lydamorehouse | Entries tagged with reading

Image: white lilac

I'm at least always reminded on a Wednesday that maybe I should go on over to DW and at least drop a line about what I've been reading. As has become typical of me, I will also attempt to catch you up on the rest of my life. But first, since it's probably the least interesting, I'll start with my reading.

This has been a banger week for me.

I finished Nghi Vo's The Chosen & The Beautiful, which I probably would have appreciated more if I were a fan of The Great Gatsby, which I am not. I didn't hate Vo's book, however? I liked the magic far better than any of the people, but I'm pretty sure, given what I know about The Great Gatsby, that was likely by design. Then, I have been absolutely CRANKING through The Singing Hills Cycle, which is Nghi Vo's loosely connected series of novellas about the wandering scholar-priest Chih, whom I adore. This week I listened to The Empress of Salt and Fortune, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, and Into the Riverlands. I have Mammoths at the Gates queued up and ready to listen to! I don't even know how to explain how awesome these novellas are, but if you are at all a fan of C-Dramas I guarantee you will *love* these. I could not be happier to see that another in this series is up for a Hugo this year. Thank all the gods my friend

naomikritzer is up in a different catagory or I'd have a real connundrum on my hands.

Also, because there was a day when I could not get the next Singing Hills novella, I listened to Remote Control. another novella, this one by Nnedi Okorafor. I have to say? These two hour audio versions of stories are amazing--like popcorn for the brain!

The rest of my week has been a lot. Much of it fun stuff, but a goodly chunk of it being preparation for heading East to watch Mason graduate from college. (I know! It doesn't seem possible to me, either!) To be fair, Shawn is doing most of the actual planning. But my job is often to do much of the fetching, as it were. Plus, with this crazy heat (it's been all the way up to 90 F / 32 C), I've been trying to keep the ground moist for my baby seedlings that are coming up in the boulevard garden. My bouelvard, like anywhere that I attempt to "grow" grass, is an absolute nightmare. I would be summarily kicked out of any gated community for my inability to keep grass of any sort alive. However, I am attempting to make up for that this year by having a stunning boulevard garden. So in amongst the perrenials, I dumped a literal ton of "butterfly garden" seeds. Things seem to be emerging? Of course, we are also poised to be out of town for a week and a half. So, I may come back to a lot of dead things.

Which I guess also goes with the grass aesthetic, I guess.

Sigh.

At any rate, the fun thing I did this week was spontaneously go on a "Midwestern hanami" with the above-mentioned Naomi. I have long told her how jealous I am that the Japanese actually make a holiday out of flower viewing (which is what hanami translates to--actually technically it's just "flower" and "to see.") In Japan, of course, what people go out to look at are cherry blossoms. We could do that here, but cherry blossoms bloom when it's still a bit "nippy," as we say here in Minnesota, plus there just aren't a ton of cherry trees to be had. Lilacs--even though lots of other things are in bloom--are really to the Midwest what cherry blossoms are to Japan. Like in Japan, lilacs are not native... but you wouldn't know it. Also, people plant them EVERYWHERE and when they bloom, you can smell them on the air. Just like in Japan, you can, if you know where to find them (and I do,) walk through a kind of tunnel of lilacs in bloom.

Image: On Summit Avenue, there exists a secret tunnel of lilacs two blocks long....

Naomi and I have long talked about doing a lilac hanami, so we finally did. On Tuesday, we set off to Summit Avenue just east of Lexington where exists a lovely, two-block long tunnel of lilacs. It was a perfect spot, actually. Public, but still a little private.

A dork enjoy a picnic under the lilacs

Image: A silly otaku (me) enjoying a picnic under the lilacs.

We spent the time snacking on sushi and fantasing about a Minnesota where everyone has the week off when the lilacs come into bloom. We imagined all sorts of lilac "flavored" treats people could sell, including some "Minnesota State Fair"-inspired things like a corndog with lavender/lilac-colored mustard artistically droozled to look like a lilac. It could be a thing!

Minnesotas could all wander around with phones and camera out, trying to get the perfect quintessential lilac shot.

lilacs in a row

Image: A pokemon that I drew for those stopping for our Pokestop

A friend of mine discovered that our Little Free Library out front is a Pokestop for people playing Pokemon Go. I decided to lean into it and have created a number of homemade drawings for people stopping by (or kids who just want some art of a Pokemon) to come an take.

Because I am silly like this.

In other news, today is Wednesday and I have some reading/listening to report. I'm currently just over halfway through Nghi Vo's The Chosen and The Beautiful by Nghi Vo is going to be one of the guests of honor for this year's Gaylaxicon, which will be held here in Minneapolis/St. Paul. I'm on the programming committee for Gaylaxicon, so I thought I should do at least a little due diligence and read SOME of her work. ;-) (I actually have two other books of hers currently in my audiobook queue.) This particular book can be summed up with the perfect elevator pitch: The Asian The Great Gatsby, but queer and with magic. And, despite all the Gatsby stuff, I'm enjoying it so far.

Previous to this, I listened to Audrey Lee's The Mechanics of Memory which is story that takes place in a "couple minutes into the future" world where a young woman who wakes up in a mental institution unable to remember the previous year, only it's clear that some of what she's being told about all that is a lie. Maybe I had already finished that as of last Wednesday, because I did then figure out how to listen to T. Kingfisher's A Sorceress Comes to Call, which I found, like all of T. Kingfisher's stuff, eminently readable.

I bounced out of Service Model Adrian Tchaikovsky, but I didn't delete it, figuring I can try again later when I'm in the mood for some humor.

I've spend a lot of the rest of the week trying to get my gardens in order. Not an easy task. Somehow, every year, I fail to figure out whether it is smarter to leave the leaves or to rake them. Whatever I chose is inevitibly wrong. Leaving them is better for the bees, but then I murder the grass underneath. If I rake them up, then something comes and kills the grass anyway. I have a dirt lawn. I'm hoping to make it trendy, fashionable. Wish me luck.

Good news, no mow May should be a cinch.

Turns out, in a surprise to only the richest man in the world, if you cut funding for the National Weather Service, storm predictions suffer.

We have a neighbor in one of our closed neighborhood groups who is a meterologist. When everyone (including me!) was complaining about the storm prediction that had "everyone overreacting," she explained some things to us.

Firstly: Garbage in, garbage out.

When budget hatchets come down, fewer things like weather balloons go up. Atmospheric conditions are largely tracked by weather balloons and some states have gone from releasing the usual two a day to ONE a day. Our weather here in Minnesota largely comes from the west. So, that means, on the day leading up to the potential big storm, the weather predictors were depending on data that was last current IN WYOMING, approximately 900 miles (1,448 km) away.

There was no new data between here and there that included upper atmospheric pressures, etc. All that data normally goes into the models they use to run their weather prediction maps. When they don't have data, their predictions are... SURPRISE!!... crap. Garbage in (or nothing at all in); garbage out.

So, if you feel "ripped off" because we got no storm on Monday, then BLAME TRUMP.

I mean, this is where it feels dumb... rather than evil. Like, I expect this current administration to be vindictive against what they call "wokeness," but what the f*ck is "woke" about weather reporting? Did people really feel there was a Big Weather problem, lots of bloat and misuse of funds? (Don't feel the need to answer this, these questions are rhetorical. I know that all government agencies got hit.)

