WHAT ARE YOU READING?

[RIPPA]

Per request

BTW - the first thing I am reading in 2023 is What If? 2 since I was gifted that at Christmas but that isn't really a "story"

[JLSigman]

Comics absolutely count.

Currently finishing up the Mahabharata, and this translation by Carole Satyamurti is excellent. I hope she decides to tackle the Ramayana next.

Also reading New Mutants vol 3, aka "Adventures in Limbo". Ooh boy this is dark. And mystic. And great.

Over on Goodreads, I decided to try to read 75 books this year.

[SirSmUgly]

I went nuts in a bookstore and now have like six new books to work through. I found my old copy of Mick Foley's (first) autobiography and read through it for the first time in years. The pictures are all falling out. 

I still love it, but man, it's crazy how much casual homophobia there is in that thing. The '90s really were something. Not that I'm critiquing from a moral standpoint because I was responsible for my share of casually homophobic remarks as a snotty teen in the '90s. 

Next up, I think, I'm reading Edward Chancellor's Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation. It jumped out at me for its aptness when I was browsing, but also, my wife just read The Lords of Easy Money by Christopher Leonard and I think is finishing up Narrative Economics by Robert J. Shiller, and we'd been talking a lot about what she read. I also read a great long-form article at the New Yorker a couple weeks ago, "The Pied Piper of SPACs," that name-checks Shiller's book. So it seems like The Great Librarian in the Sky is trying to lead me somewhere. When I saw Devil Take the Hindmost on top of a random pile of books in the store, I figured that I'd read that and then the Leonard and Shiller books that my wife read and recommended to me, all this year. I also picked up a copy of Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty that was out in plain sight, and I'd been meaning to get around to that as well, someday. 

Now let's see if I actually do it. I just learned about the Japanese concept of tsundoku, so even if I just acquire all these books, but never read them, I'll feel better about it. 

[username]

10 hours ago, RIPPA said:

BTW - the first thing I am reading in 2023 is What If? 2 since I was gifted that at Christmas but that isn't really a "story"

Hey, I was gifted the same book for Christmas. Haven't started it yet but I hope it is as good as the first book.

[Mario]

Finally read All-Star Superman.  Liked it quite a bit, wouldn’t rate it a classic.  Hall of Very Good, I guess.  It’s a fun, gentle take on Superman.  Morrison lifts a lot of elements from the 50’s to 70’s incarnations of the character.  Even the structure of the book seems lifted from an earlier era.  There’s a continuing story running through all twelve issues, but the book still feels very episodic.  They was apparently a deliberate choice by Morrison.

In many ways, All-Star Superman reminds me of Alan Moore’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” which was meant to be the last Silver-Age Superman story.  Morrison is more successful with that, but he had 12 issues to work with.  Moore got two.

I run hot and cold on Frank Quitely, but the art here is outstanding.

[Cobra Commander]

Just finished "The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson" by Jeff Pearlman which has a narrative that can move from telling the absurd on-field stories to come of the off-field stuff which could make Bo or his organizations come off a little badly, but it's probably difficult to tell a truthful story without mentioning some of those things. 

[odessasteps]

Was in comics shop and found a used copy of a book I had as a teen about the UK Avengers for $5. 

Also got the new TwoMorrows book about the history of Charlton. 

[JLSigman]

On 1/2/2023 at 2:38 PM, JLSigman said:

Comics absolutely count.

Currently finishing up the Mahabharata, and this translation by Carole Satyamurti is excellent. I hope she decides to tackle the Ramayana next.

Also reading New Mutants vol 3, aka "Adventures in Limbo". Ooh boy this is dark. And mystic. And great.

Over on Goodreads, I decided to try to read 75 books this year.

Finished New Mutants 3, and other than some weirdness where the artists can't decide how skinny/emaciated to make Madelyn Pryor, it was excellent.

Also read S.W.O.R.D. vol 1, which I had basically already read in various Reign of X collections. I still love Manifold. I still wish there was a page or two when world-spanning crossover happen and then un-happen.

Thinking that since Jacqueline Carey is releasing a new Terra D'Ange book later this year, it's time for a re-read of the first trilogy.

[southofheavy]

I've got Everybody Knows by Jordan Harper, Assata Shakur's autobiography, and An Indigenous People's History of the United States on the way to my house right now. I got Kindred by Octavia Butler for Crimmis. Gonna start there and see where the year takes me.

[JLSigman]

Finished the two collected S.W.O.R.D. and I'm really torn. I like a lot of the characters, but there's no story here that isn't hooked into something (or several somethings) happening off in another comic. And the triple/double heel turn at the end just made no sense at all. I'd like to see some of these characters in other teams, I think.

[odessasteps]

2 hours ago, JLSigman said:

Finished the two collected S.W.O.R.D. and I'm really torn. I like a lot of the characters, but there's no story here that isn't hooked into something (or several somethings) happening off in another comic. And the triple/double heel turn at the end just made no sense at all. I'd like to see some of these characters in other teams, I think.

 you will get the chance when you get to Ewings current run on X-Men Red. 

