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bookblogging
Sep. 4th, 2008 12:34 pmNovels/prose books:
Spink, Reginald, translator and collector: Alexander and the Golden Bird and Other Danish Folk Tales
(not much new to me here, since Danish folklore was part of the regional folklore collected by the Grimm Brothers. It was kind of interesting how England kept popping up as a figure in these though--Danish princes going off to marry English princesses and so forth).
Manga:
Gin Toriko: Song of the Hanging Sky vol. 1
(I picked this up based on Brigid Alverson's review at MangaBlog, and I'm happy to say that I agree with her review absolutely. It's a beautifully drawn, understated, moody book about cultural clash, conflict, and growing up. It's the most interesting title Go!Comi has licensed in awhile, and I recommend it).
Sugiura Shiho: Silver Diamond vol. 1
(this is how you do world-building for a fantasy world if you're a decent storyteller--slowly, in pieces, at moments naturally occurring in the flow of the story. In fantasy stories where characters from the fantasy world interact with characters from our world, there's often a temptation to have them do an infodump in the guise of explaining things to the characters from our world. Sugiura resists the temptation, and writes the protagonist from our world, Rakan as already knowing there's something abnormal about his own past, and hesitant to ask questions of his strange visitor because he's afraid the answers will destroy his sense of normalcy. The result of this is that we still don't know what's going at the end of this volume, but I at least am very interested in reading more to find out.
The sucker-punch is that Tokyopop will probably cancel this title and I'll never know. It's a pity, because it's the best new thing I've seen from them recently, not counting Petshop of Horrors: Tokyo, which is already a known quantity).
Umino Chico: Honey and Clover vol. 1
(Honey and Clover, like Nodame Cantabile, is a josei series I already know I like, and will follow in any format--manga, movie, animation, live-action television. It impresses me that this is the third time I've seen this story unfold, but this is my favorite rendition of it; the original material still feels fresh and exciting to me.
If anybody cares: no, I do not think there is anything skeevy or pedophiliac in Umino's depiction of Hagu as a very girlish woman. It's never felt that way to me at all. There is a significant difference between an adult who looks young and has childish qualities and a prepubescent child adopting sexually adult mannerisms. Other characters are shocked by Hagu's smallness and cuteness, but it's primarily her talent and artistic vision that they respond to, and what makes her interesting as a character is the way her adult persona is gradually revealed through suffering and struggles, through the articulation of her desires and goals and affections. She's not a jailbait character with an age arbitrary legal age slapped on top of her; she's a genuinely complex college-age adult).
Yazawa Ai: Nana vol. 12
(I wanted Nana and Hachi's reunion to be more emotional, but I suppose it makes sense that it's not; it's just a meeting between them, and after all, the separation has never really been about physical distance, but rather emotional distance. The emotional distance is still unbridged between them, and they do not yet understand how important they are to each other. It's so heartbreaking).
Fujisawa Yuki: Metro Survive vol. 2
(this was far less interesting than the first volume, but since the story concludes here, I suppose that's okay. It's nothing spectacular, just a solid take on the disaster survivor plot, and worth reading if you like those).
Spink, Reginald, translator and collector: Alexander and the Golden Bird and Other Danish Folk Tales
(not much new to me here, since Danish folklore was part of the regional folklore collected by the Grimm Brothers. It was kind of interesting how England kept popping up as a figure in these though--Danish princes going off to marry English princesses and so forth).
Manga:
Gin Toriko: Song of the Hanging Sky vol. 1
(I picked this up based on Brigid Alverson's review at MangaBlog, and I'm happy to say that I agree with her review absolutely. It's a beautifully drawn, understated, moody book about cultural clash, conflict, and growing up. It's the most interesting title Go!Comi has licensed in awhile, and I recommend it).
Sugiura Shiho: Silver Diamond vol. 1
(this is how you do world-building for a fantasy world if you're a decent storyteller--slowly, in pieces, at moments naturally occurring in the flow of the story. In fantasy stories where characters from the fantasy world interact with characters from our world, there's often a temptation to have them do an infodump in the guise of explaining things to the characters from our world. Sugiura resists the temptation, and writes the protagonist from our world, Rakan as already knowing there's something abnormal about his own past, and hesitant to ask questions of his strange visitor because he's afraid the answers will destroy his sense of normalcy. The result of this is that we still don't know what's going at the end of this volume, but I at least am very interested in reading more to find out.
The sucker-punch is that Tokyopop will probably cancel this title and I'll never know. It's a pity, because it's the best new thing I've seen from them recently, not counting Petshop of Horrors: Tokyo, which is already a known quantity).
Umino Chico: Honey and Clover vol. 1
(Honey and Clover, like Nodame Cantabile, is a josei series I already know I like, and will follow in any format--manga, movie, animation, live-action television. It impresses me that this is the third time I've seen this story unfold, but this is my favorite rendition of it; the original material still feels fresh and exciting to me.
If anybody cares: no, I do not think there is anything skeevy or pedophiliac in Umino's depiction of Hagu as a very girlish woman. It's never felt that way to me at all. There is a significant difference between an adult who looks young and has childish qualities and a prepubescent child adopting sexually adult mannerisms. Other characters are shocked by Hagu's smallness and cuteness, but it's primarily her talent and artistic vision that they respond to, and what makes her interesting as a character is the way her adult persona is gradually revealed through suffering and struggles, through the articulation of her desires and goals and affections. She's not a jailbait character with an age arbitrary legal age slapped on top of her; she's a genuinely complex college-age adult).
Yazawa Ai: Nana vol. 12
(I wanted Nana and Hachi's reunion to be more emotional, but I suppose it makes sense that it's not; it's just a meeting between them, and after all, the separation has never really been about physical distance, but rather emotional distance. The emotional distance is still unbridged between them, and they do not yet understand how important they are to each other. It's so heartbreaking).
Fujisawa Yuki: Metro Survive vol. 2
(this was far less interesting than the first volume, but since the story concludes here, I suppose that's okay. It's nothing spectacular, just a solid take on the disaster survivor plot, and worth reading if you like those).