green tea in the morning

What are you currently reading?

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury. There'll be a lot of navel-gazing here, won't there?

What did you recently finish reading?

The Twelve by Justin Cronin. Second book in a vampire apocalypse trilogy. Somewhere in the 2010's, a ~*Sekrit Experiment by the US Government*~ results in deadly beings called Virals. The twelve first subjects are the strongest and each has followers called Many. The thirteenth, a young girl called Amy, chooses her own path and sides with the human survivors.

By the second book, I remember that most of the major non-white characters are dead. Why. The human archvillain is like a character Stephen King would write without the dramatic adjectives. Our human hero, Peter, is the tough, compassionate, and unassuming type. (He might also be whitewashed if a movie is ever made. Ridley Scott reportedly bought rights to the first book.) Here he's written less boringly than in the first book. Carter still sounds like a field hand straight out of Gone With the Wind :| and his portrayal is mostly problematic. It's more obvious now because in the first book he spends most of his screentime being bewildered and bullied - not that this isn't problematic too.

Our human heroines are Sara, one of the many prisoners of the despotic human government, and Alicia. Alicia is an example of a writer trying too hard to write a strong female character!! in that she has to be physically resilient, know martial arts and how to use weapons, and be able to survive violent rape. Yes, Cronin went there. Why again.

Goodreads reviews complain that most characters talk the same way, and that too still applies.

Prose is well-crafted, in a "writer strives to avoid cliches and unimaginative descriptions" way.
( Spoilers )

1. The Grandmaster: Wong Kar-wai's 2013 movie with Tony Leung as Ip Man. Artful shots that aren't as self-indulgent as they could have been, martial arts philosophy every three seconds, and Zhang Ziyi's character being the most explored (sole inheritor of father's most famous technique; fights traitorous shixiong who masters the other famous technique; the aftermath). Slices-of-life movies are a hit-and-miss for me, and this one falls somewhere in between - after all, there are only so many dramatic close-ups I can bear.
The movie also sadly underuses Zhang Zhen and his Bajiquan.

2. I watched JKT48 at their theater yesterday.
( Descriptions of falling off a bus and other mishaps )

Am thinking of making a Twitter account specially for Bahasa Indonesia tweets.

Anime -
. TeniPuri: The animated version of that short omake of Atobe going to school. [ x ] This is one canon that's always three steps ahead of fandom when it comes to... innovativeness.
. Zetsuen no Tempest: Watched the first episode and feel no inclination to watch the rest, not liking the four main characters (I assume we haven't seen the last of the sister). The next episodes might or might not change my mind.
Though this proves that last fall's anime season is the time for Toyonaga Toshiyuki to step out of his comfort zone.
. Red Data Girl 9: ( Spoilers )

What I'm reading
I continue to read Jianghu San Nuxia. Girl #1 has proven to be the coolest character in the book. I'm also amazed that the author lets aggressive ladies be aggressive, and even when other characters make fun of them because of it, the author doesn't.

What I've just finished
David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. As a narrative and thematic journey, it's pretty exciting. Attempts to question white privileges are just that, attempts, with "What if in the future..." spoken in a markedly less strong voice - not quite pastede on yay, just content to remind readers of said privileges. (Also, dude? Some cultures are not yours to tinker with.)

What I'll read next
No idea. I'll see what comes along.