bookblogging: why I don't blog books

[cerusee]

This everything I can remember reading since...oh, March or maybe a little before? Probably no earlier than February. I jogged my memory by looking at my bookshelves; if it was from a library, or elsewhere borrowed, I may have forgotten about it. I borrow more novels/prose/nonfiction than I buy, so this list is a little slanted towards comics and graphic novels, which I buy more often, because less of what I want to read is available from the library in a regular and timely fashion.

It's also slanted towards comics and graphic novels because I read a lot more of them.

School-related/academic reading: uncounted multitudes.
Poetry: like you care.

Novels/prose books:

Kipling, Rudyard: Kim (reread), The Jungle Book.

Eddings, David & Leigh: The Belgariad, The Mallorean (rereads).

Stephenson, Neal The Diamond Age, Zodiac.

Can't remember the author: Keturah and Lord Death.

Alexander, Llyod: The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio.



Comic strip collections/comic book collections/graphic novels:

Various: The Big Book of Hoaxes.

Eisner, Will: The Spirit Archives vol 1, The Building.

Ishida Tatsuya: Sinfest, Sinfest: Life is My Bitch (all the Sinfest is technically a reread, since I read the strip online).

Warren, Adam: Empowered vol. 3 (damn! just...damn. Adam Warren's obscenely talented. I am interested in his ideas, and would like to subscribe to his newsletter).

Buja's Diary.

Geary, Rick: I cannot remember their damn names, but the Jack the Ripper book, and the Lizzie Borden book. Which reminds me,

Graphic Classics: the O Henry, the Lovecraft, and the Stoker.

Moore, Alan and Rick Veitch, Swamp Thing (whatever that first Moore volume is titled).



Manga: (I'm not going to look up authors I can't remember. Sorry; it's too much)

Saijyo Shinji: Iron Wok Jan vols. 2-6 (best goddamn cooking manga ever).

Yeh-Ri Na: 50 Rules for Teenagers vol. 1.

Ikegami Ryoichi: Mai the Psychic Girl vol. 2 (I haven't read volume 1, but it flows pretty well).

Ito Junji: Uzumaki vols. 2-3 (ditto).

Akino Matsuri: Petshop of Horrors Tokyo vol. 1 (reread; I read it in scanlation).

Anno Moyoco: Happy Mania vols 2-8 (GUYS, GUYS, THIS IS THE GOOD CRACK GUYS. It's like Nana if Hachi were even more insane and all the soap opera pathos was replaced by more entertainingly poor life choices).

Ariyoshi Kyoko: Swan vol 2

Endo Hiroki: Tanpenshu vol. 1.

Fujisawa Yuki: Metro Survive vol. 1
(I'm a big sucker for "we're trapped after a major natural disaster and don't know what's going on outside" stories, especially if, like this, they exploit the fascinating possibilities of an urban/human-created environment warped horribly into a forbidding death trap. See also King of Thorn. And seventeen million Hollywood movies, but I like reading comics more than watching movies. Which reminds me, I need to catch up on Dragon Head).

Usumaru Furuya: Short Cuts vol. 1-2
(this is a very loaded kind of work, and I winced a lot. I also laughed. I am also always impressed by a comics artist who can construct a visual pun or joke, or otherwise really exploit the visual aspect of comics, and Short Cuts is rich with that sort of thing).

Higuri You: Cantarella vol 9

Kobayashi Makoto: Club 9 vol .1
(same author as What's Michael?. Kobayashi, maybe? This has fewer cats and more panty-related humor. It's vintage flipped manga by Dark Horse, with one of those translations that tries to convey a particular geographical Japanese dialect by phonetically writing out an American Southern accent. And, I dunno, I loved it and thought it was hilarious. But I think YMMV).

Mizushiro Setona: X-Day vols. 1-2.

Mizuno Junko: Cinderella
(Mizuno. She's...just look at it; it's educational. You'll be educated. Scarred, but educated).

Mori Kaoru: Emma vol. 7.

Nakamura Yoshiki: Skip Beat vol. 11.

Ninomiya Tomoko: Nodame Cantabile vol. 12 (contains smooching! finally!).

