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May. 9th, 2008 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckHere's a partial log of the books I've read since my last update. I'm working on writing up the second half of the alphabet. Maybe this weekend.
After School Nightmare 6 - I think some events in this volume might support my theory that the school and the class are some sort of after (or between) life. I like the changes in dynamics between the characters (I wish I could remember their names!), not so much because I like where they're going as because I like that they are changing. I like that traumatized girl is showing increasing strength.
Cabot, Meg. Avalon High - Hm... Arthurian stuff and high school. Not a winning combination for me given my preferences. I still enjoyed the book, though, because I liked Ellie's voice and her attitude toward Destiny. The teenage angst wasn't overdone (meaning, given that this is me, that there wasn't much of it at all). For some reason, I had the impression that this book started a series. Does it?
Case Closed 8-9 - It's still disconcerting to be reading mysteries that I kind of, sort of know the solutions for. Well, I don't actually remember the answers most of the time, but each clue feels familiar, has a sense of 'Oh, yeah. That's why that happened.'
I do occasionally spot things in crime scene treatment that I think are procedural errors, but I don't get the impression that the science side of investigation makes for as much drama. I suppose that it's also possible that some of what I'm noticing has to do with the age of the manga (the Japanese copyright date is in the mid-90s). Maybe. There are also a couple of things that might be translation errors. The main one that springs to mind is a conversation in which the police can't get through for several hours, so the PI and off-duty (and not local) cop announce that they're going to 'do the autopsy' because they have no choice. I boggled then was relieved to realize that they didn't actually mean 'autopsy' but rather some crime scene work. I'd been a bit afraid the manga was going to take a turn into a different sort of blood and dismemberment.
Case Closed 10 - I don't think I remember the library story from the anime. I'm not sure if that's because it wasn't there or if it's because I've forgotten it. I'm not usually prone to forgetting stories that take place in libraries, though, and I think that some of the gimmicks involved would have stuck with me. I did enjoy seeing Heiji and having Shinichi return. (And I'm hugely frustrated that the English names are sticking in my head. I prefer the Japanese. My brain also keeps breaking over the fact that the main characters have very English names in the translation while the minor characters still have Japanese names.)
Chase, Loretta. Not Quite a Lady - I'm sad. This is a perfectly good book, and I can't finish it. I got halfway through. I like the characters. I like the prose style. I'm bored. I set it down for the night and probably won't pick it up again, just like any of a dozen or so other romances I've started this year. Can I have these characters dealing with an improbable ancient conspiracy or incursion from another world or complex political machinations? Please? I wouldn't mind the romance as a secondary or tertiary plot, not in the least.
I think I'm off romances completely for a while. The big question is whether or not it's worth boxing up the fifty or so that I've got waiting to be read and slinging them into the basement in hopes that I'll be up to reading them in the next couple of years. I worked hard to accumulate them. They're all by authors I like or things that came highly recommended.
Chibi Vampire 5 - Karin's grandmother is a menace, but she's not the menace that everybody seems to think she is, not quite. The meeting of the vampire council intrigued me as it hinted at a lot of things that I'd love to see developed. I also feel a combination of sadness and relief that Karin doesn't quite get what poverty means for whatshisname. That is, she knows he's poor. She figured out (after a while) that he can't afford enough food, but she doesn't even think about other things. I don't know that she could do anything more to help.
Claymore 4 - Being a Claymore seems to be a pretty miserable life. Of course, we haven't seen much of life for those who aren't Claymores during the times when they're not being threatened by Yoma (Yuma? Youma? I can't remember the spelling). I am feeling more patience with the flashback to Claire's early life than I normally do for such things. For me, this volume suffered from having a lot of action sequences that I could only vaguely follow, but I expect that most people wouldn't have the same problem. My eyes tend to skip over complex action sequences.
Claymore 5-6 - Ooh! Conspiracies! I also like the idea that there's a lot more-- potentially-- to being a Claymore than the girls have been told. Scott's on the verge of giving up on the series because he can't tell the Claymores apart. My main complaint is that I want less fighting and more information about the world and the conspiracy and... Yeah.
