Tea and Some Cookies... and Reading
Jan. 31st, 2018 12:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouseI spent most of last week reading a manuscript that I'm still working on critiquing for the Loft.
For those of you who don't know, the Loft has a program where you can pay to have your manuscript critiqued by a professional, like myself. Like most things that go through the Loft, it's expensive. To be fair to the prices listed there, I work really very hard on these things and the critique is very thorough--everything from pointing out passive voice to plot holes. So, that's been eating up a lot of my usual reading time.
I did, however, get a few manga (and manhwa) read. I read BJ Alex by Mingwa. Even though this manhwa is definitely a yaoi, BJ does NOT stand for what you think it might. BJ in this context is a "Broadcast Jockey," the Korean equivalent of a YouTuber. I thought a bit aboutjiawen while I was writing my review, because the only BJs I've ever watched are mukbang, which is a whole separate kind of thing. (If you haven't heard of mukbang, which I certainly hadn't before hearing about it from her, it's basically a You Tube live-stream of someone cooking and eating food, while chatting with people who are texting into their channel. It should be unwatchable, but I have to confess to losing several minutes of my life to more than one, without subtitles, knowing absolutely no Korean.) So, this write up is probably more interesting than the manhwa was, but, if you like yaoi, it is pretty cute and I would recommend it. It's not finished. There were only about 4 chapters up when I read it.
I also read the first volume of Cat Paradise / Gakuen Sousei Nekoten! by Iwahara Yuji which is a manga about a girl and her cat and the magical academy they attend, where they gain superpowers and fight demons. You know, typical manga stuff.
Another manhwa I read was The Baker on the First Floor by GyaGa. This one follows a yaoi artist (whoa! meta!) who falls in love with the titular baker who, in fact, has moved in to the first floor of our hero's apartment building. There is a wild amount of back story in this one, if you take it on, since both of them have ex-lovers they are hung up on. I mean, I read the whole thing, but it's not a top tier recommendation by any stretch.
Apparently, I also forgot to talk about a number of manga that I read during the big snow storm. If you're ever curious about the manga I consume (and there is a great quantity of it), you can read MangaKast--the site where I review literally everything manga related that I read.
The other thing I read over the last week were letters that I received from a friend of mine between 1988-1990. I have several more years worth that I want to go through, because this particular friend led a very interesting life. He competed in the Gay Games in Vancouver as a body builder and lived all over the country, including the Castro in San Francisco during the late 80s. The letters are a surprisingly rich queer history and I haven't even gotten to the part in his life where he becomes a porn star... He and I are FB friends and he said he might one day want to write a book about his life, and I totally he should. His letters certainly read like a novel.
How about you? What've you been up to? Wha'tcha reading?
For those of you who don't know, the Loft has a program where you can pay to have your manuscript critiqued by a professional, like myself. Like most things that go through the Loft, it's expensive. To be fair to the prices listed there, I work really very hard on these things and the critique is very thorough--everything from pointing out passive voice to plot holes. So, that's been eating up a lot of my usual reading time.
I did, however, get a few manga (and manhwa) read. I read BJ Alex by Mingwa. Even though this manhwa is definitely a yaoi, BJ does NOT stand for what you think it might. BJ in this context is a "Broadcast Jockey," the Korean equivalent of a YouTuber. I thought a bit about
jiawen while I was writing my review, because the only BJs I've ever watched are mukbang, which is a whole separate kind of thing. (If you haven't heard of mukbang, which I certainly hadn't before hearing about it from her, it's basically a You Tube live-stream of someone cooking and eating food, while chatting with people who are texting into their channel. It should be unwatchable, but I have to confess to losing several minutes of my life to more than one, without subtitles, knowing absolutely no Korean.) So, this write up is probably more interesting than the manhwa was, but, if you like yaoi, it is pretty cute and I would recommend it. It's not finished. There were only about 4 chapters up when I read it.I also read the first volume of Cat Paradise / Gakuen Sousei Nekoten! by Iwahara Yuji which is a manga about a girl and her cat and the magical academy they attend, where they gain superpowers and fight demons. You know, typical manga stuff.
Another manhwa I read was The Baker on the First Floor by GyaGa. This one follows a yaoi artist (whoa! meta!) who falls in love with the titular baker who, in fact, has moved in to the first floor of our hero's apartment building. There is a wild amount of back story in this one, if you take it on, since both of them have ex-lovers they are hung up on. I mean, I read the whole thing, but it's not a top tier recommendation by any stretch.
Apparently, I also forgot to talk about a number of manga that I read during the big snow storm. If you're ever curious about the manga I consume (and there is a great quantity of it), you can read MangaKast--the site where I review literally everything manga related that I read.
The other thing I read over the last week were letters that I received from a friend of mine between 1988-1990. I have several more years worth that I want to go through, because this particular friend led a very interesting life. He competed in the Gay Games in Vancouver as a body builder and lived all over the country, including the Castro in San Francisco during the late 80s. The letters are a surprisingly rich queer history and I haven't even gotten to the part in his life where he becomes a porn star... He and I are FB friends and he said he might one day want to write a book about his life, and I totally he should. His letters certainly read like a novel.
How about you? What've you been up to? Wha'tcha reading?