April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers

Novels/prose books:

Kirino Natsuo: Out
(eww ewww ewwww. This is well-written, but the ratio of suspense to vivid descriptions of torture, murder, and dismemberment is too low for me. She has other books translated into English, but I'll stop here).

Heyer, Georgette: No Wind of Blame
(relatively low suspense content, but also a low torture/dismemberment content, and lots of wit).

Riccardi, Victoria Abbott: Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto
(Riccardi's memoir of her years spent in Kyoto in the late 1980s, studying tea kaiseki, which is a meal eaten by guests before a tea ceremony, prepared and served by the host. Riccardi is better at describing food than she is creating a sense of herself--her occasional segues to describe memories not directly related to food and her relationships with people are the weakest bits in the book--but since I picked this up because I was interested in reading about the food, this is perfectly fine with me and doesn't detract from the book. It's a fast, pleasant read, and not at all one of those travel memoirs that makes you want to punch the writer in the face for being a xenophobic, racist jerk--or for blindly cheerleading the virtues of foreign cultures without recognizing their faults, either. Riccardi's portrait of Japan from the perspective of a gaijin is affectionate, nuanced, and mature. Plus, nifty recipes! As soon as the weather cools down, I'm going to make beef-and-potato hot-pot and the drippy-sweet daikon wheels).



Manga:

Tanaka Meca: Pearl Pink vols. 3-4
(what an awesome acting debut. XD).

Anno Moyoco: Happy Mania vol. 9
(this volume seems a little unfocused even for Happy Mania, which is typically insane. Or maybe it was just me, since I was exhausted and struggling to stay awake when I read it).

Yamazaki Housui: Mail vols. 1-3
(I've been telling people that I read volume 1 of this while sitting around immediately after a massage, waiting for my sister to be done with hers, and I undid all of the masseuse's good work by shriveling up in terror. Jesus, this is creepy. Same artist as on Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, although that series has a different writer. It's a tad formulaic, and I was surprised at how consistently people survived their haunting experiences, but very enjoyable, in that terrifying way.).