Dalton, Annie. Isabel: Taking Wing - I suspect that, if I'd read this when I was eight or even ten, it would have seemed long and complicated. As it was, while liked the writing, the events seemed very shallow. Each step was over too quickly, and none of the characters apart from the main character spent much time on stage. When I was in elementary school, I'd have found the fact that people-- named characters even-- die in the book just a bit shocking.
This is an historical, set in Elizabethan England. It focuses on a girl, Isabel from the title, who's the middle daughter in a relatively wealthy merchant family. She makes friends with a servant girl, talks her into an expedition to the theater and falls in the Thames on the way home. Her father packs her off to live with her aunt in the country. On the way there, she and the manservant accompanying her are set on by bandits, and he's killed. She stumbles on a group of traveling players that includes the servant girl's older brother and stays with them until they can get her to her aunt's. (I don't consider this spoilery as it's all in the cover blurb.) Each episode gets maybe a chapter.
DearS 6-7 - I keep hoping that something will happen in this series. Something that will tip my opinion one way or another, either into utter squick or into relief that there's some subversion of the they-only-know-how-to-be-slaves thing. Right now, it's all borderline squick and stupid humor. I just keep hoping.
I did enjoy the bit in v.7 where the girl who manages the hero's apartment building reveals that she makes doll clothes and cosplay outfits as passionate hobby that's verging on being something that could go professional. I like seeing her get more personality and agency. She's rather a doormat most of the time.
Durst, Sarah Beth. Into the Wild - I liked this a lot. The notion of story as a trap and as an active, controlling force intrigued me, and Durst handled both well. Other stories, most notably Fables, have tackled the idea of fairy tale characters trying to survive in the mundane world. This comes at the idea from a different angle. Now I want the sequel.
Ghost Hunt 1 - A teenage girl gets involved with various experts in the supernatural who've been hired to investigate a curse on an old school building. This volume felt like it was primarily set up of characters, not of their backgrounds or deep personalities but simply their existence. I'm not sure how many characters from this volume return in later volumes. Presumably the girl and the guy who hires her and his assistant all do, but I suspect that the others either won't return or won't return often. I'd be glad to be wrong because some of the other investigators interested me more than did the guy who hired the girl. His main virtue in my eyes was that he was also looking for non-supernatural explanations of what was going on.
Girls Bravo 1 - I only managed a little bit of this one. I'm the wrong audience for T&A, and I couldn't find anything else at all. It's a very bad sign when I'm dealing with a comic manga and start picking holes in the world building. Not because the holes are unexpected but because I shouldn't be paying attention to that sort of thing. In this case, I ran aground on the notion of a world with only ten percent of the population male that is both stuck on monogamy and convinced that no woman can be a real woman unless she marries. This world, mind you, wasn't even particularly important to the story. It was a plot device to throw in a cute little alien girl and (I expect) to throw in later, marriage obsessed females who can find the gateway and cause the hero problems.
Good Witch of the West 5 - I'm more interested in the answers to the big world building questions now than I am in the characters or the politics. Unicorns and dinosaurs interest me more than angst. I like the female lead and the fact that she's managing to keep following her own path. I just wish that I had more of an impression that she were doing it in a meaningful way. I'm a little afraid that there's Destiny that's going to rain down omens and such so that whatever ending comes is by fiat.
Hunter x Hunter 17-18 - The end of the Greed Island arc. At last! I'm not sure what I think of the start of the next arc. Voracious, intelligent monsters really aren't my thing. I want more character interactions and development.
Hunter x Hunter 19 - More fights. This time, the enemy seems like a serious threat, and a lot of the people dying never did anything to set themselves up for it (as opposed to Greed Island or the Hunter trials). I'm not sure what I'm looking for in this series right now, just that I'm not finding it. That might be the series or might be the fact that I'm generally cranky.
