It finally seems to be warming up - I didn't wear my big huge heavy coat today and that wasn't a mistake! I am so tired of winter weather.

My Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse blu-ray arrived last night and I was too tired to watch it, even though I was eagerly anticipating its arrival. I was in bed by 9:30. And then I was awake from 3:30 to about 5-ish, because ugh. My knee and ankle are still healing after that fall two weeks ago and last night they were particularly painful. Today I wore my keds since I can use the ankle wrap with them and it was finally warm enough and there was no lingering snow or ice around. Sigh. But I'm definitely looking forward to watching it soon. #precious spiderbabies

Let what I'm reading Wednesday commence:

what I've just finished
Star Wars: Queen's Shadow by E.K. Johnston, which I enjoyed a lot. I thought it did a nice job with Padme, a character who makes some decisions I have a lot of trouble understanding, and also the handmaidens, while also showing us the beginnings of Padme's very important relationships with Bail, Mon, and Mina Bonteri.

I really liked that she did try to find and free Shmi, even if she was unsuccessful - someone should write the AU where she succeeds, and how that changes things - and I also liked that she sent Sabe to Tatooine to free slaves and that even though that was also only a little successful (25 freed slaves is not nothing), we learn that there is a nascent abolitionist movement on the planet, which fic explores sometimes but which canon has not, really. It doesn't here either, but it's nice to know it exists; fandom can run with that.

While I wish they'd made Padme/Sabe textually canon in both directions, the subtext is unmistakable and also very pleasing to me. I also enjoyed how nobody has any time for Rush Clovis, who is treated exactly as he should be here, given his own behavior. As I said last week, this book really supports my feelings that Padme's most important relationships - and her romantic relationships - were mostly* with women prior to Anakin, and it could explain why she ignores the thousand red flags he sends up in AotC, if she hasn't actually dealt with dudes much before (I mean, it doesn't explain why she ignores all the murderizing, but I am just going to have to continue to accept that she does somehow). (It could also be part of her adrenaline junkie personality, which also comes through in this book, her thrill at being in the middle of the action even though she knows people are in danger.)

*I think it's interesting that her prime political mentors are Palpatine and Bail Organa here; it's a nice parallel to Anakin's mentors being Palpatine and Obi-Wan.

Anyway, skygiants has a nice write up here, and io9 also has a decent review.

what I'm reading now/next
I've tried a couple different books but they haven't held my interest in light my current all-consuming need to read Bat fic, particularly if Jason's return to the family is a little less terrible (e.g., he's found by someone in the family rather than the League of Assassins; Talia finds him and returns him posthaste rather than training him as an assassin and pointing him at Bruce; etc.), but also in general. Basically, stories about the Batfamily as a family are all I want to put in my eyeballs right now.

(Last weekend, I was really annoyed to discover JL/JLU is no longer on Netflix, nor is Under the Red Hood, and I was too lazy to dig out the dvds, but maybe this weekend? I tried one of the movies that was available but the voices were all wrong and I stopped.)

So that's my reading Wednesday. More details will be in the monthly recs! *g*

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