Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 26
June 5, 2015
Daredevil 1:3 – 1:4 – Spoilers
Episode Three:
1. I’m still impressed by how this show is showing the moral complications of vigilantism, even when it’s against organized crime, without offering any easy solutions. Matt even makes a speech about morality in court. This episode goes along well with 1.2 in its thematic depth.
2. I think they might be trying to have at least one or two gross-out moments per episode. Because it’s Netflix, and they can? You could tell the same stories with less brutality and gore. The violence...
May 29, 2015
Daredevil 1:1 – 1:2 – Spoilers
This post and those that follow will include spoilers.
I was a big Daredevil fan for a while in the 1980s, picking it up at the Elektra issues somewhere in the 160s and reading on to some point in the 250s. A big part of that time period was dominated by Frank Miller, if that helps you to orient. Packed away somewhere, I have a copy of issue 200 with the cover autographed by Frank Miller, though his pen didn’t work all that well. A sharpie would have been better.
I chose the comic because I w...
May 25, 2015
“And Death Shall Have No Dominion,” Dylan Thomas
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on rac...
May 22, 2015
August 2014 Reading Log
Fiction: A Case of Possession by K.J. Charles is second in the A Charm of Magpies series, a historical paranormal with an ongoing male/male romance. I love the way the magic is done in this series, and as usual, I am a sucker for historical fantasy.
Razor Wire by Lauren Gallagher – I read this for preview on Heroes and Heartbreakers. It’s a dark, gripping lesbian romance about military police on Okinawa, one of whom is pregnant from having been raped. It was a page-turner, and did a great job...
May 15, 2015
July 2014 Reading Log
Fiction: I finally started to read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke this month, but ran out of steam, so it’s still not finished. I state that here so I will be ashamed and go back to it, even though to date (May 2015), I still have not. I bought the book when it came out, in hardcover, and because the hardcover is ginormous I could only read it at home. Yes, I know that now there is an e-book. I am stubborn. I bought the hardcover and I am going to read it that way.
Prisoner b...
May 8, 2015
June 2014 Reading Log
A note here – I’ve mostly been listing nonfiction books in the month I started reading them, and combining my thoughts from throughout the time I was actually reading it. But I actually spent months reading some of these nonfiction books.
Fiction: Lessons After Dark by Isabel Cooper was much more a traditional historical romance than its predecessor, No Proper Lady, and for that reason I enjoyed it a lot less.
Nonfiction: They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War by DeAnne Bla...
May 1, 2015
May 2014 Reading Log
Fiction: The Knights of Breton Court by Maurice Broaddus (three volumes in this edition) could be described (and I think was, somewhere) as King Arthur meets The Wire. It’s brilliant and original, but I tend to find Arthuriana depressing in general because of the way the sequence ends, and this book adds the hopelessness of grinding poverty and endemic crime to that. I was not in a good place to be reading this particular book when I did, but did it anyway because I was preparing for a WisCon...
April 24, 2015
April 2014 Reading Log
Hooray, now I’m only a year behind!
Fiction: Emilie and the Hollow World by Martha Wells was a lot of fun, with a spunky heroine, interesting nonhumans, and lots of steampunk. Wells is one of my all-time favorite fantasy authors; this is her first novel specifically aimed at young adults.
Country Heaven by Ava Miles is a contemporary romance about a country singer and a cook. I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the Midwestern heroine’s love of the movie Gone With the Wind and the idea that...
April 17, 2015
March 2014 Reading Log
Fiction: The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (galley) – I have known the author online for many years, though we’ve only met in person a few times, briefly. I loved this. Straight up loved it. And since now it’s been out a while, you can see from various reviews and award nominations that many others loved it as well, so it’s not just me. It’s rare to find a fantasy in which the hero is not constantly cleaving people with swords. I felt an emotional connection to the protagonist almost im...
April 10, 2015
February 2014 Reading Log
Fiction: The Marketplace (Book One of The Marketplace Series) by Laura Antoniou – this was a freebie of a well-known book about dominance and submission. I’d read it back when it came out, but didn’t remember much. Anyway, Submission is not my kink, but reading about it in this book is interesting in that it feels like science fiction to me: I’m reading about a culture that is alien to me, and trying to understand the associated emotions of the characters, but I don’t have all the necessary…s...
