Best Reads of the Year - June (Part 1)
Dec. 17th, 2018 04:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vassaladyAND WE HAVE REACHED JUNE. Seriously, this is when my reading EXPLODED for the year and why I am 12 books away from having read 500 for the year (as reported on goodreads - I DEF read things that I didn't put on goodreads, so I am probably already technically there.) Let's get to it!
Note - since we're getting into ALL THE MANGA soon, I will write mangaka names inconsistently. Like, I might do it Last First or First Last. jsyk.
June (Part 1)
Mean Girls Club: Pink Dawn by Ryan Heshka - Oh man, so this was odd but cool? Like, just these ladies saying fuck everything to, well, everything and mass chaos and violence and fighting back against leaders of order and purity. Like, not a FAVORITE favorite but a fun read. Really would have loved to check it out under a black light, because that's a thing, I think? But I didn't, alas.
Tom of Finland: The Complete Kake Comics by Tom of Finland- I was super curious for potential fic purposes to check out more Tom of Finland stuff than just the pin ups you see online now and then. These were often far more sequential comics than I expected (one sexual encounter OFTEN led to another as a new character walked by for the next, or Kake found himself in a new situation as a result of the previous) and were appropriately smutty and kinky and cartoony. It was a very interesting look at classic gay comic porn. I'd rec it if you that was something you wanted to read. (And there's almost nothing to read, it's nearly all wordless.)
Oglaf by Trudy Cooper and Doug Bayne - KEEPING with smutty entertainment, omg, Oglaf is SO FUN. I'm behind on the webcomic right now, but I just spent hours catching up in June. It's got such a great cast of characters and it's so funny and plays on so many tropes. It's very sexually explicit, so don't check it out at work. If you start from the very beginning, it may take some time to get into but there's a lot of one off joke comics so you don't really NEED to (though there definitely are many narratives occurring among the sexual hijinks.) It was also a title that I was a little unsure if it was "cool" to like (as in, I wouldn't feel judged liking it) and genuinely cool people like it, so phew! (I don't trust my taste often.)
Persephone by Allison Shaw - I am a SUCKER for any romantic Persephone/Hades story. First off, the art is WONDERFUL and it uses a somewhat limited color palette and I just really really love the art. The story is fun and sweet too as Hades DESPERATELY tries to ignore Cupid's Arrows. AND THE SIDE CHARACTERS. Give Artemis a whole comic to herself, please! Loved her! It's def for more mature audiences (Persephone and Hades do get it on at the end but it's v tame and classy and not very graphic but still.) So yeah, I def want to read more Allison Shaw things.
I Hear the Sunspot by Fumino Yuki - AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! THE STORY THAT STOLE MY HEART. POSSIBLY MY MOST FAVORITE THING THAT I READ ALL YEAR. So this is about two college students, Kohei and Taichi, and Taichi volunteers to be Kohei's note taker (Kohei has a hearing disability), and Kohei offers him lunches in return. ONLY OF COURSE KOHEI FALLS IN LOVE WITH TAICHI. So this is just the SWEETEST and MOST PLEASANT manga. It's a slow burn, for sure (I will talk about the installments on their own, but as a preview, in the third volume, we are still ONLY AT KISSES.) But like, the characters all have great depth, and they are all trying to figure their shit out and their feelings and their place in the world and how to communicate both in a basic sense and on an emotional level, and it's just SO GOOD. I don't know what to say about it other than I reread it like five times in the last seven months. It's just so lovely.
Also, this is where I was sucked into a BL spiral that's still going on and led me to read over 450 works in the following months.
Whoops.
--
Okay, that's it for now. I wrote these in between working on Yuletide, so hopefully they kind of make sense. I mean, this is all just self indulgent spewing of feelings in the first place, so I really shouldn't worry about it!
Also I know I've been saying three parts for June, but.... Well... It might be more.
Note - since we're getting into ALL THE MANGA soon, I will write mangaka names inconsistently. Like, I might do it Last First or First Last. jsyk.
June (Part 1)
Mean Girls Club: Pink Dawn by Ryan Heshka - Oh man, so this was odd but cool? Like, just these ladies saying fuck everything to, well, everything and mass chaos and violence and fighting back against leaders of order and purity. Like, not a FAVORITE favorite but a fun read. Really would have loved to check it out under a black light, because that's a thing, I think? But I didn't, alas.
Tom of Finland: The Complete Kake Comics by Tom of Finland- I was super curious for potential fic purposes to check out more Tom of Finland stuff than just the pin ups you see online now and then. These were often far more sequential comics than I expected (one sexual encounter OFTEN led to another as a new character walked by for the next, or Kake found himself in a new situation as a result of the previous) and were appropriately smutty and kinky and cartoony. It was a very interesting look at classic gay comic porn. I'd rec it if you that was something you wanted to read. (And there's almost nothing to read, it's nearly all wordless.)
Oglaf by Trudy Cooper and Doug Bayne - KEEPING with smutty entertainment, omg, Oglaf is SO FUN. I'm behind on the webcomic right now, but I just spent hours catching up in June. It's got such a great cast of characters and it's so funny and plays on so many tropes. It's very sexually explicit, so don't check it out at work. If you start from the very beginning, it may take some time to get into but there's a lot of one off joke comics so you don't really NEED to (though there definitely are many narratives occurring among the sexual hijinks.) It was also a title that I was a little unsure if it was "cool" to like (as in, I wouldn't feel judged liking it) and genuinely cool people like it, so phew! (I don't trust my taste often.)
Persephone by Allison Shaw - I am a SUCKER for any romantic Persephone/Hades story. First off, the art is WONDERFUL and it uses a somewhat limited color palette and I just really really love the art. The story is fun and sweet too as Hades DESPERATELY tries to ignore Cupid's Arrows. AND THE SIDE CHARACTERS. Give Artemis a whole comic to herself, please! Loved her! It's def for more mature audiences (Persephone and Hades do get it on at the end but it's v tame and classy and not very graphic but still.) So yeah, I def want to read more Allison Shaw things.
I Hear the Sunspot by Fumino Yuki - AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! THE STORY THAT STOLE MY HEART. POSSIBLY MY MOST FAVORITE THING THAT I READ ALL YEAR. So this is about two college students, Kohei and Taichi, and Taichi volunteers to be Kohei's note taker (Kohei has a hearing disability), and Kohei offers him lunches in return. ONLY OF COURSE KOHEI FALLS IN LOVE WITH TAICHI. So this is just the SWEETEST and MOST PLEASANT manga. It's a slow burn, for sure (I will talk about the installments on their own, but as a preview, in the third volume, we are still ONLY AT KISSES.) But like, the characters all have great depth, and they are all trying to figure their shit out and their feelings and their place in the world and how to communicate both in a basic sense and on an emotional level, and it's just SO GOOD. I don't know what to say about it other than I reread it like five times in the last seven months. It's just so lovely.
Also, this is where I was sucked into a BL spiral that's still going on and led me to read over 450 works in the following months.
Whoops.
--
Okay, that's it for now. I wrote these in between working on Yuletide, so hopefully they kind of make sense. I mean, this is all just self indulgent spewing of feelings in the first place, so I really shouldn't worry about it!
Also I know I've been saying three parts for June, but.... Well... It might be more.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-18 04:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-05 02:53 pm (UTC)Oglaf is sooooooooo fun, must catch up!
ETA: okay maybe i won't share it with club, idk, but i might still bring it if you wanna borrow it.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-05 05:24 pm (UTC)