#frederic brremard

[carriagelamp]

I saw my cousin over Thanksgiving and, being the giant nerd that she is, she dragged me back into manga hell, so that’s the majority of what this month was, reading-wise. Manga, manga, and a little more manga. Lots of queer stories which absolutely rock, I haven’t read anything sapphic in a while.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

I continue to be neck-deep in Sherlock Holmes. Having finished the novels, I’ve returned to the short stories. And man. Doyle really did his best work in the short stories, I absolutely adore The Adventures.

For anyone who needs the Holmes canon explained, the first two stories in the series were A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four, both novels which introduced the main characters and set the scene. After that came The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which is a collection of short stories, each one a different case Holmes undertook that Watson chronicles. 

This particular collection is full of some of my favourites… “The Speckled Band” (a long time personal favourite), “A Scandal in Bohemia” (Irene Adler’s introduction!), “The Red-Headed League”, “A Case of Identity”, “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”... I really do adore this collection; in my opinion, it’s one of the best starting places if you’ve never read any Sherlock Holmes before and want to give it a go.

Basil and the Lost Colony

I just found out the Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective is, in fact, based off a series of books! They’re about Basil of Baker Street, a little mouse detective who lives under Holmes and Watson’s floorboards and makes a study of the great detective, taking on his own, rodent-based cases. It’s two things I love: Sherlock Holmes and Tiny Rodent Society That Parallel Human Society. This one has them racing across Europe to scale a mountain and seek out a mysterious lost colony of mice while being hot pursued by the fiendish Professor Ratigan!

The movie was definitely more exciting than the book, though others in the series may be better. Still, it was a cute little read and it was fun to see where that movie spawned from.

Candy Color Paradox v5

A series that keeps me coming back for more. It’s one of the few examples of a yaoi series that actually feels like adults with adult jobs in an adult relationship and not... whatever the hell yaoi is usually doing. First book had to get its relentless horniness and tropes out of the way, but past that it settles into a much more interesting story. By this book, with the characters are now in a fairly established relationship and the story’s intrigue comes from them learning how to be more open and vulnerable with each other, finding healthy life balances, and excitement from their shared career. Rather than, you know, pointlessly trying to break up the relationship or throw in a third wheel or something. This series is actually pretty great for Open And Honest Communication which feels rare in a manga romcom.

Chasing After Aoi Koshiba v1-2

...See, I know I enjoyed this book. I read the first two books, it was a very cute yuri and I’m looking forward to reading more of it, but for the life of me I can’t remember a single damn thing about it anymore. That’s what comes of bingeing manga one after the other after the other I guess… (also it kind of got overshadowed by the next series on my list, whoops). Uhh… well, if you want a lesbian romance manga, it was definitely a sweet one! It’s worth trying! Even if I am drawing a blank...

Failed Princesses v1-4

This series rocks. You know that “not like other girls” meme, but instead they’re girlfriends and are dating? This is that meme, but an entire manga series about it. It is delightful. Quiet Awkward Nerdy Girl ends up comforting Pretty Popular Girl after she gets dumped by her boyfriend, and through a string of events they end up hanging out and becoming friends… and now four books in I’m in the middle of some delicious slowburn agony. It’s just very much about friendship and growth and trying new things and actually communicating rather than just making assumptions and it’s positively wonderful. I’ve got my brother hooked on it too, and he’s not normally that interested in romance genre manga. (Actually, neither am I, and yet here I am.)

Heartstopper v3

I read book 1…. I don’t know, years ago, before you could even easily buy it in North America. I remember needing to order it from the UK because I was intrigued and wanted to get my hands on it. And now there’s piles of them in the local bookstore! It’s amazing to see, I couldn’t be happier! So I finally got around to picking up book 3, years later.

Another cute school romance, this one taking place at a British grammar school. It’s between Charlie, who was outed last year and is still dealing with the fallout of it, and Nick, a sweet rugby player who ends up befriending him. It’s fun to read, because you see the growth of both the characters and the artist as the series progresses, and it has a really charming, sketchy style that I haven’t really seen anywhere else.

House of Five Leaves v1

Bought on a whim, weird as hell. A very meek, though capable, ronin who is desperate for work ends up being gradually drawn into a criminal organization that kidnaps hostages for ransom money. He struggles with the morality of the work and how much he’s willing to be involved, while the leader of the group has completely set his sights on the ronin and is determined to draw him deeper and deeper in. Despite how grim that sounds, the first book definitely has the promising whisper of found family somewhere deeper in the series? Maybe? I have no idea how it will progress but it was definitely an interesting story… though the art was a bit.... much. The eyes. The eyes….

Kageki Shojo!! The Curtain Rises

Cute! Cute cute cute! As I understand The Curtain Rises is maybe... a prequel to the main series? I’m a little uncertain, but it came to me highly recommended and damn if it wasn’t justified. It shows how all the characters come to be at a prestigious all-girls theatre school and start settling into the intense, demanding life there. The main characters all feel intriguing, with distinct personalities, motivations, flaws… It balances between silly, sweet, and heavy really well, and I’m super excited to continue. Plus very very pretty art and the inherent queerness of theatre, though I’m struggling to find anything that actually confirms or denies if this is yes absolutely going to be a queer romance or not. For the time being, this book felt intensely pre-relationship queer, and my cousin was treating it as such, so until I’ve heard otherwise I will be keeping it under my queerlit tag.

