Reading meme and other things..
Jul. 25th, 2019 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Reading meme...
House of X by John Hickman -- basically, Jonathan Hickman and Marvel's reimagining and repositioning of the X-men within the Marvel Verse. This review, which is more positive than my own take, pretty much spells out what is happening here.
My quibble is that there is an awful lot of world-building, which weirdly has always been implied but not really incorporated in the comics. This is a good and bad thing. You provide too many details in a comic -- you could write yourself into a corner, on the other hand -- it is good to have a solid framework and foundation to build a story. But, we have all this back-story already, how much of that will be ret-conned.
Comics are sort of like published fanfic. Each new writer adds their twist or perspective. So you sort of have to handwave a lot of it -- and focus on the story and characters, and the ideas. Continuity be damned.
However, with this much world-building and planning, maybe it will have continuity at least within it's own arc? Or make sense? I don't know. But I am enjoying it.
The book is a godsend for my analytical brain -- which loves to analyze stories. I figured the story out with one read through. And it was fun. I love graphic novels with layers of content.
I'm considering grabbing Matt Fraction and Elsa Charretier's November which is due to debut in the fall. And is about how three women's lives are affected when one finds a discarded gun in her back yard.
It apparently is very layered and requires multiple reads to figure out.
Also recently read?
If the Duke Demands -- too much sex, not enough story.
The Governess Game by Tessa Dare -- also too much sex, and not enough story. I got bored and plodded through it. The sex scenes didn't do a lot for me.
I honestly think it is hard to write a good sex scene. It's basically an action scene, but with no conflict -- well unless it is a violent sex scene or rape, and honestly no one wants that.
(*Note there are no rape scenes or sexual violence in the above books. I've been avoiding that content of late.)
* What I'm reading now?
The Cooking Gene - a Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty
It's interesting. So far I'm enjoying the writing style. And it's off the beaten path for me. (I finally got burned out on the romance novels.)
2018 James Beard Foundation Book of the Year | 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner inWriting | Nominee for the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Nonfiction | #75 on The Root100 2018
A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry—both black and white—through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom.
Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who "owns" it is one of the most provocative touch points in our ongoing struggles over race. In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty takes readers to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine.
From the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields, Twitty tells his family story through the foods that enabled his ancestors’ survival across three centuries. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and travels from Civil War battlefields in Virginia to synagogues in Alabama to Black-owned organic farms in Georgia.
As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the Southern past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep—the power that food has to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together.
Flirting with History of Wolves (which I bought for 1.99 recently, and The Sympathizer also $1.99, and We Sold Our Souls ...also for 1.99.
And flirting with books I do not own -- such as Little Fires, November, The Chain..
I don't know what I want to read at the moment. Don't have a shortage of books to choose from.
2. What the Author of Where the Crawdads Sing Recommends and Reads
Well...reading through the article certainly explained the writer's style, and why she was great at description but struggled with dialogue, romantic relationships, and the mystery plot. She reads too much Faulkner and not enough Agatha Christie.
Also she's a huge fan of To Kill A Mockingbird and Scout is her favorite character, which explains why Kyra is a lot like Scout in narrative voice. In fact the book's structure reminds me a lot of To Kill a Mockingbird.
The problem with the literary prose stylists is well...they fall in love with their own phraseology. They are wonderful wordsmiths...but at times she feel as if you are drowning or smothered by the beautiful prose.
Don't get me wrong, Toni Morrison's Beloved is among my favorite novels, but..I did feel at times as if I were buried beneath words. I loved it. But, it does meander.
Faulkner, I probably shouldn't comment too heavily on -- since I've only read Sound and the Fury (not his best work) and The Reivers (which most haven't heard of).
I think she'd like Margaret Atwood...although Atwood may be too genre for her? Not sure.
House of X by John Hickman -- basically, Jonathan Hickman and Marvel's reimagining and repositioning of the X-men within the Marvel Verse. This review, which is more positive than my own take, pretty much spells out what is happening here.
