Okay, I've kind of been sucked in to the post-Yuletide madness as you will no doubt see when I post my year end totals and the fanfiction reading spikes. To be honest, as much as I love it, I think I need a break from the fic and since the secure server to my office is down...I'm going to get caught up on my reading posts.
Lucky you!
Here are my totals for October:
3 Books - 790 pages (2 new)
Thunderstruck by Erik Larson
Aphrodite by Masaki Yamada
The Natural by Bernard Malamud
8 Graphic Novels - 1524 pages (2 new)
Monster 10 by Naoki Urasawa
Monster 11 by Naoki Urasawa
Emma 5 by Kaoru Mori
Tramps Like Us 2 by Yayoi Ogawa
Tramps Like Us 9 by Yayoi Ogawa
Tramps Like Us 10 by Yayoi Ogawa
Tramps Like Us 11 by Yayoi Ogawa
Tramps Like Us 12 by Yayoi Ogawa
Fanfiction - None
Scanlations - 75 pages (none previously read)
Bleach Chapter 293. Urge for Unite by Kubo Tite/M7
Bleach Chapter 294. If You Call Me Beast, Kill You Like Tempest by Kubo Tite/M7
Bleach Chapter 295. The Last Mission by Kubo Tite/M7
Bleach Chapter 296. Changed Again and Again by Kubo Tite/M7
Total, Year to date:
Books: 43 - 14804 pages
Graphic Novels: 120 - 23381 pages
Fanfiction: 75 - 137326 words/ 275 pages
Scanlations: 9 volumes, 91 chapters - 3565 pages
Thunderstruck was a book I picked up when it first came out, based on the strength of The Devil in the White City. Thunderstruck is told in a similar manner, by interweaving the story of a murder case and a technological innovation that is inextricably tied to the events. In this case, it was the stories of Dr. Crippen (so famously caught pursued via wireless) and Guglielmo Marconi. The pairing of the two made perfect sense...until I found myself wanting to skip past the Marconi bits to get back to Dr. Crippen.
In the end, I found the book to be uneven. The two stories did not have similar appeal for me, and further, I found myself more or less trying to process events as happening 'side by side' when, often, the wireless telegraphy drama had happened years before much of the action on the Crippen side of things. I enjoyed both stories to some degree, and did enjoy the book as a whole, but am left wondering if I might not have been better served by simply buying a book about the Crippen case*.
Aphrodite was a book that I went out of my way to acquire on the strength of the Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence tie-in novel, After the Long Goodbye. It is, as far as I can tell, the only other book by that author that has been translated in to English and I had high hopes after the quality of After the Long Goodbye which has to be one of the best post-cyberpunk books out there**.
I found myself incredibly disappointed in the story. I wish I could say that it was the fault of a poor translation but I think it may be more that the concepts do not translate well for a Western audience. Or else it's just me, that's also possible.
Aphrodite is the story of a Yuichi, a young man who is drifting through life until he finds his spiritual home on a man-made island named, oddly enough, Aphrodite. The book follows him through different phases in his life, both on and off the island until we reach the final crisis for Aphrodite and the role Yuichi plays in it.
The book never really 'grabbed' me. I felt too removed from Yuichi who, in turn, felt too removed from the world, to really become involved in the story. There was an airy quality about the prose that kept me, as a reader, at arms length. The story itself was interesting, if a bit depressing in the end, but it felt like it had been trying to teach me something and I'm pretty sure it didn't succeed. I honestly wish I could recommend this book, but I can't in good conscience.
The final book I read in October was Bernard Malamud's The Natural. I had been watching the movie adaptation on television and grabbed my copy of the book off the shelf as I ran up to Maryland to visit my brother in the hospital. The story is excellent, if somewhat darker than Barry Levinson's depiction of it in film. In many ways, I prefer this darker, more edged tale of loss, pain and morality to the triumph of spirit we are given on the silver screen. It has certainly earned its reputation as a modern classic.
On the manga side of things, this was when I caught up on Monster volumes 10 and 11 as well as Emma volume 5. I have extensively discussed how much I love these series in the past so I won't bore the world with that again. Also, I seem to have gone through a 'romance' phase immediately after my brother got out of the hospital***. That would account for re-reading all the volumes I own of Tramps Like Us. Which, again, is not anything I need to go into great depth about as I've discussed it before.
And that brings us to a close for October...look forward to my November post sometime this weekend and the December/Year-end Roundup on January 1!
*Also, how cool was it that someone actually took the time to do DNA testing on the preserved remains at Scotland Yard? I have to admit, Dr. Crippen's guilt didn't really shine through for me (despite his wife being completely awful) and I like to think the results support a theory of Belle running off and leaving him.
**Seriously, even if you're not in to Ghost in the Shell, if you like cyberpunk,or post-cyberpunk read this book. You don't need the series to understand it and it kicks that much ass.
***Reading for comfort? Yeah, not terribly surprising.
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