July wrap-up

This is my little wrap-up for July. I have a book I’m still reading. And I’ll probably finish it in a couple of days, but I’ll put that in the August rewind. Because it seems logical in my brain. Anyway. These are the books I read in July.

Cold Spell and Fathomless by Jackson Pearce

These are the last two books in the Fairytale retellings series. They’re technically more like four companion novels, but hey. Cold Spell is the fourth book and is a retelling of the Snow Queen. It’s about Ginny and Kai who have been friends forever and recently started dating. Then Kai is taken away by a gorgeous young woman, and Ginny is sure something is wrong, he wouldn’t just leave. So she goes after him. Fathomless is about Celia Reynolds, the youngest of triplets, with the ability to see their past when she touches someone. She meets Lo, an Ocean Girl, who can’t remember her past. Celia tries to help Lo remember and we get some insight into part of the sort of overarching Fenris mythology, which was nice. They were fun, not like great, but they were fine. It was fun. Review here.

Bipersonar by Carl Frode Tiller

This was a Norwegian book. The title means “side characters”, and the book tells the story of one man through “side characters” in his life, his sons and his brother, and also the author writing his story. It was fine. Carl Frode Tiller always writes sort of sad people who live on the edges of society, struggling to fit in, which is very interesting. It might just be a very Norwegian trait, dissecting the people who fall outside of society.

Captain Marvel, volume 1 by Kelly Sue DeConnick and David Lopez

I felt like reading more superhero comics. I’ve read Miss Marvel, and while I liked it, it didn’t blow me away. And I read Thor, but I wanted to read more lady heroes. So I picked up Captain Marvel. She’s awesome. Carol Danvers is a pilot, hero, protector of earth person. She is in a good place in her life, but decides to go on a mission in space, because she likes doing stuff and not being complacent. She decides to take a mission to return an alien girl to her home world and gets dragged into a dying world, and corruption. And also the Guardians of the Galaxy guest star. It was awesome.

An Untamed State by Roxane Gay

This is the story of Mireille, a Haitian-American woman who goes to Port-au-Prince with her husband and son, to visit her parents. She is kidnapped by a gang of men, which is a not-unheard-of occurrence with female relatives of rich men in Haiti, according to the book. When Mireille’s father refuses to pay the kidnappers they take out their anger and frustration on her. It was gorgeous and awful, and painful. It was very amazing though. It made me cry and want to put it down and all that, but I also had to know what happened, so I kept going. It was amazing. This is ramble-y. I wrote a review.

Thor, volume 2 by J. Michael Straczynski, Olivier Coipel, Marko Djurdjevic

This is volume 2 in Straczynski’s Thor run. And it was fun. We get to see more of what Loki is doing, and that’s fun. Because, you know, he’s fun. We also got to see more of Thor’s backstory and his relationship with Baldur. I really like it. I like the art. I really like the art style, and I like Thor’s story, and what he’s doing. I don’t have much more to say. I like it, it’s fun. I’m enjoying the interactions between the Asgardians and the humans, it’s fun.  

A Girl is a Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride

This book won some sort of award, the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for fiction, I think. It’s a coming-of-age story about a young woman who has to deal with her brother’s brain tumor and how it affects him, her, and their mother. It’s set in Ireland, so there’s a lot of Catholicism and prayer and judging. The Girl doesn’t really get the attention and love she needs, and she uses some fairly unhealthy ways to deal with it. The book is written in a sort of stream-of-consciousness way, and sometimes I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, but it also felt very honest and real and it was great. I wrote a review here.

Girls Will Be Girls: Dressing Up, Playing Parts and Daring to Act Differently by Emer O’Toole

This is a non-fiction book. Also by an Irish author. It’s about gender roles and how we use clothes, make-up, hair, and everything to define who we are. How gender roles are still very present and how they damage both men and women. It was very interesting, and an interesting look at how we look at gender. Emer O’Toole is Irish and from a very traditional Irish home, where the mother makes the food, and the daughter helps with the cleaning and the father and the sons sit back and chill, and do the manly things. And it was interesting to see how she went from thinking this was just how it was supposed to be and then discovered feminism, and how she moved to England, and then how trapped and angry she felt when she went back home to Ireland. It’s about her sort of feminist awakening, how she realizes her sexuality and not comes to terms with, but how she decides to label herself and how she’s quite comfortable with who she loves and all that.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

This is the gorgeous, weird, wonderful classic about whaling. It’s told by a man who calls himself Ishmael, an ordinary sailor on the Pequod. The captain of the Pequod, Ahab, is a one-legged, crazy man who is chasing the white whale, Moby Dick, who bit off his leg. It’s beautifully written. A lot of people worry because of the whale anatomy chapters, they’re bloody great. It’s wonderful and intense and magical. Read it. Also review-ish.