Reading Wednesday

[oyceter]

Woe, it's been a while since I've had a Reading Wednesday post.

What I've read: I thought I had already made a post about reading Meljean Brook's Guardian Demon, but apparently not! Anyway, I'm hoping to write this one up in more detail. Like many of the other books in the Guardian series, I don't completely buy the romance and the plot doesn't always make sense, but somehow the books are greater than the sum of their parts. Possibly it's Brook's clear affection for worldbuilding along with romance. And of course, after I finished, I went on to reread bits and pieces of various other Guardian books.

I did not read for another week or so after that, but then I got the Kobo Aura HD, and I have now resumed reading 7 Seeds (currently in the middle of volume 14? 13?). It continues to be awesome, and I am especially glad to see certain characters reappearing.

I also caught up on the latest Skip Beat chapters! I think I am withholding judgement until I see what happens next. Also, the translation for some of them is terrible.

And I skimmed The Mammoth Book of Hot Romance, most of which I cannot remember, save the Victoria Janssen short story that I liked a lot. POC hero AND heroine! And a relatively unused romance time period (for the genre, not for the author) with a lot of period detail.

What I'm reading now: Finally found my places again in Spillover and Feed after uploading them to the new ereader, but I haven't made much progress in either. Also in the middle of a 7 Seeds volume. Also I am a few pages into Samit Basu's Gameworld trilogy book 1, but I don't count that as officially reading it yet.

Random book-shaped space: I miss reading manga! Being able to do it on the ereader is awesome, and the new one's larger screen makes them so much more legible. Anyway, I got Silver Spoon and Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou to read, but I feel like I'm completely behind on stuff, especially shoujo manga. Any good new shoujo series around?

... also, I should grab whatever Yuki Kaori is working on now.

Comments

[lnhammer]

Heh -- I'm currently doing a slow reread of YKK on my Kobo. I recently found that PDF works better (and is much easier to make) than epub, FWIW. ETA: This is on an e-ink device -- a tablet may perform differently.

After that, I'll have to see what to try (maybe catch up on Kimi ni Todoki?). Though, actually, now that I'm falling down a wuxia rabbithole, I may not notice other things for a while.

---L.

[oyceter]

I've been kind of frustrated with PDFs on the Kobo so far, but those have been text ones where the margins make the text too small and navigating while zoomed in is incredibly annoying. For manga, CBZ/CBR has been working for me, which is so awesome! Less conversion ftw!

Re: wuxia rabbithole: excellent!

[lnhammer]

Large-page PDFs can, ya, be a pain. I found a widget that takes Aozora Bunko texts and makes PDFs the size of a standard Japanese bunko paperback -- which happens to be almost exactly the size of a Kobo screen. Main problem being no instant lookups from a PDF.

---L.

[dsgood]

I would be interested in hot romance fiction in which the characters were mammoths.

[lnhammer]

Or even a sweet romance fiction in which the characters were mammoths -- I'd go for that, too.

---L.

[oyceter]

If they were the mammoths from The Way Things Work, I would be even more in!

[lnhammer]

Now all we need is to convince David McCauley to write and illustrate it!`

[oyceter]

+1!!!!

[(Anonymous)]

I imagine there might be fanfic somewhere about Manny the Mammoth and his mate from "Ice Age." Although it might be a bit tricky to produce a story that's either hot or sweetly romantic when your male lead has the voice of the title character from "Everybody Loves Raymond"--especially if his kibbitzing buddies the sabretooth tiger and whatever the other one is keep showing up.

Marfisa

[oyceter]

... this is why I love the internet ;).

[torachan]

Are you already reading Kimi ni Todoke? If not, I recommend that. I'm actually not following that many shoujo series right now because they're harder to find scans of and I don't get down to Book Off that often anymore without a car.

If you liked High School Debut, Kawahara Kazune has two currently running series that I like, Ore Monogatari!! and Aozora Yell.

[oyceter]

I was, but now I am super behind! Also, ooo, didn't know Kawahara had more manga out, will have to check those out.

[torachan]

She's one if those authors that has a lot available in Japanese but doesn't seem to get much interest from the US publishing industry. :-/

[oyceter]

SIGH. I feel like this can be said about so many of the mangaka I want to read...

[torachan]

Yeah. :( There are scanlations of both those series, though. Ore Monogatari!! is one I'm working on myself, actually, so I can guarantee a good translation! No idea what the quality of Aozora Yell is, but there are also raws out there.

[oyceter]

Oh, that's awesome! I've seen your posts but never quite realized that it was by the High School Debut mangaka.

[torachan]

It's a collab so the story is by her but the art is someone else.

[jinian]

Yeah, Silver Spoon!