Take me away to Neverland

Four books this month, two novels and two comic books.

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Set in 1870s New York and focusing on the emotional affair between a young lawyer who's engaged to be married and his fiance's cousin, a Countess fleeing an abusive marriage. The book is a mixture of romantic yearning, melancholy reflection on the inescapable expectations of the characters' society, and long digressions about various society folk and their own foibles and habits. Not bad per se, but I got impatient with it a lot? I feel it could have been a lot shorter.

In terms of plot I've seen it compared a lot to the more famous Anna Karenina, which I have not read so I can't tell you how accurate that is. But it might be handy to know if you have.

Saga Vol. 3 by Brian K. Vaughan
This volume skips back in time a bit from where the last one left off, allowing us to see more of Marco and Alana's family's stay with Oswald Heist. It's a pleasant time but we know going in that eventually their pursuers are going to catch up with them, so tension is derived from both that dread and the need for the parents to decide what exactly they're going to do next.

Meanwhile The Will, Gwen, the little girl they rescued from the brothel planet, and Lying Cat are all stranded on an alien planet. Their situation is complicated by The Will seeing visions of his deceased lover, who urges him to a) bone Gwen and b) give up the mercenary life to stay on the idyllic planet they've wound up on, which conflicts with Gwen's desires to get off the planet and have her revenge on her ex.

Prince Robot IV isn't as active in this volume, having to wait in the wings to confront Oswald the way he did at the end of Vol. 2, so for a third subplot we follow a pair of investigative reporters named Lipsher and Doff who are trying to write a story about Alana and her illicit relationship and motherhood, but get on the wrong side of the authorities in the process.

This series is good, although it relies a lot on crudeness for humor and... I dunno, shock value, I guess? As you've probably surmised, I find it a bit gratuitous. Fortunately the intermingling storylines and characters keep things engaging. 'ware various triggers however.

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander
The Black Cauldron is one of the Disney movies we'd sometimes rent while I was growing up and while it wasn't a regular favorite it did make me curious about what the original books are like. Based off the first one, I'd say I like it quite a bit- the story is set in a medieval fantasy sort of world and takes place in a Wales-like land called Prydain, a collection of various small Kingdoms. A peasant boy named Taran dreams of adventure but instead works in a small village learning to make horseshoes and taking care of a pig called Hen Wen. Hen Wen happens to be an oracle however, and when she senses that the local evil Death-Lord, Arawn, and his general, the Horned King, are after her she escapes from her enclosure and flees into the forest. Taran pursues his pig and from there things spiral into a road trip with the end goal of reaching the fortress of Caer Dathyl before an advancing army does.

While I do still like the movie relatively well I think the book is a bit better, particularly with regards to the characters. Book!Eilonwy for example is weirder than the movie one and I greatly appreciate Weird Little Girl Rep. There's also this theme of... Taran, though he wants to be, is not really a mighty warrior hero, but instead an Assistant Pig-Keeper who is Doing His Very Best, and while the theme remains in the movie the book gives us a good idea of how painfully out of his depth Taran feels, which makes his perseverance especially sweet.

Ms. Marvel Vol. 1: No Normal by G. Willow Wilson
New Jersey teenager, Kamala Khan, like many teenagers, is struggling with her identity; her parents are orthodox Muslims and with the exception of her friends Nakia and Bruno, she's viewed as an oddity by her peers. On top of that she's also something of a nerd (she writes superhero fanfiction which, Kamala, why, RPF is weird). In an attempt to fit in she sneaks out to a party and winds up in the midst of an alien attack on New Jersey which mysteriously grants her shapeshifting superpowers. After using them to save someone she decides that she's going to become like the superheroes she admires, but from there she has to figure out how to balance her aspirations with being true to herself, superhero life with teenager life, and all without her parents figure out what's going on. A very cute and charming origin story.

Seven books this month, two graphic novels, one nonfiction, four novels.