[Cobra Commander]

Just finished Cheap Land Colorado by Ted Conover which is about his experiences in the San Luis Valley in Colorado where the low cost of land lead to a variety of people to move to the flats off the grid in places like Costilla County and Alamosa/Manassa (birth place of Jack Dempsey) and other areas around the Rio Grande in Southern Colorado. The book covers a time from around 2017 or 2018ish through 2021 with people living in trailers on a prairie who moved there to start anew or due to warrants and trouble where they had lived. It's sorta similar to The Quiet Zone by Stephen Kurczy, a book I read around a year ago about the author's experiences living in the US National Radio Quiet Zone around the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. But Cheap Land has more pages about people who were on drugs, building a fence to keep cows from disturbing the author's house, and people using generators to be able to watch Denver Broncos games.

Other books by Conover include titles like "Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America's Hoboes", "Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Mexican Migrants" and "Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing"

[ohtani's jacket]

I finished Scalped yesterday. I wasn't as thrilled with the final arc as some people seem to be, but overall I thought it was one of the best series I've read from the modern era, which, for my purposes, encompasses 2000-2023. What I liked about it most was that it dealt with a subject matter that, to the best of my knowledge, hadn't been addressed before in comics, at least not in a full blown series. That's a goal I wish more creators who strive toward instead of giving us their latest take on fascist superheroes. It's a shame that the TV series wasn't picked up, as it probably would have made an even more powerful TV show than a comic, especially if led by a full indigenous cast. 

[twiztor]

still reading my Avengers/Cap America/Namor/Iron Man comics run. i recently finished most of the Lee/Kirby stories and will soon start the 1970s stories. some of the early stuff was a bit of a chore, but it's getting pretty good now and i look forward to what is upcoming. I am setting a soft target of reading 500 comic books this year. Really shouldn't be a stretch, i've just never kept a solid count before.

also still (re-)reading the Goosebumps series from the 90s. they are all pretty cheesy but a good way to kill an hour or so. i picked up the entire original run (62 books) a couple years ago. i would like to get on pace to read 1 per month, but i'm only on #30 so haven't hit that mark so far.

today i read the Sherlock Holmes novella "Hound of the Baskervilles" which i quite liked. i tend to prefer the shorter stories, however. this takes me to 50% of Doyle's Holmes output.

Edited February 1, 2023 by twiztor

[ohtani's jacket]

I finally read Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan's Night Force. It's not bad, but it's not surprising that it struggled to find an audience. It probably would have done better a few years later when the direct-sales market was more established and there was a larger audience for mature readers books, however the biggest problem was that the cast of characters simply wasn't as interesting as the Tomb of Dracula cast, especially the Baron. If Wolfman's intention was to have the Night Force itself be a rotating cast of characters, then the Baron needed to be as charismatic and interesting as Dracula, but he didn't hold anywhere near as much appeal.

The art was somewhat inconsistent. Lately, I have a hard time unseeing some of the criticisms that the likes of John Byrne made about Colan's artwork in the 80s, even if those comments stemmed from a ridiculous "us vs. them" mentality that Byrne seemed to have at the time, and later forgot about when it became one of "them." There are a lot of wonky elements to Colan's artwork at times. Some of it is no doubt intentional as Colan was always a fan of using interesting camera angles or perspectives, but sometimes there are some odd looking panels that aren't touched up or fixed by the inker.

I can't say I really missed the series once it came to an end, and I don't have much desire to read the two volumes that followed, however I will praise it as a valiant effort to try something new.

Edited January 23, 2023 by ohtani's jacket

[odessasteps]

Yeah. It was different than usual 80s DC stuff, but didn’t click. Of course, I read it before Tomb also.

[Cobra Commander]

Just finished "Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original" by Howard Bryant. Part 1 goes through 1981 with lots of talk about all the other baseball players from the Oakland area and the Great Migration of Blacks from the South to Oakland, then gives us a fair bit of Charlie Finley and Billy Martin and stealing 100 bases in his first full season. Part 2 is the 130 steal season through 1995. More Billy Martin. Lots of media people getting mentioned mostly in regards to the chaos of being on the Yankees in the 80s. Rickey eventually returns home, gets traded as a rental, returns home. Also he hates that Jose Canseco got paid and pampered. Part 3 hops around a little covering all the stuff after 1995 like Rickey playing on a new team virtually every year, Rickey trying to get a winnebago from some team, Rickey being a pest in regards to contracts, playing cards with Bobby Bonilla during the NLCS, how the John Olerud story is bullshit, how Rickey really doesn't refer to himself in 3rd person as often as people say, and the people who didn't appreciate Rickey being outnumbered by the ones who did.

It's not a text book and the author has a POV, which I don't mind him sharing because there were quite a few assholes in the old baseball media that could stand to get called out from time to time. It's an interesting story of a really good player and how he fit in the context of when he played and the America he was playing baseball in.