/rant

But, so here it is Wedensay already, and I'd been meaning to write up some notes about what I've been reading. I am currently eighty-some percent of the way through the audiobook of The Mechanics of Memory by Audrey Lee. I will say that I think this book is a little longer than it needed to be, but I'm enjoying the general premise of it. It's about a woman who is basicaly wrongfully sent to a psychatric "spa" in order to have false memories implanted in her--though it turns out she's resistant (or maybe was prepped to withstand the "treatment"), so she's trying to figure out the mystery of why everyone has been sent here and what it has to do with a bunch of hackers known as the Mad Hatters (which, I mean, the name alone gives us a clue that perhaps this psych ward is, in fact, somehow involved.) It's one of those mysteries where you're pretty sure you're guessing ahead, but then another twist is introduced. It feels like it should be closer to the climax than it is right now. I'm at that phase where I would LIKE THEM TO GET AWAY WITH IT, but another complication just dropped. But, despite that, I would recommend it. The audiobook has at least two narrators and, unfortunately, one of them reads like he has never experienced an emotion in his life. But, luckily the majority of the chapters have someone else reading.

Previous to this I had someone read The Sculpted Ship (by K. M. O'Brien) to me, and that was another one where I started out more keen than I finished. The Sculpted Ship was to science fiction what Legends & Lattes is to high fantasy. The place where I ended up growing disintersted in The Sculpted Ship was where it left the formula of low stakes problem solving. There's a whole heist at the end that solves one of the main plot issues of the story, specifically how our heroine will get the parts to finish making her ship space worthy, but it goes deep into characters we only just met and I could have done without it, even though it puts a bow on the whole thing. I was there for the "how will our heroine make enough money to buy this part?" and "Will the heroine pass her etiquette lessons in time for the safari booking?" non-tension conflicts.

We all need a book like this from time to time.

If you pick it up, my only caveat is that K. M. O'Brien is a dude writing about women and I knew that the moment that his point-of-view heroine described another woman as "well-endowed." This wasn't a cardinal sin? I do know some women who might say something like this, but there is later an aborted sexual assault that just didn't quite ring true for me. Mileage may vary, however.

So, with The Memory Mechanic nearly done, I have another list of possiblities.

HOWEVER, if I can figure out how to get the audio files to my phone, the following list may be moot, as the Hugo Award reading packet included audio files for almost all of the books nominated this year. Audiobooks included are: A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher, Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky, The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, and Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wisewell (the last of which I listened to some time ago and really enjoyed.) So, it's missing a couple? But, that's pretty impressive!

The list of things that I have queued up in Libby are:

Nnedi Okorafor's Remote Control (this appears to be a novella, as it's only 4 hours long)
Annalee Newitz's The Future of Another Timeline
Mike Chen's Light Years From Home
Kemi Ashing-Giwa's The Splinter in the Sky
Vic James's Gilded Cage
Jenn Lyons's The Sky on Fire
Christopher Paolini's To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

If anyone has recommendations among those (or which Hugo nominee I should start with), I'd love to hear what you have to say.

I THINK I have a plan to get the Hugo nominees over to my phone, but if not, I'll end up listening to those piecemeal on my computer while doing things in the house (which is fine, it's just less convenient than my phone. And now is the weather for yardwork, so! I may actually become one of those people who has two different books going at once!)

Anyway, I hope you all are doing well. Reading anything fun or different?

I had planned to post about the books I've been reading lately yesterday, of course, but in a good news/bad news sort of way, I ended up writing so much on the new novel that I lost track of time. As I was telling my writing accountablity Zoom group, I don't quite know what happened, but I hit a voice that I'm super comfortable in (not previously a POV character) and I'm running with it.

Enough about that.

I've recently gotten very into audiobooks. After finishing The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey (which I sort of disliked, though not enough to quit listening to it), I picked up We Have Always Been Here by Leah Nguyen. I also somewhat disliked We Have Always Been Here. I never cottened to the main character/narrator, Park. I found her (at least how she was read to me) to be an unlikely combination of paranoid and clueless. Like, the book opens with Park having been poisoned. Because Park has been bullied all her life, she doesn't put much mind to this, even as weird shit starts happening all around her on the ship, including other people being attacked, she never goes back to "I wonder if any of this connects to what happened to me?" I don't know about you? But I hate when main characters don't seem interested in solving the plot and/or generally forget clues that, to the reader, seem like Big Deals. And being poisoned one day and having your mentor tell you "I have a project that is going to take up all my attention, you're now the main psychologist" feels like the sort of thing that a paranoid person should reallly start deep dive investigating. you know? Don't get me wrong. Park investigates the crap out of everything else going on in this ship, but she never connects any of it back to things that happen to herself. Worse, the big reveal at the end made me realize that had she done so, she would been directly led to one of the main villains.

But, the androids in the story get a good ending. They were who I cared about, so it worked out for me.

I'm now listening to The Sculpted Ship by K. M. O'Brien. I've been describing this book to people as a science fiction version of Legends & Lattes. The stakes are so low in The Sculpted Ship that if I were not already a fan of slice-of-life manga and thus have built-up a huge tolerance for people just wandering around and doing tasks, I probably would have fallen asleep listening to this. This is not a criticism per se, however, because, given the current political situation in the United States, a story that is essentially about THINGS WORKING OUT is exactly what the doctor ordered (for me, anyway.)

I'm not quite finished with it and there does seem to be a little intrigue a foot here in the last 20% of the book, but I am hopeful that things will just work out as so many things before this have. That would be fine with me.

Speaking of slice-of-life manga, I read two "wandering around in a post-apocaplyptic world" science fiction manga in the past week. I read Usuzumi no Hate / The Color of the End: Mission in the Apocalypse by Iwamune Haruo and Shuumatsu Touring / Touring After the Apocalypse by Saito Sakae. Both of which I would highly recommend, with a few caveats. The Color of the End has a plague in it and there is a lot of death and dying, including suicide. Likewise, Touring After the Apocalypse has its dark/sad moments as well as some suicides. Weidly, despite those warnings, I found both of these manga to be hopeful and "quiet" in a "let's appreciate life while we have it" kind of way. Very appropriate for flower viewing season.

I also read a couple of family dramas: Otona no Zukan Kaiteiban / Adults’ Picture Book New Edition by Itoi Kei and Kashikokute Yuuki Aru Kodomo / A Smart and Courageous Child by Yamamoto Miki. Both of which I liked, but mileage may vary. If you're at all interested in reading fuller reviews of any of the manga I've mentioned, feel free to check out my manga review site: https://mangakast.wordpress.com/

Speaking of manga, a quick plug for the old podcast. Yesterday we dropped our twenty-first episode, this time discussing the cyberpunk manga classic Blame! (https://open.spotify.com/show/11brxmJZjf3gnzltvwXI7H) I guess, I technically re-read that recently, too. Weirdly, despite the fact that the podcast is a lot of squee, I wouldn't necessarily recommend Blame! Technically, Blame! is also a lot of wandering around in a post-apocalyptic world, but it feels far less hopeful. In fact, the vibe is grim. It is interesting and pretty and action-packed, but it might not be what the soul needs right now, if you catch my meaning.

I think that's it. Otherwise, I've been writing a lot and prepping for Minicon.

You?

Image: This is what 58 looks like (on Shawn, anyway.)

Yesterday, no April Fools, was Shawn's birthday. Shawn decide that one of the things she really wanted was a bunch of meals out. So, we started the day at Day By Day Cafe on West 7th in Saint Paul. From there, we made a brief stop to pick up charcuterie (which will be tonight's meal--our family believes in Birthday Week Observed), and then off to S. R. Harris fabric wearhouse for some light shopping. Home for a while and then off to dinner at Bole, which is an Ethiopian restaurant in St. Paul.

