cerusee: a white redheaded girl in a classroom sitting by the window chewing on a pencil and looking bored (Default)
I've not been reading much this month, first because I was in Austin, visiting my parents and hanging out with no-longer-expat Mikke, and more recently because I've been catching up on six months worth of All My Children via YouTube. Rebecca Budig is like my cocaine, man; I got hooked on Greenlee by reading soap mags way back in 2000, and I've never been able to kick my addiction to her feisty, self-absorbed shenanigans for more than three months since. She is more entertaining than...really, most things.


Novels/prose books:

Heyer, Georgette: The Foundling
(barely a romance. It's more about 20-something Gilly, the Duke of Sale, breaking out of the protective shell of his overbearing family and having an adventure that helps him cross the line into adulthood. This is not a complaint! Gilly's just adorable in his vulnerability and growing sense of confidence. It never entirely gelled for me as a book, but I laughed a lot and wibbled a lot and really enjoyed it).

Ranpo Edogawa: Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination
(oh boy, I dig it. And I love short stories in general. But for the love of god, don't read this while eating. When will I learn never to read gritty detective fiction while eating?).


Manga:

Okazaki Mari: Suppli vols. 2-3
(Tokyopop has probably already axed this, although it looks like it could be years before we actually know for sure that they've axed and what they're still planning to publish. I was more okay with the thought of this being dropped until I read these volumes, because I am falling in love with this work-romance soap josei manga. The josei niche in America is so, so tiny; I can't abide the thought of it shrinking before it's ever been able to grow. I want to read comics about women my age struggling to balance their professional and personal lives! I want to read comics about Japanese women who want real careers! I want comics with genuinely post-adolescent soap opera! And this is so beautifully, wistfully, illustrated. God, I'm getting depressed).

Watanabe Taeko: Kaze Hikaru vol. 9
(speaking of soap romance, lol@the guys' obsession with the status of Sei and Soji's relationship).

Nishi Keiko: Promise and Love Song
(man, shoujo comics can be dark sometimes. I wonder at what point that realization no longer surprised me?).

woo woo!

Jun. 17th, 2008 08:29 pm
cerusee: a white black-haired man with glasses leaning out of a train window with the caption "YO" next to him (YO)
I can only sit around my apartment reading library graphic novels so long before my butt starts to hurt and I go stir-crazy, so one of the ways I fill my copious free time this summer is by wandering around Boston (or Cambridge and Somerville) and window shopping and developing massive and disgusting blisters all over my feet. Harvard Square is particularly awesome for this sort of thing (although it often leads to me buying things like frozen yogurt or falafel sandwiches or books, which defeats the purpose of wandering around Boston as a cheap, calorie-burning form of entertainment).

I particularly like to hit up the Harvard Book Store, because they have a nice selection of used books and remainders in their basement. I've been there about four times before and never bought anything, but fifth time's the charm--this time, I found used copies of Secret Comics Japan, the old, large-size printing of Shirow's Dominion (it was marginally cheaper for half the price of the original printing than the full price for the new printing), and--this is the one that made me cackle with glee as I stepped out into the street, the proud new owner of it--a copy of Pineapple Army, which is story by some other guy, but art by Urasawa Naoki (I didn't even know it had ever been published in English)! I am one step closer to owning the complete works of Urasawa! Now I just need all of Happy, the rest of Monster, all of 20th Century Boys, all of Pluto, all of Master Keaton, and all of Yawara.

There was also a copy of an old Viz magazine with a Nishi Keiko story--I think it was called Promise?--translated and with an introduction by Matt Thorn, which I stupidly did not buy on the assumption that it would surely duplicate material in my recent acquisition of Love Song. Now that I'm home and have checked, I think it actually didn't. I'll read Love Song tonight and go check again tomorrow.

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