Kingdom Hearts 2 - If I give this one a few more years, Delia may like it. Right now, I'm going to avoid letting her look inside and see the princesses. I still don't have much to say about the series. I'm not finding (or expecting, really) depth.
Kingsley, Kaza. Erec Rex: The Dragon's Eye - A few too many of these characters have names that are allusions or puns. It started to grate after a while. Of course, the book's aimed at kids, so the stuff I found grating might be amusing or challenging for many in the target audience.
Erec is a boy who's part of a largish family of stray children taken in by a single foster mother. His family keeps moving, keeps getting poorer, keeps adding new members (all before the start of the book). Erec's unusual in two ways. First, he only has one eye. Second, he has occasional spells when he *must* do certain things, always the right things to solve a problem but often solving a problem he wasn't yet aware of. The book starts when Erec's mother disappears. Erec knows that he has to find her, so he follows his instincts and ends up in another world.
I have some guesses about where the story's going. I'm not certain that I'm right, but I have suspicions. This looks to be a long series. Erec has twelve quests to complete.
Law of Ueki 6-8 - I'm now trying to figure out how this story will have a satisfactory resolution. Not that it's coming soon. I'm just looking at the future. Maybe Ueki will become king or something. I do now get the impression that Ueki was hugely lucky when he was a baby. Anyway, these volumes had more fights, and they were generally resolved with cleverness rather than brute force. I still like that.
Lee, Rachel. Shadows of Prophecy - Rather than comment more on this one here, I'm just going to link to the entry I wrote about it. I didn't finish it for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality (or lack thereof) of the prose. I'm afraid I don't recommend it.
Let Dai 1 - I didn't finish this one. I read about ten pages at the beginning and ten at the end and concluded that it would be too violent and too hopeless. According to the blurb, it's about a tragic m/m romance between an innocent, nice guy and brutal (but attractive), obsessive thug with mood swings. The bits I read seemed to involve some girls, too, largely as victims of violence.
After School Nightmare 6 - I think some events in this volume might support my theory that the school and the class are some sort of after (or between) life. I like the changes in dynamics between the characters (I wish I could remember their names!), not so much because I like where they're going as because I like that they are changing. I like that traumatized girl is showing increasing strength.
Cabot, Meg. Avalon High - Hm... Arthurian stuff and high school. Not a winning combination for me given my preferences. I still enjoyed the book, though, because I liked Ellie's voice and her attitude toward Destiny. The teenage angst wasn't overdone (meaning, given that this is me, that there wasn't much of it at all). For some reason, I had the impression that this book started a series. Does it?
Case Closed 8-9 - It's still disconcerting to be reading mysteries that I kind of, sort of know the solutions for. Well, I don't actually remember the answers most of the time, but each clue feels familiar, has a sense of 'Oh, yeah. That's why that happened.'
I do occasionally spot things in crime scene treatment that I think are procedural errors, but I don't get the impression that the science side of investigation makes for as much drama. I suppose that it's also possible that some of what I'm noticing has to do with the age of the manga (the Japanese copyright date is in the mid-90s). Maybe. There are also a couple of things that might be translation errors. The main one that springs to mind is a conversation in which the police can't get through for several hours, so the PI and off-duty (and not local) cop announce that they're going to 'do the autopsy' because they have no choice. I boggled then was relieved to realize that they didn't actually mean 'autopsy' but rather some crime scene work. I'd been a bit afraid the manga was going to take a turn into a different sort of blood and dismemberment.
Case Closed 10 - I don't think I remember the library story from the anime. I'm not sure if that's because it wasn't there or if it's because I've forgotten it. I'm not usually prone to forgetting stories that take place in libraries, though, and I think that some of the gimmicks involved would have stuck with me. I did enjoy seeing Heiji and having Shinichi return. (And I'm hugely frustrated that the English names are sticking in my head. I prefer the Japanese. My brain also keeps breaking over the fact that the main characters have very English names in the translation while the minor characters still have Japanese names.)
