Reading Wednesday
May. 15th, 2019 05:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
violsvaSo I don't usually do Reading Wednesday but this week I want to geek out about Runaways.
Also finished in the last week:
Road Through Time: The Story of Humanity on the Move by Mary Soderstrom.
As a history of roads this was an interesting summary; however I hoped when I took it out of the library that it would be more of a history of immigration, which is really not what it was trying to do. And I still want that book, although it would be really really long.
Runaways: The Complete Collection, Volume 2 by Brian K. Vaughan et al.
OMG this is amazing.
I have been reading Runaways since December--actually I picked up the first volume of Rainbow Rowell's new series first, which was great but also I am now spoiled for everything. So if that matters to you don't start there.
But the first series--it is actually making me really sad for my younger self that I didn't read it when it first came out because, um, that kid could have used it. But it is so great now. And it has Nico and I love Nico SO MUCH.
Nico Minoru is a sad bisexual Japanese* goth witch and she is trying so hard. And not exactly succeeding. And all I want is for her to be happy and she is really really bad at being happy. Like, even if her life was not exploding she would ... not be good at it. And I love her so much.
Here she is when her best friend comes back from space:
And then:
Always great when your space girlfriend comes back from space and you missed her so much and you're so happy and ... then it turns out she also brought her actual girlfriend. Who is ... not you. Because you fucked it up. Right. Awkward. (Also, this panel contains three queer women, two of whom are women of colour (though technically Xavin in the centre is genderfluid). Just casually. Talking about plot.)
Vaughan paces things brilliantly--in among the supervillain fights are little quiet moments of characters talking about religion, or mourning ... everything, or going shopping, or having nightmares about turning into their parents. And I love the story structures and the antagonists, and in this volume he does something that authors very rarely do when talking about the internet (especially in 2006) and remembers that people use the internet to make friends.
I watched the first episode of the Hulu series over Christmas and it was pretty cool, but I'm bad at getting motivation to watch TV shows even when I actually have easy access to them, so I haven't seen the rest of it.
Currently Reading:
Central Asia in World History by Peter B. Golden.
This is pretty textbooky but I wanted a general introduction so that's a good start. Also when I showed it to Pixies the first time she read the title as "Central USA" and now I'm thinking about the Mongol conquest of the central United States.
*I noticed reading Silk** last year that I had been really feeling the lack of Asian characters without even noticing it. This isn't about representation for me--I'm not Asian--but maybe representation of my environment: I grew up in north Toronto and therefore contexts full of white people feel fundamentally wrong to me. In my head there should be lots of Asian people around, because that's just what the world is supposed to look like--my high school was probably about 75% Asian--and the contrast between that and most Western media, or the actual small midwestern city I am living in right now, is very weird.
**Incidentally, I'm still annoyed that after 4+ years on Tumblr I found out about Silk--and Runaways, for that matter--by randomly browsing at the library. If Tumblr isn't going to tell me about awesome Asian spider-girls then why was I even on Tumblr?
Also finished in the last week:
Road Through Time: The Story of Humanity on the Move by Mary Soderstrom.
As a history of roads this was an interesting summary; however I hoped when I took it out of the library that it would be more of a history of immigration, which is really not what it was trying to do. And I still want that book, although it would be really really long.
Runaways: The Complete Collection, Volume 2 by Brian K. Vaughan et al.
OMG this is amazing.
I have been reading Runaways since December--actually I picked up the first volume of Rainbow Rowell's new series first, which was great but also I am now spoiled for everything. So if that matters to you don't start there.
But the first series--it is actually making me really sad for my younger self that I didn't read it when it first came out because, um, that kid could have used it. But it is so great now. And it has Nico and I love Nico SO MUCH.
Nico Minoru is a sad bisexual Japanese* goth witch and she is trying so hard. And not exactly succeeding. And all I want is for her to be happy and she is really really bad at being happy. Like, even if her life was not exploding she would ... not be good at it. And I love her so much.
Here she is when her best friend comes back from space:
And then:
Always great when your space girlfriend comes back from space and you missed her so much and you're so happy and ... then it turns out she also brought her actual girlfriend. Who is ... not you. Because you fucked it up. Right. Awkward. (Also, this panel contains three queer women, two of whom are women of colour (though technically Xavin in the centre is genderfluid). Just casually. Talking about plot.)
Vaughan paces things brilliantly--in among the supervillain fights are little quiet moments of characters talking about religion, or mourning ... everything, or going shopping, or having nightmares about turning into their parents. And I love the story structures and the antagonists, and in this volume he does something that authors very rarely do when talking about the internet (especially in 2006) and remembers that people use the internet to make friends.
I watched the first episode of the Hulu series over Christmas and it was pretty cool, but I'm bad at getting motivation to watch TV shows even when I actually have easy access to them, so I haven't seen the rest of it.
Currently Reading:
Central Asia in World History by Peter B. Golden.
This is pretty textbooky but I wanted a general introduction so that's a good start. Also when I showed it to Pixies the first time she read the title as "Central USA" and now I'm thinking about the Mongol conquest of the central United States.
*I noticed reading Silk** last year that I had been really feeling the lack of Asian characters without even noticing it. This isn't about representation for me--I'm not Asian--but maybe representation of my environment: I grew up in north Toronto and therefore contexts full of white people feel fundamentally wrong to me. In my head there should be lots of Asian people around, because that's just what the world is supposed to look like--my high school was probably about 75% Asian--and the contrast between that and most Western media, or the actual small midwestern city I am living in right now, is very weird.
**Incidentally, I'm still annoyed that after 4+ years on Tumblr I found out about Silk--and Runaways, for that matter--by randomly browsing at the library. If Tumblr isn't going to tell me about awesome Asian spider-girls then why was I even on Tumblr?