Land of the Lustrous

Now, this manga also came to me on high recommendations and…. eugh. I don’t know, maybe the anime is better, but the manga was incoherent at best. I had no idea what was going on through most of it, the characters were almost impossible to tell apart or keep track of, and I have no goddamn idea what the overarching plot was supposed to be. The main character was uninteresting, the characters she interacted with felt lifeless and flat… I dunno. I don’t get it.

The concept itself seemed unique. A race of sentient gemstones, all female, are forced to constantly defend themselves against a strange, unexplained race of beings who… live on the moon? And want to destroy them? To? Make decorations? Or something? The main character would like to fight, but she’s been deemed to fragile, so instead she’s sent to be a… scholar? Record aspects of the natural world? And she… meets people? I guess?

Don’t fucking bother there is so many manga that are more worth reading. Hell, just go watch Steven Universe if you want to see female gems kicking ass, it’d be significantly more interesting than whatever this was.

Love: The Mastiff

I love this artist’s work <3 His Love: series is a really fascinating one. Each one focuses on a single animal, with absolutely no text, just following a day in their life as they need to struggle for basic survival. In this one, the mastiff’s master is killed, and he’s left to survive on his own in the Australian outback. Every one of these books is absolutely stunning work, and Love: The Mastiff is one of the best in the series I think. It honestly made me a little emotional.

Perfect World

A neat shojo romance about a woman who runs into her old school crush again for the first time in years and rekindles their friendship. However during the years, he had received a spinal cord injury and is now in a wheelchair. I’m able-bodied and not a good judge of how well this manga handles the topic of disability, but to me at least it seems to be making an earnest and interesting effort to explore what disability can really mean for someone and how it can affect relationships and romance. The first book comes across as sweet, honest, but not pulling any punches from acknowledging the messier, harder aspects of living with disability.

Mustang Mountain: Sky Horse

Horse girl book! Meg is invited to join her standoffish “friend” Alison, who is being sent to stay with her cousin on a remote ranch in the Rocky Mountains. Meg is thrilled to get to spend time around horses, but Alison and her cousin Becky are both disinterested and exasperated by this arrangement. And while things start off rocky, it only gets more complicated when their trip up to the ranch is interrupted with a car crash and a life-threatening storm up in the remote mountains…

I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I liked the first two books in her other series, Saddle Island, but it was still a fun, fast, easy read and sometimes I just need to relive the childhood euphoria of horse adventures and independence.

[carriagelamp]

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: The Poetry of Mister Rogers

This is an anthology collection of the various poems and songs that appeared in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, with art by Luke Flowers. It is exactly as zen as you think it will be. If you are in need of something soft, loving, and affirming right now in the terror that is 2020, go pick this book up. I read it all over the course of two days and feel like a better person for it.

Asterix in Britain

I decided to watch my french Asterix movies on a whim the other week, and that got me rereading all the old Asterix comics I grew up with (Asterix and Obelix All At Sea, Asterix the Legionary, Asterix and the Black Gold, Asterix and the Great Divide, Asterix and the Secret Weapon…) I decided to use in Britain as my representative though because to this day it’s one of my all time favourites, and it’s one of the first ones we ever owned — while the others my brother and I collected avidly over the years (any time we were allowed to pick a new comic out of the book store) I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have this volume at home. There fun, detailed illustrations, goofy puns, over the top slapstick, and endless love between the characters seriously melts my heart every time I pick them up. Though I have to admit, the Secret Weapon sure is a bigger shitshow than I realized as a kid…

The Barnabus Project

This is a new Canadian picture book I’ve been meaning to get my hands on for a few months. It is very neat. It’s a bit more of an involved adventure story than you often see in picture books, while still not entering the domain of graphic novel or chapter book. It’s about a company that genetically engineers “perfect” pets for the public to buy. But deep beneath the storefront, well under the streets, are the sinister labs where the “failed” projects are kept, waiting to be recycled back into parts. This is where Barnabus lives, and this is where Barnabus and his friends must break free from. A thrilled little book with adorable art!

Bunnicula

This is actually my first time reading this book, though I’ve meant to ever since I was a kid. For anyone that doesn’t know this classic, it’s told from the point of view of the family dog, who witnesses his owners bring home a strange new pet: a pet rabbit named Bunnicula, with black fur that looks like a cape and the strangest teeth ever seen on a rabbit… The housecat is even more alarmed, and the two of them begin to investigate the strange occurrences going on around the rabbit and protect their family from sinister forces. It’s a very cute chapter book and a nice soft intro to the “horror” genre without going quite as dark as Goosebumps.

