A classic epic fantasy with some excellent worldbuilding, striking art, and even more excellent cracktasticness, but characters whom I never quite warmed up to ( Read more... )

36. Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country. Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker ( Read more... )

An intricately plotted mystery with sf elements ( Read more... )

This manga is an adaptation of the very long children’s fantasy of the same name by adult mystery author Miyabe. Her dark, psychological mysteries are well worth reading, but if this manga is representative of the novel, she’s yet another adult writer who fell on her face when she tried a children’s book ( Read more... )

Popular schoolgirl Chiko finds a lost cell phone in a subway station, and answers it when it begins to ring. A mysterious voice tells her that someone is going to die in ten minutes in front of the train station, but if she can get there in time, she can save the person. Run ( Read more... )

When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka, was chosen as this year's "Vermont Reads" book, and I was very excited about it-- a book by a woman of color, set neither in Vermont nor in a rural community! But I found the book itself a disappointment. It's slim and the prose is elegant, but I only began engaging with the characters about midway ( Read more... )

This novel, a prequel to book 2 (which was a prequel to book 1) is the origin story of two of my favorite characters from the previous novels, the suave king Shoryu and his grumpy kirin Enki (here called Rokuta ( Read more... )

Though set in the same world as the first Twelve Kingdoms novel and possessing a few of the same characters, this is not a continuation of Yoko’s story, but about events a number of years before that story begins. You don’t have to read the first book first, but if you did, note that the hero of this one is much easier to take than Yoko is for much ( Read more... )

The Snow day by Kamako Sakai ( Read more... )

I'm not officially doing the 50 books challenge, but I thought I'd share a few that I read in the past few months.

( The Color Purple by Alice Walker )