Hi! My name is Danika, and today I have my May wrap-up
So last month I read six books. The first was Station Eleven by Emily St. John
Mandel, and I really liked it! Mostly I really enjoyed the depiction of
the post-apocalyptic world, and how it was a little bit less brutal than most
post-apocalyptic stories that I've read. I think because it does take place some
years in, and it kind of says that things were really violent and difficult
at first, but now everyone's kind of splintered off into little communities
and basically just keep to themselves. It was also really interesting how the
story unraveled. There's a lot of bouncing between characters and going
back and forth through time to just before... the apocalypse, basically, and also
what happened years after. And, surprisingly, this didn't feel scattered.
There's a lot of threads kind of holding it together. There were definitely
characters that I was a lot more interested than others. That was probably
the weakest part of the book for me. Most of the characters I just wasn't that
invested in, and for some of the characters, I had trouble even
remembering who they were when we got back to their perspective. There were
only probably three characters that I was really interested in their viewpoint,
though I did like getting more of the world and more of the overall story. I
was also disappointed that there's only really one character that stated to have
a disability, and that's the brother of one of the point-of-view characters is
in a wheelchair, and, spoiler, he kills himself because he doesn't see a future
for himself in this world because he's in a wheelchair. And I just thought this
wasn't the best as the only depiction of disability in the whole story. I do
understand that that might be a choice that people would make, but I
don't think it had to be with the only character with a disability. After that, I
read Radio Silence by Alice Oseman. This is a young adult novel. And it's
basically about a girl in the UK who is trying to get into her university of
choice, and is also obsessed with this podcast that has a lot of similarities
to Welcome To Night Vale. I found this really difficult to read, because through
most of the book, it does feel really bleak. Which has less to do with the plot and
more to do with the state of mind of the main character and her friend, who takes
up a lot of the book. I wouldn't be surprised if one or both of them could
be diagnosed with depression, which I always find difficult to read about,
because that kind of viewpoint really stays with me, even after I put down the
book. So the whole time that I'm reading narratives like that, I really take that
on and absorb it. I think I'm kind of susceptible to those sort of narratives,
so I did find it really difficult to read in that way. I think the end made it
completely worth it, because it kind of shows that there is hope, and that even
if it doesn't end in, you know, a big explosion of rainbows, there is spots of
light in that darkness. I also really liked that this book focuses on
friendships as really intense, meaningful relationships, just as much as romantic
relationships are. And of course there's lots of queer representation in this
story: the main character, Frances, is both biracial and bisexual. There's also
gay representation, and one character turns out to be demisexual. There's also a
lot of criticism about universities as an institution. So even though this was a
little bit difficult for me to read, I still really enjoyed it and thought it
was definitely worthwhile. After that, I read the Mockingbird trades, volumes 1 and
2, and I really loved these. I especially liked volume 1, which I've already
returned to the library, which is told in this puzzlebox fashion? So basically the
first issue you get the main character coming back to get all of these medical
tests done, and every time she gets called in, she is midway through some
other plot. So she just comes in in these wild outfits, or with a corgi!
Throughout the rest of the issues you get all of the stories that were happening
that were interrupted in that first issue. So, the first issue is a
complete story, but has kind of a hook for every other story. I also really
enjoyed it because it was completely accessible as a superhero comic. I don't
read a lot of superhero comics, so it was really nice but even though this is a
Marvel comic, and it does mention other Marvel superheroes, I didn't have to know
a lot of backstory to experience this comic. Also, Bobbi is an amazing main
character: she is sarcastic and funny and very confident. And she's also a scientist,
and that plays a big part in a lot of stories. Unfortunately, volume 2 of the
comic is when the comic got canceled, which is terrible, because like Wonder
Woman, I got really into this comic after has already cancelled, because apparently
all of the comics that I like from the big 2 comic publishers are immediately
canceled. So this one—only about the first half is actually Mockingbird, and
then the second half is just an Avengers comic that includes Mockingbird as a
character, but it doesn't have the same team or anything, and I didn't like the
Avengers one. If I had known, going in, I would just get volume 1 and 2 at once
and read them straight through to the end of the actual Mockingbird story and
then just stop. I definitely liked the first volume better in terms of
storytelling, but the second volume, with the actual Mockingbird storyline, is
really entertaining. It is ridiculous and over-the-top. I especially like the
feminist undead pirates and the mer-corgis, as in mermaid corgis. So then I read
Noteworthy by Riley Redgate. And this is another young adult book. Tt is
about Jordan, who wants to get into this all-male a capella group, so she
disguises herself as a guy, and then kind of infiltrates this a capella group.
