Sunday, August 31, 2014

Book Review: Earth Girl

Curse summer colds, I never caught colds this much when I was in college, must be the general public making me sick. Regardless, one other big change from my college town is that apparently the District of Columbia has a law about being in the teenager section of a library if you aren't a teen or accompanying one. So far I haven't seen it enforced yet, and I can still pass for 19 if I try, but it is making me a little more hesitant to go in and browse around and instead I'm getting more and more of my books off of my never-ending "to read" list. Which is probably a good thing for me in the long run but I feel oddly out of touch without that chance to just see what's new on the shelves or simply has an interesting cover.


Earth Girl by Janet Edwards



Friday, August 29, 2014

Manga Review: Wandering Son (volume four)

This review is late in more than one sense of the word, can you believe I placed a hold on this volume back in December, shortly after I reviewed volume 3, and even though I was first in line I didn't get the call saying the book was in until July? I know that libraries are big, complicated systems with procedures to follow but that's flat out ridiculous, I had assumed that if the book was already in the catalog it wouldn't be long until it was on the shelves. So, yet again I am behind in the series and it has to once again gently remind me why I'm so frustrated about it.


Wandering Son (volume 4) by Shimura Takako


Monday, August 25, 2014

Anime Review: Riddle Story the Devil

Back when this show started airing in the winter I didn't give it a second glance since the premise seemed, well, dumb. But as with One Week Friends the longer it went the more it seemed like I was only hearing positive things about it so I decided to give it a shot anyway. I was watching it a bit slowly and so I was about halfway through when it ended and then I heard all of those same people start grumbling about the ending. And I decided that oh well, I haven't gotten to a part where I dislike the story yet so I might as well keep going, even if I'm probably also going to dislike it considering that I haven't seen one person remain positive about the ending....


Riddle Story the Devil (Akuma no Riddle)


Sunday, August 24, 2014

Book Review: The Boneshaker

A couple of years ago I read The Broken Lands and found myself regretting that it had taken so much time to get to the book since I whole heartedly adored it and yet never got around to reading the book it was a prequel to. My to-read list is so long I had nearly forgotten about it until I saw the author talking about the kickstarter she was doing (I believe it was either a companion novella to this or for another, unconnected novella she had written) that prompted me to check my new library systems to see if they had a copy and to reserve it. And so, here are my thoughts on it, and I am also so glad the library seems to have found their copy again, this is the second book in four months they've said I lost after I turned it in and I had to find the first one on the shelves myself.....


The Boneshaker by Kate Milford


Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Movie Review: Hal

I was pleased to hear a few months back that Funimation had picked up the recent anime film Hal and I was sad they didn't have a weekend where you could watch it for free like they've done in the past with other films. But they were screening it at Otakon and since it was for only an hour Saturday morning how could I say no?



Hal


Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Anime Review: Mekaku City Actors

A couple of years ago I first heard of the Kagero Project and went looking for information on it, I wasn't even sure what exactly it was, and was horribly confused when I tried skimming tvtropes and wikipedia articles on it. The basic set-up is that an editor, Jin, used the vocaloid program to make a series of songs, which were later put to videos, that sort of told a story and then were later adapted into a light novel series, a manga, and then eventually this anime, think of it as the story becoming more accessible each time it was adapted. So I tried out a few videos and liked some but was just plain confused by others and decided to wait it out until the adaptation to see if the story worked any better here, especially since in an odd twist Jin himself was doing the writing for the series (I can't find a staff listing that credits him with a particular role so I'm assuming he helped with the series composition or scenario instead of writing the actual scripts). So, while this is certainly the easiest version of the story for people to get into and finish, is it the "best" one?


Mekaku City Actors


Friday, August 15, 2014

Book Review: Cress

Sadly I was unable to get a copy of the audio book of Cress after enjoying Scarlet's so much but I was consoled that a few months earlier I had a chance to go to a book signing and the audio book narrator was in fact there and did a small reading from the book which was rather nice. I feel like I'm a bit odd about book signings however since I usually go to them, listen to the author talk for a bit, and then leave without getting a single book signed. For me the more important part isn't trying to make a connection with the author in those five seconds you get to talk to them (unless it's Tamora Pierce but that was a special occasion and my friends are still jealous of that one) but even for authors I don't really like I enjoy hearing how they came up with their ideas and lives since hey, that's just another story and clearly I'm here because I like stories!



Cress by Marissa Meyer



Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Manga Review: Mars

Long time readers probably recognize this title because it's one where I've been trying to find a complete collection of it to read for years, I seem to recall I first came across it in high school which even for me was quite a few years ago now. Once I finally discovered that one of my library systems had the complete set I carefully set up my request for when I would have a ride (since I 1. wasn't going to request one book at a time again, heck now and 2. was not going to walk over a mile each way in the DC heat with 15 books) and then over the course of many nights spent babysitting worked my way through the series to see once and for all just what actually happened in it.


Mars by Fuyumi Soryo


Monday, August 11, 2014

Anime Review: Chaika the Coffin Princess

And I'm back! It feels a bit weird after that mini hiatus but also because wow we're almost halfway through the summer season of anime and I'm still playing catchup with all of the spring shows. Although this show would have felt odd to review no matter what the time, as people probably remember I was only lukewarm at best about it during the round-UP and only ended up continuing because I needed something to watch during my lunch breaks. I was seeing a lot of praise for it, hence why I choose that show over some other shows to be my catch-up show, but this is one of those cases were I never quite got the hype.


Chaika the Coffin Princess