National Geographic Traveler: Rio de Janeiro by Michael Sommers
Travel guide for the city and region of Rio de Janeiro that I picked up on a whim from a dollar store. It was originally published just before the year 2014 so every now and then it makes reference to "upcoming events" in 2016 and such, which was a little disorienting to read. Most of it is recommendations for various museums and other tourist spots by neighborhood, but there's also a bunch of history and other interesting details in it.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind: Vol. 2 by Hayao Miyazaki
It's been a while since I saw the movie, but based on what I remember and comments I've seen on this, this volume is basically where the movie content ends.

Anyway, the art is extremely detailed and attractive but I find the story suffers somewhat from being a war/politics narrative and I have trouble keeping track of who's fighting what in this sort of story. There are the Doroks and the Torumekian Empire and the Valley of the Wind and also the bug keeper people. The bug keepers are kind of a mercenary culture, the Valley of the Wind is a tiny kingdom that pretty much has to fight for the much larger Torumekian Empire or else, and I thiiiiink the Doroks are who the Torumekians are fighting? When they're not fighting each other because there's some sort of power jockeying going on behind the scenes?

In fairness to Miyazaki though, I am also writing these thoughts up several weeks after I actually read the comic.

Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones
First book in the Chrestomanci series, of which I have read/owned several but never actually the first one. This made for a bit of unintentional dramatic irony since the Chrestomanci book I remember best is the one about Chrestomanci's backstory and in this one the central character, Cat, spends a great deal of time confused and intimidated by Chrestomanci and unsure of what the guy's actual deal is.

The basic plot concerns a pair of orphaned siblings named Gwendolen and Eric (aka Cat). While Cat is relatively meek and ordinary his sister Gwendolen is a powerful and ambitious budding witch and in pursuit of her aspirations, she convinces a powerful magician called Chrestomanci to take her and her brother in. However, life at Chrestomanci Castle is not quite what they expect and Gwendolen in particular chafes under the restrictions that are placed on her. Gwen starts a campaign of rebellion and trouble making, dragging her brother into trouble in the process.

I quite enjoy DWJ's writing voice so this was a fun, breezy sort of read for me. There are some uncomfortable bits though- ( triggers and also spoilers )
The Secrets of Wiscombe Chase by Christine Merrill
Regency romance novel about a couple who marry for practical/arranged reasons (he's poor but has a property that her family wants to get a hold of, and her father buys him an army commission in return for marrying his daughter) before the hero heads off to fight in the Napoleonic wars for seven years. They eschew having sex before he leaves so naturally our hero, Gerald, is not happy about the fact our heroine, Lillian, gave birth to a son ten months after he joined the army. He is also not happy that his con artist in-laws have turned his family home into a 24/7 party center/informal gambling den. Gerald comes home expecting to deal with a HEARTLESS JEZEBEL, only for Lillian to pledge her loyalty to him because she's frankly miserable with the current situation.

A lot of the drama/conflict comes not just from Gerald's distrust of Lillian but also ( mild spoilers for a potentially triggery topic that comes up early on ) So how much you'll enjoy this probably depends on how you feel about that kind of content.

Emily Climbs by L.M. Montgomery
Second in the series about a romantic young girl living in P.E.I. around the early 1900s with ambitions of becoming a professional writer. In this one Emily, our heroine, starts going to high school but in order to obtain her guardian's permission she isn't allowed to write fiction while she's there (though poetry and nonfiction writing is reluctantly allowed). What follows is a mostly slice-of-life affair where Emily makes her first forays into writing professionally, gets into conflicts with the aunt she's staying with, and has wistful interactions with her various love interests

Teddy, the primary one, is a sweet enough kid but unfortunately also the least developed; Perry is a scrappy farmhand with ambitions of Making Something of Himself and probably my favorite except for That One Thing He Says At One Point; and Dean is a brooding poetical guy who readers seem split between "He's the Hades to Emily's Persephone! Such chemistry!" and "ARE YOU KIDDING ME HE'S LIKE THIRTY AND KEEPS FLIRTING WITH AND MANIPULATING THIS GIRL WHO'S STILL IN HER EARLY TEENS." Guess which camp I'm in!

Also Emily straight up has psychic powers, which just gets weirder to me every time it comes up.

