Some mostly positive reviews
Dec. 24th, 2011 10:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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50books_pocI stopped counting books when I realised it was making reading feel like a chore. While I've read a lot of manga I realised I'd never read any novels by Japanese people, so I decided to make a special effort to do so.
Under the cut:
Meanwhile by Jason Shiga
Aya by Margauerite Aboue
The Manga Guide to Databases by Mana Takahashi
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa
Twelve Kingdoms: Shadow of the Moon by Fuyumi Ono
Harboiled and Hard Luck by Banana Yoshimoto
Meanwhile by Jason Shiga: a funny and clever choose your own adventure scifi comic. I got confused a bunch of times and chose the wrong page, in the end I read it cover to cover to catch all the pages I'd missed and felt like I'd missed part of the experience, but I still enjoyed it. A black and white version is available online, but there's something very satisfying about flipping the pages yourself, plus the art is prettier in the book.
Aya by Margauerite Abouet: A graphic novel about a young woman and her friends on the Ivory Coast. A little slice of life, I liked the characters and enjoyed seeing an insider's view of a country I know very little about, but it felt a little like Aya was being set up as better than her friends for being more interested in being upwardly mobile through academia. Maybe that's my own upward-mobility-through-academia guilt talking though.
The Manga Guide to Databases by Mana Takahashi: For anyone who has wanted the fundamentals of Databases and SQL explained to them in the form of a cute manga about a princess and a fairy. No, really, it's adorable. It's not the best textbook ever, I did learn some stuff but a lot of the explanations were very shallow, I think it would work best as introduction in conjunction with a more dense text with lots of in-depth definitions. And the plot is pretty light, I can't see it appealing to anyone who isn't genuinely interested in databases (which I am, having used them at my old job with no theoretical training beyond my second year Computer Science data structures course) But I was the perfect audience, and I enjoyed it :)
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa: A very male gaze-y, dryly humourous light scifi/fantasy novel. Once it got going and stopped focussing quite so much on which of his classmates the main character thought was the hottest it was fairly enjoyable. It stops at the same place as the first season of the anime but has less plot, since the anime added in lots of extra hijinks which I assume come from the later novels.
Twelve Kingdoms: Shadow of the Moon by Fuyumi Ono: (I reviewed the anime here) Roughly the same story as the first arc of the anime, but without the extra characters of her schoolmates and only follows Yoko's POV. Otherwise very similar in broad strokes, but definitely different in ways I can't quite put my finger on. Anyway, I really liked it. Yoko's growth from passively trying to get everyone to like her to gaining backbone and determination is very compelling.
Harboiled and Hard Luck by Banana Yoshimoto: Two unrelated stories (novelettes?), both with an air of melancholy lightened by quiet optimism. In the first a woman has a strange encounter while visiting a small town on holiday, in the second a woman deals with her sister having a fatal aneurism. The prose is sparse and the tone laid back but they're well written and I enjoyed them. I'm glad they were short, for longer stories I find I need something like the typical emotionally cathartic 3 act structure or I run out of steam. Both are about women and the protagonist of the first is bisexual, but they didn't feel like they were trying to Make A Statement about gender or sexuality.
Tags: japanese, chinese-american, ivory coast, science fiction, graphic novel, science/medicine, time travel, non-fiction
Under the cut:
Meanwhile by Jason Shiga
Aya by Margauerite Aboue
The Manga Guide to Databases by Mana Takahashi
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa
Twelve Kingdoms: Shadow of the Moon by Fuyumi Ono
Harboiled and Hard Luck by Banana Yoshimoto
Meanwhile by Jason Shiga: a funny and clever choose your own adventure scifi comic. I got confused a bunch of times and chose the wrong page, in the end I read it cover to cover to catch all the pages I'd missed and felt like I'd missed part of the experience, but I still enjoyed it. A black and white version is available online, but there's something very satisfying about flipping the pages yourself, plus the art is prettier in the book.
Aya by Margauerite Abouet: A graphic novel about a young woman and her friends on the Ivory Coast. A little slice of life, I liked the characters and enjoyed seeing an insider's view of a country I know very little about, but it felt a little like Aya was being set up as better than her friends for being more interested in being upwardly mobile through academia. Maybe that's my own upward-mobility-through-academia guilt talking though.
The Manga Guide to Databases by Mana Takahashi: For anyone who has wanted the fundamentals of Databases and SQL explained to them in the form of a cute manga about a princess and a fairy. No, really, it's adorable. It's not the best textbook ever, I did learn some stuff but a lot of the explanations were very shallow, I think it would work best as introduction in conjunction with a more dense text with lots of in-depth definitions. And the plot is pretty light, I can't see it appealing to anyone who isn't genuinely interested in databases (which I am, having used them at my old job with no theoretical training beyond my second year Computer Science data structures course) But I was the perfect audience, and I enjoyed it :)
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa: A very male gaze-y, dryly humourous light scifi/fantasy novel. Once it got going and stopped focussing quite so much on which of his classmates the main character thought was the hottest it was fairly enjoyable. It stops at the same place as the first season of the anime but has less plot, since the anime added in lots of extra hijinks which I assume come from the later novels.
Twelve Kingdoms: Shadow of the Moon by Fuyumi Ono: (I reviewed the anime here) Roughly the same story as the first arc of the anime, but without the extra characters of her schoolmates and only follows Yoko's POV. Otherwise very similar in broad strokes, but definitely different in ways I can't quite put my finger on. Anyway, I really liked it. Yoko's growth from passively trying to get everyone to like her to gaining backbone and determination is very compelling.
Harboiled and Hard Luck by Banana Yoshimoto: Two unrelated stories (novelettes?), both with an air of melancholy lightened by quiet optimism. In the first a woman has a strange encounter while visiting a small town on holiday, in the second a woman deals with her sister having a fatal aneurism. The prose is sparse and the tone laid back but they're well written and I enjoyed them. I'm glad they were short, for longer stories I find I need something like the typical emotionally cathartic 3 act structure or I run out of steam. Both are about women and the protagonist of the first is bisexual, but they didn't feel like they were trying to Make A Statement about gender or sexuality.
Tags: japanese, chinese-american, ivory coast, science fiction, graphic novel, science/medicine, time travel, non-fiction