Ohtsuka Eiji, story, Yamazaki Hosui, art: Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service vol. 6.

Takuya Natsuki: Fruits Basket vol. 19.

Tamura Yumi: Wild Com.

Tamaki Chihiro: Walkin' Butterfly vol. 1.

Tanaka Meca: Omukae Desu vol. 3, Pearl Pink vo.l 2
(Kawy, I recognized that "I'm not a breakable doll!" bit you posted from the bonus story! Were I to worship household gods, Tanaka might be one of them. I would burn incense scented with citrus and cloves and pray for understated but sincere emotional support in my career of choice).

Tobe Keiko: With the Light vol. 2.

Tsukaba Sakura: Penguin Revolution vols. 2-4
(how does Tsukaba write characters so goddamn sweet and affecting without making them boring? how? how? I now love this series as much or more than Land of the Blindfolded, and that was my previous canon of shoujo sweet, yes, even more than Fruits Basket, because that has all that unsettling family dysfunction. Tsukaba would be another of my household gods; I would offer her honeyed rose petals and pray for domestic harmony, or at least roommates who wash their dishes in a timely fashion and put the toilet seat down).

Urushibara Yuki: Mushishi vol. 2.

Yagami Yu: Dokkoida vol. 1
(this is the shit. Total alien superhero secret identity sitcom shenanigans crack. However, I will examine volume 2 carefully prior to buying it, because it's possible the harem setup assembled by the end of volume 1 doesn't exist for the sole purpose of being lampooned, and I will not read a harem manga unless it's at least a little deconstructionist).

Aoike Yasuko: From Eroica With Love vol. 3
(someone's got a cruuuuuush! Someone besides me, too).

Yazawa Ai: Nana vol. 9
(BAWL).


And yes, this is typical.

Comments

[retsuko.livejournal.com]

OMGUZUMAKISQUIKEDTHEHELLOUTOFME I mean, I found 'Uzumaki' somewhat unsettling. The ending made no real sense to me, but I chalked it up to the same weirdness that a lot of J-Horror has for me--relentlessly creepy, but ultimately confusing.

I need to buy Empowered 3!

I agree with you about Tsukuba's character writing talents... I need to read PR! I still love Land of the Blindfolded, though. I've always wished it were bigger so that I could read/write fic for it.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

Uzumaki: Yeah, I kind of have that reaction to almost all J-horror. Do you think horror's sort of rooted in local culture? Or at least, rooted in your broad cultural traditions? Certain things are probably scary or at least unsettling in a very broad way, but maybe horror has to tap into specificities to go beyond unsettling and be psychologically relevant?

Empowered 3 is an interesting animal; it contains two stories that push at the concept in interesting ways, and when you read it, I think you'll recognize them. Hurry up and read it so I can talk about them without spoiling you!

I've read a lot of one-hit wonders, so I didn't let myself get excited about Penguin Revolution until I read it. I liked the first volume, but obviously, it didn't overwhelm me, or else I wouldn't have dawdled this long in following through on subsequent volumes. Tsukaba's appeal is two-pronged: one, she really writes accessible, appealing stories about likable people falling in love with each other; two, her stories are very well-paced, and the more you read of one of her manga, the more engaged you are. They move along quickly enough to establish a sense of real emotional progress without unduly rushing through the drama of whatever plot you happen to be in the middle of. There's enough character meanness to create conflict, but every character is given enough complexity to be potentially sympathetic. Her art's not revolutionary, but it's skillful and emotive, and she's able to bring out the appropriate action and emotion in every scene.

I probably wouldn't ask her to work on a non-fiction comic about political mass murder, but she's very skilled at creating a good, memorable, and affecting shoujo comic.

[retsuko.livejournal.com]

Do you think horror's sort of rooted in local culture? Or at least, rooted in your broad cultural traditions? Certain things are probably scary or at least unsettling in a very broad way, but maybe horror has to tap into specificities to go beyond unsettling and be psychologically relevant?

