Reading and To Be Read

[lydamorehouse]

 As some of you may remember, I had recently checked a number of manga out from the library (and got JUDGED for it). Well, I managed to read at least one of them since then: Blue Period (volume 1) by Yamaguchi Tsubasa.

Blue Period is about a young delinquent-looking second year high schooler who is sort of drifting through life, following his parents' advice to do good in school, but also have some fun. Yatora should be doing okay, but he's just not feeling it. Any of it. Until one day, by chance, he runs face-to-face with a piece of art that MOVES him. Seeing this senior's art project makes Yatora feel feelings he didn't know he possessed. In art class the next day, he decides to try it for himself--can he produce something that invokes a place, a feeling? And he has just enough success that he decides to not only continue with art, but to strive to get into the prestigious Tokyo Art School. Wacky hijinks ensue, as they say. I ended up really liking this manga, but I couldn't help but compare it to an autobiography about a similar struggle, Blank Canvas: My So-Called Artist's Journey, by the mangaka who wrote, among other things, Princess Jellyfish. In part because Yatora's successes (at least by the end of volume one) seem fairly effortless. I do think that it's going to get more complicated as the story progresses, but I also wonder if this isn't just going to be Yotora's shounen superpower and the theme of the manga, which is: making people feel things is stronger than technical skill. Which? I mean, I can get behind that message, honestly?

My To Be Read pile includes a couple of manga that I'd previously bounced out of, and one book that's so overdue at the St. Paul Public Library that they might make me pay a lost fee if I don't get it back to them soon (so, I should probably do that today)--that one is PTSD Radio by Nakayama Masaaki, which gets compared to Ito Junji...so horror, obviously.:

But, so I previously bounced out of, but am trying again:

• Choujin X (volumes 1 & 2) by Ishida Sui. This is JUMP product, so I dunno. Could just be people-kaiju fighting each other?
• Solo Leveling, by Chugong, which is a Korean manhua which seems to have been based on a studio-produced Korean anime, as the first author credit is to Dubu (Redice Studio). 

This is keeping in mind that I don't always have an issue with "just fighting" manga. I am a Bleach fan, after all. I'm just not sure if I'm in the mood for that. 

Then, I picked up Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, (Vol 1) by Yamada Kanehito/ Abe Tsukasa which will probably read very fast for me since I've seen the first... three(?) episodes at a friend's house and I already know that I like the premise. I also picked up another JUMP product, Blade of the Moon Princess by Endo Tatsuya, in part because my library had the first two volumes<--which is often how I end up with the manga I read.

What about you? Reading anything interesting?

Comments

[profiterole_reads]

I've seen the Blue Period anime and it was lovely! <3

[lydamorehouse]

Honestly, I can only imagine that this story is better IN COLOR rather than black & white. I should check it out. I think I saw it on Crunchyroll, in passing.

[eagle]

After lots of distractions getting in the way of my reading, I finally finished Asimov's The Stars, Like Dust, which was... absolutely dire. So bad. But it was entertaining to see the early 1950s SF vision of a world with interstellar space ships with each hyperjump computed by hand from a giant paper volume of star positions.

I am now reading Terry Pratchett's Nation and somewhat surprisingly not really liking it, mostly because it is so very, very grim. But I may be getting to the part where it starts getting less grim (I'm still very near the beginning), and I want to see where he goes with it.

[lydamorehouse]

OMG, paper volume star positions.... just... wow. I mean, NASA did a lot of by hand math, so, I guess that was a good guess at the time?

Good luck with Pratchett. I have failed to read much of Pratchett, which is clearly some kind of flaw in me and not Sir Terry.

[pepperbar]

To be fair, by the time of Foundation's Edge Asimov had posited an onboard computer doing all that math and an AI-style interface that NASA still only dreams of.

[lydamorehouse]

I had no idea. Cool!

[hippogriff13]

Not sure if this term applied solely to the process described above, but didn't they used to refer to navigating through space as astrogation, and the crew member assigned to this task as an astrogator? That terminology seems to have been dropped quite a while ago--by the seventies?--in favor of just referring to the process as navigation. Although presumably they originally avoided doing that because the Latin root of "navigation" involves boats and/or the ocean specifically...

[eagle]

Yeah, that terminology sounds right to me. There was a term in the book for the paper volume of star positions, but I have apparently already forgotten it. Maybe it was an ephemeris? That seems right from Google at least.

[pepperbar]

I'm now 50 chapters into Undead Unluck by Tozuka Yoshifumi and getting emotional whiplash, in a good way. The anime wasn't really grabbing me as much as I wanted it to (I was watching it for a friend who wanted someone to squee at) and I was having trouble paying attention to it. The manga, on the other hand, has got me by the throat. The somewhat-typical shonen action/comedy has had so many moments of profoundly painful tragedy and a remarkably sweet romance woven through it that I'm having trouble putting it down.

[lydamorehouse]

oooo, that's one hell of a recommendation. I will put it on my list!

[pameladean]

I read Seanan McGuire's Aftermarket Afterlife and then read it again. Then, since Cameron had gotten her Middlegame out of the library, I picked that up. I always find Seanan's work absorbing and riveting, but I am not sure this is for me. It may exceed my capacity for bloodiness and cold-bloodedness. I mean, I suspect that the people committing the latter are going to come to a bad end, but I am not sure I want to spend that much more time in their company.

P.

[lydamorehouse]

Yes, indeed!

I have not successfully been transformed into a Seanan McGuire fan, but so many people whose taste I resepct are, so I may also have to give her another go, although possibly with a different book. Recommendations on where to start?

[pameladean]

I've been puzzling over this -- I don't actually know much about your taste in reading because I don't read manga myself. I know you read a lot of other things too, but I just have a snapshot at the moment.

I did finish Middlegame and thought it good, though I still don't really think the bad guys are all they might be and I don't want to read about them. Most of the book doesn't feature them as prominently as the beginning. But yeah, not that one to start with. It's under Seanan McGuire, but I kept thinking what a Mira Grantish book it was. I think because it would be science fiction if alchemy were actually a science. I haven't fallen for the Mira Grant books as hard as for Seanan's and I haven't revisited them nearly as much, so I don't think I'll suggest starting there.

My favorite McGuire series is the October Daye series. It is relevant to my interests, as it returns to the Tam Lin story, ringing changes on it, a number of times. Also because I am a sucker for first-person narrators with snark; and because it is so intricately set up. There is hardly a bit of it that, however much like background color or characterization or incidental worldbuilding it may seem, does not rear its head at some point and open up entire vistas that many readers probably thought of, but I did not.

The first October Day book is also Seanan's first novel, and the first time that I read it I thought it was a little rough in that first-novel way; I thought something was off about the pacing and I wasn't sure about the narrative voice either. When I reread it about six books into the series, I couldn't find the flaws I recalled. The voice was just Toby's voice, and the structure was quite strange but made sense.

I will say that Seanan levels up as a writer REPEATEDLY in the first five or six books. It is actually astonishing. The second one has some problems that I did find again on rereading, but the new things it does mean that doesn't matter a whole lot. The third one is remarkable in a dozen ways; and so on.

I can natter on more if you like, but this seems like more than enough to begin with.

P.