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Once again Reading Wednesday comes around with me finally having enough to be worth reporting:
Finished:
Cross Game, Mitsuru Adachi -- a reread of one of my favorite manga series, at the rate of a volume or so at bedtime. Favorite even though I don't like baseball, mind you -- it's the character stories, as expressed through the game, that are compelling. One element that strikes me this time through is how Adachi uses different kinds of filler material, including pretty transitional scenery and silly jokes about his own laziness, to control pacing. I am reminded of how a good omniscient narrator knows when to show scenes in detail and when to summarize. I do wish the manga had paid more attention to Aoba’s arc wrt the national women’s baseball team try-outs -- the anime expanded the one-page mention into a couple episodes, which helped make it more clear she’s the co-protagonist.
On hold:
The King's Avatar (全职高手), Butterfly Blue (蝴蝶蓝) -- because with chapter 827 I caught up with the translation. Still works as brainless snorking.
Heaven Awakening Path (天醒之路), Butterfly Blue (蝴蝶蓝) -- which is xuanhuan (Chinese-inflected fantasy) by the author of The King's Avatar -- and while it's not as compulsively snorkable as the video-game book, it still pulled me along chapter-to-chapter. That said, the magic system is more interesting than most of the characters, and the translation is stalled at 70 chapters, with only the barest hints that things will open out soon.
DNF, at least for now:
Classical Chinese Literature v1 ed. by Minford & Lau -- I ran out of library renewals (and, admittedly, got distracted by popular Chinese lit) before I could finish. In the end, I never quite made it out of the Six Dynasties period: this volume has a nicely large lump of material from then -- a period that's often skimped over in general anthologies of Chinese lit.
Ongoing:
Way of Choices, Mao Ni (猫腻) -- returned to this after a short break, and am now up to chapter 292 or so. Still not liking the current arc as much as previous ones, in part because it’s marked off as a definitive arc, but I'm enjoying the amount of peril and sacrifices the author is willing to put the characters through.
And throughout all this, very little poetry, especially after I had to return Minford & Lau. Hrm.
---L.
Subject quote from “The Last Snowfall,” Vienna Teng.
Finished:
Cross Game, Mitsuru Adachi -- a reread of one of my favorite manga series, at the rate of a volume or so at bedtime. Favorite even though I don't like baseball, mind you -- it's the character stories, as expressed through the game, that are compelling. One element that strikes me this time through is how Adachi uses different kinds of filler material, including pretty transitional scenery and silly jokes about his own laziness, to control pacing. I am reminded of how a good omniscient narrator knows when to show scenes in detail and when to summarize. I do wish the manga had paid more attention to Aoba’s arc wrt the national women’s baseball team try-outs -- the anime expanded the one-page mention into a couple episodes, which helped make it more clear she’s the co-protagonist.
On hold:
The King's Avatar (全职高手), Butterfly Blue (蝴蝶蓝) -- because with chapter 827 I caught up with the translation. Still works as brainless snorking.
Heaven Awakening Path (天醒之路), Butterfly Blue (蝴蝶蓝) -- which is xuanhuan (Chinese-inflected fantasy) by the author of The King's Avatar -- and while it's not as compulsively snorkable as the video-game book, it still pulled me along chapter-to-chapter. That said, the magic system is more interesting than most of the characters, and the translation is stalled at 70 chapters, with only the barest hints that things will open out soon.
DNF, at least for now:
Classical Chinese Literature v1 ed. by Minford & Lau -- I ran out of library renewals (and, admittedly, got distracted by popular Chinese lit) before I could finish. In the end, I never quite made it out of the Six Dynasties period: this volume has a nicely large lump of material from then -- a period that's often skimped over in general anthologies of Chinese lit.
Ongoing:
Way of Choices, Mao Ni (猫腻) -- returned to this after a short break, and am now up to chapter 292 or so. Still not liking the current arc as much as previous ones, in part because it’s marked off as a definitive arc, but I'm enjoying the amount of peril and sacrifices the author is willing to put the characters through.
And throughout all this, very little poetry, especially after I had to return Minford & Lau. Hrm.
---L.
Subject quote from “The Last Snowfall,” Vienna Teng.