Sophinisba Solis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophinisba) wrote2021-08-04 09:24 pm
sophinisba) wrote2021-08-04 09:24 pm
Entry tags:
Books including comic books
I have finished three books since my last books post two weeks ago, two of them just today. One was for work so I won't tell you about it. The other two were a Black Panther comic book and the novel Transcendent Kingdom.
Part of me is like, comic books are so short, should I count it as a whole book? But I tend to have a really hard time understanding or getting through comic books, so this is an accomplishment for me. I bought this book, Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet Book 1, the first, what, trade? that Ta-Nehisi Coates did for Marvel, back in 2016, and I read maybe a third of it back then but was super confused by so many unknown characters and different stories that I gave up.
I came back to it last week, figuring that at this point, having become a much more enthusiastic Marvel (movies fan) and seen the Black Panther movie three or four times, I would know what was going on, but I still didn't, but I read through it anyway and I guess it was good? I probably won't continue to read the series, though I might if the lesbians trying to overthrow the monarchy were the main characters.
The end of the book included this... issue? Of the Fantastic Four from 1966 that I guess was the first appearance of the Black Panther, and that was a trip! Like, they refer to Wakanda as an "area" and a "territory", as if they still can't really grasp that African countries are countries. And T'Challa a "chieftain" instead of a king. And he hunts our heroes for sport for some reason? Idk to be honest it was sort of boring because the plot was so silly, and also confusing because I don't know anything about the Fantastic Four except that Peter Parker sometimes has sex with Johnny Storm in the Peter/Tony fics I read. :P
I recently listened to this great podcast interview with the writer and sociologist Eve Ewing, who has written comic books about the character Riri Williams, a genius Black teenager who is, I guess, mentored (?) by Tony Stark. This is another character I've run into in fics and I'm determined to get to know her despite my difficulty reading comics, so today I got the first book about her out from the library, Invincible Iron Man: Ironheart Vol. 1: Riri Williams, written not by Ewing but by Brian Michael Bendis, and I read the first... part? Issue? A little while ago and it was neat so hopefully I can continue with that and get to the Ewing ones soon.
Transcendent Kingdom is also about a Black girl genius but is a realistic novel. Yaa Gyasi's writing is really lovely but I didn't find this as compelling as her previous book Homegoing. It moves around in time between when the protagonist is in grad school studying mice, when she's a little girl growing up with her Ghanaian immigrant mother and older brother in Alabama, with some other parts about her teenage and college years. Her older brother has an opioid addiction and her mother has depression and there's an Evangelical church and it's really a lot.
I read two more stories in the collection You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld. They are funny and sad, really full of great details, but I haven't felt super motivated to keep reading them.
Tonight I checked out and read the first few pages of Something New Under the Sun, a slightly futuristic new novel by Alexandra Kleeman. I had read about this book last week and thought the subject sounded interesting, but it has long paragraphs and (so far) unlikable characters and is probably not going to be for me.
I've only read a couple more short chapters of Braiding Sweetgrass and will have to return it soon.
Yay, libraries! Yay, books!
Part of me is like, comic books are so short, should I count it as a whole book? But I tend to have a really hard time understanding or getting through comic books, so this is an accomplishment for me. I bought this book, Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet Book 1, the first, what, trade? that Ta-Nehisi Coates did for Marvel, back in 2016, and I read maybe a third of it back then but was super confused by so many unknown characters and different stories that I gave up.
I came back to it last week, figuring that at this point, having become a much more enthusiastic Marvel (movies fan) and seen the Black Panther movie three or four times, I would know what was going on, but I still didn't, but I read through it anyway and I guess it was good? I probably won't continue to read the series, though I might if the lesbians trying to overthrow the monarchy were the main characters.
The end of the book included this... issue? Of the Fantastic Four from 1966 that I guess was the first appearance of the Black Panther, and that was a trip! Like, they refer to Wakanda as an "area" and a "territory", as if they still can't really grasp that African countries are countries. And T'Challa a "chieftain" instead of a king. And he hunts our heroes for sport for some reason? Idk to be honest it was sort of boring because the plot was so silly, and also confusing because I don't know anything about the Fantastic Four except that Peter Parker sometimes has sex with Johnny Storm in the Peter/Tony fics I read. :P
I recently listened to this great podcast interview with the writer and sociologist Eve Ewing, who has written comic books about the character Riri Williams, a genius Black teenager who is, I guess, mentored (?) by Tony Stark. This is another character I've run into in fics and I'm determined to get to know her despite my difficulty reading comics, so today I got the first book about her out from the library, Invincible Iron Man: Ironheart Vol. 1: Riri Williams, written not by Ewing but by Brian Michael Bendis, and I read the first... part? Issue? A little while ago and it was neat so hopefully I can continue with that and get to the Ewing ones soon.
Transcendent Kingdom is also about a Black girl genius but is a realistic novel. Yaa Gyasi's writing is really lovely but I didn't find this as compelling as her previous book Homegoing. It moves around in time between when the protagonist is in grad school studying mice, when she's a little girl growing up with her Ghanaian immigrant mother and older brother in Alabama, with some other parts about her teenage and college years. Her older brother has an opioid addiction and her mother has depression and there's an Evangelical church and it's really a lot.
I read two more stories in the collection You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld. They are funny and sad, really full of great details, but I haven't felt super motivated to keep reading them.
Tonight I checked out and read the first few pages of Something New Under the Sun, a slightly futuristic new novel by Alexandra Kleeman. I had read about this book last week and thought the subject sounded interesting, but it has long paragraphs and (so far) unlikable characters and is probably not going to be for me.
I've only read a couple more short chapters of Braiding Sweetgrass and will have to return it soon.
Yay, libraries! Yay, books!
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The new story was really good though! But complicated!
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