Y'know, I've been mulling this over for several days. I remember, vividly, seeing both Ringu and "The Exorcist: Director's Cut" while in Japan, and was far more freaked out by the Exorcist. My students were skeptical. Ring, they insisted, was more scary, even if they couldn't explain to me why it ended the way it ended, or why Sadako wrecked vengeance on people not even remotely associated with the terrible thing that had happened to her. I decided that Exorcist scared me more because of my Judeo-Christian upbringing (and my dislike for seeing Lina Blair spiderwalk backwards down a flight of stairs and vomit up blood.) Eventually, I did a little research on the Ringu and Ju-on and found that they're both somewhat based on the Yotsuya-kaidan, a centuries-old folktale that's been made into something like 29 different film versions. So I guess it's a kind of "you had to be raised in this" thing, at least to some degree. (Granted, I was very happy that I had watched Ringu on some else's TV set and not my own!)

As for Uzumaki, I'm willing to bet that's Junji Ito's own special brand of crazy. I'd love to read some psychoanalytic deconstruction of his work! (I'd hate to see him to do a H. P. Lovecraft story! D:)

Word on all your comments about Tsukuba. I'll be on the lookout for it. :)

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

Ringu scared the fuck out of me, but I watch horror so little, and am so suggestible to it that it's hard to rank the scare-factor (I did think it was scarier than the American remake, but the Japanese original benefited both from my having seen it first and also just generally being a little more restrained, which usually helps with the scary). In the past few years, my reading has been very skewed towards manga, and I've read a fair number of horror manga that upset me so much I actually had to go lie down for awhile and tuck my feet under the blanket. (Check out Ito's Museum of Terror: Tomie. It's utterly terrifying--also, virulently misogynistic, which is only slightly alleviated by the fact that all the men are pretty loathsome as well, and that's deliberate--and artistically interesting to me as horror that works by being totally weird and over the top and unrelentingly icky. I thought it was much scarier than Uzumaki, and Uzumaki did scare me.) I've also read classic horror manga (a lot of Umezu) that I found at most mildly shocking, although again, sort of artistically interesting, and had fun trying to pinpoint precisely what audience, what age, what mindset would react to this with the proper sense of fear that makes horror successful.

[octopedingenue]

EEEEE MECA TANAKA, one of my rare Mangaka of Feminist Squee! I adore her sweet, ballsy, passionate girls and the menschy boys who love them (and who I would totally date IRL especially if they can cook like Kanji), and her stories about little and broken but still good families. The second bonus story in volume 2, about the girl and her stepfather, breaks my heart in the good way, as long as I LALALA past the last page.

I want Sailor Fuku ni Onegai! licensed YESTERDAAAAY.

Is With the Light worth picking up? The dismaying length has scared me off reading volume 1 in-store so far, but it's more than I like to pay for impulse-buy manga without reading it first.

Have you read Love*Com? REEEEEAD my fluffy darling with which I overidentify as a Tall Girl, the shoujo romcom version of Walkin' Butterfly.

TRUEFAX: A friend once picked up my borrowed copy of Uzumaki 2, started reading, and got maybe 5 pages in before she shrieked and threw it across the opposite wall.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

With the Light: it's hard to say. For a comic that was created solely to help educate people about autism and that is a composite based on lots of non-fiction accounts of raising autistic children in Japan, it's a pretty gripping drama! Which is why I bought volume 2; I thoroughly enjoyed the reading experience of volume 1. I initially bought it without looking too closely at it because I'm always curious about alternative manga and it got good reviews. I'm happy to own it because it helps to diversify my comics library a little bit; if I didn't care about building a good library, I might have chosen to borrow it from the public library instead of buying it.

I have not read Love*Com! I've generally heard good things, but nothing that made me sure I would like it. Recommendations from you are generally good indicators that I will like something, though, so I'll check it out.

It's good to keep a balanced plate, you know, but catching up on Penguin Revolution reminded me that I really, deeply love good shoujo, and sometimes it's nice to read something that's just emotionally satisfying.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

By the way, this icon reminds me that if you haven't already seen it, I need to badger you into watching Mai-HiME someday. I'd be curious to see your overall reaction to it, but very specifically, if you do not love Akira and Takumi more than life itself, I will eat my hat. My really nice olive green cap with the brim from Aldo.