February, March and April reading round-up

Well my plan to do a monthly post about what I have read hasn't really worked, has it?! Oh well...

Luckily (???), a lot of my reading time in February to April was taken up with War and Peace, so I don't have too many books to talk about!

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Go back on the blog for my posts on War and Peace (which are full of spoilers, by the way. So maybe don't do that!). There are a lot of them! The readalong ended a while ago now, and I kind of miss it, while also being happy that I have my reading freedom back. One thing that I realised is that at the moment I really don't want to be reading more than one fiction book at a time, so I ended up giving up on trying to read other things for the most part, which wasn't great. Oh well!




In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

I enjoyed reading this, and it has made me want to read more Capote. I knew though that although this is non-fiction that there have been parts of it that have been proven not to be true, so I had that thought in the back of my mind the whole time I was reading it which was slightly annoying.






The Martian by Andy Weir

I really liked it. I would recommend it if sciencey stuff doesn't put you off! I really don't have anything else to say about it that hasn't already been said by pretty much everyone I have heard talking about the book.








Attack on Titan volumes 3, 4 and 5 by Hajime Isayama

I started reading this at the end of last year because I realised I was consuming absolutely nothing in Japanese at all, and I like it so far, although it is a bit gruesome. I'm not absolutely enamoured with it though, which is why I haven't got further than volume 5, in spite of having the next few volumes of manga just sitting over there *points* waiting to be read.





Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

This was pretty gripping, and I liked the fact that the whole apocalypse part of the story didn't play out at all like I thought it would. For a book that is about the world being attacked by giant insects, there is (if you haven't heard anything about the book before) a surprising amount of focus placed on the main character and his extremely complicated relationships with his best friend who is in love with the main character, and his girlfriend. I'm not sure I've read anything else that has portrayed teenager's relationships in quite the same way, and I thought that aspect of it was really interesting.



The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett

I meant to do a separate post about Pratchett but I was finding it difficult to write so I ended up abandoning it. Sorry! I read this as part of Terry Pratchett Reading Week over on Bex's blog, and I am really happy that I did. I don't think that it is the strongest discworld book, but it is imbued with Pratchett's sense of humour and it kept on making me chuckle. I am planning on getting through all of the discworld books either again or for the first time, and I'm going to try and read at least 1 or 2 every couple of months. I am looking forward to getting to the Death books, as they were my favourites when I read Discworld as a teenager.



Saints by Gene Luen Yang

I read Boxers last year (I don't think I wrote about it on here), and really loved it so I was really excited to finally get a chance to read Saints. I think overall I prefer Boxers, but I do like both of them, and I definitely want to re-read them together at some point, in which case I will try to remember to do a post here covering them properly. I really really enjoyed them.






Ms Marvel Volume 2: Generation Why written by G. Willow Wilson, Illustrated by Jacob Wyatt and Adrian Alphona

I am really really enjoying Ms. Marvel so far and it's making me actually want to read individual issues rather than the collected volumes... but I probably won't (don't have a tablet to read the digital version on and I think my phone would be too small, and I have no idea where I would even be able to get my hands on the actual comics in Japan). Still, I recommend this to everyone! YAY Ms. Marvel!!




And that's it! I use the word "enjoy" too much, don't I? (Not that I actually think anybody will read all of this, so maybe it's okay!)

Also I am posting this at 3 in the morning (ish) because I can't sleep, so I expect it might be a bit mistake-ridden. Apologies!

I really need to do these at the end of each month, I will definitely do on for May!!!

Comics I read in November

Okay, so I'm not a huge comic/graphic novel reader (although I have read a sizeable amount of manga), but I do buy them occasionally and would love to read more! If I ever get some kind of tablet device then I would really like to look into exploring comixology or maybe signing up for marvel unlimited... but for the time being, printed comics, yay!

Hawkeye Volume 3: LA Woman written by Matt Fraction and illustrated by Annie Wu and Javier Pulido

I talked about the first volume in Matt Fraction's Hawkeye run (ah, I feel like whenever I talk about comics I'm getting all of the terminology wrong, help!), here, and I also read the second one, which I didn't blog about (because I am a bad blogger) but did enjoy. This volume is much more straightforward than the first two volumes, which tended to have non-linear stories. It follows Kate Bishop, the other Hawkeye as she goes to L.A. Obviously this means almost no Clint Barton (boo!) but I like Kate, so yay! I guess the next volume released will cover what Clint was up to while Kate was in L.A., so I'm looking forward to that.

The first bit of it is taken not from the normal Hawkeye comics but from Hawkeye Annual #1 (I guess? Comics confuse me), and it's slightly jarring after the other things because it has a completely different colouring style, although it's apparently the same colour artist. Normally these Hawkeye comics have a very limited colour palette (which I like), but the first one uses more standard colours (I guess?). I didn't dislike it at all, but it felt like I was reading something else. It's weird how much having different colouring changes the feel of the comic! And I so wouldn't have been able to put my finger on what felt so different had it not been for the additional stuff at the back of the second volume where the person who does the colouring talks about how he purposefully uses a limited palette.

Anyway, if you are at all interested in Hawkeye I really recommend this (but do start at the beginning of this run, not at volume 3!)

Ms. Marvel Volume 1: No Normal written by G. Willow Wilson and illustrated by Adrian Alphona

This is definitely a much more straightforward comic than Hawkeye. There has been a lot of buzz around this, mainly focused on the fact that the main character, Kamala Khan, is a Muslim Pakistani girl, which is pretty unusual for a superhero. I think the comic does a really good job of making Kamala's life seem completely normal for her (if that makes sense? I think sometimes things can go too much in the direction of WOW LOOK HOW DIVERSE WE'RE BEING! rather than actually seeming real), and I really liked her as a character. 

The story itself is pretty straightforward, Kamala ends up getting the power to alter her body so she can change her body at will, and one of the joys of this is that she could use it in the way that most teenage girls would and make her ideal body or something (...okay, maybe not just teenage girls because that is exactly what I would do if I had that power before even considering doing anything else, if I'm honest), and at the beginning she does struggle with that a bit, but then she just uses her ability to be awesome and try to fight crime, which is a wonderfully positive message.

I say this as a complete comics newbie, but so far it seems like this would be a good comic to jump in with, as so far there has been nothing that relies on you having a massive amount of comic knowledge to understand. I managed with my knowledge which is mostly just based on marvel films, hehe.

Honestly, it's pretty rare when I read something that I don't have some small complaints or criticisms about (my husband said that my constant criticism of everything is a sign that I'm turning Japanese, but I think that I've always been like that, and most of my Japanese friends are about a million times less nitpicky than I am), but I really couldn't find anything wrong with Ms. Marvel. I want the next volume to come out now!