The Sandman: Dream Country by Neil Gaiman
Third volume in Neil Gaiman's much vaunted comic book series. While the previous two volumes were arc-centric, this one is a collection of short stories set in the same universe and featuring Morpheus as a minor character in each. This volume is also one of the ones that mildly traumatized me as a young, sex-repulsed teen because I picked it up after one of my parents brought a couple of volumes home and the first issue in this one involves a woman getting raped and abused by a guy. (Although it was not as traumatizing as GODDAMN JOHN DEE IN THE FIRST VOLUME, CHRIST)

Anyway. In the first story more SPECIFICALLY it's about a writer who holds the muse, Calliope, prisoner after buying her off another, retired writer and uses her to skyrocket his career. Story number two is about a cat who journeys to the heart of dream country on a revenge quest and the knowledge she obtains there. Story number three is about the first performance of Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night Dream; before an audience of the fair folk themselves. And story number four is about a retired superheroine who is isolated by her superpowers and her downward spiral into suicidal depression. 

No. 3 is my current favorite, probably because it's the least depressing and/or skin-crawly of the lot.

Karl Marx's Interpretation of History by M.M. Bober

One of the things I've noticed about the books I've been reading in my library's history section, especially the older ones, is that they generally do not have the pseudo-impartial, no-usage-of-the-first-person style I've come to expect in academic writing from wikipedia and high school English class. Instead, the authors will talk about the time period they currently live in, their opinions on other historians and philosophers and philosophies-of-history, and their personal opinions on the long dead people they talk about, which tends to make me feel less like I am reading Absolute Facts and more like I'm personally having... not a conversation with these authors, since I can't exactly comment back, but it's more akin to sitting down with them after dinner somewhere and politely listening while they infodump at me about their research. It's a bit exasperating sometimes and amusing at others, but I think I actually appreciate it in some ways over more impersonal academic writing. And I've gotten into the habit of googling the names of these authors, trying to find information on them which helps put their writing into further context.

Which brings me to this book, which was a bit of a departure from that- the first 3/4 or so of the book were mostly an impartial summarizing of many, many, many aspects of Marxism, though with the occasional bit of "this theory is flawed because X" criticism or "Marx and Engels were very vague on this point"- but it isn't until the last quarter of the book that Bober sits down and starts chewing out all the various flaws he sees in Marxist theory, particularly Marx's, er, interpretation of history.

About Bober himself I was able to find out about Bober himself is that 1) His full name is Mandell Morton Bober, 2) He is/was a scholar at Harvard University, 3) He seems to identify as a conservative, 4) He states that after the publication of the first edition of the book he received a lot of "abusive letters" from Marxists, and seems to consider Marxists overly worshipful of the guy, and 5) The second edition (the one I read) was probably being written during the mid 1940s, while the Great Depression was still weighing on people's minds. Meanwhile, I can't find any information on him through google beyond that he wrote this book, which was a bit of a surprise after being able to find wikipedia articles on authors I thought would be too obscure for people to bother with.

Anyway, this probably does not tell you much about the book itself, so I'm just going to copy+paste what I wrote on goodreads about it:


Anyway, in the last volume Emily and the gang had found the way to Cielis, where they were planning on meeting up with the Council of Cielis, a group of  Old And Important stonekeepers, to ask for their help in taking down the Elf King. They met a Council-hopeful named Max Griffin, a stonekeeper who I think is around Emily's age- but god knows, since I've missed things like Trellis being a Literal Teenager before- and a couple of mostly unimportant guards. Everyone got on a ship and they were headed for Cielis. This volume opens up with them on the ship, and Emily having a dream conversation with her stone, just before they arrive at Cielis.

Upon arrival, Luger and Trellis are dumped into a prison, the Hayes family brought to Council headquarters where Max and the others are insistent that Emily will undergo a dangerous trial to try and join the Council, and the furry brigade are told to just enjoy Cielis, whatever. Unfortunately, not only are the Elven duo imprisoned, but Emily- and Leon/Enzo/Enzo's Pal I Forgot The Name Of- discover that something is deeply, deeply wrong with the city of Cielis and the Council. Meanwhile, Miskit and Cogsley are rescued from a wyvern's nest by a stonekeeper named Vigo, who turns out to have a connection with their creator, Silas.

