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Some things I've been reading lately:
Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde - Finally got to this -- I know, I know, but rather than play the blame game, let's just move on. Specifically, I read the original 1890 magazine version, before Wilde toned down the "immorality" and padded out the backstory. Initially, it appears to be a homoerotic love triangle wrapped in gobs of enormously entertaining piffle (I hadn't known it was possible to talk in paragraphs of epigrams -- I must reread to figure out how Wilde pulled that off), but then genre-shifts to something that tries to be a morality play but ends up a gothic melodrama. Unfortunately, those parts without Lord Henry on stage, which is most of the moral-playing, has very little piffle, forcing the story to succeed on its own slight merits. Recommended for anyone who hasn't read it, with the understanding that it's okay to stop at the time-skip.
Much like many manga, if it comes to that. And speaking of manga:
Last Game, Shinobu Amano - Recommended for fans of Akagami Shirayuki-hime, Kimi ni Todoke, and Special A, as unlikely a combination as that may be. This is technically mainline shoujo (it runs in LaLa) and certainly is playing many shoujo tropes, but the main story takes place while the characters are in university. Thus showing audience expectations are not as set in stone in Japan as in the States.* The main characters are a poor but hardworking girl of limited emotional affect and a privileged rich boy who can't get over how she always beats him academically. After several years of one-sided rivalry, in high school he eventually hits on his plan of revenge: make her fall in love with him, and then dump her.
Because this trick always works.
It isn't until they're in university that he realizes his obsession with her includes no small amount of attraction to her -- and she in turn, after deciding to put new effort into making a friend (or even two), starts showing signs of being not indifferent to him. Not that she quite understands what's going on herself, being a little inexperienced at this whole socializing thing. And at emotions.
The art and characterization is very similar to Sorata Akizuki's, though the latter is not as delicate with Amano, and the sense of humor similar to Karahu Shiina's. The tropes, they are legion, both played with and played straight. I'm having a lot of fun with this one. Unlicensed, scans available through chapter 9 (which should be early volume 3 when the tankobon comes out). And speaking of fun:
The Ingoldsby Legends, "Thomas Ingoldsby" aka Richard Harris Barham - You can find references to this in novels throughout the second half of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th, but after that it seems to have become largely forgotten** except for a single anthology piece, "The Jackdaw of Rheims." Which is a shame, as Barham is a dab hand at comic narrative verse -- he knows how to keep the pace up and not get bogged down in clever rhymes and cleverer details. He's also got an deft hand at adapting stories, especially medieval tales, to his time.
Before recommending it, I should probably mention that his misogyny is about par for the 1840s, and his retelling of The Merchant of Venice is vicious in its antisemitism. I'd suggest skipping that one, but here for once he's adapting a well-known story, thus giving one a gauge to how much he changes from his sources, so I'll weaken that to you may want to. Otherwise, there's good reasons the Legends were read and loved by at least three generations.
* Witness Yotsuba&!, a comedy about parenting a five-year-old girl that's aimed at teenage boys.
** A half-exception: someone reads it in Half Magic, but since that's set in the 1920s, it's a period-appropriate detail.
---L.
Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde - Finally got to this -- I know, I know, but rather than play the blame game, let's just move on. Specifically, I read the original 1890 magazine version, before Wilde toned down the "immorality" and padded out the backstory. Initially, it appears to be a homoerotic love triangle wrapped in gobs of enormously entertaining piffle (I hadn't known it was possible to talk in paragraphs of epigrams -- I must reread to figure out how Wilde pulled that off), but then genre-shifts to something that tries to be a morality play but ends up a gothic melodrama. Unfortunately, those parts without Lord Henry on stage, which is most of the moral-playing, has very little piffle, forcing the story to succeed on its own slight merits. Recommended for anyone who hasn't read it, with the understanding that it's okay to stop at the time-skip.
Much like many manga, if it comes to that. And speaking of manga:
Last Game, Shinobu Amano - Recommended for fans of Akagami Shirayuki-hime, Kimi ni Todoke, and Special A, as unlikely a combination as that may be. This is technically mainline shoujo (it runs in LaLa) and certainly is playing many shoujo tropes, but the main story takes place while the characters are in university. Thus showing audience expectations are not as set in stone in Japan as in the States.* The main characters are a poor but hardworking girl of limited emotional affect and a privileged rich boy who can't get over how she always beats him academically. After several years of one-sided rivalry, in high school he eventually hits on his plan of revenge: make her fall in love with him, and then dump her.
Because this trick always works.
It isn't until they're in university that he realizes his obsession with her includes no small amount of attraction to her -- and she in turn, after deciding to put new effort into making a friend (or even two), starts showing signs of being not indifferent to him. Not that she quite understands what's going on herself, being a little inexperienced at this whole socializing thing. And at emotions.
The art and characterization is very similar to Sorata Akizuki's, though the latter is not as delicate with Amano, and the sense of humor similar to Karahu Shiina's. The tropes, they are legion, both played with and played straight. I'm having a lot of fun with this one. Unlicensed, scans available through chapter 9 (which should be early volume 3 when the tankobon comes out). And speaking of fun:
The Ingoldsby Legends, "Thomas Ingoldsby" aka Richard Harris Barham - You can find references to this in novels throughout the second half of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th, but after that it seems to have become largely forgotten** except for a single anthology piece, "The Jackdaw of Rheims." Which is a shame, as Barham is a dab hand at comic narrative verse -- he knows how to keep the pace up and not get bogged down in clever rhymes and cleverer details. He's also got an deft hand at adapting stories, especially medieval tales, to his time.
Before recommending it, I should probably mention that his misogyny is about par for the 1840s, and his retelling of The Merchant of Venice is vicious in its antisemitism. I'd suggest skipping that one, but here for once he's adapting a well-known story, thus giving one a gauge to how much he changes from his sources, so I'll weaken that to you may want to. Otherwise, there's good reasons the Legends were read and loved by at least three generations.
* Witness Yotsuba&!, a comedy about parenting a five-year-old girl that's aimed at teenage boys.
** A half-exception: someone reads it in Half Magic, but since that's set in the 1920s, it's a period-appropriate detail.
---L.