may 2022 reading wrap-up
BOOKS BOUGHT IN MAY 2022
- xxxHOLiC Vol. 1 by CLAMP (Special Ed.)
- xxxHOLiC Vol. 2 by CLAMP (Special Ed.)
- Sailor Moon Vol. 1 by Takeuchi Naoko (Omnibus)
- Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher
- Book of Night by Holly Black
- I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston
BOOKS READ IN MAY 2022
- DC Pride 2021 by Steve Orlando, et al.
- Only A Monster by Vanessa Len
- The 99 Boyfriends of Micah Summers by Adam Sass
- The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
- Answers in the Pages by David Levithan
- The X Lives and Deaths of Wolverine by Benjamin Percy, et al.
- The Amazing Spider-Man: Beyond Vol. 2 by Zeb Wells, et al.
- The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
- Assemble! Animal Crossing: News From the Carefree Island Vol. 1 by Minori Kato
- It Sounds Like This by Anna Meriano
- The One Who Loves You the Most by medina
I just placed orders on BookDepo for Our Dreams at Dusk Vol. 4 (which is finally back in print! YAY!), and I Want to Be a Wall Vol. 1 by Honami Shirono. I guess that should be noted in my June wrap-up, but I’m just stating this here in case I forget. Some of the books listed as “bought” last month were really bought ages ago, and I only received them in May. I guess the only books I actually BOUGHT in May are the xxxHOLiC manga. Lately I’ve been wanting to read more manga again, which is great because I’ve been off manga for a long time, and not so great because I haven’t bought/stocked up manga in a long time, (plus, my focus is so different now, too) so I need to start buying again. I hope I can still read well enough to not give up buying xxxHOLiC in Japanese, because the English language omnibus are ugly af.
(I’m hoping it’ll be fine as my general lore/fantasy vocab is a bit better than my food/vegetables/etc. vocab, which is my main issue with What Did You Eat Yesterday? - I always ended up skipping the bits where they talk about food, which in a food manga is a LOT. My food/vege/fruits vocab is almost as bad in English and Malay though, lol.)
Speaking of manga, the new Animal Crossing manga is so wholesome and cute! It follows a 10yo girl who finds a deserted island populated by talking animals, and basically just follows most of the early ACNH game storyline. I wish it slowed down more in the middle parts, and got us through the opening of the museum, the stores, Redd, and so on. As it is, it sped up the story and just introduced new villagers in 4-koma panels by the end, which made me wonder if there was even any material left for a second volume. I guess we’ll see! (I mean, I could probably google the Japanese version up to see if more volumes were released, but I’m not in the mood for this level of book hunting just yet.)
The DC Pride 2021 anthology was an impulse purchase from last month. I had wanted the main DC Pride single issue, but The Last Comic Shop said they weren’t bringing it in outside of preorders (I did manage to preorder DC Pride 2022 on time this year!). Getting the collected anthology is better, I guess, because it also included the Pride-specific storylines/issues from other comics. As anthologies go, the stories are hit or miss, but the ones I liked, I really liked. The Batwoman story by James Tynion IV & Trung Le Nguyen, the Poison Ivy & Harley Quinn story by Mariko Tamaki & Amy Reeder, and the Renee Montoya story by Vita Ayala and Skylar Patridge are my favourites. Oh, and special mention to Sina Grace’s Pied Piper story which was fun even though I still have NO idea who Pied Piper is!
(I’m still confused as to why Nightwing had a Pride cover/pin-up last year AND this year, when afaik he isn’t canonically bi, and his queerness is mainly fandom headcanon?)
To compare it with Marvel’s Voices: Pride #1… well. The actual Pride single issue by Marvel is much better than DC’s, but when it comes to the anthology, DC wins hands down, because Marvel just doesn’t have enough material outside of their “diversity special issues” to fill up a whole book, and had to resort to adding fillers and reprints from stuff like Northstar and Kyle’s wedding. Marvel’s queer superheroes are always team or side characters and that really needs to change, at a time where DC has Jon Kent (Superman), Jackson Hyde (Aquaman), and Kate Kane (Batwoman) starring in their own books. Wiccan can’t carry the entire Marvel line even if his husband is the emperor of the Kree-Skrull empire, especially when Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness failed to return him to the MCU and only referred to America Chavez’s queerness throughout the whole movie with nothing other than a pride pin and the words “amor es amor” on her jacket.
Marvel, you failed. Okay this rant is probably better for my Hellfire Gala episode but oh well. It is June.
I also read The X Lives and Deaths of Wolverine, which started off really strong but ended up being such a SLOG to get through. I enjoyed some of the HoXPoX-worthy reveals regarding Moira and the building of Krakoa, and I really loved how badass Cypher/Doug Ramsey is in the few pages he showed up, but generally speaking, this is mostly a Wolverine-fights-Omega Red comic and any kind of fight comic bores me to tears. The only reason I made myself finish reading was so that I would keep up with the current Krakoan stories. Plus, Laura and Gabby and Daken stepping in to save Logan at the end made the whole series almost worth it. And Logan fighting to keep the timeline where Daken exists, because he doesn’t want to return to a present time where his son was never born <3
(If that happened I think he would never forgive Xavier. Although I guess technically even if Daken was never born, the current Daken would still exist, because time travel doesn’t negate things that already happened - Logan would’ve just created a branched timeline.)