And here I'm going to copy paste my rambling/speculations from my tumblr.


The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

First book in a series called The Raven Chronicles which I decided to pick up after seeing a tumblr post from the author (spoilers spoilers spoilers) about Which Disney Characters The Five Main Characters Would Be and decided I was intrigued. 

The story starts with a sixteen year old teenage girl called Blue Sargent, who lives in a house with her psychic aunt and various other psychic ladies who are like aunts and cousins and friends of her mother. Blue herself is not psychic but has the weird ability to amplify other people's psychic powers and is pretty much a giant rechargeable battery for psychic energy stuff. Blue also has the slight issue where every psychic she's met ever has pretty much taken one look at her and gone "You're going to kill your true love when you kiss him." Blue plans on dealing with that by not falling in love, ever.

Unfortunately for Blue's best laid plans, she's off on Saint Mark's Eve helping her Aunt Neeve do Psychic Errands by figuring out who's going to die soon based on who Aunt Neeve spots on the Corpse Road, when she encounters the ghost of a boy called Gansey. Neeve concludes if Blue is seeing him then that means she's destined to either A) Kill him or B) He's her true love, and in any case since he's there he's probably going to be dead within a year.

Gansey, as it turns out, is a boy at the local Rich Boy's Private School known as Aglionby, whose primary passion in life is the paranormal and tracking down a mythical Welsh king known as Glendower, who he's pretty sure is somewhere in the area. Gansey is accompanied by his friends Adam, overworked scholarship student with intense baggage thanks to his shitty abusive family and his need To Prove Himself, Ronan, walking attitude problem with Dead Dad Issues, and Noah, who is very quiet.

Gansey's quest to find Glendower and research into the local ley lines leads to him eventually crossing paths with Blue and her family- okay, his quest and the fact that he and his posse sometimes eat at the diner where Blue works- and things steadily become more and more worrying. Especially because a teacher at Aglionby- the unfortunately named Barrington Whelk- is also very interested in the ley line, and he happens to be a giant pissbaby.

Entertaining, and made me a bit nostalgic in an odd way since the random paranormal elements and things like the heroine whose specialness derives from her lack of specialness reminds me of the sort of stuff I tried writing as a teenager. (Which... probably sounds like an insult but was not intended as such. The writer is good at what she does.)

( Spoilers. )

A Fine Passion by Stephanie Laurens

After a less-than-successful spouse hunt in London Jack, Baron Warnefleet, returns to his ancestral estate, where he hasn't been in many years, and comes across Lady Clarice trying to rescue a young man from a carriage wreck. Jack soon discovers that Clarice is a very assertive and intelligent woman who has essentially been running his estate while he's been gone, and that the carriage wreck was most likely a murder attempt- the early part of the book is thus mostly taken up by Jack trying to figure out what he wants to do with Clarice while she >('s at him and they both wait for the victim of the carriage wreck to wake up from a coma and provide them with answers.

( Spoilers. )

Overall not particularly bad, but I found this one more tedious than anything else.

Sisters by Raina Telgemeier

Sort of a companion to Raina Telgemeier's previous autobiographical comic, Smile, set mostly around the same period of her life, but with a heavier focus on her family relationships and particularly Raina's relationship with her younger sister Amara, using scenes from a three week road trip and flashbacks to earlier parts of their childhood to show off their relationship and character. As cute as the previous one, and I think this one was actually a bit more interesting to me. I appreciate that the creator is willing to sometimes show herself in a less positive light.

( A page from Sisters. )

The Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman

I first read the Sandman comics- or some of them, anyway- when I was a young teenager and someone in my family brought home a couple of volumes from the library. If you know much about this series then you will probably not be terribly surprised to hear I was kind of traumatized, but as I am now Officially A Grownup and because my goodreads account kept waving this under my nose, I decided that damn it, I am probably now capable of handling that one issue of torture porn where John Dee brutalizes everyone in a diner. 