My quibble is that there is an awful lot of world-building, which weirdly has always been implied but not really incorporated in the comics. This is a good and bad thing. You provide too many details in a comic -- you could write yourself into a corner, on the other hand -- it is good to have a solid framework and foundation to build a story. But, we have all this back-story already, how much of that will be ret-conned.
Comics are sort of like published fanfic. Each new writer adds their twist or perspective. So you sort of have to handwave a lot of it -- and focus on the story and characters, and the ideas. Continuity be damned.
However, with this much world-building and planning, maybe it will have continuity at least within it's own arc? Or make sense? I don't know. But I am enjoying it.
The book is a godsend for my analytical brain -- which loves to analyze stories. I figured the story out with one read through. And it was fun. I love graphic novels with layers of content.
I'm considering grabbing Matt Fraction and Elsa Charretier's November which is due to debut in the fall. And is about how three women's lives are affected when one finds a discarded gun in her back yard.
It apparently is very layered and requires multiple reads to figure out.
Also recently read?
If the Duke Demands -- too much sex, not enough story.
The Governess Game by Tessa Dare -- also too much sex, and not enough story. I got bored and plodded through it. The sex scenes didn't do a lot for me.
I honestly think it is hard to write a good sex scene. It's basically an action scene, but with no conflict -- well unless it is a violent sex scene or rape, and honestly no one wants that.
(*Note there are no rape scenes or sexual violence in the above books. I've been avoiding that content of late.)
* What I'm reading now?
The Cooking Gene - a Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty
It's interesting. So far I'm enjoying the writing style. And it's off the beaten path for me. (I finally got burned out on the romance novels.)
2018 James Beard Foundation Book of the Year | 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner inWriting | Nominee for the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Nonfiction | #75 on The Root100 2018
A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry—both black and white—through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom.
Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who "owns" it is one of the most provocative touch points in our ongoing struggles over race. In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty takes readers to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine.
From the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields, Twitty tells his family story through the foods that enabled his ancestors’ survival across three centuries. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and travels from Civil War battlefields in Virginia to synagogues in Alabama to Black-owned organic farms in Georgia.
As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the Southern past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep—the power that food has to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together.
Flirting with History of Wolves (which I bought for 1.99 recently, and The Sympathizer also $1.99, and We Sold Our Souls ...also for 1.99.
And flirting with books I do not own -- such as Little Fires, November, The Chain..
I don't know what I want to read at the moment. Don't have a shortage of books to choose from.
2. What the Author of Where the Crawdads Sing Recommends and Reads
Well...reading through the article certainly explained the writer's style, and why she was great at description but struggled with dialogue, romantic relationships, and the mystery plot. She reads too much Faulkner and not enough Agatha Christie.
Also she's a huge fan of To Kill A Mockingbird and Scout is her favorite character, which explains why Kyra is a lot like Scout in narrative voice. In fact the book's structure reminds me a lot of To Kill a Mockingbird.
The problem with the literary prose stylists is well...they fall in love with their own phraseology. They are wonderful wordsmiths...but at times she feel as if you are drowning or smothered by the beautiful prose.
Don't get me wrong, Toni Morrison's Beloved is among my favorite novels, but..I did feel at times as if I were buried beneath words. I loved it. But, it does meander.
Faulkner, I probably shouldn't comment too heavily on -- since I've only read Sound and the Fury (not his best work) and The Reivers (which most haven't heard of).
I think she'd like Margaret Atwood...although Atwood may be too genre for her? Not sure.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-26 01:10 pm (UTC)I know the feeling. I did well in high school lit classes, but there were times I'd get bored by somebody's descriptive passages, especially nature descriptions, and as I've said before, once I was bored, reading was a chore instead of a joy for me. Being smothered is an apt way of putting how it felt to wade through some of it. I'm looking at you (among others) James Fenimore Cooper! To make it a little less tedious to read I made a joke out of that kind of description that got too syrupy or just plain boring, giving it in my head the dishonorable name "Farnsworth of the Forest Style," reading it softly aloud to myself in exaggerated fashion like a very hammy actor to make it sound silly instead of just unreadable for me.