Latest reading
As usual, I haven't only been watching dramas, but I've been reading as well. I have quite a backlog of stuff to write on, so I might as well get to it.
Most of my reading lately has been rather comics oriented, though there are a few "regular" books as well. (45. - 48.) Wann's Can't Lose You 1-4 is a manhwa that is quite reminiscent of kdramas: a poor girl with a hear of gold is discovered to look just the same as a bitchy rich girl who has been receiving death threats. The poor girl is hired to pose as the rich girl and while doing her job, she falls in love with the rich girl's icy and handsome fiance and he falls in love with her as well. Didn't I say it's sounds just like a drama :).
The fourth volume brings on the craziness with prophecies made at birth and intertwined destinies for all the main characters. This is a short one, only 6 volumes, and I'm interested to see how the story will wrap up. It's ok, but Snow Drop was so much better. Still, any manhwa where I constantly keep picturing the male lead as played by Joo Ji-Hoon can't be bad :).
When I was mainlining on the rest of the volumes of Tomoko Hayakawa's The Wallflower, my manga provider was out of volume 9. I recently got it from Amazon with (50.) Bill Willingham & co.'s Jack of Fables: The (Nearly) Great Escape.
In Wallflower, I loved the storyline where Sunako and Kyohei were trapped in the same room by the landlady in order in order for love to change Sunako into a real lady. Kyohei was sacrificing himself for the cause and I loved how the other three were sending him off like they didn't expect him to come back in one piece. Well, let's face it, Sunako can be extremely scary when she wants :).
Another storyline that made this volume really good and unmissable was the visit to Kyohei's hometown. It had been in decline ever since he left, because there were no longer as many customers, so the merchants decided to kidnap him in order to force him to move back. In the process they get Sunako as well, and, of course, nothing goes quite as planned.
Still, Sunako and Kyohei visit his parents and we're give a glimpse into how horrible his childhood must have been. Everybody has always been all over him because of his extreme good looks and his mother is shown to be a complete basketcase who couldn't take the attention on him and thought his beauty made her appear ugly. So she blamed him :P.
I really like it how this series constantly shows how appearances aren't everything. Quite the opposite. All four bishounen boys have had at least some hard times because of their looks, Kyohei the worst. Sunako, on the other hand, is quite happy to be as she is and claims to have "abandoned femininity". She has no intention of conforming to her aunt's views of beauty and feminity, though I do think she will be forced to tone down her opposition to every feminine thing with the way her relationship with Kyohei is progressing along :).
Jack of Fables is a spin-off from the popular Fables series. The basic premise of the series is that fairy tale characters are real and have set up a colony in our world. They are very strict about keeping the knowledge of their existance a secret. In the main series, Jack (of the giant killer and beanstalk fame) had at one point moved to Hollywood to make movies about his exploits. This, of course, violated fable rules, so he was forced to move on and this is the point where Jack of Fables starts.
I quite liked the book and it's story involving a sort of prison camp for fables. Jack is taken there as well and stages a daring escape plan, just as the title of the book suggests. We meet some familiar characters, but there are a lot of new acquaintances as well, and I suspect we are going to run across at least some of them while following Jack's future exploits.
(51.) Ai Yazawa's Nana continued to be as enjoyable as ever in volume 5. Still, I find Nana K. sometimes quite pathetic in her constant need of having someone to love her and pay attention to her. She simply can't be without a boyfriend and in this volume, even though she knows it's not going to lead anywhere, has a one night stand with Takumi, the member of Ren's band whom she has idolised for quite a time already. I like it that Ren and Nana O. are back together in this volume.
Which reminds me that I need to find the second Nana film sometime, since I liked the first one.
The latests reads have been the two first books in Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic series, (52.) Sandry's Book and (53.) Tris's Book. I quite like her Tortall books, so I was curious to see what this series was like. However, I must say that though these two were ok as fast reads, I didn't enjoy them quite as much as I've enjoyed some of her other books. I will read the series through, it is entertaining enough, but I'm not sure if I'll go on to read the other quartet set in the same world. Maybe if I find them easily through Bookmooch or on a second-hand bookshop, but I will not especially go looking for them.
