laceblade

• What are you currently reading?

Kitty Goes to Washington - WOW BOOK OF MY ID?! It's a continuation after the first Kitty book, obvs, EXCEPT NOW WITH CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS AND NIH RESEARCH AHAHAHA!!!! I cackle with glee when I read this :*)


• What did you recently finish reading?

Very! Very! Sweet, volume 1 - I bought volumes 5-8 of this manhwa back when Borders was going out of business, & they’ve sat on my shelf ever since. UNTIL NOW, when I finally figured out how to obtain books through my library’s outerlibrary loan system. I really, really enjoyed the first volume of this series, & I hope it only gets better.
Tsuyoshi is a spoiled brat from a Japanese family who’s always gotten whatever he wants. In volume one, his grandfather reveals that their rich/powerful family actually comes from a Korean ancestor who moved to Japan hundreds of years ago.
Tsuyoshi is unimpressed with this - reflecting on whether pouring a bottle of Coke into a swimming pool makes the liquid no matter water? - but his insolence gets his grandfather to spend the rest of his school years in Korea, where he’d like Tsuyoshi to meet a stubborn & badass Korean woman to be his wife.
Enter Be-Ri, the awesome girl who lives next door to Tsuyoshi’s newly built house.
Be-Ri likes to collect junk (aka: people’s garbage) & make things like cat trees or whatever else she can with it. I LOVE BE-RI AND HER GIVE-NO-FUCKS-ATTITUDE AND ALSO HER ENTIRE WARDROBE!!
Be-Ri and Tsuyoshi loathe one another upon first sight, so they clearly must be the series’ OTP!
Another wrench in this love story is that Be-Ri’s in love with the high school tenant who lives with Be-Ri & her family…& is also dating Be-Ri’s sister ;_____;
POOR BE-RI, ILU AND HOW AWESOME YOU ARE! So yeah, I'm excited to read more, even though 2-4 are going to take forever to arrive via outerlibrary loan system -_-

Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught Between Two Cultures - This was written by Kyoko Mori. idk if other people read Shizuko’s Daughter multiple times in adolescence, but I did. I’m not sure if it’s because her YA is ubiquitous in the US, or because she taught creative writing at St. Norbert’s, which is basically in Green Bay (where I grew up).
I loved this collection of essays, which makes up the memoir. For those who don’t know her story, Mori’s mother committed suicide when Mori was 12 years old. Her dad was abusive also, so there are several trigger warnings that come with this book :/
Her writing about the differences between US Midwestern & Japanese cultures is very well-done & sometimes amusing. I should probably note that as someone who relocated to the US because she never really felt like she belonged in Japan, or could ever express herself there, Mori holds pretty negative views of Japanese culture.
She lived/grew up there, so it’s not like I can fault her perceptions, although some things seem like they could happen in any culture (choosing to hide an illness from your family members) or are actually just wrong (referring to all manga as violent pornography).
Mori’s prose makes it worth it, though. I’d kind of like to reread Shizuko’s Daughter now since it’s been a while, and track down some of her other things, too. Looking back, I know she’s always been one of my favorite writers.

some songs that aren’t about love by jan - This was a Chihayafuru fic that I think littlebutfierce linked me to? Short & great - perfect snapshots of the characters, & I think it really captures the mood of the show, as well.

Revival #1 - Read this because were_duck kept talking it up. Zombie series that’s taking place in/around Wausau, WI. If not for the local bits, I might not be as interested, but for now I am. I’ve gotten the first trade from the library since reading issue 1, but haven’t read it yet.

Trillium #2 & 3 - Just as good as the first issue, not much else to say.

Saga #14 - This was a great issue. The scene with Lying Cat & Sophie was touching. I’m always excited for more Saga!

Dawn of the Arcana, volumes 4-8 - I’m getting a little bored with this series, but not enough to stop reading? The lack of detailed backgrounds feels lazy to me, and the political intrigue that first attracted me to the book forever seems like a carrot dangled in front of me instead of something I actually get to see :/ I also really don’t care for any of the characters, so that’s a pretty big :(

Kitty and the Midnight Hour - I ended up liking this a fair amount?! Or at least enough to continue with it. Kitty is a bamf, & I’m glad she’s able to upset some of the power structures in her life. Excited to see where things go.

