What I Read In June!

[mozaikmage]

Why does the autosave feature work for everyone except me, apparently :((( this is take two of this post, lol.
Okay so! The month is almost over, I don't have anything out from the library rn and my ebook holds are due to come in several months at the earliest, so I'm calling it now. I was inspired by Jo Walton's column over at Tor-- I mean, Reactor Magazine, listing everything she's read in a month. I like how concise and clear her reviews are. Also very intimidated by all the academic nonfiction she reads. I wish I could do that. Unfortunately I went to art school twice instead of learning how to do academia properly. Lol and lmao. I read like six months back in her column and got some new ideas for what I want to read in the future.

Anyway, onto my readings! In reverse chronological order because I copypasted the list from Storygraph. Manga reads will be on WWAC.

Idlewild by James Frankie Thomas

This one was, like Milkfed, a very "there but for the grace of God go I" kind of book for me, where I have enough in common with the characters that I can see how easily, if a few things were different, like if I was born a decade earlier and went to a different kind of school, that might've been me. I hope my former codependent queer bestie never reads this one because I do not think they would enjoy it very much.

Enter Title Here by Naomi Kanakia
Read this one on queenlua's rec and it vividly threw me back to high school hell. I went to a very normal public school that made me into the kind of person who, when Reshma's SAT score was revealed, immediately thought, "oh no wonder she's so unhinged she's not getting into any good school with an SAT score like that." I would not have enjoyed this book when it was published in my senior year of high school, but now I can look back on that horrible time and kind of, a little bit, laugh.

Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson

Read this one on Jo Walton's rec from her column, and it was a lot of fun! Like an Agatha Christie book without any murders, but then again they're writing from the same time and place. I liked the meta aspects of the book within a book situation, very funny.

Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia by Samuel R. Delany

My first time reading Delany after years of hearing about him and reading his tweets at my bookstore job with my coworkers. I actually picked up this copy at my old coworker's used book shop. I really enjoyed it but I think a lot of the more complicated concepts went over my head. I liked this vision of a society, the extremely pathetic and miserable main character, and the whole distant-war-that-comes-too-close aspect felt very contemporary to me, especially as someone with relatives still in Russia and Ukraine. This is the kind of SFF I love-- really small human interpersonal dramas amidst a huge backdrop. The main guy is so awful god bless.

Annie Bot by Sierra Greer

Klara and the Sun by way of Rabess's Everything's Fine which I talked about here before and that one webcomic about government assigned catgirls (It's very good but, once again, the dude SUCKS). Easy to read but simultaneously hard to take because of how much the guy fucking SUCKED good lord if Annie posted to r/relationships or AITA the comments would be full of "girl get out of there now" but it's clear this is a case of unreliable narrator due to lack of world experience. Ending felt inevitable, but only somewhat satisfying for it.

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

I love lesbianism and being a lesbian!! Not really a straightforward romance but more of an ambling jaunt through life. The afterword about how Waters herself thinks it's cringe now but a lot of twentysomething lesbians seem to really like it made me a little embarrassed, as a twentysomething lesbian who really liked it. There's something really, really nice about the idea that people like you have always existed, have always lived lives you can see the shadow of your own life in. I loved that Nell found a lesbian community, and socialism and activism, and a girlfriend who loves her. Her different relationships were all interesting and believable, and the sex scenes were pretty good.