Care Bears: Unlock The Magic

This was… hm. Something. It was cute. The art of this graphic novel has certainly modernized the care bears from their original style, but it’s not a bad thing — the simple, bold shapes are actually pretty enjoyable. You have the care bears on a mission to protect the land of these strange new creatures from dark, “heartless” forces. Overall, if you’re in the mood for something soft and nostalgic that’s been transported into 2020, it’s not a bad read... though I can’t say it wow’ed me.

Emma and the Blue Genie

Another adorable novella (chapter book? Somewhere between the two?) by Cornelia Funke who I don’t think is capable of writing a bad story. Like all her books, this one is charming and whimsical and feels strangely classic. Emma and her wiener dog Tristan sneak out of their house one night for some peace and quiet, and discover an unusual bottle that washes up on the shore. When they release it, a small blue genie is released and Emma learns of the horrible events that befell him and his master in a far off land. A horrible yellow genie stole the source of his magic, forcing him into this small, weakened form, and has besieged the land now that the blue genie is out of the way. The blue genie seems to heartbroken that Emma can’t help but promise her help, and accompanies him across the sea… A fun little story for anyone that enjoyed Aladdin.

The Erth Dragons: The Wearle

The first miserable failure of a book I read this month. I couldn’t finish it and didn’t even try. It sounded like cool scifi dragons, but what I got was a pack of sixty dragons off exploring. A team that included a grand total of three female dragons. Who are there for, it seems, breeding. One of which is fridged immediately to jump start the main character’s story. This is a book I may have read in middle school, but I was thrilled to realize I actually have choices now and don’t need to tolerate this shit. Do not fucking bother, the world building is obnoxious as well.

 Flawed Dogs

Now this one was a delight. As quirky and bizarre and charming as Berkeley Breathed’s work always is. This is a novel that starts with a prized pure-bred dachshund, Sam the Lion, one who is a once in a life time example of doggy bred perfection. However things get mixed up on his way to the snobby dog-show-loving owner who purchased him and he ends up instead in the arms of a young girl who adores him as only children can, completely indifferent to any “perfection” he may have. The happiness of girl and dog fosters resentment in the household’s other dog, a show dog who is pampered but not loved. So begins a horrible sequence of events that sees Sam cast out of the house, horribly mutilated, and left to fend for himself in a cruel world. Flawed Dogs manages to deliver both dogs with rocket-propulsive farts as well as grim questions about what the nature of life, perfection, and vengeance means to a wronged party who has had his life destroyed beyond all recognition.

This was my favourite book of the month, and I would HIGHLY recommend it, but maybe give it a miss if you’re squicked by animal brutality because this book delivers very funny moments, very heartwarming moments, and very upsetting animal abuse in fairly equal measure.

The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell

The second disappointing book of the month. I’ve heard so many good things about this series! About how it’s gotten so many kids to fall in love with reading and series and more complex narratives! I’ve been really excited to read it, because I love me a twisted fairy-tale. Unfortunately this seems to be a very good series for kids, and a very poor story for adults who are used to the tropes of a basic fairy-tale inspired fantasy novel. The writing was unfortunately bland and it was chockablock of clichés and stereotypes that are frankly rather unappealing. Maybe things get better as it progresses, but the series didn’t hold my interest for long enough for me to find out. Honestly, it just made me want to go and reread Inkheart instead.

Little Tails in the Jungle

The Little Tails series is an adorable blend of picture book, comic, and nonfiction educational. It shows Chipper and Squizzo as they adventure around different ecosystems and interact with the wildlife there, sharing interesting facts and trying to keep out of trouble. It’s a pleasant read for an adult that likes well done wildlife art, and fantastic for kids that are craving accessible nonfiction content about animals.

When Santa Fell to Earth

My second Cornelia Funke novella of the month. This is a Christmas favourite of mine, and I reread it around December every couple years or so. In this story, Nikolas is a young Santa who is on the run. The North Pole has been taken over by a faction of Santa’s who have given up on the traditional values of Christmas and have decided instead to focus on a more sterilized, corporate type of Christmas, one with clear present transactions and a hefty bottom line. Any dissenting Santas are hunted down and dealt with. Nikolas is one of the sole surviving rebel Santas who has managed to stay ahead of the Santa hunters… or he had, until his reindeer panics in a thunderstorm and sends his caravan crashing down to earth, to broken to lift off again. Stuck at the side of a little residential street, Nikolas befriends a couple of local children who help him, his elves, and his angels try to get things sorted out and ready to go before Christmas — or the Santa hunters — arrive.

Wintersmith

More Pratchett, and in this case another seasonally appropriate read. This is the third book of the Tiffany Aching series, in which Tiffany, a young apprentice witch, joins her mentor at the secretive dark morris dance, a ritual that happens in the winter to welcome the changing of the seasons, just as the regular morris dance heralds summer. Tiffany, though, doesn’t just hear the music but feels it in bones, and before she knows it she finds herself compelled to join in, to fill in a strange empty spot she can’t look away from. She does, in fact, find herself dancing with the Wintersmith, and now there are snowflakes coming down with her face crafted into them, frost that lovingly spells out her name, and a winter that doesn’t seem inclined to leave anytime soon. Tiffany made a mistake, and now people are going to die if she doesn’t do something.