Nishi Keiko - Love Song (Eng. trans.)

I picked this up because I loved Nishi's stories in Four Shoujo Stories so much. This is another collection of her short stories, selected and translated by Matt Thorn, a very early fan and scholar of shoujo manga.

Also, it's taken me several months to blog this, so my memory is really fuzzy.

The first story, "Love Song," is on a woman who ends up being the abuser in a relationship; even though she knows she's destroying the relationship, she can't seem to keep herself from doing so.

I don't remember much of "Jewels of the Seaside" or "The Signal Goes Blink Blink;" the first is a comic mystery with three sisters and one man, and I can't even remember the second any more.

The final story, "The Skin of Her Heart," didn't impress me too much, but I may have been in a bad mood at the time as well. I do remember liking the art, which was very spare and very different from the other stories. It's a quiet, sfnal story that focuses more on the character than the world.

I'm not sure I would recommend this to everyone; I ended up liking Nishi's two stories in Four Shoujo Stories much more, but I'm still glad I got it. Also, I hunted down some more of her manga in BookOff, so maybe more later.

Judson, Olivia - Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation

I think Olivia Judson was moonlighting for a while as Dr. Tatiana on The Economist, which is where she gets the columns for this book. Despite the title, the book is actually a pop science book on evolution and natural history in the form of an advice column.

Sample letters go something like this:

"I'm a such-and-such spider in California. Even though I'm willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice to my mate, she won't take it! Why won't she eat me? Am I not tasty enough?"

The reply is generally very tongue-in-cheek and will usually laugh at inadvertent puns about eating and sex. To this, Dr. Tatiana may explain how cannibalism of one's sex partner has evolved, why it's usually the male who gets gobbled up, and how this strategy benefits both the male and the female of the species.

The breezy tone of the letters may annoy some people, but I actually enjoyed it. Judson does tend to anthropomorphize a little, but she's usually very, very good about keeping discussion of other species' sex habits to those species. She very rarely draws parallels directly to human behavior, although she often uses human behavior as a joking way to write back to the insect of the week ("Maybe he's philandering, but aren't you sleeping around a little as well?").

One of the reasons why I really liked the casual voice was because even though I think I have a fairly strong stomach for these things, I was still getting pretty grossed out by the very end. This is from the person who absolutely loved all the parasite chapters in Peeps.

Come to think of it, it could be because the letters were often written from the POV of the guys getting eaten, whereas in Peeps, you get the feeling that the author thinks the parasites are pretty darn cool.

Also, when I was reading it, I yelled out, "Score!" as Judson debunked the hoary "men are wired to sleep around and women are wired for marriage" theory.

Interesting topics covered include cannibalism, aphrodisiacs, spiky penises, incest, hermaphrodites, sexes (why just two?), male attire, and etc. Also, while the book's title says it's for all creation, many of the examples focus on the bug world. I figure this may be because we know more about them because of short lifespans and therefore more ease in tracking evolution, but I honestly have no idea. Not that I have anything against bugs! They had the coolest and weirdest examples anyway. I kept thinking back to Tiptree's Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death".

Despite the occasional "EW! That is gross!" reaction, this is still a fun and fast read. Um. Provided that you like weird nature details like me.

Heroes 1x04 Collision

( Spoilers )