Most of my reading lately has been rather comics oriented, though there are a few "regular" books as well. (45. - 48.) Wann's Can't Lose You 1-4 is a manhwa that is quite reminiscent of kdramas: a poor girl with a hear of gold is discovered to look just the same as a bitchy rich girl who has been receiving death threats. The poor girl is hired to pose as the rich girl and while doing her job, she falls in love with the rich girl's icy and handsome fiance and he falls in love with her as well. Didn't I say it's sounds just like a drama :).
The fourth volume brings on the craziness with prophecies made at birth and intertwined destinies for all the main characters. This is a short one, only 6 volumes, and I'm interested to see how the story will wrap up. It's ok, but Snow Drop was so much better. Still, any manhwa where I constantly keep picturing the male lead as played by Joo Ji-Hoon can't be bad :).
When I was mainlining on the rest of the volumes of Tomoko Hayakawa's The Wallflower, my manga provider was out of volume 9. I recently got it from Amazon with (50.) Bill Willingham & co.'s Jack of Fables: The (Nearly) Great Escape.
In Wallflower, I loved the storyline where Sunako and Kyohei were trapped in the same room by the landlady in order in order for love to change Sunako into a real lady. Kyohei was sacrificing himself for the cause and I loved how the other three were sending him off like they didn't expect him to come back in one piece. Well, let's face it, Sunako can be extremely scary when she wants :).
Another storyline that made this volume really good and unmissable was the visit to Kyohei's hometown. It had been in decline ever since he left, because there were no longer as many customers, so the merchants decided to kidnap him in order to force him to move back. In the process they get Sunako as well, and, of course, nothing goes quite as planned.
Still, Sunako and Kyohei visit his parents and we're give a glimpse into how horrible his childhood must have been. Everybody has always been all over him because of his extreme good looks and his mother is shown to be a complete basketcase who couldn't take the attention on him and thought his beauty made her appear ugly. So she blamed him :P.
I really like it how this series constantly shows how appearances aren't everything. Quite the opposite. All four bishounen boys have had at least some hard times because of their looks, Kyohei the worst. Sunako, on the other hand, is quite happy to be as she is and claims to have "abandoned femininity". She has no intention of conforming to her aunt's views of beauty and feminity, though I do think she will be forced to tone down her opposition to every feminine thing with the way her relationship with Kyohei is progressing along :).
Jack of Fables is a spin-off from the popular Fables series. The basic premise of the series is that fairy tale characters are real and have set up a colony in our world. They are very strict about keeping the knowledge of their existance a secret. In the main series, Jack (of the giant killer and beanstalk fame) had at one point moved to Hollywood to make movies about his exploits. This, of course, violated fable rules, so he was forced to move on and this is the point where Jack of Fables starts.
I quite liked the book and it's story involving a sort of prison camp for fables. Jack is taken there as well and stages a daring escape plan, just as the title of the book suggests. We meet some familiar characters, but there are a lot of new acquaintances as well, and I suspect we are going to run across at least some of them while following Jack's future exploits.
(51.) Ai Yazawa's Nana continued to be as enjoyable as ever in volume 5. Still, I find Nana K. sometimes quite pathetic in her constant need of having someone to love her and pay attention to her. She simply can't be without a boyfriend and in this volume, even though she knows it's not going to lead anywhere, has a one night stand with Takumi, the member of Ren's band whom she has idolised for quite a time already. I like it that Ren and Nana O. are back together in this volume.
Which reminds me that I need to find the second Nana film sometime, since I liked the first one.
The latests reads have been the two first books in Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic series, (52.) Sandry's Book and (53.) Tris's Book. I quite like her Tortall books, so I was curious to see what this series was like. However, I must say that though these two were ok as fast reads, I didn't enjoy them quite as much as I've enjoyed some of her other books. I will read the series through, it is entertaining enough, but I'm not sure if I'll go on to read the other quartet set in the same world. Maybe if I find them easily through Bookmooch or on a second-hand bookshop, but I will not especially go looking for them.