When Shawn was on the phone with one of her brothers, I heard her laugh and say, "Yes, we *do* really know how to whoop it up."

Maybe this is something about being 58 (which I will also turn in mid-November) or maybe we've always been like this. SPOILER: it's the latter.

Listen, you don't even understand how boring I am! I got so excited this morning to officially record my first snowfall, it wasn't even funny. But, you know, re-read that sentence. I was excited to record a snowfall on the CoCoRaHS page. I am, in fact, living the high life.

Today is also Wednesday and I haven't gotten much read. I listened to several of the stories on the audiobook of Queers Destroy Science Fiction, but then kind of petered out on them for some reason. I haven't started the next book, though I did download another option (Please Report Your Bug Here, by Josh Riedel.) Ironically, I also went to the library on the day before Shawn's birthday (when we went out to eat also as part of the week long celebration, this time to--don't mock!--Red Lobster.) So, I have a literal pile of manga I should be reading, too. I just started one that Reactor (formally Tor.com) recommended called Touring After the Apocalypse. (<--pretty excellent so far, honestly.)

Anyway, I need to start getting wits gathered so that I can go pick up Shawn at work. Hope you all are doing well!

I skipped my Zoom writing accountability meeting today because I need to watch all the things before we dump our Hulu subscription on the first.

The truly hilarious part of this is that the only thing I really need to watch is the second season of the new Bleach arc (Thousand Year Blood War). And, I say this as a tried and true Bleach fan, but it is so dumb and so cringe (the jiggle physics are just... gods help us all) that I need an emotional support fan to be on Discord with me while I watch it.

Seriously, I tried this on my own several times before and I kept hitting cetain moments where I'd have to stop, yell, "THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS, KUBO*" slam the off button, and then not watch for months.

My dear longtime Bleach fan friend in Wales agreed to sit with me (on Discord and on a different streaming platform and in a different time zone) so that we could both get through this. I mean, there is part of me that would be fine if I never watched it to the end. I hate the ending with the fire of a thousand burning suns. However, I am such a completist for this fandom that it just doesn't feel right to give up, you know? I'm still writing fic in this universe from time to time (though my fervor has mostly died. I used to post something once a week. I just don't have that fire in my belly any more since Kubo killed all that is good and right in the world, by which I mostly mean Captain Ukitake but also my ships.) And, despite everything, some of the very best twists--some of which were signaled from the very begining--are in this arc. So, it's... worth it??

Plus, at this point I only have to put up with it for a couple of days. Then there's no more Hulu and no more Bleach. In the US, Hulu is the only place it's streaming; you can't even get it on Crunchyroll. So, I'm in it for the next however many days. And, we watched quite a few episodes today. Hopefully, we can just power through it. (We haven't even hit the awful transphobic scene yet. I can not watch that alone.)

So, that's part of what I'm watching and reading. Not that I would recommend it to anyone. Unless I HATED them.

The other media related thing I did recently was that I downloaded a whole bunch of audiobooks from Libby. Let me do an informal poll (not a real one, because I have never figured out how to embed them). Which of these should I listen to first:

The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey
We Have Always Been Here by Lena Nguyen
On Earth as It is on Television by Emily Jane
Queers Destroy Science Fiction! by Lightspeed, et. al
Amped by Daniel H. Wilson

I will eventually try to read them all in the time I have, and, if I'm honest, no matter what you all recommend I start with, I'll probaby start with whichever one is shortest (which is The Echo Wife, at 8 hours.)

Otherwise, I haven't been reading all that much. I did end up watching an anime (also on Hulu, since it was going away,) called Summer Time Rendering, which I liked for the cleverness of the time looping. It starts out seeming like it's going to be a murder mystery version of the movie Groundhog's Day (1993), but then the story veers into science fiction (and dark fantasy) kind of quickly. I will say that if you are not an anime or manga fan, this isn't a good one to start with, unfortunately. The manga it was based on is from a genre/publishing category called ecchi, which means that--speaking of jiggle physics--there is more than the typical amount of "fan service." Lots of panty shots and bouncing D-cup boobies. Heavy male gaze. And not nearly enough pretty. pretty men to make up for it.

However, the mystery as it gets unraveled was pretty fascinating and by the time it turns into a battle/fighting anime (Summertime Render, the manga version, was a Monthly Shounen JUMP+ product, so becoming a fighting manga was inevitable, alas), the cleverness shifts to "how are they going to out run time and thwart the bad guy's ability to track them, this time." Which is a neat way to do it, for my money. If you are cool with all the ecchi, I would recommend it. If not, yeah, there are a lot of uncomfortably large boobs bouncing around without nearly enough support. :-(

Otherwise, I will need to report soon on how my New Year's Resolution is going. I've heard back from nearly all 20 of the people who signed up to be my pen pal for a year. It's been really good for my mental health to have something to look foward to in my post box (gods know, my inbox is full of Democrats screaming for money and push articles from the NY Times and The Atlantic reminding me that the world is, in fact, on fire and democracy has died in darkness weeks ago.)

ANYWAY.

Oh, I forgot one other thing that I watched: The God of Ramen (2013). This a live-action documentary about a guy who makes ramen really, really well. I am a member of Japanese Film Festival and so I get a lot of notifications when they run online "screenings" of various movies for international audiences. I have a couple more that I want to watch, but I also need to get though Bleach....

How are you all holding up? Reading (or watching) anything interesting lately?

==

*Kubo Tite, Bleach's mangaka. A man I love to hate and hate to love. A ruiner of lives. A gifted genius and babbling dumb face.

Image: snow shovel in snow, trying to show off how many inches we got by 7am when it was still snowing.

I have no idea how many inches actually fell in Saint Paul, but it must have been over 4 inches because Saint Paul declared a snow emergency! Which means that I work tomorrow tagging cars. (Others are working all night tonight, but I am just not enough of a night owl that I could survive a shift from 8 pm to 6:00 am.) What's funny is that due to how pay periods work, I actually haven't yet got paid for the work I did in February (though I do expect a paycheck by this Friday.)

Today is actually reading Wednesday, (apparently NOT yesterday). Because I realized I hadn't read anything, I quick read a manga last night called Ask Affection by Yoichi Manika. It's actually almost a plot-what-plot, except I find that I'm still kind of trying parse out how the relationship even worked. I haven't yet written my review, even, because like, this one guy is complaining at his regular gay bar that all the guys that he hooks up with are only after him for his pretty face (and naturally hot body.) The bar's "mama," a trans woman, has heard a rumor that an AV (adult video, so what we would call a "porn star") has been seen sniffing around and she thinks he should try to hit that. Our hero looks at the guy in question, decides, I guess because the movie he's in is straight, that there's no chance and anyway, wouldn't this just be more of the same? That last thought isn't a bad one, but the problem is that through out the whole rest of the manga, our hero never seems to parse that a sex worker would be working as a straight porn star and actually be gay. EVEN when they do hook up and said porn star keeps reassuring our hero that he's actually interested in a boyfriend. Yet, our hero moves in? And continues to not believe that he's being courted? That's the part where I start going ??? and, probably, I am thinking WAY TOO hard about what is essentially smut.

Such is my nature, I guess.

I will start off with the traditional "What are you reading?" Wednesday stuff, because, once again, lo and behold, I have done the reading.