Kiss Her Once For Me by Alison Cochrun
I didn't dislike the romance but I can't believe I picked the one Sapphic Romance Novel that was WRONG ABOUT MY NICHE AREA OF EXPERTISE.
This book made me lose my damn mind for one stupid fucking reason: the author doesn't understand webcomics, art or animation and made her protagonist a webcomic creator who got laid off from Laika. Laika is, quite famously, unlike most other animation studios in the United States, a stop-motion animation studio. To be a character animator at Laika, you need to have the very particular niche skillset of stop-motion character animation. This does not require drawing ability as much as it requires, like, photography skills, and sculpting, and a very specific personality and aspirations. A skillset that does not easily transfer to drawing a popular webcomic. This would've been really easily fixed if she was a storyboard artist instead of an animator, then everything would've completely tracked for me because there are a lot of storyboarders who do autobio webcomics on instagram and get popular for it.
Which brings me to my second quibble: the webcomic platform is clearly a royalty-free Webtoon clone, but a "messy, imperfect" autobio comic called The Perpetual Suck would not Do Numbers on a Webtoon clone. What does numbers on Webtoon-likes are beautiful highly-rendered full-color longform soap opera stories and extremely simple and short #relatable gag comics. Nothing in between. If her autobio comics were being posted to Instagram, though, I could see that happening.
It really bothered me that her art style or the aesthetic of this "webcomic" is never described, and that the "webcomic" "episodes" are written in the same prose style as the rest of the book and not in a script style or anything that could even slightly give me an idea of what the COMIC LOOKS LIKE.
It also really bothers me that Fun Home is very clearly the only graphic novel the author has ever heard of by name and possibly not even read, because it's not a great reference point for imagining what The Perpetual Suck/Snow Day/The Arrangement might look like when there's SO MANY autobio webcomics out there that could help provide a clearer image of Ellie's work! The Perpetual Suck especially sounds like a perfect name for a comic in the 2009-ish Julia Wertz/Gabrielle Bell/Emitown kind of era of girl autobio webcomics, but not at all like something that would be a massive and sudden hit in 2022.
Anyway, other than this. I felt the story was contrived and the dialogue was a bit "how do you do fellow kids"-level cringey, and also I don't understand the point of making Ellie demi and then falling in love and lust at first sight when that's... not how that works? Like if you wanted to explore demisexuality this was not the story for it. It might've been an excuse for why Ellie didn't fall for Andrew at first sight but like. She could've just been gay. She could've just, not fallen in love with a guy at first sight. Like. Bruh
But man I can't believe I have LITERALLY ONE SINGLE AREA OF EXPERTISE (I've taught classes on Webcomics! I WROTE A HISTORY OF WEBCOMICS!) and I happened to pick up the one sapphic romcom that was wrong about it.

The Cynical Writer's Guide To The Publishing Industry: How to Convince the Gatekeepers that Your Book is a Potential Bestseller by Naomi Kanakia

I actually don't feel like it was as cynical as the title made me expect. I think I was expecting a kind of beesmygod-level deeply mean and insulting to literally everyone not living to your exact narrow and arbitrary moral standards (including working for, like, any publisher at all) sort of cynicism, but I found Kanakia's tone to be fairly kind and encouraging throughout? A little tough but like. Nice teacher tough. No sugar coating, expect the absolute worst, this is going to suck forever and you are not going to make it big, but it's still worth trying anyway. And it left me feeling like it was still worth trying anyway after all. Also, helped reframe my perspective and gave me some useful pointers for The Querying Hell that awaits me as soon as I get a draft up to novel-length lol.

Exalted by Anna Dorn

This book was unhinged and I loved it. I need to rewrite my contemporary attempted litfic to be funnier and more unhinged. I was worried I wouldn't like it because I don't like astrology, but I think that made it even funnier. Every character in this book kind of sucks, but in very strange ways. The ending is actually perfect. Ideal last page. Wow.

I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

I read this before Idlewild, but it felt oddly similar in some ways. Also about a prep school in the 90s/00s, but Makkai's is about true crime and a murder and the ethics of true crime podcasting and violence against women. And cancel culture. I dunno, I think it was fine but took me a weirdly long time to finish considering it's, like, kind of a thriller? With a mystery that should be compelling me to read faster to find out who did it? But I thought the like, depiction of the boarding school environment was really interesting and believable.

Personal Life Update: Someone posted about my rarepair fic on Twitter and their tweet blew up and now the stats literally multiplied by ten times overnight. It had 3 bookmarks on Sunday. Now it has 52. Number of kudos went from 30 to 316. I have never gotten a kudos email that looked like that before and probably never will again but god, it feels GREAT.

I've put the romantasy aside and have been focusing on revising my fictional anime fandom zine drama story lol. It's getting longer! And I'm actually making the main couple get together this time.

My friend recommended the SweetTouch Taiwanese Lychee Beer to me at the liquor store yesterday, so I got a six-pack of that, gave one to my mom, and she liked it so much we only have 2 cans left today. She gave one to my stepdad and decided we're bringing this beer the next time we go camping. It's really good, not too sweet and not too beer-y, very lychee. Try it it's nice!