laceblade: (Default)
laceblade ([personal profile] laceblade) wrote2013-09-05 07:43 am

Reading Wednesday on Thursday

• What are you currently reading?
Ash: The Secret History by Mary Gentle - I got this from work's library! It's the all-in-one tome, so a little too big for me to lug back & forth from work :/ I'm almost halfway through, which I think means I've read most of Carthage Ascendant. I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH?!?!


• What did you recently finish reading?
the numbness or the pain (so intense to feel) by [archiveofourown.org profile] only_because3 - Glee fic set after Finn's upcoming death (which will happen in episode 3, as Cory Monteith died), trying to explain why Quinn wouldn't attend the funeral. (It was revealed that Dianna Agron who plays her won't be in the episode/wasn't asked to be in the episode.) This is the only fic I've read so far incorporating Finn's death, & it's because it was written by an author I trust. Short, pretty good. I miss reading Glee fic, & I should read more.

Gwen Ifill book on race in politics - I ended up liking this quite a bit, although I don't have anything more to say about it than I said last week.

Basara, volumes 22-24 - I'm circling toward the end and it's pretty good?! I think I'll probably be adding this to my list of all-time favorite manga. I just hope that I can find copies of the series eventually, & buy them for myself. I assume they're all out of print -_-
The plot/etc. is dropping off a little bit for me - the intense one-on-one battles that are all happening simultaneously can be a little ugh. BUT the artwork has really stepped up its game these past few volumes. So it's a wash.

Cross Game, volumes 4 & 5 (as released in the US) - This series is picking up a little bit for me. The baseball annoys me less, mostly because those scenes go really fast! And the relationships between the various characters are becoming more interesting, especially Aoba & Kitamura. Still, I feel like this series would be much more interesting to me if Aoba were the protagonist instead of Kitamura. The occasional pantyshots continue to telegraph to me, "This story is not meant for you!"
I love the background art in this series, & also the wordless panels and pages. Scenes change by showing the readers what life in this part of the city is like, by reminding characters of Wakaba, etc. I do really like the way the manga-ka tells the story. You can definitely tell he's been doing it for a long time.


• What do you think you’ll read next?
Not sure! I'm a little stressed out at the moment, so I could see myself turning to something for comfort. But probably mostly things I've still got checked out from the library. I'll also be rereading Saga for [community profile] beer_marmalade.
jesse_the_k: That text in red Futura Bold Condensed (be aware of invisibility)

[personal profile] jesse_the_k 2013-09-05 01:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Many lovely things in the Saga reading experience: an archetype of "their life is really, really harder than mine."
owlectomy: A squashed panda sewing a squashed panda (Default)

[personal profile] owlectomy 2013-09-05 03:32 pm (UTC)(link)
ASH is the weird, enormous, queer, plottwisty, WTF-just-happened book of my heart and it always delights me when other people get into it!
torachan: (Default)

[personal profile] torachan 2013-09-05 04:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Basara is indeed out of print and there are some volumes that are really hard to get ahold of, but they did just announce a digital rerelease, so there's that at least.
meganbmoore: (Default)

[personal profile] meganbmoore 2013-09-06 10:19 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, Basara got a bit "shounen duel"-y towards the end, but wrapped things up well, IIRC. Also, I think you have about 1 or maybe 1 1/2 volumes left of the main plot, and then the rest is short stories about various characters set before, during and after the series.