A friend of mine recommended a supernational manga called Neko ga Nishi Mukya / When a Cat Faces West by Urushibara Yuki, which I adored. It's a manga series that's complete in three volumes, so if stories about how emotions might affect the world around us in a magical way and the super-chill "investigators" check them out entrances you, this might be a series for you. Also, if you are interested in a more detailed review, you can find mine here: https://mangakast.wordpress.com/2025/02/24/neko-ga-nishi-mukya-when-a-cat-faces-west-by-urushibara-yuki/

Then, because I was in-between books, I settled in at dinner tonight with Betty Crocker's Hostess Cookbook.

Image: a very vintage book that, unfortunately, has ZERO recipes for how to cook a hostess.

So far (and I am only in the introduction), I'm learning a lot about how to balance my experise as a cook, the size of my living/dining room, and the relative usefulness of my various friend groups. Pro-tip: cultivate friends who "will carry part of the entertainment load for you." What can I say? I secretly really enjoy these little time capsules into a fictious world where middle class white women had time to consider the relative rudeness inviting someone via telephone (only for casual gatherings!) or hand-written invitation card (preferred, naturally!)

I'll let you know if there are any actually decent recipes. I suspect (because I flipped ahead) there will, instead, be a LOT of fondue.

How about you? Reading anything interesting?

In other news, Shawn officially graduated from PT today. She's still disappointed in how much pain she feels after three months. Luckily, Chris, the physical therapist, reassured her that this is still very within the normal range. Apparently, Allina Health used to have people who'd gone through knee replacement near the same time form a cohort so that they could support and encourage each other. Chris noted that one of the upsides of this was that people had a much better sense of the "average" amount of pain, flexibility, etc. The internet likes to point out outliers: successes and disasters. And not a lot in between.

Appparently, the knee cohorts were one of the many things lost due to the pandemic.

Anyway, in part to celebrate her official graduation (and other part Shawn getting stood up by a work friend), Shawn and I did something we almost never do, which is go out to lunch. Shawn picked the place--Babani's, which is Kurdish food, and it was delightful. The company was, of course, superb.

Image: manga cover

On Monday, Shawn had a Friends of the Ramsey County Library board meeting, and, so, as resident chauffeur, I tagged along. When she was at her meeting, I browsed the manga shelves, as one might expect.

I ended up picking up and mostly reading all of the above title: Turns Our My Online Friend is My Real-Life Boss by Nmura. The back cover copy pitches it to fans of Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard? (link to my review), which I can understand because it has a similar humorous office romance + fantasy element + slightly clueless hero vibe. In fact, I think the thing that I'm enjoying about it so far is how our hero, Hashimoto, manages to have not one but two guys hitting on him both in Real Life and the game and... completely misinterprets every pass. To be fair, both of Hashimoto's suitors seem to misunderstand the other's motivations for a lot time as well. I mean, I, too, am a nerd? I also should probably carry a sign that reads: "If you are flirting with me, please just tell me. I have no idea." But, Hashimoto is almost mind-bogglingly clueless--to humorous effect, so it works? I mean, at least so far. I'm not quite finished with volume 1.

Anyway, I am not sure I would have picked up this book if I were not marooned at the library for two and a half hours, however. Like, it's fine and cute and everything, but I am rarely fond of gaming-related stories. I don't know why. They're a very popular subgenre and I play TTRPGs, but I dunno. Something for me never quite translates--like the game parts don't grab me and hold my attention like they should? At least in this one they don't play the game so much as just hang out in game spaces as their avatars.

I dunno.

That's what I've been reading at any rate. Nothing, as they say, to write home about.

In other news, Shawn continues to do well post-knee surgery. She rarely uses her cane and can do much of what she used to. However, apparently one of her co-workers, who has also been through knee replacement, asked her if she had gotten to the point where she feels like the surgery was worth doing, and she does NOT. She's still got a fair amount of lingering nerve pain, which is not typical, but also, obviously, not fun.

For myself, I went to cat cafe today with

naomikritzer which was a great deal of fun. If I get my act together, I will post some pictures of it tomorrow.

Things are proceeding apace here at Chez Roundhouse.

At this very moment, Shawn is sitting at the dining room table sorting out short-term disability. This is a very "normal Shawn" activity, so we have, at least, reached the stage post total knee replacement surgery (right knee) where she can concentrate on things that are not solely PAIN MANAGEMENT. I will tell you? A few days ago, Shawn was really not sure today would ever, ever, EVER come.

Yesterday, I was able to be... somewhat of a participant for my bi-weekly podcast recording. I can't say that I was firing on all my cylinders, but I was upright and present and caffinated. That's what passes as close enough these days.

Also in the plus column: I know what day it is: Wednesday.

And, as it happens, one of the things that I've been able to do while playing Personal Care Attendant, is read a LOT of manga. In reverse order of when I read them:

Telework Yotabanshi/Home Office Romance by Yamada Kintetsu. This was a very cute slice-of-life straight romance that features a Systems Engineer who is... Very Engineer, if you know what I mean. It's very rarely stated in manga, but I feel like if this were written by an American it would just be stated that our main character, Mitsuhashi, is on the autism spectrum. He likes to do things in his very thoughtful way and doesn't like change and isn't especially good at picking up social clues. It's not stated that this take place during the pandemic (possibly to make it more universal and less era specific), but his neighbor also is working at home--she is a perky, out-going archeology grad student named Izumi. This one-shot follows their romance as it unfolds through various chance meetings, etc. It's VERY RELAXING.

The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn’t a Guy at All by Arai Sumiko which has a new release from Yen Press this year. It's a yuri, which, oddly, I rarely read in part because.... well, actually the reasons are legion, but among other things, I prefer my romance between adults and so many of these are situated in high school. This one is, too? But, The Guy She Was Interested in... solves one of my other big problems with a lot of yuri, which is that I RARELY find the women in them attractive. Lesbians have a look that isn't conventionally attractive. The heroine in this one is actually dykish and that works for me. Not that this is a "sexy" yuri--so few of them are. It's honestly much more of a coming-of-age story. This manga is on-going, but I read all 100 chapters of it that I could find.

Just Like Mona Lisa (Vols. 1 & 2) by Yoshimura Tsumuji, which I straight-up hated, despite the fact that the premise should have been a gimme for me, in particular. It's a science fiction story set on an alternate Earth where everyone is born without a gender. Some time around 12, most people have decided which of the binary options suits them best and they pick one or the other and grow into that. Our main character, Hisane, is 17 and a half, and is still genderless. This is not a problem for them until their two best friends (one guy and one girl) confess on the same day. I hated this for a number of reasons, but the main one was that we also find out that there is no option for Hisane to stay nonbinary/genderless. All of the others who ever stayed genderless this long died. So it's kind of a "f*ck or die" trope only with gender and I abhor it.

Akane-banashi by Suenaga Yuki (art by Moue Takamasa), Volumes 1-3. If you've read or watched any of Shōwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjū this is that, only high school. If not, rakugo is a traditional Japanese theater performance style that is basically a one-man show. There are traditional stories that get told and the performer uses nothing but his (or, more rarely her) voice and a simple prop, like a folding fan. Akane-banashi is a Shounen Jump product and I can't tell if that means that if I watched it, I would eat it all in one gulp, or if I'm starting to feel like a lot of these "my super power is some ancient Japanese artform" manga/anime are starting to all taste the same, as it were. LIke, as I was reading this I very much felt pulled along and it was hitting all the right "she's a genius!" and yet "she must struggle!" notes, but then I put it down and was very... I feel like I've read this basic premise a million times already.

