm wondering if the writer is a Spike/Xander shipper? Definitely a Cordy/Spike shipper.) Annoyed, Dru dumped him on Giles doorstep. Giles called Buffy, Jenny, and Willow -- and they are trying to find a way to tether his soul to him so he doesn't turn completely -- basically they are turning into a version of Angel.
Plus side? Xander gets super-powers. Downside? He craves blood.
It would work better...if well, the art was better. I miss the other artist. And, what about Angel, you ask? Oh, he's off solving crimes as the vampire version of Phillip Marlow in Sunnydale sort of like Angel the Series, except he skipped over the whole Buffy/Whistler/Cordy/Doyle etc bit.
What I'm reading now?
Outside of hammering away at my novel...which is writing not reading, so never mind.
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
This is the first fictional novel by the 70 year old woman living out in the wilderness of Idaho...who used to write naturalist books about Africa with her ex-husband.
So far? It's the best written thing that I've read in a long time. (Granted that's not saying a lot considering what I've been reading). But it is well-written. The writer has established a distinctive voice, and I feel like I'm in the head of her characters. The descriptions are vivid for the most part, as are the characters.
And the story moves a long at a nice clip. It's a mystery, there's a death, but mainly it deals with how a young girl manages to survive in the marshland completely on her own and why.
I'm enjoying it at any rate.
As an aside -- it's odd, all the fictional (non-comic) books I'm reading are by women, and all the comics seem to be by men. Both make the same mistakes regarding the genders...or the gender they aren't, which is also interesting. I'm guessing it's hard to write about or understand someone who isn't like us? But isn't that the whole point of writing fiction -- to attempt to do so? I guess it depends on the writer -- some want to share their perspective and explain themselves, other's want to figure out what someone else thinks and understand someone else, some both.
2. Struggling with restless legs at the moment, blame my mother for bringing it up -- that and dehydration.
Tired. Have not been sleeping well. Most likely weather related, the humidity fires up the arthritis which fires up the sciatica, which drives a needle of hot pain into my left knee.
Doctor suggested knee to ankle pillow -- been hunting on Amazon. Not sure, think I found something -- currently using a regular pillow. Doctor is actually pretty good for a change, even if she's a bit blood test happy.