Of Swords and Parasols

What are you currently reading


Volume 8 of 7 Seeds by Yumi Tamura. According to wikipedia, the arc I'm reading now wraps up at the end of volume 9, and I'll have reached the point I kept telling myself I wanted to reach before taking a break. Which is just as well, as emotional investment is currently a bit anxietymaking. Yumi Tamura appears to have gone "Pft, Clamp thinks they can make unbearably angsty back stories? They are amateurs. I'll show them how it's done without going nearly as far over the top."

What did you recently finish reading?

Volumes 4-7 of 7 Seeds. See above.

A Bride's Story Vol 4 by Kaoru Mori. Most of this volume is a side plot about a pair of twin sisters looking for husbands. These husbands, though, have to be brothers so the sisiters won't be separated. It was pretty much hilarious and delightful throughout, and I didn't mind the sidetrip at all.

Cross My Heart by Sasha Gould. DNF. Set in late 16th Century Italy, our heroine was sent to a convent several years ago, but is called home by her father after her sister's mysterious death to marry her sister's fiance, and soon is approached by a secret society of women who help make each others problems go away. Which would seem to be a perfect formula for me, but somehow, it's just boring. Like, really really boring. I read over half of it thinking "surely, SURELY something is about to happen and this book will live up to its potential and turn awesome!" until I realized that the boredom was making me read more slowly than usual and hours that could be spent reading something else were drifting away from me.

The Secret Lives of Codebreakers by Sinclair McKay. Nonfiction about day-to-day life at Bletchley Park from 1938-1945. Pretty interesting stuff, really. I hadn't realized before that there were 9000-10000 people employed there throughout the war (though that includes EVERYONE employed there, including messengers, secretaries, kitchen staff, cleaners, etc., not just codebreakers) or how common nervous breakdowns were. This is also the first thing I've read that broke down just how secretive things were, including between the people working there, with no onebeing allowed to discuss any aspect of their work with anyone outside of their own department, even family also employed at the Park. There was one family of a mother and two daughters where the mother was a waitress in the canteen, the older daughter one of the codebreakers, and the younger daughter employed as a messenger at 13, and who later became a secretary at the park, and none could discuss their work with each other at any time, even after the war. (The younger daughter, Mimi Gallilee, is also one of McKay's most-quoted sources for the book.) Another couple met and got married while working there, but didn't know what the other actually did there for decades after, despite being married the whole time. There's some information on codebreaking, but most of the focus is on the day-to-day operations and living conditions.

The War At Ellsmere by Faith Erin Hicks. A short-ish graphic novel about a girl named Juniper who goes to a boarding school on scholarship. She quickly befriends her quirky roommate, Cassie, and makes an enemy of the school's Queen Bee, Emily. The main plot is pretty straightforward and doesn't add anything to its type, but is very enjoyable. There's a sideplot about a legend of the school's, which holds that, before it was a school, it was a lord's castle, and one day the lord's sons had a fight and followed a white beast into the forest, and were never heard from again. Unfortunately, the book isn't long enough to really integrate that legend into the main plot, because based on what Hicks managed to do in the limited space she had, I think that could have elevated it from a solid and enjoyable read to a pretty great read. I feel compelled to mention that there isn't a single living male in the whole thing.

The Adventures of Superhero Girl by Faith Erin Hicks. Utterly hilarious adventures of a superheroine whose town is beset by ninjas, marshmallow thieves, evil poodle ladies, and the occasional talking bear. It pokes a lot of loving fun at the genre (and less loving fun and more sharp stick at society-at one point, Superhero Girl wears a hoodie because she's having a bad hair day, and everyone thinks she turned evil) and has a lot of fun with her adventures in and out of costume, and wants us to ponder just how often superheroes forget to take their masks off (and how they keep them on in a fight). My favorite parts were when she fought her evil future self, and the times her brother showed up to be eternally devastated that she didn't want to be his partner forever.

The Little Princesses by Marion Crawford. Memoir of Marion Crawford, who was governess to Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret in the 1930s and 1940s. Knowing that the royal family cut off all contact with Crawford after she published the book and never spoke with her in the almost 40 years between the book's publication and Crawford's death (and didn't attend or send a wreath to her funeral) I was curious about what she had to say, and surprised to find how incredibly pro-royal-family it was. By today's standards, it's almost nauseatingly pure and positive. To judge by the book, the royal family was perfect and gracious and never had an ounce of arrogance or pretension, and the princesses were perfectly behaved angels who never lost their temper or misbehaved, only having "flaws" that made them precocious and clever as children, and intelligent and responsible and caring as they grew older. As one of the first books of the type, it must have felt to be an enormous breach of confidence, despite it's adoring nature (and definitely was, as Crawford had supposedly agreed not to publish anything about the royal family) but most famous figures would be relieved if something unauthorized about them came out and was half as positive as this. Really, though, it was an enjoyable and charming read, and had a lot of interesting information about life and conditions at the times, it's just hard to buy into a portrayal of any family as being so good and flawless.


What do you think you'll read next?

More 7 Seeds, then get back to Legend of the White Haired Demoness, and I have the Beautiful Creatures series from the library.