Then, I read something EXTREMELY smutty called Can’t Think Straight by Pangin (art by Huddak). I've been describing this manhwa to people as "the roommate trope plus enemies to lovers." It's basically about a horribly homophobic straight guy and his gay roommate who through very unlikely circumstances become fuck buddies and then... sort of (at least where it left off) actual boyfriends. This is the WORST example of a redemption arc because the love interest (the straight guy) still has way too much to recover from when the two men are already moved in together and supposedly dating. Luckily, I did not read that one for that PLOT.

A much more adorable and realistic BL/yaoi that I read was That Blue Sky Feeling by Okura (art by Coma Hashii), Vols. 1-2. Okura also wrote I Think Our Son is Gay which is a very lovely story about a mother coming to terms with the fact that her eldest child is gay. That Blue Sky Feeling kind of follows a similar arc where the young protagonist meets the first gay guy he's ever known--a kid who is out in high school and suffering for it--and sort of falls VERY SLOWLY in love with him. (I mean, I am guessing? It is also more coming-of-age than anything else.) Weirdly, this is also a VIZ product, but there's something very charming and original going on here that I quite like.

Two Sizes, Too Small by Mizore is the final one that I read which I also can't entirely recommend. It's about a height gap, which normally I can relate to because I am 5'2" and Shawn is 6'1" but, sadly, this one veered into creepy territory because the smaller one looked very, very... child-like and I had to NOPE out hard once the romance heated up.

So, for me this is a LOT for one week, particularly when sometimes I have to confess to not having read ANYTHING.

In other--sort of related--news, I lost my Duolingo streak. Ironically, Shawn has been able to keep hers up. My problem has always been that I tend to sneak my lessons in when I am out and about town or in a queue or whatever. Because Shawn is at home, I'm just not waiting in the car for her at the usual times and so I have completely forgotten to even open the app. I think that I bailed at just the right time because some friends of ours and Shawn have been discussing on WhatsApp the fact that Duo seems to have become more menacing and threatening than usual. Anyone else experieince that?

Anyway, that's us. Hopefully, now that Shawn seems to be returning to slightly more normal activities, so can I.

I just finished reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (audiobook) and have since fallen into the Frankenstein fandom, at least a little bit. My most favorite thing that I've discovered is an AITA post from Elizabeth, Victor Frankenstein's betrothed, which is nearly canonical (in Frankenstein she does write him a letter wondering if he is love with someone else and notes that his affection towards her has always seemed like a brother to a sister.)

Frankenstein occupied a lot of my mental real estate for several days in a way that few books do. Not, I don't think, because it was Just That Good, but because there is so much we think we know about Victor Frankenstein and his creature. The book "explodes" a lot of that, much of which I posted about earlier when I was still in the throes of listening to the audiobook, but much of which I keep returning to.

Interestingly, Frankenstein gets a shout out in the book I'm listening to now, The Body Scout by Lincoln Michel. The blurb for the book describes it as "a hardboiled baseball scout must solve the murder of his brother in a world transformed by body modifications." Why did I pick this book, you might ask? So, lately, when I am looking for the next thing, I just ask Libby to call up all the available audiobooks that have been tagged cyberpunk. Out of all the ones it found for me, I started this one yesterday because I noticed two people are waiting for it. I figured I'd better finish listening to it so I can get it off to them.

If you're curious, the other ones on my list are: The Memory Librarian by Janelle Monae, The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with Her Mind by Jackson Ford, and The God Game by Danny Toby. If you've read any of these I'd love to know which I should pick next. I usually take out way more books that I can reasonably get through in the borrowing time because I inevitably can't stand a reader or just can't get into the book and it's nice to have another one to jump right into.

I had wanted to tell you about the game I ran this last weekend, but as it's time to head off to my writers' hour, I will have to save that for tomorrow!

It's been a slow reading week. I don't really have that much to report. I started listening to the audiobook of Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki, which is a collection of short stories. So far I've been enjoying it.

The other thing I read is my copy of the TTRPG Camp Flying Moose by Alicia Furness because I am planning on running a one-shot of it at ConFABulous (October 11-13, 2024). If you were ever a fan of Lumberjanes the graphic novels, this is the RPG for you. The game seems pretty simple to run, but I did have to re-work the provided character sheet because it had no place to put the stats.... which seems like a kind of major oversight. But, it was easy enough to do.

Oh, I should also probably mention that the SIXTH episode of Mona Lisa Overdrive dropped today. Kali1ban and I talk about WorldCON a bit as well as the aesthetics of cybperpunk. A LOT of short stories titles get dropped, so if you're looking for a "is this cyberpunk or not?" kind of read, you can check that out.

Otherwise, I feel like I'm finally starting to recover from WorldCON. I'm starting to catch up on my correspondence, etc. It's weird to feel like this when all I did was attend virtually.

That's it for me. What about you? Reading or watching or listening anything interesting?

First of all, WorldCON sent out their final schedule today, so now I can officially announce where you can find me (virtually) in Glasgow next weekend (August 8-12). My panels are online, unless otherwise noted:

Let Them Cook - Food in Anime (THURSDAY: 1 pm GMT/8:00 am CT) - hybrid
The Immersive Possibilities of Horror Audio (SATURDAY: 7pm GMT/2:00 pm CT)
Everything We Love (a Little or a Lot) About Fanfiction (SATURDAY: 10pm GMT/5:00 pm CT)
Help, I Got Reincarnated Into a Worldcon Panel! (SUNDAY: 10pm GMT/5:00 pm CT)
If I'm Not Kira and You're Not Kira, Who is Writing in the Death Note? (MONDAY: 1pm GMT/8:00 am CT) --hybrid

Three out of the five panels are, as you can see, anime and manga panels, so I guess I have made myself a kind of reputation? To be fair, on the questionnaire when they ask about your specialties, I always point people to my manga review site, so... I reap what I sow, I suppose. And, I'm not really complaining! In fact, I'm thrilled! I am particularly excited to talk about Food in Anime, though, as I told the moderator, I really hope that we can mention manga, too, since that's where most of my favorites exist.

But, so I have a couple of early mornings, both for hybrid panels. We'll see how this goes. I've had some bad luck with hybrid in the past--not being able to hear the other panelist and basically being Max Headroom in a corner and so not getting called on to participate a lot. But, I am hopeful!

As for reading, expect a lot of manga over the next week and a half!!

This week, of course, it's still been all cyberpunk, all the time. I finished a re-read of Gibson's Nueromancer, as that's the subject of our most recent podcast (which should be dropping later today or early tomorrow), and I started listening to the audiobook for Klara and The Sun by Ishiguro Kazou. I just finished watching Star Trek: Prodigy's second (current) season, and really loved it. Every time my family looked over my shoulder while I was watching this they had some disparaging comment about the animation, but I thought it was fine. Not my favorite style, but the story made up for it, IMHO.

In my TBR pile, I have a supposedly cyberpunk graphic novel called Twelve Percent Dread by Emily McGovern, a bunch of random manga that I will now probably dump to read later, since I need to focus on food and isekai (another world) manga.

What about you?

First of all, the obligatory reminder that if you'd like to listen to me and my co-host, Ka1iban, talk about the original Ghost in the Shell anime movie from 1995, you can do it. Here's the Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5yZxXGcx2E6EAga4k5pmMa. You can also listen on Spreaker, iTunes, or anywhere fine podcasts can be found.

If you listen, please review and/or rate us, subscribe, and all those good things.

