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larryhammerVacation reading!
What I've recently finished since last post:
Gakusen Toshi Asterisk ("War-school city Asterisk") volumes 1-2 by Yû Miyazaki, another futuristic science-fantasy with irrelevant shounen tropes, here somewhat mitigated by characters who are less stupid about the troping (and less stupid overall) than several others I should be ashamed of knowing. Can't actually recommend it, tho' -- needs more male-male friendships, for one thing.
Mahôka Kôkô no Rettôsei volume 9, the first of a three-part novel (the installments are getting longer, boo) ending with even more of a cliffhanger than previous first-half novels. Good job of stepping up the dangers and the complexity of the world, though. My recommendation for the series still stands.
Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn volumes 1-4 by Harutoshi Fukui. Don't judge me. I'd never seen/read any Gundam before and this seemed as good an entry as any to the franchise -- even if the title provokes a "Srsly?" with a screwed-up face. (Not to mention, it is hard to take seriously a leader of The Resistance who calls himself Full Frontal. Yes, really.) Anyway, this is an original novel series in the main timeline (UC), set a couple years after Char's Counterattack, later recently adapted as some OVAs. There's some features that smell of formula, including the growing angst of a teenage protagonist caught between rival factions who has been unable to carry off any third options, but it is indeed decent old-school hard-SF adventure, with mecha and complex politics. If you like the franchise or in-system SF adventure, I suspect you'll like this.
Eagle-Shooting Hero by Jin Yong, where the title character turns out to be, in the final scene, Genghis Khan in a moment of deliberate moral ambiguity. The nationalism here is stronger than in the four classic novels (or, for that matter, even many Japanese light novels), but it still works as a satisfying adventure yarn. (Just don't think about how an eagle that can land on a woman's arm can also carry her on its back. As in flying her out of otherwise certain death.) Excellent stuff. More pls.
What I'm reading now:
White-Haired Demoness by Liang Yusheng -- and here would be that more pls. This starts in 1615, thirty years before the fall of the Ming Dynasty (the Manchus have started causing trouble in the northeast), with the wuxia parts as the secret history behind certain historical events. The structure of the opening couple chapters, which sequentially introduce then discard a few possible protagonists, is a little odd, but I can see dim outlines of a possible continuity of style from A Dream of Red Mansions. Not bad so far, and the setting is more grounded than in Eagle-shooting Hero, tho' we'll see whether the titular strong woman gets cut down by the author for being strong.
(No actual Red Mansions -- it was too big for my pack.)
On This Same Star, a bilingual edition of tanka from Mariko Kitakubo's 2005 collection WILL selected and translated by Amelia Fielden. I can't yet comment on how good the translations are -- too many Hard KanjiTM (also known as Kanji I Haven't Learned Yet) and me without, at the time, a kanji dictionary -- but so far they are highly evocative and often good English poems. Tasty, tasty stuff.
(I did read some of Poems of Places volume 1, but not much. A surprisingly low-verse vacation.)
Origami Masters: Bugs: How the Bug Wars Changed the Art of Origami, which I've been waiting for for several months. I am slightly disappointed: given the second subtitle, I was expecting a more detailed narrative of the Bug Wars of the 1990s and 2000s, instead of merely a six-page introduction summarizing a few key events as preface to 12 advanced models of insects by seven designers. Given models, I also expected more models from participants of the time, and given the Bug Wars were even more prominent in Japan than North America, more (if maybe not half) Japanese designers, rather than none at all. Deceptive title aside, the models look Really Cool and I greatly appreciate the designer's comments about paper (there's at least two I won't be able to make with my current materials).
What I might read next:
More Gundam Unicorn. Shut up, he explained.
---L.
What I've recently finished since last post:
Gakusen Toshi Asterisk ("War-school city Asterisk") volumes 1-2 by Yû Miyazaki, another futuristic science-fantasy with irrelevant shounen tropes, here somewhat mitigated by characters who are less stupid about the troping (and less stupid overall) than several others I should be ashamed of knowing. Can't actually recommend it, tho' -- needs more male-male friendships, for one thing.
Mahôka Kôkô no Rettôsei volume 9, the first of a three-part novel (the installments are getting longer, boo) ending with even more of a cliffhanger than previous first-half novels. Good job of stepping up the dangers and the complexity of the world, though. My recommendation for the series still stands.
Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn volumes 1-4 by Harutoshi Fukui. Don't judge me. I'd never seen/read any Gundam before and this seemed as good an entry as any to the franchise -- even if the title provokes a "Srsly?" with a screwed-up face. (Not to mention, it is hard to take seriously a leader of The Resistance who calls himself Full Frontal. Yes, really.) Anyway, this is an original novel series in the main timeline (UC), set a couple years after Char's Counterattack, later recently adapted as some OVAs. There's some features that smell of formula, including the growing angst of a teenage protagonist caught between rival factions who has been unable to carry off any third options, but it is indeed decent old-school hard-SF adventure, with mecha and complex politics. If you like the franchise or in-system SF adventure, I suspect you'll like this.
Eagle-Shooting Hero by Jin Yong, where the title character turns out to be, in the final scene, Genghis Khan in a moment of deliberate moral ambiguity. The nationalism here is stronger than in the four classic novels (or, for that matter, even many Japanese light novels), but it still works as a satisfying adventure yarn. (Just don't think about how an eagle that can land on a woman's arm can also carry her on its back. As in flying her out of otherwise certain death.) Excellent stuff. More pls.
What I'm reading now:
White-Haired Demoness by Liang Yusheng -- and here would be that more pls. This starts in 1615, thirty years before the fall of the Ming Dynasty (the Manchus have started causing trouble in the northeast), with the wuxia parts as the secret history behind certain historical events. The structure of the opening couple chapters, which sequentially introduce then discard a few possible protagonists, is a little odd, but I can see dim outlines of a possible continuity of style from A Dream of Red Mansions. Not bad so far, and the setting is more grounded than in Eagle-shooting Hero, tho' we'll see whether the titular strong woman gets cut down by the author for being strong.
(No actual Red Mansions -- it was too big for my pack.)
On This Same Star, a bilingual edition of tanka from Mariko Kitakubo's 2005 collection WILL selected and translated by Amelia Fielden. I can't yet comment on how good the translations are -- too many Hard KanjiTM (also known as Kanji I Haven't Learned Yet) and me without, at the time, a kanji dictionary -- but so far they are highly evocative and often good English poems. Tasty, tasty stuff.
(I did read some of Poems of Places volume 1, but not much. A surprisingly low-verse vacation.)
Origami Masters: Bugs: How the Bug Wars Changed the Art of Origami, which I've been waiting for for several months. I am slightly disappointed: given the second subtitle, I was expecting a more detailed narrative of the Bug Wars of the 1990s and 2000s, instead of merely a six-page introduction summarizing a few key events as preface to 12 advanced models of insects by seven designers. Given models, I also expected more models from participants of the time, and given the Bug Wars were even more prominent in Japan than North America, more (if maybe not half) Japanese designers, rather than none at all. Deceptive title aside, the models look Really Cool and I greatly appreciate the designer's comments about paper (there's at least two I won't be able to make with my current materials).
What I might read next:
More Gundam Unicorn. Shut up, he explained.
---L.
no subject
Date: 3 October 2013 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 3 October 2013 01:45 am (UTC)