Readings
Far more shoujo manga than I am comfortable admitting. Enough to push my count well beyond 50, at least.
42. David Small. Stitches. graphic novel. Couldn't help comparing my reactions to this to those I had reading Persepolis. Liked the art style more; story felt more accessible and relatable for me personally.
41. Tish Cohen. Inside Out Girl. I'm not sure why I bother reading these heartwarming tales of family acceptance and love. I think I'm expecting to fall into the target demographic someday. Today is not that day.
40. Persepolis. graphic novel, rec. I suspect my timing was off for the reading of this. Throughout, I had very little thought about it aside from "War sucks," "Man, these drawings are ugly," "Shit, all this about a boy? Pull yourself together, girl," and "...What, that's IT?" Maybe at another time I would've been more intelligent about it, but... yeah, probably not.
39. Coffee Prince. Novel the Kdrama was based on, I guess? Interesting to read for comparison. The drama's better, even if it drags things out 10x more.
38. Minami Maki. Special A. scanlations. Cute enough.
37. Lee Yun Hee and Kara Lim. Angel Diary. scanlations. Actually totally enjoyed this. Has a bit of a Saiyuki feel to it with the demons and the ensemble cast and their banter--but with some girls sprinkled in for variety! So, yeah. Would read more of, and again!
36. Suzanne Collins. Catching Fire. YES SO MUCH YES. Need more yes.
35. Furumiya Kazuko. Bloody Kiss. manga + scanlations. Standard shoujo vampire fantasy. Cute? Quick read.
34. Andy Raskin. The Ramen King and I. nf, random find @ Borders. Probably the closest to self help I am every likely to read. Also, probably the most enjoyable, even with lots of "surprise! taking it seriously!" sprinkled amongst the ludicrous.
33. Suzanne Collins. The Hunger Games. YES.
32. Yoshino Aki. Shuukatsu! Kimi ni Naitei. scanlations. Okay, but this one was so adorable and fun and timely, since it's about a girl searching for a job. Ahh, so adorable.
31. Souryo Fuyumi. Mars. scanlations. Why do I read this crap?
30. Philip Roth. Goodbye, Columbus. f, rec. Mmmmeh.
29. Max Berry. Jennifer Government. f. It was good.
28. Alain de Botton. Kiss & Tell. f, rec. Really interesting, but made me wish I were reading his nonfiction rather than a novel.
27. Hiura Satoru. Hotaru no Hikari. scanlations. Read after watching the (PERFECT) drama, a rec.
26. William Pene du Bois. The 21 Balloons. f, rec. A quick read. Quick mostly because it really failed to entertain me much.
25. Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking-glass. f. Sometimes I feel a serious need to fall through a rabbit hole.
24. Lucy Maud Montgomery. The Blue Castle. f. SO PERFECT.
23. Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Rashomon and 17 Other Stories. ss. Sorry I read this over the course of several months, as I know I forgot some of the details I would've preferred to linger over.
22. Simon Garfield. Mauve. nf. Ridiculously fond of this. A little ploddy, a little repetitive over certain themes, but largely amazing.
21. Karen Rizzo. Things To Bring, S#!t To Do...and other inventories of anxieties. I have a thing for books about lists. So far, they tend to fall on the side of disappointing me. But this came closer to satisfying than Hornby's reading lists last year.
20. Yu Aida. Gunslinger Girl. scanlations. So strange and outside my normal reading tastes, but something keeps drawing me back.
19. Hatori Bisco. Ouran High School Host Club. scanlations. Because the anime is saved to my external hd and I don't want to hook it up but I miss Ouraaaaaan. Interesting differences between reading and watching. Think I like the anime better, so far.
18. Ashihara Hinako. Sand Chronicles. scanlations. I'm just in it for Fuji-kun.
17. Miho Obana. Kodocha. scanlations. Adorable, frenzied fun but surprisingly serious and touching, and grown up for something at times so very immature. Really want to finish the anime now.
16. Tachibana Higuchi. Gakuen Alice. scanlations. Gah, cute. Kinda draggy places but adorable characterization and dynamics and mysteries and intrigue make up for it.
15. Moyamu Fujino. (Hakobune Hakusho.) Animal Academy. vol. 1 manga. Pretty dang cute. Reminds me of Gakuen Alice a LOT. Would totally continue reading it if I could find scanlations somewhere.
14. SeungHee Han & JinSeok Jeon. One Thousand and One Nights. manga. Um. No. Possibly because I started on volume 7. Be that as it may, a polite but firm no is still in order.
13. Christopher Moore. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. f. So very hilarious I didn't even mind that he obviously thought himself incredibly clever for it all.
12. Joanne Harris. The Girl with no Shadow. f. Sequel to Chocolat, which I never read. Quite enjoyed this, found it pretty gripping, really.
11. David Lehman, Charles Wright, eds. The Best American Poetry, 2008. Favorite bits: from Tom Andrews "Evening Song": "...There are times/when the sound the world makes is a little word./Something like help, or yes..."; from John Ashbery "Pavane pour Helen Twelvetrees": "And so he said not to go,/is standing stuttering there/fluffier than a dream in the park setting/where we were accustomed to dwell."; from Susan Mitchell "Ritual": "as one who the more she looked saw less/what little there was she messed into more mess"; the entirety of Ron Padgett "Method, or Kenneth Koch" and Lynn Xu "[Language exists because]", neither of which seem to be available online anywhere, sadly.
10. Erik Spiekermann & E. M. Ginger. Stop Stealing Sheep and Find Out How Type Works. nf. I read this to understand the title. It was not worth the effort. (And it was an effort. Teeny tiny for the main text, and every page had a sidebar full of additional information in even teenier tinier (red!) text. Ugh, it made my eyes feel old.)
9. Evelyn Waugh. The Loved One. f. So that's Waugh. Okay. I like morbid things. This was morbid. But, um. Eh.
8. Joann Sfar and Emmanuel Guibert. The Professor's Daughter. gn. Brief, kinda odd, but very charming and with very pretty artwork. And originally French, as I'm given to understand! I don't think I've encountered a French graphic novel, before!
7. Susanna Clark. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. f. Beastly long. Worth it? Probably yeah. Pretty endearing, in the end.
6. Watchmen. gn. I am apparently lacking in some distinct cool gene. This prevents me from rallying behind this as much as I'd been led to believe I would and should. Besides being a shade more grotesque than I generally prefer, it kinda boiled down to a murder-mystery, with a slap dash of sci-fi and comic conventions for the nerds. And I don't like murder mysteries much, really. And the sciencey talk came out as *preachy*. (How does one make science sound preachy? I'm not quite sure. But here, somehow, it is thoroughly managed.) Overall I give it a big fat "meh."
5. Nancy Baxter. Norma Ever After. So very meh. But I like the way she wrote the main character's dialog.
4. Greg Bear. Darwin's Radio. f. Hmmeh. Kinda interesting premise, but omg, killed it with so much boring.
3. Audrey Niffenegger. The Time Traveler's Wife. f, rec. !!! heartbreaking but !!!
2. Stephen Chbosky. The Perks of Being a Wallflower. f. I feel like this like I feel about Nick Hornby: I'm just missing something that keeps it from clicking into place and being epic and moving.
1. Laurien Blair. Between the Covers. f, rec. hahahahha
The favorites:
The Professor's Daughter
The Blue Castle
Shuukatsu!