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This last week, I continued to keep on reading and listening to the cyberpunk stuff--so, here's what I got through:

The big standout was Feed by M.T. Anderson. I listened to this as an audiobook, which is what I would recommend as the best way to consume it, hands down. The production value on the audiobook is phenomenal. The story is, in part, about social media taking over your brain, and so there's a point where the narrative is broken up with fake advertisements, which are so well done that I initially mistook them for real ones--I thought my phone had flaked out or I'd hit some pop-up. It took several seconds before I realized that these were fake and tailored to the novel. So, that part was EXTREMELY well done. And perfectly hammered in the point of the book, because my brain is so used to being interrupted and bombarded by ads that initially I went into "don't pay attention to this" mode and didn't fully register that my audio book should NOT come with ads. And, of course, we all believe that we're SO good at multitasking, which we all know is at least partly a lie was laid bare by this whole thing. Like, we think we are so adept at tuning advertisements out, when, really, we are subconsciously absorbing them... as I was until I woke up to the fact that this was part of the narrative.

Wake up Sheeple, indeed. ;-)

I finished reading the physical book of 36 Streets by T. R. Napper and... mmmm, I loved the setting of this book a lot. It's a cyberpunk Vietnam, specifically Hanoi. But, the main character never gelled for me and the grim not only stayed grim throughout, but got WORSE. Like, people I had invested in and lied died stupid deaths. So, not what I would call a satisfying story and the text never asks any of the interesting questions of cyberpunk as far as I was concerned even though the main character, Lin, choses to erase huge portions of her memory in order to "fight unencumbered." All of which, to me, felt needlessly macho instead of some kind of treatise or reflection on personhood.

I listened to the short story "Seb Dreams of Reincarnation" by Aimee Ogden which is a great story in the vein of David Levin's "Damage." In which people's minds become space ships. Seb, the titular hero, was once a ship and now he's trying to cope with being a human again and not really doing great--at least not until he takes up the hobby of manning drones. It's a story I want people to read, so I won't spoil it, except to say that the ending is EXTREMELY heartwarming.

I also re-read the short story "Maneki Neko" by Bruce Sterling, which is a story that's sort of like Naomi Kritzer's "Better Living Through Algorithms" (though, obviously, Naomi does it better.)

I gave up on the audiobook The Electric Church by Jeff Somers as it suffered the same problem of T. R. Napper's book, which was excessive machismo. A problem, as much as I hate to admit it, at least in cyberpunk written by men.

I started to listen to the audiobook of Warcross by Marie Lu, which was liking until it became a millionaire boyfriend novel. I'm going to stick with it, but I am adjusting my expectations.

Other things in my queue:

Armada by Ernest Cline (audiobook)
Accelerando by Charles Stross (audiobook)
Jennifer Government by Max Berry

And, of course, I'm going to have to rewatch Ghost in the Shell 2.0: Innocence for the next podcast.

So, what about you? What are you reading lately? Anything good? Anything AWFUL?

Even though it's been two weeks since I reported on my reading, I don't actually have a WHOLE lot new in that regard. Because my podcast is doing a Ghost in the Shell episode next time, I watched the 1995 anime film of the same name and read the 1989 manga, also known as Koukaku Kidoutai by Shirow Masamune. The later was a trip and a half. But, I don't want to talk too much about either of those here, since hopefully y'all will tune into my show when it drops next week.

I did finish listening to the audio book of Rule 34 by Charlie Stross. I ended up liking it, but I'm not entirely sure if that would remain true if I'd READ the thing, rather than having it read to me. As I noted in earlier posts, it's written in second person, which means all the action is told as "you" rather and he/she or I. So, you walk in to the room. I wonder if this would have ever smoothed out for me if I'd been reading it inside my own head. It worked out fine when someone read it to me, because it felt slightly more natural? The story itself was fine. I guess it's part of a series which I might eventually read all of, but I'm currently not in a special hurry to do so.

I also started reading 36 Streets by T. R. Napper because it had made someone's list of queer cyberpunk and my library had it. I was really enjoying it until the most recent scene... which got a little dark and gruesome for me. I will probably push on, but that's the real trouble with cyberpunk, isn't it? Sometimes the gritty streets get a little too hardcore. I will say that I'm enjoying the Hanoi setting and all the Vietnamese mafia culture. I've been waiting for the gay to kick in, but, turns out, the heroine has a girlfriend.

I ended up returning a couple of books unread this week because I just wasn't getting into them this time. I don't know about the rest of you, but there are books that have narrative styles that I just have to be in the mood for? (Or, sometimes, in extreme cases, I never get into?) That was the case with Aubrey Wood's Bang Bang Bodhisattva. I may try it again, if only because I met her once at WisCON and really liked her as a human being. I also had out an audiobook of Broken Angels by Richard Morgan that felt more milSF than I was in the mood for, so that also got returned unfinished.

I just checked out a bunch more cyberpunk-ish audio books, which include:

Warcross by Marie Lu
Feed by M. T. Anderson
The Electric Church by Jeff Somers

Hopefully one of these will fit the bill. What about y'all? Reading anything fun or noteworthy or... terrible?

Yesterday was a day of errands for me. Mostly I schlepped my family around, actually. Shawn kicked the day off with an appointment she wanted me to sit in on, in order to be a second pair of ears. She recently discovered that her right knee has degraded to the point where she's going to need knee replacement surgery sooner rather than later.

I know what you're all thinking. How do you DISCOVER this all of a sudden? Shouldn't you have felt your knee slowly getting worse?

This is precisely what happened with Shawn's gall bladder. It was zero to IT NEEDS TO COME OUT RIGHT NOW. I think this happens because she suffers nearly constant migraines my beloved wife just doesn't notice the rest of her body falling apart. So, she had some swelling in her knee and then got an x-ray where the doctors were like, "Mrs. Rounds, you have not had cartilage in this knee for what seems to be years.... how are you even walking?" And Shawn will be like, ?? because she's on day 26 in a row of the kind of cluster headache that is colloquially dubbed "suicide migraines" because they are that bad.

So, at any rate, she is looking at knee surgery in October and this is going to be an ORDEAL, but on the other hand, one of Shawn's great stress relievers is going for walks and not being able to do that has not exactly helped the migraine situation either. So, knee surgery it is!

Then, we had to text Mason from the clinic to make sure he was ready to be picked-up for his hair appointment, which we had accidentally scheduled perilously close to the end of this consult. But, he was up and ready and so we whisked him off to a salon that specializes in long, wavy hair. Mason inherited SOME of his mother's curls, but you wouldn't know it because his hair is long enough to be kind of heavy and it weights down a lot of the natural curl. He's had some split ends happening for awhile now too, so any way, even though it was not on par with surgery consultation, it was still fairly important to get done.

Then, as the driver of the family, I hung out near the salon (no hardship as it was close to Nina's Coffeeshop.) I brought Mason and I home and had about an hour to catch my breath when, speaking of migraines, I got back in the car to take Shawn off to the suburbs to her neurologist. The exciting news on that front is that migraine medicine continues to evolve and Shawn is now going to be the recipient of a new med that has some promise. FINGERS CROSSED. I told her that one of my sincere wishes for her is to have a day--just even one, single day--that is 100% pain free. I'm not sure she's had that in her adult life. (I mean a lot of chronic pain sufferers don't, but this is also my wish for all of you/them.)

