all books all the time

... I like how three long plane journeys & the winter holiday break made me read as many books in about a week & a half as I managed in 4 months!

Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism & the Scapegoating of Femininity - Julia Serano. ( Read more... )

Code Name Verity - Elizabeth Wein. No spoilers -- & I do think this YA novel is one v. much worth going into without spoilers! ( Read more... )

Feminism for Real: Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism - Edited by Jessica Yee. ( Read more... )

Kitty Steals the Show - Carrie Vaughn. ( Read more... )

Daughter of the Blood, Heir to the Shadows, Queen of the Darkness - Anne Bishop. Yeah, the magical cock ring books. ( Read more... )

Kitty's Big Trouble - Carrie Vaughn. ( Read more... )

Half World - Hiromi Goto. ( Read more... )

Kitty's House of Horrors - Carrie Vaughn. My second reread of the 7th book in the Kitty Norville series; still as much delicious delicious brain candy as the first time I read it. Still in awe of how Vaughn pulls no punches w/the body count here. Still love how Kitty finds herself kind of a reluctant leader, even though she'd never really seen herself that way, because the world is fucking w/the people she loves & well, that can't stand. (& yeah, still OMG want werewolf poly OT3ness in canon pls? Someone has to have written some fic about this; I don't want to write it, I only want to read it!)

Kitty & the Midnight Hour - Carrie Vaughn. Maybe I'll reread all of these out of order? Thought after reading my favorite one, I would reread the first one. &... a huge huge part of the series is how Kitty learns to interrogate what is presented to her as the natural order of things when one is a werewolf: certain domineering behavior from males in the pack, etc. What I love is that Vaughn does make Kitty skeptical, eventually, about these things, & that Vaughn doesn't do the easy thing of making it all normal because OMG our werewolf natures~~~ or whatever. But wow, on a reread I feel like it wasn't all that clear in the beginning that Vaughn was actually going to do that! I am glad whatever made me stick around the first time pulled me through. Also OMG Cormac surly werewolf bounty hunter of love! (... though yeah, still want OT3 fic, I would settle for lots of Kitty/Cormac smut as a poor second!)

Straight from the Heart: Gender, Intimacy, and the Cultural Production of Shojo Manga - Jennifer S. Prough. ( Read more... )

A Sociology of Japanese Ladies' Comics: Images of the Life, Loves, and Sexual Fantasies of Adult Japanese Women - Ito Kinko. ( Read more... )

Japan Pop!: Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture - Edited by Timothy J. Craig. This is a generally pleasing overview of Japanese cultural studies -- I think (though I haven't checked; I'm just going by the feel of the book) largely by Western, if not US, scholars. It was published in 2000 & I'd be really curious as to how some of the topics discussed have morphed since then; for example, I was interested in James Stanslaw's article on how female pop stars use English (or not) to assert certain things about themselves & their image, & I'd imagine this has developed much further in the last 11 years.

I also liked William Lee's piece talking about how popular TV shows (most recently -- & that's not v. recent anymore -- Crayon Shin-chan) use nostalgia about a certain type of family to draw in viewers, especially for shows that may have already been airing for decades & that rely on the appeal of a certain mythic timeless good-old-days social structure. One article by Anne Allison about Sailor Moon & her reception in the US retreads old ground for me (though it probably wasn't old when the book was published... ) about localization of Japanese anime, but also points out that part of the reason Sailor Moon wasn't nearly as popular in the US was because kids found her annoyingly "girly" for a superhero. For all those who posit the US as feminist light years ahead of other countries (including Japan), well, yes, look at that: US kids rejecting someone for trying to be both a superhero & feminine. Hm.

Other stuff I liked: Christine Yano talking about the continuing appeal of enka; Hiro R. Shimatachi on karaoke-induced culture clashes (though again, this is something I suspect has changed a lot since publication); & Hiroshi Aoyagi on pop idols as tools for pan-Asian identity. Anyway: a nice overview, and now I have to see what's been written in English more recently on some of these same subjects.

The WisCon Chronicles Volume 5: Writing and Racial Identity - Edited by Nisi Shawl. ( Read more... )

Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai - Michael Dylan Foster. ( Read more... )

Frostbitten - Kelley Armstrong.( Read more... )

Our Tragic Universe - Scarlett Thomas.( Read more... )

The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity and Globalization - The Modern Girl Around the World Research Group. ( Read more... )

Live Through This: On Creativity & Self-Destruction - Edited by Sabrina Chapadjiev. ( Read more... )

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks - E. Lockhart. ( Read more... )

The WisCon Chronicles Volume 4: Voices of WisCon - Edited by Sylvia Kelso. ( Read more... )

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before - David Yoo. ( Read more... )

Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work - Edwidge Danticat. ( Read more... )

Mechademia 1: Emerging Worlds of Anime & Manga - Edited by Frenchy Lunning. ( Read more... )

Lord Sunday - Garth Nix. ( Read more... )

Gullstruck Island - Francis Hardinge. ( Read more... )

Of Wind & Sand - Sylvie Berard, translated by Sheryl Curtis. ( Read more... )

Slightly Behind & to the Left - Claire Light. ( Read more... )

Total Eclipse - Rachel Caine. ( Read more... )