Chase, Loretta. Not Quite a Lady - I'm sad. This is a perfectly good book, and I can't finish it. I got halfway through. I like the characters. I like the prose style. I'm bored. I set it down for the night and probably won't pick it up again, just like any of a dozen or so other romances I've started this year. Can I have these characters dealing with an improbable ancient conspiracy or incursion from another world or complex political machinations? Please? I wouldn't mind the romance as a secondary or tertiary plot, not in the least.
I think I'm off romances completely for a while. The big question is whether or not it's worth boxing up the fifty or so that I've got waiting to be read and slinging them into the basement in hopes that I'll be up to reading them in the next couple of years. I worked hard to accumulate them. They're all by authors I like or things that came highly recommended.
Chibi Vampire 5 - Karin's grandmother is a menace, but she's not the menace that everybody seems to think she is, not quite. The meeting of the vampire council intrigued me as it hinted at a lot of things that I'd love to see developed. I also feel a combination of sadness and relief that Karin doesn't quite get what poverty means for whatshisname. That is, she knows he's poor. She figured out (after a while) that he can't afford enough food, but she doesn't even think about other things. I don't know that she could do anything more to help.
Claymore 4 - Being a Claymore seems to be a pretty miserable life. Of course, we haven't seen much of life for those who aren't Claymores during the times when they're not being threatened by Yoma (Yuma? Youma? I can't remember the spelling). I am feeling more patience with the flashback to Claire's early life than I normally do for such things. For me, this volume suffered from having a lot of action sequences that I could only vaguely follow, but I expect that most people wouldn't have the same problem. My eyes tend to skip over complex action sequences.
Claymore 5-6 - Ooh! Conspiracies! I also like the idea that there's a lot more-- potentially-- to being a Claymore than the girls have been told. Scott's on the verge of giving up on the series because he can't tell the Claymores apart. My main complaint is that I want less fighting and more information about the world and the conspiracy and... Yeah.
Dalton, Annie. Isabel: Taking Wing - I suspect that, if I'd read this when I was eight or even ten, it would have seemed long and complicated. As it was, while liked the writing, the events seemed very shallow. Each step was over too quickly, and none of the characters apart from the main character spent much time on stage. When I was in elementary school, I'd have found the fact that people-- named characters even-- die in the book just a bit shocking.
This is an historical, set in Elizabethan England. It focuses on a girl, Isabel from the title, who's the middle daughter in a relatively wealthy merchant family. She makes friends with a servant girl, talks her into an expedition to the theater and falls in the Thames on the way home. Her father packs her off to live with her aunt in the country. On the way there, she and the manservant accompanying her are set on by bandits, and he's killed. She stumbles on a group of traveling players that includes the servant girl's older brother and stays with them until they can get her to her aunt's. (I don't consider this spoilery as it's all in the cover blurb.) Each episode gets maybe a chapter.
DearS 6-7 - I keep hoping that something will happen in this series. Something that will tip my opinion one way or another, either into utter squick or into relief that there's some subversion of the they-only-know-how-to-be-slaves thing. Right now, it's all borderline squick and stupid humor. I just keep hoping.
I did enjoy the bit in v.7 where the girl who manages the hero's apartment building reveals that she makes doll clothes and cosplay outfits as passionate hobby that's verging on being something that could go professional. I like seeing her get more personality and agency. She's rather a doormat most of the time.
Durst, Sarah Beth. Into the Wild - I liked this a lot. The notion of story as a trap and as an active, controlling force intrigued me, and Durst handled both well. Other stories, most notably Fables, have tackled the idea of fairy tale characters trying to survive in the mundane world. This comes at the idea from a different angle. Now I want the sequel.
Ghost Hunt 1 - A teenage girl gets involved with various experts in the supernatural who've been hired to investigate a curse on an old school building. This volume felt like it was primarily set up of characters, not of their backgrounds or deep personalities but simply their existence. I'm not sure how many characters from this volume return in later volumes. Presumably the girl and the guy who hires her and his assistant all do, but I suspect that the others either won't return or won't return often. I'd be glad to be wrong because some of the other investigators interested me more than did the guy who hired the girl. His main virtue in my eyes was that he was also looking for non-supernatural explanations of what was going on.
