Saturday, November 29, 2014

Book Review: Cooperhead

Previously on Narrative Investigations: Helen receives an ARC from Tor only to discover it's the third book in a series, crap! Thankfully her library had the first book in the series but, after writing that review, she discovered that they didn't have the second book! So it was off to the other library system so that a review of Silverblind will still happen before the new year!


Cooperhead by Tina Connolly


Friday, November 28, 2014

Movie Review: Interstellar

Normally this film would fall into the category of "movies I'm interested in but not enough to pay DC theater prices so I'll wait for the DVD" but, much like Princess Kaguya, this is a film where the experience of seeing it on a big screen is part of the draw. Or in this case, seeing it on a 70mm film playing IMAX theater at work with the sound so loud it was literally rattling some of the building (not an exaggeration, I had to deal with the rattling first hand when I was covering for a coworker). Even with an employee discount the ticket price still made me wince, was it worth it in the end?



Interstellar


Monday, November 24, 2014

Anime Review: Tonari no Seki-kun and Magica Wars

This is why I usually take November off, I simply run out of things to review and have to scramble a bit, especially when it comes to anime. Thankfully after doing this for so long I've started to anticipate this so I'm going to do something I haven't done in a little while, I'm going to talk about two series of shorts that came out in this past year. Since two mini-reviews is totally the same as one full length review, right?


Friday, November 21, 2014

Book Review: Dragon Sword and Wind Child

Last February I ordered a microphone from Amazon, got a package direct from Amazon, thinking that I didn't remember that it was an Amazon fulfillment, and opened it up to find a kindle instead. I then remembered that my birthday was in about a week and that this was probably a gift from my mother considering I had mentioned off-handedly that I was thinking of getting on in the next year and confirmed when I started getting email notifications about books from my wishlist being added to my account. Obviously this book was one of them, I forget where in the manga blogosphere I first heard of it but it was an out of print title that had recently popped up in ebook form and it sounded like it had potential so why not?


Dragon Sword and Wind Child by Noriko Ogiwara



Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Webcomic Review: The Littlest Elle

Initially I was going to hold off on changing how I did webcomic reviews until the new year but what the heck, I'll talk about it more in my end of year round-up post in about a month but I've decided that I'm going to start doing reviews of completed webcomics I follow as if they were a comic or manga series (even if I reviewed them while they were still on-going since I've done that for manga as well). Of course, this series actually ended months back and I was waffling on whether or not to start doing these reviews now but I have a bit of a lull in my schedule and this artist does have a few other active projects so I'd like to highlight one that she's done to help get people interested in the ones she's still working on (I'm also impressed at anyone who manages to work on three separate webcomics at once, no matter what the update schedule is!)

The Littlest Elle by Elle Skinner

Monday, November 17, 2014

Anime Review: Free! Eternal Summer

This should be the last of my summer anime reviews which is slightly ironic since it's the most summer of the summer anime I watched and I'm seriously contemplating wearing long underwear to work tomorrow (curse you polar vortex). I didn't start out the summer watching this show but I had a feeling I would get around to it sooner or later and I finally did when friends told me it was actually better than the first season which was an odd thing to hear. I never thought that the first season was particularly good or bad, it had it's good and bad parts but was ultimately a bit bland, to hear that the staff decided to do actual character development and build upon the first season was a bit shocking more than anything else!

Free! Eternal Summer



Friday, November 14, 2014

Book Review: Tides

I got this book in a curious way, an author I follow on tumblr reblogged another author saying her second book was coming out soon and she would like to have more reviews of the first book up on Amazon so she'd be happy to send a PDF of the book to anyone who wanted to review it on there. Naturally I was interested so I'll be cross-posting part of this review over there, hope it does some good!


Tides by Betsy Cornwell


Thursday, November 13, 2014

Movie Review: The Tale of Princess Kaguya

I was under the impression that this movie had a one-night only showing in DC and was unhappy that I wouldn't have a chance to see it, until I checked back a week later and discovered it was a one week showing so I still had time! (and right after I bought this ticket I realized another location had opened up for the next week with a possibly even cheaper ticket price, curses) The movie won't be playing long in the rest of the country either so I bumped this up my reviewing queue a bit and let's get to it!



The Tale of Princess Kaguya




Monday, November 10, 2014

Anime Review: HaNaYaMaTa

During my Summer 2014 Anime Round-UP I mentioned that this was a show I hadn't tried out yet but was on my short-list to try if I found myself with some free time and that's exactly what ended up happening. I don't remember why but I found myself with a lack of colorful, cute shows in my viewing schedule and this seemed like a natural addition and a good way to fill those lunches at work where nothing else was airing that day.

HaNaYaMaTa


Sunday, November 2, 2014

Book Review: Rampant

Apologies for the lateness of this review and this time I have no explanation for it, I've just been feeling a bit down lately and that makes it surprisingly hard to pull myself together and care enough to write. Wish I could say that it should get better soon but since I'm about to start NaNoWriMo right after this I'm going to take next week off and see how trying to do two different kinds of writing each night goes. I have plenty to review but just no motivation, even though I've figured out a way to pre-write most of these at work!



Rampant by Diana Peterfreund