What I found interesting about this is that generally with cross-dressing
narratives that I've read, there's this kind of wink at queer subtext, but it's
not actually fulfilled. With Noteworthy, it actually acknowledges that trans
people exist. If you go in expecting it to have a lot of trans content, you will
be disappointed, because Jordan isn't genderqueer: she
is cis and does identify completely as a girl, but when she's talking about
cross-dressing, she also acknowledges that trans people exist, and that what
she's doing is very different from being trans, and that she feels some guilt in
feeling like she's appropriating something from trans people. And I just
found that really refreshing, because I think is the first cross-dressing
narrative book that I've ever read that actually acknowledges that trans people
exist at all. Probably the bar is just really low for
me. Generally what happens on cross-dressing stories is that while
she's disguised as a boy, girl falls in love with her, but it doesn't count as
queer, because the girl doesn't know that she's a girl. And then she falls in love
with a guy, but it doesn't count as queer, 'cause really she's a girl, so everything turns
out at the end that as soon as the girl knows that she's a girl, she's not interested
anymore, and once the boy knows that she's a girl, he suddenly fell in love
with her, and everything is totally straight and on the up-and-up, which is
almost the plot of Noteworthy? Except that Jordan is bi! So when this
straight girl makes out with her, she's like, "This is great!" but then immediately
is like "Uhhh, I probably shouldn't do this, because she doesn't know that I'm girl, and
that's not really the best in terms of consent." She does fall for a guy, and
he does only really return those feelings when she is revealed to be a
girl, but because she is bisexual, it's still queer: there's no trying to run
away from the queer implications of a cross-dressing narrative. I was also just
completely pulled in to the plot: this arts academy environment, and this
hyper-competitive a cappella group rivalry, which gets pretty vicious at
some points. And then on top of that, there's a lot of a Jordan struggle: she
is in this school because of a full scholarship, and it talks about her being
poor in this environment of really wealthy people, and also that just
because she got a full scholarship doesn't mean that she can really afford
to be there, because there are always costs associated that aren't covered in
the scholarship. So it's her trying to prove to her
parents that this is worthwhile, and also feeling really guilty—whether she is
asking too much for her parents to sacrifice just so she can be here.
The only real complaint that I had with this was that I found a lot of the characters
of her a capella group blended together. There were only a few that really stood
out to me. I did really love the character of Nihal and Jordan's
relationship with him, I thought that was great, but a lot of the minor characters
I couldn't even really tell apart, but since this was a complaint with a
couple of books for me, it may also just be my inability to keep names straight. So
overall, I would definitely recommend this. Don't go in expecting genderqueer
representation, don't go in expecting a lesbian
relationship, but I really did enjoy this. And it has a bisexual main character who uses
the word bisexual, so that's always great. After that, I had one of my biggest
letdowns based on the premise, and that's Honor Among Punks. This is a comic set in
an alternate universe London, which has a punk, queer woman version of Sherlock
Holmes. Which sounds super great. This was written in the late 80s-early 90s, so
first of all, the art is a little bit dated. It's definitely not what I'm used
to from comics now. It was kind of fun, but not really my style.
The world-building I found disappointing. It's supposed to be an alternate
universe London where World War II never happened, and World War I
happened on a much smaller scale, which means that we didn't get the technology
that came with the wars, and also a different social environment.
Really, I couldn't tell most the time that it was supposed to be an alternate
universe. It takes place mostly within this punk community, which seemed almost
timeless. The only moments where I really remembered that this is supposed to be
an alternate universe was when people were wearing swastika-patterned clothing
for some reason. This is also very dark, gritty, violent--less of the sort of
puzzle-solving mystery that I was expecting from a Sherlock Holmes
retelling. For about the first half of this book I was a little bit bored with
it because of those issues, but then I realised that one
the major characters is trans, and I was surprised by that and interested by that,
because it's definitely not common to have trans representation in the early
90s. The way the main character talked about this trans character was not good, the
vocabulary—saying "transvestite" and things like that—doesn't work now, but
this was a product of its time, so I was willing to give it a little bit of
leeway. The character didn't seem to have much of a personality beyond being
enraged all the time, but I was hoping that this was leading up to her own
storyline, which I would soon regret, because she did get her own storyline,
and that storyline—spoilers—is her being a serial killer. I don't think that this
story was meant to be malicious. They do talk about her afterwards because—spoiler
and trigger warnings—she kills herself. And she's talked about as this complex
character that they still mourn and still recognize as being a friend, but
regardless of the intent, this is a really damaging portrayal of a trans
woman. That alone makes this something that I could not recommend. But other
than that, I did really enjoy most of the books that I read in May. Let me know if
you've read any of these and what you thought of them. And if you have a
wrap-up, feel free to link it down below and I'll definitely check it out. And
thank you for watching! Bye!
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