Sakura of DOOM

What I've read: Finally finished review copy of Tokyo Demons and reviewed it! And because last week, I was craving fantasy + romance, I naturally blazed through Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo's Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art. It's a fun book about how con man John Drewe got artist John Myatt to forge hundreds of paintings. The difference in this con, though, isn't the techniques used to make the canvases pass scrutiny, but rather how Drewe created the provenance of each painting—the record of ownership, sales, location, and etc. of a painting. Since it can be difficult to tell a forgery via art style, dealers and auctioneers and buyers rely on a dependable provenance, and Drewe took advantage of this to sell off some paintings that would otherwise never have passed as real.

Drewe isn't a con man that I'm secretly rooting for; instead, even if Salisbury and Sujo's description of his compulsive lying and his terrible treatment of his common-law wife hadn't been there, I would have hated him just for sneaking into all those archives and doctoring so many documents. My morals, somewhat subjective...

And of course, now I want to read fast-paced non-fiction about cons or robberies or other elaborate schemes, which I am sure I will take recs for and them promptly be in a different mood in about two days. (I like the recs! Please keep it up! I might not get to them soon, but I do take note.)

I also read the latest chapter of Skip Beat, ( minor spoilers )

What I'm reading: I started Sherwood Smith's Once a Princess—good lord, she's published a lot lately! I didn't realize she had so much self-pubbed/small press stuff out; I hope it's going well for her. Lost some interest once it hit the secondary world due to not having enough processing power for worldbuilding. I'm also in the middle of Martha Wells' Wheel of the Infinite, which I am enjoying but cheated on with an art con book. And I started my Con or Bust review book. I got a few chapters in Bruce Schneier's Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive after reading Provenance, but then decided it was too research-y and less narrative than I was looking for.

What I'm reading next: A genre I have not talked about in this post? Hopefully I will keep going on Con or Bust book, along with starting a reread of Octavia E. Butler's Xenogenesis in preparation for Wiscon.

Oh man, much as I am sad about not reading a lot of manga in the past few years, it does mean that binge catch ups are very fun!

This reading spree also included a reread of volumes 12-23, all prompted by CB starting to watch the Skip Beat anime. I really wish they would animate more of the manga!

Anyway, the series consistently cracks me up, and it was really fun tearing through so many volumes at once.

( Spoilers must regain their precious human emotions! )

You may all mock me now!

I know, I said I wasn't going to read any more of this. And I really wasn't! I wasn't having fun. And then I read iwrotethat's The Work of Chemists, and it was awesome and nearly made me fall off the bed laughing, and I thought, "Well.... maybe just one more try."

Let me say, now that I have that fic's narrative voice in my head, everything is so much funnier!

Also, on a side note, the worst part about reading series I already know in Chinese is that I have to figure out everyone's names all over again! So frustrating...

( Spoilers )

Also, you are all fired for not telling me Skip Beat is going to be a twdrama!

I'm still not quite sure what to think about this series. I like how it's not All About the Boy, and I especially love Kyoko's giant grudge, but the manga-sports-esque battles and power-ups involving acting, of all things, has me rolling my eyes a bit. Then again, I tend to have a lower tolerance for shounen tropes anyway.

( Spoilers )

Mogami Kyoko has dedicated most of her life to her childhood friend Shotaro's dream of being an idol, including moving to Tokyo with him to basically act as a combination housekeeper/secretary/babysitter. When she overhears Sho telling another woman that he brought her along only to help himself out, she decides to become an idol and smash him down to size.

So far, Kyoko isn't doing so well with the "making her way into show business" thing, largely because she doesn't want people to love her enough (that's what the talent company's president says). Now she's got to somehow acquire said feelings of love, even though vengeance is the emotion spurring her on.

While I like Kyoko's vengeful evilness, I am still somewhat disturbed by the whole "you cannot succeed in show business unless you want people to love you!" thing. It reads too much like various exhortations for women to please other people. Also, there's a plot through vols. 2 and 3 that involves what I hate the most -- two women pitted against each other.

I am glad that it's for work and not over a man (though it partly is as well), but it's still irritating, particularly since romantic interest and star talent Tsuruga Ren does everything perfectly and without effort.

I'll probably keep reading this, just because the library has it, but I'm not a fan yet.