It was a lot of driving around for me, but I got a LOT of Duolingo done. I have started this new habit, which I think is actually working for me, wherein I spend my first several minutes of every session just going over the new section they have called "words." You get almost no points for doing this, but I don't care. It's what I need, if I want to have any hope of actually remembering Japanese. It's basically vocab review? I've been missing this in my life since I had to drop Drops (an app that is solely devoted to vocabulary).

Plus, I am fond of listening to the actual radio.

Do people even do this any more? Like, I'm not talking about streaming music or a podcast, I mean that stuff that is in the air on radio waves. Like, where you tune your radio device to a frequency. Very old school. But, it's one of the few ways I'm introduced to new music. My weird habit of listening to the actual radio is the only reason I can sing along to Taylor Swift at my age.

You may have also noticed that I missed "What Are You Reading Wednesday?" this week, despite the fact that I've been starting to be more consistent now that I'm reading and consuming things for my new cyberpunk podcast. This is because (spoiler!) our next episode is going to be about the anime sensation Ghost in the Shell, and so all I would be doing would be listing Ghost in the Shell in all of it's half-a-zillion iterations.,, and I figured that might be a bit boring for you. Because, seriously. ALL I am doing right now (and will do until we record next Tuesday) is reading and watching the movies, the anime, and the manga.

Because there is A LOT.

So far, I have AVOIDED the live action, but I might just break down and watch it because I'm sure my co-host will want to complain about it a little.

I am behind on the rest of my life as a consequence, but I'm starting to get my feet up under me.

the_siobhan and

magenta I am finally hoping to sit down and write a reply volley in our various snail mail games. I actually have been saving your letters to read and reply to, so my apologies, but this is me savoring the experience. But the goal is to have things in the mail to you both before the week is officially done.

I don't have much else to report, I don't think? How are you all!?

I have been reading and consuming a literal f*ck ton thanks to my new podcast. Once again, I will break things down by category.

BOOKS

I started and finished listening to Annalee Newitz's novel Autonomous, which I sort of hated? I had real issues with the character of Paladin for reasons which I will only get into privately, so if you want to know reach out. But, it is definitely cyberpunk and queer, so it's on the list to talk about next week.

The only other cyberpunk book that my library had available as an audiobook was Charlie Stross's Rule 34, which... is pretty fascinating so far, if only because it is told in the second person.

SHORT STORIES

"Papa's Going to Buy You a Mockingbird," by Lillian Boyd (Fireside, June 2021). Another story of hyper-capitalism, where our heroes come together to try to fix a problem caused by renting out your own head for ad space. It feels weirdly plausible in a depressing way.

"Across the River, My Heart, My Memory," by Ann LeBlanc (Fireside, July 2021). A story told from the point of view of someone's black market mod pancreas. Yes, the pancreas is telling the story, you heard that right. You kind of have to read it to believe it, but it works. The protag is a pancreas that has the stored memories of a lesbian who is part of a kind of institutional memory coop, which feels very 1990s dyke culture to me... and so read very authentically queer, if you know what I mean.

"Cruise Control," by Benjamin C. Kinney (Fireside, July 2021), which is about a guy who talks his grandpa into becoming a car. it's not gay in any way that I could see, but it is very, very cyberpunk.

"Clown Watches the Clown" by Sara S. Messenger, which is... clown beating fetish + unions??? It is rare that I leave a story and think, "What did I just read?" but this was definitely one of them. Also, not sure how cyberpunk-y it is, outside of the world being very dystopian and the characters been very much part of the underclass. Kind of worth a read, though?

MANGA:
I am only just in the B's of the alphabetical list of cyberpunk manga generated for me by Baka-Updates. But, I got through several over the last week:

AD. Police by Suzuki Toshimichi / Tony Takezaki, which is apparently part of a fairly popular franchise that I had never heard of, but which is kind of a Blade Runner rip-off, in that basically these are cops who hunt down robot crimes (a theme that will continue as we go down the list.)

Armored Gull: The Exoskeleton Frame by Las, a Korean manhua which only had a few chapters published, so I was left wondering when the cyberpunk part would hit. Currently, it seems to be a mecha manga, which is very pretty? There may be a plot coming (as it seems to have been somewhat telegraphed) that our young scientist hero is maybe NOT who he says he is.

Armitage the Third by Konaka Chiaki / Ikegami Tatsuya--another manga from a surprisingly large franchise of movies and anime. I had so much trouble reading more than a couple of chapters of this that I should probably put this one in the next category, which is things watched. I hunted down the first episode of a four part OVA of this just so I could get a better sense of it. It's basically about Martian cops who hunt down illegal robots and prosecute robot crimes. The twist here is that our heroine, Armitage, is herself a third generation robot virtually indistinguishable from humans.

I also started and didn't yet finish Blame! by Nihei Tsutomu.

THINGS WATCHED:
In amongst all of this cyberpunk stuff, it is also the Japanese Film Festival Online (until June 18) and, while I'm not trying to catch everything (which would be darn near impossible, given that there are hundreds of films available,) I did pick up at least one other film this last week.

BL Metamorphosis, directed by Kariyama Shunsuki, which is based on a manga of the same name by Tsurutani Kaori. This film was INSANELY CHARMING. It's about a friendship that forms between a 78-year old woman and a 15 year old girl over their mutual appreciation of a particular yaoi series. I've been describing this to a lot of people because I love it so much, but one of the things that makes the movie awesome is that it's paced just like a yaoi, there's even a kind of "break-up due to easily solved miscommunication" that happens about 2/3rd in and they get a very satisfying friendship version of an HEA. There's even an element of forbidden love, because at one point the 15 year old gets asked who that woman is to her and she shouts, "She's not my grandma!" and runs away, ashamed, just like what happens in a lot of yaoi stories when someone first suggests to the hero that he might be gay.

Then, I watched the Netflix original anime movie based on Blame! (2017) directed by Seshita Hiroyuki and I'm not ashamed to say I liked it. Apparently, it gets a lot of hate because it's not a faithful adaptation of the manga, but I've been having a hard time getting into the manga, so I'm not sure I care.

So, that's been a lot. How about you? What 'cha reading these days?

I bet y'all didn't know that my father has a vlog. He invited me onto his show ostensibly to talk about my book release, though we, in many ways, ended up chatting more about Sherry Turkle's Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in the Digital Age and other ways that the Internet has changed conversation and thinking.

I would normally embed the video here, but that option has been restricted. Regardless, if you're curious what my dad looks like and/or want to otherwise check out our rambling conversation (and the thumbnail that makes me look like a wanted criminal) you can follow the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjSix3rLWF0

Otherwise, it is reading Wednesday and I have very little to report, although I did just finish a manga called Mermaid Scales and the Town of Sand by Komori Yoko, which I enjoyed tremendously. It's the kind of story that I'd call fantasy-adjacent, as there are a lot of fantastical elements, though most of them end up being metaphorical or allegorical. I described it on my manga blog as a sophisticated slow burn slice-of-life about the kind of grief that nearly all young kids experience--that moment when you realize that your parents are human beings, riddled with faults of their own. The story begins as the middle school-aged heroine is relocating to a small seaside town because her parents are divorcing (due to her mother's infidelity) and ends in a place of acceptance, at least the acceptance for now. It's a very grown-up book, honestly. Surprisingly PROFOUND. (Which is why the review, if you go off to read it, starts with a rant about frustrated I am that the gross pedophiles of the world have ruined anime and manga for so many mundanes.) People should read this book!

Anyway.

I am up at the a$$-crack of dawn because I just took our family friend, John, to the airport, so that he could catch a flight for home. He was staying with us for a few days on his annual Midwestern tour to see his mother (in Iowa.) He's always a very easy houseguest, basically family, so it was lovely to have him while he was here.