Of Love and Other Demons - This was something I’d started a long time ago & finally finished by plowing through the second half. I love Marquez’s prose, but the premise here (priest commissioned to exorcise a 12-year-old girl with(out) rabies but falls in love with her instead) was pretty uncomfortable. I need to read Love in the Time of Cholera & also 100 Years of Solitude.

Alphonse Mucha - collection or art by Mucha. Last year at the end of the Laura Ingalls Wilder road trip I took with my mom & my sister, we stopped at the Czech Museum in Iowa. 30 minutes before closing, we only had time for their main exhibit, which was all Mucha. LOVE. I'm 50% Czech & am woefully uninformed about this part of my cultural history. I'd love to read more about the politics & history of Czechoslovakia (which I know is now two countries, but that's how it's always been referred to in my family).


• What do you think you’ll read next?
I have now given up predicting! Likely lots of training materials/etc. as I start a new job on Monday!! Maybe something for comfort since starting new jobs always = scary.

Traveling Daru - This was a really cute ~10-minute short.
Daru is a toy who gets left behind by his child-owner in an airport b/c the kid's mom won't stop to pick him up while rushing to make their plane.
SO, Daru travels the world trying to find her. It's basically an excuse for animating lots of gorgeous backgrounds. Worth the 10 minutes, anyway.


Free! - This is a new/currently airing series that everyone & their mom is talking about.
Basically this is a show about boys who love swimming. Similar to Chihayafuru, the main characters formed a bond around this sport when they were young, & are now reunited in high school.
This is the same studio that made K-ON!, etc.
They had originally released some artwork about the characters without intending to do a series. Fans on Tumblr/etc. exploded with fanart & backstories, & because people liked it so much, they made a show.
The dudes have rippling muscles, etc. It is a fanservice show - that's the whole point.
Reading the mantearsflowingfree Tumblr is kind of hilarious. They mock men on the Internet who are complaining that this series is not explicitly aimed toward them, but rather toward female viewers.

Anyway, I genuinely like the show!
Unlike K-ON!, members of the opposite sex exist & have speaking roles. (In K-ON!, I think the only ones around are Mugi's butler & the guitar shop guy - two men in service roles who exist to serve the protags :D)


Servant x Service - This is a new/currently airing series about civil servants in Hokkaido. As I am ALSO a government employee & traveled most extensively in Hokkaido on both trips to Japan, I was really intrigued by this!
Unfortunately, it's sort of a running gag type show where every character is super annoying. There are also a few fanservicey jokes made about the large-busted protagonist.
I wouldn't recommend this to people, although I'll be watching for at least a little while to see if it gets any better.


Chihayafuru 2 - Feels just like season 1. I like the new boy-crazy girl who joins the karuta club just b/c she likes Taichi. She reminds me of Hachiko from NANA.
Don't really care about the new dude.
I ship Kana/Hanano for totes.
There was a quote in episode 4 or so explaining the series' title. Obviously "Chihaya" is the name of the protagonist, but "Chihayafuru" is also the beginning of one of the karuta cards.
lavendersleeves wrote this quote down here:

"Chihayafuru" is a poetic phrase that makes about as much sense in Japanese as it does in English. The translators translated this meaning as "impassionate," which seems apt in that "Impassionate" means either "full of passion" or "without passion." But in the last episode, a character gives a lovely interpretation of the word that I found somewhat inspiring:

"Chihayafuru" is like a perfectly spinning top, turning so fast and perfectly that it appears not to be moving at all. But it deflects everything that tries to touch it without losing balance, without losing calm.
The word is used to describe gods, not humans--it is probably a state that humans cannot achieve. It seems to me to be a state of such focus that one can be lightning-alert and yet perfectly calm. An offensive defense. Or maybe such inner peace that nothing can upset it.

SUPER INSPIRING. Even though "it is probably a state that humans cannot achieve," it seems like something to strive for, every day.


Little Witch Academia - This was a 25-minute short by a new studio. It's a school for witches!
It's hard to summarize the plot without giving shit away (only 25 min!), but this style is basically my mental image of Harry Potter. It was gr9, and they've apparently funded a second installment via Kickstarter. I'll be watching it!
The animation studio has uploaded this to YouTube, so you can watch it here.