Amazing Spider-Man: Beyond is another one that I’m reading without being really invested in it. There were a couple of issues in the Beyond storyline that were by Kelly Thompson, and I read them because they were by her, and those issues were great, and I guess I’m just following the series to see where the Beyond arc would end now. Plus, it helps me understand the ongoings in Miles Morales more.
I went through an okay number of ARCs last month - Only A Monster by Vanessa Len, The 99 Boyfriends of Micah Summers by Adam Sass, Answers in the Pages by David Levithan, It Sounds Like This by Anna Meriano and The One Who Loves You the Most by medina. Technically I finished The One Who Loves You the Most on the morning of June 1st, but I’m going to ignore that and include it as a May read.
Of all the ARCs, unsurprisingly my favourites were the middle grades - Answers in the Pages and The One Who Loves You the Most. Weirdly enough, though both are excellent books, the former felt more like a Disney tween movie to me, and the latter like a refreshing all-ages indie film… but some of the reviews criticising The One Who Loves You the Most claimed it was “too optimistic” to be authentic. I mean. Is it SO BAD to want kids to have books about queer joy? Does every single queer book need someone in the hospital from being beaten up (which, hey, kind of did happen in TOWLYtM) or from attempted suicide (ditto) to be considered “realistic”? I don’t get it.
Anyway. Answers in the Pages is a very timely book about censorship and the importance of representation, and intergenerational queer stories. Maybe it’s predictable and a little Disney-esque, and I have to admit a skimmed through some of one of the POVs in it, but it’s sweet and wholesome and a really important read for kids today. TOWLYtM is also an important read, and I find it a lot of fun, but the content (see my notes on hospitalisations) means that maybe not every kid would be ready for it yet.
My favourite YA read of May is It Sounds Like This, which I almost passed on on Edelweiss when it was offered to me, because as fun as band and friendship stories are, I have limited reading time and wanted to focus on only taking on queer ARCs for now. But thankfully I saw it being recommended on a queer list that stated it has a gray-aro/ace romantic interest, and that really got my attention, because so far with the exception of Loveless, aro/ace people have only been written pretty much one way in the books I’ve read. Having an aro/ace character as a romantic interest was definitely different! I’m so glad that I read it because this book also had good neurodivergent rep, and great rep of a teen exploring their own identity, and even though I hated that it made me cry, it depicted the breaking up of a friendship really well. And! it had the perfect amount of romance in a story - it’s there, but just a hint, barely seen.
And then there’s Only A Monster by Vanessa Len and The 99 Boyfriends of Micah Summers by Adam Sass. Only A Monster was a book I’ve been anticipating for awhile, and I was so lucky to get an ARC (even though it came late!). I think if you’re a fan of Victoria Schwab’s Monsters of Verity duology, this book offers that kind of vibe. Except I enjoy the writing in Only A Monster a little more, and I find myself more invested in the characters, and the conflict felt more real, like Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone books. I love the concept of monsters in this book, and tbh I do not see how the supposed OTP romance will ever resolve happily (in fact I would rather that it doesn’t) in future volumes.
The 99 Boyfriends of Micah Summers was supposed to be my “fun summer read” and it did not disappoint. The premise is a bit similar to Emery Lee’s Meet Cute Diary except it’s a LOT better? Rather than just being annoying in the beginning, Micah just comes across as super naive, and as someone who knows a lot of actual adults who are almost as naive, it didn’t take much for me to believe, I guess. I wasn’t expecting it to also read as a lose Cinderella retelling, and that’s always a plus for me (fairy tale retellings I mean, not Cinderella specifically.) So, yeah, it’s cute and it’s fun and that’s really all I wanted out of it so I was happy.
Finally, my non-ARC readings for the month - Rick Riordan! I’ve been wanting to reread the Riordan books for awhile and the news about Disney+’s upcoming series just made me want to reread them more. So when Patricia said she’s up for a buddy read, of course I wanted to start immediately! We read The Lightning Thief over a weekend, splitting it into 3 (or was it 4?) discussions, and The Sea of Monsters over the next weekend over, er, 2 discussions despite us planning to do 4, because we couldn’t stop reading. I think I appreciate these books so much more now, maybe because I know more about Greek myth than I did the last time I reread it, or maybe because I was paying closer attention due to doing a buddy read. Part of it was definitely the fact that I’ve learned so much more about ASD and ADHD now compared to the last time I read Riordan, and the latter meant that I finally see how these books are just such good ADHD rep. I just love it when children’s books are better when you reread them as adults <3
- Someone recently asked me why I wasn’t frustrated with the ending of xxxHOLiC, and well, I hate to say it but the reason is (1) I never read Rei so I wasn’t affected by its “permanent” hiatus, and (2) I read this fanfic which is now the canon ending to ME, and no one can take it away from me: The Professor’s Wife by foolish_mortal