1 post tagged “jan 8-20”

I took a trip to California from Jan 12-16 which not only served to give me more reading time, but it cut into my ability to organize my reading by 'week'. Ah well, this go around, I'm covering 12 days or so which means I've a bit more to get througn in this post so bear with me, please.

First things first: Stats and Titles

3 Books - 1143 pages (one re-read)
City of Falling Angels by John Berendt
Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers
Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly

8 Graphic Novels - 1633 pages (two re-read, two previously read in fan scanlations, one magazine)
Emma 2 by Kaoru Mori
Monster 6 by Naoki Urasawa
Trigun Maximum 8 by Yasuhiro Nightow
Trigun Maximum 9 by Yasuhiro Nightow
Pixie Pop Gokkun Pucho 1 by Ema Toyama
Rin! 1 by Satoru Kannagi and Yukine Honami
Tramps Like Us 10 by Yayoi Ogawa
Shojo Beat v3 i2 Var.

Fanfiction - 21950 words - 44 pages (see comments below)

Scanlations - 54 pages
InuYasha Chapter 488. 'The Answer' scanlated by Maki Maki Scanlations
InuYasha Chapter 489. 'Completed Meidou' scanlated by Maki Maki Scanlations
Bleach Chapter 259. 'Flicker Flames' scanlated byM7

Total, Month/Year to Date:
Books: 5 - 1738 pages
Graphic Novels: 14 - 2619 pages
Fanfiction: 5 - 21950 words / 44 pages
Scanlations: 5 chapters - 94 pages

 

I got a fair amount of reading done on the plane, starting with The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Given how much I enjoyed both the book and subsequent film of Midnight, I was very much looking forward to this. In the end, I think I got most, though not all, of what I was looking for out of this book.

Berendt plays to his strengths, providing another excellent 'portrait of a city' through first person observation, gossip and minor local events which are all hung on the framework provided by a major local event that can be used as a galvanizing 'moment in time'. Venice itself is perfectly charming as a subject for this type of study. It is a place unique the world over that prides itself on its individuality; its cast of characters are the larger than life personalities needed to carry off a book like this.

I think what stops this book from taking a place in my heart equal to Midnight is that the central event, while interesting and tragic, is not nearly as engaging a crime. I mean, for pure visceral impact on people unfamiliar with a location, murder outdoes arson every time. We can't relate to a building we don't know and have never seen burning down, no matter how beloved it was; not in the way we can empathize with a murderer or victim.

I could, undoubtedly, ramble at length about Gaudy Night (and, indeed, had been mentally composing commentary while reading the book) but I think that I will spare you my inept rambles about the structure and purpose of the story. Really, you don't need to see it and my time will be better spent warning you away from Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly.

Under the Black Flag is not necessarily bad, the book is engaging and is not poorly written, it's just not what I really kind of wanted it to be. I was looking for a fairly generalized portrait of the 'Age of Pirates' and to some extent this delivered, but I felt that the book jumped around way too much in time and space (particularly in the early chapters) to present a cohesive view.  I understand that the author had a lot of ground to cover, both in terms of time and space, but he might have been better served focusing on geography and individuals first and using events and themes to tie them together than by focusing on actions, and themes and using events and individuals to tie them together.

He had excellent information and clearly knew his material inside and out and, because of this, managed to provide good portraits of many of the major figures we associate with piracy. Unfortunately, I came away from this book wanting more which is never grounds for a good recommendation.

 

In terms of graphic novels, it should come as no surprise to anybody that I continue to be absolutely delighted with Emma. Book 2 has a bit of a 'darker tone' than the first volume. There are light moments, to be sure, but they're set against a backdrop of loss and the chapter focusing on Emma's childhood is fairly bleak.

Emma and William continue to be delightfully sweet despite the obstacles placed in front of them, and the cast of secondary characters provide wonderful contrast to and commentary on their relationship. In fact, my only real complaint about this book is that I wish CMX had sprung for more expensive paper. With a price point of $9.99, I definitely feel like they're skimping on quality in favor of eking out more profit which is a shame because Emma deserves better.

I'm going to continue on the 'romance' theme for a moment and move on to Rin! which is another painfully sweet story I'd read in scanlations and loved enough to spend money on once it became available here. If you can't tell from the teeny tiny image, Rin! is boy's love manga which uses an archery team as both background setting and plot device.

I'm not a huge fan of the boy's love genre, though I am more than willing to read it if the story is good enough. Rin! is definitely good enough. It isn't necessarily believable, but romances really aren't meant to be. What works in Rin!'s favor is that the characters are well developed and the conflicts they have ring true within the setting. The storytelling doesn't feel heavy-handed or forced and when smut happens, it is mild and makes sense contextually.

I recommend this for anybody who likes shmoopy romances. Well, as long as you can get past the whole boy/boy thing. ;-) Oh! And if you liked this book and you read fanfic, you've definitely got to check out Release which was written for this year's Yuletide.

For more romance, I read the February issue of Shojo Beat (chapters of Nana, Vampire Knight, Crimson Hero, Absolute Boyfriend, and Backstage Prince) along with book 10 of Kimi wa Pet which was inexplicably re-named to Tramps Like Us in the U.S. It's good, but definitely not a 'starting off' point for, well, anybody. The series has been around for a while and if you like it, you're probably already familiar enough with the series that you really don't require my commentary. Then, there was Pixie Pop Gokkun Pucho, about which the less said, the better. I received it for free and I want my money back.  The notes I made on my 'reading spreadsheet' run as follows:

I lost brain cells reading this. Brain cells I could be using for important things like bringing about world peace or deciding whether I want paper or plastic.

Really, I think that sums it all up. It would be better used as kindling than manga. Srsly.

Now, we get into the 'boy stuff'. It had been a while since I'd touched my Trigun so I re-read Trigun Maximum 8 before reading my copy of 9. I'm still a little confused as to exactly what's going on, so I'll probably do a bigger re-read of more volumes sometime soon. (I find that reviewing several volumes worth of plot tends to clarify things for me.) I'm back in the 'meh' category on this title after having been thorougly blown away by it a while back. Nightow is incredibly inconsistent, and both his drawings and storyline can be murky at times, but when he's on, he's on and that makes the slow times all worthwhile.

Someone who is always 'on' and whose books are always worth reading is Naoki Urasawa. The banner across the front of the book calls him 'Japan's Master of Suspense' and they aren't wrong. Book 6 of Monster was fabulous as always. In this volume, we spent less time with Dr. Tenma and more with secondary characters but the story never lacked, it moved along briskly and we learned a lot. It's difficult to comment on this story without either being effusive or giving away details of plot, so I'll just end it by saying that I want book 7 now.

I read more fanfiction this time around, partly because I started going through the Yuletide 'New Year's Resolutions' and partly for the nomination period at the InuYasha Fan Guild  Awards. I probably won't be reccing stories here because I have a fic journal for that, but I did want to comment on how I totalled them. It's easiest to count fanfiction by words because that's how they are recorded by various websites, but with all my other material being counted by page, that presented a bit of a problem. I've decided that in order to count by pages, I'm going to go with 500 words/page as a standard. I came by that figure because a standard 'manuscript page' is 250 words, but is double spaced. Since nobody reads stuff double spaced any more, I simply doubled that number for a more practical count, one that I think works reasonably well as an arbitrary designator.

At any rate, that should be all for now. See you in another week or two!