Anyway this was an enormously successful/influential series once upon a time so I feel like much of my own commentary/summarizing of it would be unnecessary but what the hey. This book is the first of ten volumes and collects the first eight issues of a comic series set in the DC universe but focusing more on Morpheus/The Sandman/Dream, the anthropomorphic personification of dreams and to a lesser degree stories, and a member of The Endless, a collection of siblings/gods who are anthropomorphic personifications of Various Things That Start With D. (Death and Dream are the only ones to appear in this volume but iirc the other ones are Despair, Desire, Delirium, Destiny, and Destruction.) (Also some of those are probably spoilers oops.)

The first issue kicks off the story arc that runs through this volume when Dream is accidentally summoned by a bunch of cultists trying to gain control over Death, and then has his magical stuff stolen and gets locked up in a magical glass globe for seventy-two years, during which a bunch of Weird Dream Shit happens to various people around the world as a result of this metaphysical fuckery. Eventually Dream escapes and takes his revenge on his surviving captor, then goes off on a quest to regain his powers that takes him through various terrifying locations such as Arkham Asylum, the Dreamscape, Hell itself, and London, England.

As I alluded to when I earlier described one issue as being "torture porn" this comic is pretty fucked up in a lot of places. The final issue in this volume features Dream shadowing his sister Death during her work; it is probably the calmest and nicest issue in this volume. But if you're not too bothered by things like gore, sexual assault, drug use, abuse, murder, etc. or at least can mentally prep yourself beforehand, it's definitely an interesting read. And upon rereading it I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the art style. There's something very "classic comic book" about the style to my eye, with a lovely garish palette and enough surrealism to get the dream atmosphere across without making the story incomprehensible. It reminds me a lot of the scans I've seen of old horror comics and while I'm under the impression that Neil Gaiman intended this series to be more than just horror focused it does borrow heavily from those sort of themes- and some of those old characters, as various old horror anthology characters even make cameos in this volume.

( A page from Sandman. )

Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen

Another reread of a book I read a while back, Flipped is the story of a boy named Bryce Loski and a girl named Juli Baker, alternating between the two children's viewpoints as their relationship and perception of each other and their families change over the years.

It starts when Bryce and Juli are seven and Bryce's family moves into Juli's neighborhood- Juli goes over to say "hi" and falls in love with Bryce almost at first sight while Bryce on his part is annoyed and embarrassed by Juli, but unable or unwilling to straight up tell her to bug off. Juli spends their elementary school years pursuing Bryce, while Bryce spends his elementary school years avoiding Juli; Juli is the freest spirit to ever free a spirit, while Bryce mostly prefers to keep his head down and avoid attention; Juli's family struggles financially but is loving and artistic, while Bryce's family is upper middle class but appearance oriented, dysfunctional, and has a father that is borderline abusive.

Around the eighth grade Bryce and Juli's opinions of each other start to change as Bryce's grandfather moves in with the family and befriends Juli, nudging Bryce in the direction of looking at Juli in a more positive light while Juli meanwhile discovers Bryce a) has been secretly throwing away the eggs she was giving him for free (long story) when she could have been selling them to other people for money and b) she does not actually know him very well and he seems kind of shallow?? And thus comes the eponymous "flip" as Bryce gradually falls in love with Juli while Juli grows to doubt her own feelings for Bryce.

Anyway, I guess the relationship between Bryce and Juli is cute but the thing that struck me most upon rereading this was a subplot about a relative of Juli's, a subplot I'm not sure how to feel about.

( Spoilers + Discussion of ableism. (This book uses the r-word at points.) )

The Martian by Andy Weir

Having really enjoyed the movie I thought I'd try reading the original book; turns out the movie matches the book pretty closely although the book has Watney go through a couple of other disasters I'm pretty sure didn't make it into the movie (Watney accidentally turning the Hab into a giant hydrogen bomb, the Rover flipping over during his journey to the MAV), and there were a few details that were changed. But again, the bulk of the story is the same "smartass astronaut tries to survive on Mars while NASA tries their damnedest to save his life" storyline. Lots more detail on Watney's resource management. I think I actually enjoyed the movie a bit more but I did enjoy the book itself.