Girls Bravo 1 - I only managed a little bit of this one. I'm the wrong audience for T&A, and I couldn't find anything else at all. It's a very bad sign when I'm dealing with a comic manga and start picking holes in the world building. Not because the holes are unexpected but because I shouldn't be paying attention to that sort of thing. In this case, I ran aground on the notion of a world with only ten percent of the population male that is both stuck on monogamy and convinced that no woman can be a real woman unless she marries. This world, mind you, wasn't even particularly important to the story. It was a plot device to throw in a cute little alien girl and (I expect) to throw in later, marriage obsessed females who can find the gateway and cause the hero problems.
Good Witch of the West 5 - I'm more interested in the answers to the big world building questions now than I am in the characters or the politics. Unicorns and dinosaurs interest me more than angst. I like the female lead and the fact that she's managing to keep following her own path. I just wish that I had more of an impression that she were doing it in a meaningful way. I'm a little afraid that there's Destiny that's going to rain down omens and such so that whatever ending comes is by fiat.
Hunter x Hunter 17-18 - The end of the Greed Island arc. At last! I'm not sure what I think of the start of the next arc. Voracious, intelligent monsters really aren't my thing. I want more character interactions and development.
Hunter x Hunter 19 - More fights. This time, the enemy seems like a serious threat, and a lot of the people dying never did anything to set themselves up for it (as opposed to Greed Island or the Hunter trials). I'm not sure what I'm looking for in this series right now, just that I'm not finding it. That might be the series or might be the fact that I'm generally cranky.
Kingdom Hearts 2 - If I give this one a few more years, Delia may like it. Right now, I'm going to avoid letting her look inside and see the princesses. I still don't have much to say about the series. I'm not finding (or expecting, really) depth.
Kingsley, Kaza. Erec Rex: The Dragon's Eye - A few too many of these characters have names that are allusions or puns. It started to grate after a while. Of course, the book's aimed at kids, so the stuff I found grating might be amusing or challenging for many in the target audience.
Erec is a boy who's part of a largish family of stray children taken in by a single foster mother. His family keeps moving, keeps getting poorer, keeps adding new members (all before the start of the book). Erec's unusual in two ways. First, he only has one eye. Second, he has occasional spells when he *must* do certain things, always the right things to solve a problem but often solving a problem he wasn't yet aware of. The book starts when Erec's mother disappears. Erec knows that he has to find her, so he follows his instincts and ends up in another world.
I have some guesses about where the story's going. I'm not certain that I'm right, but I have suspicions. This looks to be a long series. Erec has twelve quests to complete.
Law of Ueki 6-8 - I'm now trying to figure out how this story will have a satisfactory resolution. Not that it's coming soon. I'm just looking at the future. Maybe Ueki will become king or something. I do now get the impression that Ueki was hugely lucky when he was a baby. Anyway, these volumes had more fights, and they were generally resolved with cleverness rather than brute force. I still like that.
Lee, Rachel. Shadows of Prophecy - Rather than comment more on this one here, I'm just going to link to the entry I wrote about it. I didn't finish it for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality (or lack thereof) of the prose. I'm afraid I don't recommend it.
Let Dai 1 - I didn't finish this one. I read about ten pages at the beginning and ten at the end and concluded that it would be too violent and too hopeless. According to the blurb, it's about a tragic m/m romance between an innocent, nice guy and brutal (but attractive), obsessive thug with mood swings. The bits I read seemed to involve some girls, too, largely as victims of violence.
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Date: 2008-05-09 04:34 pm (UTC)delia's party
Date: 2008-05-13 09:54 am (UTC)This is Kafi, Martha's mom. We are out of town, but wanted to let you know that M can come to Delia's party.
See you then!