I am still sitting on a book that I should have gotten back to the library AGES ago. I should just give up on it, I think, and admit that I am not in the mood for horror manga right now: PTSD Radio. I think I'm just mad because I got halfway into it and then stopped. It's a book of pictures, I should just be able to push through.

Anyway.

What I did read (and also, as it happens, watch the anime for) was Kyuujitsu no Warumono-san / Mr. Villain’s Day Off by Morikawa Yuu. As I read this manga, I thought a lot about that torpedoed panel at Minicon: "Shipping Light and Dark." The main character of this manga is known only as Shogun or The General and it's clear that being The Villain is just his day job. He's good at it and high-ranking and does seem to sincerely want to end humanity reign on Earth (he's an alien), but when he has time off all The General really just wants to go to the Ueno Zoo to watch the pandas.

The inherent ridiculousness of the situation fuels this gag manga. For those of you familiar with The Way of The House Husband, this manga runs of the same concept as that one: putting a scary guy (a villain, a yakuza gangster) into light and fluffy domestic situations is just so difficult for the brain to parse that it automatically seems silly. This is a guy who'd kill a man for looking at him funny, but he can't handle a roomba, right? It's just ridiculous!

And this is part of the appeal (for me, at least) of shipping dark characters with light ones. Taking the villain off the battlefield and asking the question, "What does Dr. Doom do on his day off?" forces us to attempt to humanize someone who is maybe, normally, only seen in black and white and as larger-than-life. And, I think this works especially well for those villains who are mostly just foils for the hero. Those villains whose motives are somewhat vague, or like Crowley in Good Omens, just sort of works for the Other Side--and who doesn't necessarily buy into the full agenda.

This isn't to say there isn't value in exploring those that are more committed to the "evil" cause, however.

One of the things I really didn't get to talk about on that panel (because it was so thoroughly shamed out of us) was the fact that, in my fan writing, I am actually interested in sociopathy. Like, there was a really fascinating recent article in the New York Times interviewing a woman who is a psychotherapist and a (diagnosed) sociopath. She apparently has a new book out that I should probably find and order all about her life, etc. But, she points out in the interview that not every sociopath is a serial killer, despite the popular imagination. It's a mental illness like any other for many people. It's difficult to medicate, so people have to learn to just live with it. But, yet in the interview with her you can TOTALLY see her struggling with empathy and consequences... like she is COLD and you totally get the sense that she would cut you and have zero remorse, you know? Just in a half-page interview! And, I just find this utterly captivating. Like, she talks in the interview about what happens when she tells people that she is a honest-to-god sociopath at cocktail parties and the like because inevitably, apparently, people will just start telling her about their fantasies of murdering co-workers, spouses, etc.

Anyway, in fiction, I've explored the idea that a sociopath, who among other problems severely lacks empathy, could be loved, particularly by a hero who has ALL the empathy.

Like in the manga I just read, trying to write a sociopath just living their lives is a kind of fictional puzzle that I particularly like to play with. Can you write a sympathetic sociopath? Can you do that without "weakening" the sociopathy--what fan readers call OCC, being out of character? Like for me, the challenge is "Can I write a believable love story between two people who should be (or have been) enemies, in part because one of them LITERALLY has no conscience?"

And I don't know that I've done it, but it was a fun exercise to try, you know? And, I think one of the appeals of shipping these sorts.

==
Again, the article "What It's Like to Be a Sociopath?" is probably behind a paywall for most of you. Apparently, the author is Patric Gagne and the book is Sociopath: A Memoir. Interestingly, there's some talk in various Reddit forums that in psychology the term "sociopath" isn't typically used as a diagnosis, instead folks who suffer from this mental illness are referred to as having anti-social personality disorder, which I knew from my previous research into this stuff for my fan fic. But, in this case since it appeared in a NYT article, it raised some flags for people working in the profession as to whether or not Gagne was merely sensationalizing for the publicity or actually lying about her credentials as a psychologist. And you know... fair point.

There is another article about her, here, in The Guardian that is free: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/apr/08/patric-gagne-sociopath-fighting-urges

And the Daily Mail... mmmm, seeming more an more disreputable... as this is a deeply sensational article about her, some of which seems a bit perposterous: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-13248861/sociopath-patric-gagne-new-memoir.html

Still, I should see if the library has this book.

As some of you may remember, I had recently checked a number of manga out from the library (and got JUDGED for it). Well, I managed to read at least one of them since then: Blue Period (volume 1) by Yamaguchi Tsubasa.

Blue Period is about a young delinquent-looking second year high schooler who is sort of drifting through life, following his parents' advice to do good in school, but also have some fun. Yatora should be doing okay, but he's just not feeling it. Any of it. Until one day, by chance, he runs face-to-face with a piece of art that MOVES him. Seeing this senior's art project makes Yatora feel feelings he didn't know he possessed. In art class the next day, he decides to try it for himself--can he produce something that invokes a place, a feeling? And he has just enough success that he decides to not only continue with art, but to strive to get into the prestigious Tokyo Art School. Wacky hijinks ensue, as they say. I ended up really liking this manga, but I couldn't help but compare it to an autobiography about a similar struggle, Blank Canvas: My So-Called Artist's Journey, by the mangaka who wrote, among other things, Princess Jellyfish. In part because Yatora's successes (at least by the end of volume one) seem fairly effortless. I do think that it's going to get more complicated as the story progresses, but I also wonder if this isn't just going to be Yotora's shounen superpower and the theme of the manga, which is: making people feel things is stronger than technical skill. Which? I mean, I can get behind that message, honestly?

My To Be Read pile includes a couple of manga that I'd previously bounced out of, and one book that's so overdue at the St. Paul Public Library that they might make me pay a lost fee if I don't get it back to them soon (so, I should probably do that today)--that one is PTSD Radio by Nakayama Masaaki, which gets compared to Ito Junji...so horror, obviously.:

But, so I previously bounced out of, but am trying again:

Choujin X (volumes 1 & 2) by Ishida Sui. This is JUMP product, so I dunno. Could just be people-kaiju fighting each other?
Solo Leveling, by Chugong, which is a Korean manhua which seems to have been based on a studio-produced Korean anime, as the first author credit is to Dubu (Redice Studio).

This is keeping in mind that I don't always have an issue with "just fighting" manga. I am a Bleach fan, after all. I'm just not sure if I'm in the mood for that.

Then, I picked up Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, (Vol 1) by Yamada Kanehito/ Abe Tsukasa which will probably read very fast for me since I've seen the first... three(?) episodes at a friend's house and I already know that I like the premise. I also picked up another JUMP product, Blade of the Moon Princess by Endo Tatsuya, in part because my library had the first two volumes<--which is often how I end up with the manga I read.

What about you? Reading anything interesting?

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Day in the Life of an Idiot

Journal of Lyda Morehouse

Entries tagged with reading

It's a Good Thing that Wednesdays Exist

Pokestop and Thee

Thank Elon for the Bad Weather Reporting

Late to the (Reading) Party

Snow and Shawn's Birthday

Hulu Ending (For Me)

Snow Emergency!

Wednesday Things

Wednesday Stuff

Or, I Could Just Not Update Forever

Reading and Stuff

Reading?

WorldCON schedule and Wednesday Reading

Reading and 'Casting

Reading Wednesdays

A Day of Errands

Reading and Getting Ready to Go to Indiana

Talking Smart

My Miniscule Reading List

Reading and To Be Read