The Cloud Searchers by Kazu Kibuishi

In this third volume of The Amulet series, the next stop on the crew's journey is the lost city of Cielis, said to once be home to a guardian council of Stonekeepers before the Elf King invaded. Cielis is said to be in the sky, so the crew expands as they charter an airship and hire a feline captain and his first mate. The characters must deal with the perils of storms and wyverns and an assassin hired by the Elf King with the ability to erase people's memories.

( Spoilers and speculation. )

Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas.

Historical romance novel about a country gentlewoman and author named Sara Fielding and a self-made man/gambling den owner named Derek Craven. I've bitched on my tumblr and twitter about this book, albeit obliquely, not so much because it's particularly bad but because it uses the Depraved Bisexual trope for the main antagonist (a noblewoman and former lover of Derek's) and as a queer girl that was kind of a slap in the face.

Anyway. The actual plot is that Sara's come to London to do research for one of her novels- she primarily writes about contemporary social issues, and her latest novel is about gambling- when she stumbles across the hero being assaulted by some strange men. She shoots one of Derek's attackers and drags him off to his club, where her whole "saved the beloved boss" and general Plucky Girl tendencies endears her to the staff, so she's allowed to drop by every now and then for research purposes. Derek isn't too happy about this, mostly because he's increasingly attracted to Sara but also believes she's too good for him and he's incapable of love and angst angst angst.

Besides Derek's Issues their relationship is also complicated by past romantic entanglements (the aforementioned Depraved Bisexual Lover of Derek's, and Sara's Respectable But Dull, Somewhat Sexist, And Wimpy Almost-Fiance) getting involved and a rather shortsighted decision on Sara's part. (Which made me cringe for like a solid chapter and a half, although I found her perfectly competent for the rest of the book, so.)

( There's a bunch of sexual abuse/rape themes in the book. )

Anyway, if the plot super intrigues you and none of the stuff I've mentioned seems like it would bother you, you might want to give it a look? But otherwise, I'd skip over this one.

The Stonekeeper by Kazu Kibuishi.

So fun fact about this graphic novel: many years ago I was at a church convention down in Maine. The church itself was right near a library and, being a shy kid who liked exploring and got bored with most of the actual church activities easily, at one point I was able to head there and read. It's here I picked up The Stonekeeper, read it in a single sitting, and then was unable to read it again for what was probably over five years. I was thus very pleased to not only find a copy of it in the local library, but of other books in the series- not only did I get to refresh my memories, but it looks like after all this time I'll get to find out what happens next, whenever I next visit the library.

The story starts out with a girl called Emily and her parents, who are headed off somewhere to pick up Emily's brother Navin. Unfortunately the car gets into an accident on the way there, and in a rather horrifying sequence Emily and her mother are unable to rescue Emily's father from the car, and are forced to watch as he falls to his death off a cliff.

Two years later the family's dealing with financial issues as a result of said father's death, and as a result they've wound up moving to a spooky old house in the middle of nowhere that once belonged to their great-grandfather, a reclusive puzzlemaker named Silas. Emily and Navin soon find their great-grandfather's library, and a hidden amulet that Emily snatches up. Just when the family turns in for the night, they hear a strange noise in the basement... and when they go to investigate, their mother is kidnapped by a horrifying tentacled monstrosity.

The children are soon trapped in an alternate world known as Alledia, and must rescue their mother with the help of the amulet and a variety of machines created by their great-grandfather.

It's a pretty standard children-go-on-adventure-in-another-world setup, which distinguishes itself, to me, by being pretty fucking creepy. Alledia is not particularly colorful or pretty (though we only see a small part of it in this book) with a cold and foggy look to it that you'd expect more from a horror setting than a children's fantasy, and the majority of residents in the first book are slimy, tentacled creatures with too many sharp teeth. Not to mention I'm sideeying the amulet itself, which frequently reminds Emily of the importance of gaining power and encourages her, a literal child, to kill the man who kidnapped her mother.

Anyway, being a comic book, I went and googled for some images, so you can get an idea of the art for yourself:

( Shiny pictures! )