[ohtani's jacket]

I finished Chester Brown's Yummy Fur series. Personally, I preferred the Ed the Happy Clown era to his autobiographical stories, but Brown was making up the Ed story as he went along and for some reason he grew frustrated with it. You get the sense that Chester was always a bit restless as a cartoonist, as he began experimenting heavily with panel layout as the series progressed (to the chagrin of some readers who didn't appreciate the small number of panels per page.) I enjoyed some of the autobiographical stories from his childhood. I'm sure a lot of fans our age can identify with trying to get their hands on a copy of Playboy each month and then figuring out where in the hell they're gonna hide it. I also liked his adolescent tales of dealing with coming of age and interacting with girls. The Drawn and Quarterly publisher, Chris Oliveros, convinced Chester to end Yummy Fur, which led to the ill-received Underwater series. Yummy Fur was one of the first alternative comics I was drawn to as a teenager, discovering it through the back issue boxes at my local comic shop. I was especially drawn to the Gospel adaptations where a grumpy and cantankerous Jesus spits fire at everyone. Looking back on it now, it was quite a bold choice for an alternative cartoonist to adapt the New Testament, but a natural thing to do for Brown to pursue as he was interested in alternative Gospel sources. From a comics standpoint, the Gospel adaptations represent his best cartooning work from the period, IMO, especially his Matthew. 

[JLSigman]

I've read the two volumes of Duggan's X-Men run, and I'm torn between "I adore Sync" and "Monster of the month is boring" and "Wait, was I supposed to have read something else before this, why is this person alive?". Decent writing, for the most part, but these collections are not for people who never read the stories or who have no knowledge of what else was going on at the time, which is frustrating because Marvel seems to have given up on the collections with multiple different titles during Trial of X. I've got one more Hoopla borrow, so I'll grab one of the random one-shot things to read - either I'll grit my teeth and make myself read that awful ElfQuest collection (gods, Pini, just stop) or one of the DC alt universe things.

Read Kushiel's Dart, still one of my favorite books. Starting Kushiel's Chosen.

 

[odessasteps]

For pod next week, I’ve read today:

all the issues of Amazing World of DC Comics

The Crisis issue of Amazing Heroes

the two issues of Mark Gruenwalds continuity fanzine Omniverse 

[JLSigman]

On 1/28/2023 at 8:05 PM, JLSigman said:

... so I'll grab one of the random one-shot things to read - either I'll grit my teeth and make myself read that awful ElfQuest collection (gods, Pini, just stop) or one of the DC alt universe things.

Went with option #3, the collected edition of The Last Ronin by Kevin Eastman, and man that was incredible. Even tho I haven't read a Turtle comic in 20 years I didn't feel lost and knew almost right away who the last one was. First 5 star review of the year.

[JLSigman]

I was at the library a couple of days ago getting some forms printed out because my printer is kaput and grabbed a couple of Seanan McGuire books I hadn't read yet: Where the Drowned Girls Go got read today while waiting at the doctor's office (they're short novellas) and 4/5 stars, nice to see how some of the characters are growing and overcoming their traumas.

[Cobra Commander]

Just finished "American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis" by Adam Hochschild which is about the World War I and post-war period from 1917 to 1920. Including people arrested for opposing the war, arrested for being in various groups, arrested for being in the vicinity of those groups, censorship carried out by the Postmaster General, racial violence and rioting, violence against labor unions, an increasingly invisible President who was either in France trying to exert his will on unimpressed allies, touring the nation for the League of Nations, or post-stroke when Wilson was getting any information he got through his wife, while his Attorney General and an emerging J. Edgar Hoover were trying to run things before running directly into roadblocks. The assortment of people trying to maneuver towards the Presidency through emphasizing deportations all ended up running into the electoral force of Warren G. Harding having the timing of looking like a President before Harding had a fatal heart attack and the country got 5 1/2 years of a President who spawned anecdotes about how little he talked.

Fortunately some World War I things didn't get repeated in future wars, like trying to ban people from speaking foreign languages. Of course the whole process of ending that war made things worse in the near-term to put it mildly.

I'm sure i'm not noticing some good recent books in the history/history-ish realm but it feels like things are sorta in a lull for maybe a moment or two, eventually Robert Caro will finish the LBJ books in the year 2045 and authors will find some good untapped historical topics in the near future. Or something good will counter the number of Bill O'Reilly "Killing (X)" books that are among the top sellers among history books on Amazon.

So that's the last of my Christmas haul of books.

[JLSigman]

I read the collected Inferno (Hickman) and holy shit that was amazing. I need to see what comes after collection wise, and Hoopla's search engine is utter garbage.

[JLSigman]

Finished Kushiel's Chosen. 4/5 stars - any other series it would probably be 5/5 stars, but after the incredible first book in that trilogy there are just a couple of points where things drag just a little.

 

Currently reading Seasonal Fears by Seanan McGuire. Not sure I'm going to like this as much as I did Middlegame, because we keep getting interrupted just as we maybe begin to understand something.

Also, a quick internet search said the sequel to Inferno was X Lives and Deaths of Wolverine, so I'm reading that. I swear I'm going to start skipping the Wolverine time weirdness part if it doesn't start being interesting in a minute.