Reading Wednesday-on-Thursday

[laceblade]

• What are you currently reading?
Constantine's Sword by James Campbell, - Still chipping at this. Campbell's tendency to talk about his personal life (including really creepy fixation on his mom?!?!?) is aggravating & frequent.

The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith/aka JK Rowling. I snagged this from the library & it's due back next week because I think they all have 14-day limits due to so many people checking them out.
The chapters are short & manageable. As with The Casual Vacancy, I actually just LIKE Rowling's prose, & this one seems a little less doom/doom/doom-focused than TCV.


• What did you recently finish reading?
Soul Eater, volumes 6-9 - As I mentioned last time I blogged about this series...I think I've decided I'm only in this for the art style. The plot does absolutely nothing for me, & Maka is the only character who feels like actual person.
Once I finish with the series I'm on right now (Soul Eater, Cross Game, Basara), I'm going to need to find some manga I really love (maybe some of the ones I own & haven't read yet, sob). Of the ones I'm reading right now, I only have a lot of love for Basara. idk if it's me having a rough time or manga. It seems like a lot of manga publishers in the US keep rereleasing older stuff in larger omnibus formats. Have we exhausted all the good stuff from Japan?!
I doubt it, I guess. Many manga companies have gone under, & others are struggling. Rather than gamble on new shit, they'd prefer to release things they know will sell well -_-
AH WELL. I know I haven't read every good series ever. I'm looking forward to wrapping these series up (I have a thing about completion) so I can move on to other things, more interesting characters, etc. (again, Basara excepted)

Pantomime by Laura Lam, read for beer_marmalade. This is the first book I've read about an intersex person. The protag, Micah, is complex and really fun to read about. The prose is not great, & the dialogue is often awful. I liked the way the story was told: present-as-Micah, past-as-Iphigenia. I might be interested enough to pick up the sequel, whenever it comes out.
I really wish I'd known this WASN'T stand-alone when I picked it up, as it made for a really unsatisfying ending.

Saga, #13 - This finally came back from hiatus! I am behind on all my other comic series, but I devoured this immediately after purchasing it. As before, I just love everything about this series. The art, the lettering, the story, the characters, the writing, just - GAH, SO GOOD.


• What do you think you’ll read next?
I'll be focusing on The Cuckoo's Calling, as I hope to read all of it before it's due back at the library.

Comments

[meganbmoore]

shoujo manga: Skip-Beat? Kaze Hikaru? Angel Diary? Wallflower? Kimi ni Todoke? I can't recall if you like ARina Tanemura, but some of her stuff is like Clamp went supershoujo.

[laceblade]

I haven't read most of these, although I think I tried one volume (maybe more?!) of Wallflower & at least 7 or so of Kimi ni Todoke. I SHOULD RETURN!!

[chibichan]

It must be a problem for American manga publishing companies, because in shops in the UK I always see the same old manga being released in omnibuses (Card Captor Sakura, X, Inuyasha, Fushigi Yuugi, etc.), but when I go back to Italy I find a ton of new manga being released each month. Italian manga publishing companies are doing a very good job at keeping up with Japanese releases and they also publish quite a lot of one-shot manga, which I never see in the UK. So yeah, it seems to me that American companies are struggling a bit and they're trying to sell old manga which is generally popular instead of concentrating on any new releases (except for the stuff that is on-going, like Naruto and One Piece). :/

I'll have to look into The Cuckoo's Calling, I'm quite curious about it!