Wednesday Reading Meme
What I Just Finished Reading
Mark Kurlansky, The Food of a Younger Land: The WPA's Portrait of Food in Pre-World War II America: I picked this up because I thought it might be relevant for my fanfic needs, and it turned out to be more of a primary source document than I thought it was. Apparently in the 30s the WPA employed a bunch of writers to make travel guides (because they had people of wildly varying skill levels and I guess they figured those would be hard to screw up) and when they finished those they decided to do a cookbook of regional specialties called "America Eats," except Pearl Harbor happened and it never got published. So this is an edited compilation of some of the more entertaining entries. If you're looking for help with your Cap fanfic, NYC's section has an exhaustive description on how to get food from an automat -- what foods are good, how much they cost, how you actually do it -- as well as the information that at a soda-fountain lunch counter you can apparently order a triple-decker PB&J sandwich. Like, where the peanut butter and jelly don't touch because there's another slice of bread in the middle. I have to say, this has never before occurred to me as a food possibility.
Marvel 1602: Look, I finally read something I hadn't read before for the Discord Book Club! I didn't like it much! I think basically Neil Gaiman's work isn't really for me anymore, and this book just came off as so pleased with its own cleverness that it didn't care about anything like keeping the characters in character; they all basically existed as puppets to serve the cleverness of the plot, or that was what it felt like to me. Also I really, really hated what he did with Steve Rogers. And it did not explain why the New World has dinosaurs.
Marvel 1602: New World: I actually liked this better than the first one even though it was much more your standard comic fare. I felt like the characters were better-characterized, I appreciated the Tony Stark whump, the Native Americans had speaking roles and actual agency, and also there were more dinosaurs.
What I'm Reading Now
Comics Wednesday!
Captain America #17: Back to this very confusing arc where someone who was maybe Scourge killed the Kingpin who also killed bad cops who were doing extremely bad things. And then there are the Watchdogs. And Steve goes to see a guy who tries to explain this but is attacked by Watchdogs with stun grenades and I am very confused. Sharon says the Watchdogs infiltrated the NYPD and there's a thought from Steve about how he's working on trusting Sharon now, which is stupid. "They're not after Scourge, they've become Scourge." I don't understaaaaaand.
Captain Marvel #13: Carol killed Tony! But she's only pretending to kill the Avengers to keep the weird alien force that merged with her happy and really they're all safe inside Singularity. Also there's apparently a facility of Avengers clones which is a great idea that will never go wrong ever.
Fallen Angels #3: Back to the weird Psylocke book that makes no sense. Someone's kidnapped Cable. This book is boring and I think they already cancelled it.
New Mutants #3: We're back to having a story set on Krakoa as some of the other old New Mutants try to figure out who wouldn't want to be here. So they go find their old friends and help them out by giving them their Krakoan cures for otherwise-incurable diseases. Sadly, then Angry Humans show up.
Strikeforce #4: Time for the team to go to a spooky mansion! Anyway, they sit around and tell spooky stories about their previous shapeshifter encounters and it's a lot of fun. Everyone should read this book.
X-Force #3: Oh, yeah, this is the one where the Krakoa invaders are growing people in vats and passing them off as mutants by flaying Domino's skin from her and using skin grafts, gross, no thanks. But on the plus side they're also actually bringing Xavier back using their other backup. Anyway, Xavier's alive again, but the well-organized mutant hate group (of course there are mutant hate groups, I've read an X-book before) are after him and having secret meetings.
What I'm Reading Next
I dunno. I have a lot of books.
Read this entry on Dreamwidth ||
comments
Mark Kurlansky, The Food of a Younger Land: The WPA's Portrait of Food in Pre-World War II America: I picked this up because I thought it might be relevant for my fanfic needs, and it turned out to be more of a primary source document than I thought it was. Apparently in the 30s the WPA employed a bunch of writers to make travel guides (because they had people of wildly varying skill levels and I guess they figured those would be hard to screw up) and when they finished those they decided to do a cookbook of regional specialties called "America Eats," except Pearl Harbor happened and it never got published. So this is an edited compilation of some of the more entertaining entries. If you're looking for help with your Cap fanfic, NYC's section has an exhaustive description on how to get food from an automat -- what foods are good, how much they cost, how you actually do it -- as well as the information that at a soda-fountain lunch counter you can apparently order a triple-decker PB&J sandwich. Like, where the peanut butter and jelly don't touch because there's another slice of bread in the middle. I have to say, this has never before occurred to me as a food possibility.
Marvel 1602: Look, I finally read something I hadn't read before for the Discord Book Club! I didn't like it much! I think basically Neil Gaiman's work isn't really for me anymore, and this book just came off as so pleased with its own cleverness that it didn't care about anything like keeping the characters in character; they all basically existed as puppets to serve the cleverness of the plot, or that was what it felt like to me. Also I really, really hated what he did with Steve Rogers. And it did not explain why the New World has dinosaurs.
Marvel 1602: New World: I actually liked this better than the first one even though it was much more your standard comic fare. I felt like the characters were better-characterized, I appreciated the Tony Stark whump, the Native Americans had speaking roles and actual agency, and also there were more dinosaurs.
What I'm Reading Now
Comics Wednesday!
Captain America #17: Back to this very confusing arc where someone who was maybe Scourge killed the Kingpin who also killed bad cops who were doing extremely bad things. And then there are the Watchdogs. And Steve goes to see a guy who tries to explain this but is attacked by Watchdogs with stun grenades and I am very confused. Sharon says the Watchdogs infiltrated the NYPD and there's a thought from Steve about how he's working on trusting Sharon now, which is stupid. "They're not after Scourge, they've become Scourge." I don't understaaaaaand.
Captain Marvel #13: Carol killed Tony! But she's only pretending to kill the Avengers to keep the weird alien force that merged with her happy and really they're all safe inside Singularity. Also there's apparently a facility of Avengers clones which is a great idea that will never go wrong ever.
Fallen Angels #3: Back to the weird Psylocke book that makes no sense. Someone's kidnapped Cable. This book is boring and I think they already cancelled it.
New Mutants #3: We're back to having a story set on Krakoa as some of the other old New Mutants try to figure out who wouldn't want to be here. So they go find their old friends and help them out by giving them their Krakoan cures for otherwise-incurable diseases. Sadly, then Angry Humans show up.
Strikeforce #4: Time for the team to go to a spooky mansion! Anyway, they sit around and tell spooky stories about their previous shapeshifter encounters and it's a lot of fun. Everyone should read this book.
X-Force #3: Oh, yeah, this is the one where the Krakoa invaders are growing people in vats and passing them off as mutants by flaying Domino's skin from her and using skin grafts, gross, no thanks. But on the plus side they're also actually bringing Xavier back using their other backup. Anyway, Xavier's alive again, but the well-organized mutant hate group (of course there are mutant hate groups, I've read an X-book before) are after him and having secret meetings.
What I'm Reading Next
I dunno. I have a lot of books.
Read this entry on Dreamwidth ||
