Figuring out a schedule is hard, in fact I'd argue that you never really find one but rather you get to a point where you're making smaller and smaller adjustments. On that note, anime review is coming out Tuesday this week instead of Monday since I know I'll be too busy Monday for sure, hopefully with my new work schedule this won't happen as much but this Monday is special.
For those who missed it, I finally got this week's book review up earlier today (Prudence), I also pushed forward a radio drama review this week so that I could highlight a Sparkler Monthly title during their kickstarter (which ends in one day!, I choose to talk about Tokyo Demons) and for anime I wrote a lot about Sound! Euphonium. That show ended up being a show I could talk almost endlessly about, I'd love to compare it to Honey and Clover actually about how the characters are both real characters and fantastic representations of the people you find in creative fields in school although it's been years since I've seen H&C so I might need to rewatch/reread that first. Everything else below the cut~
Speaking of reading, I finished up the non-fiction work Hissing Cousins: The Untold Story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth by Marc Peyser and Timothy Dwyer the other day and I liked it alright. I didn't know much about Alice but I liked her more in certain bits since she was mean but honest about her motivations (once she got into her 80s though it was like "jesus christ you're STILL being a jerk? Like, none of what you complain about even matters anymore!) and I felt like a lot of Elanor's good deeds started out of noblesse oblige than a real interest and that's awkward, you like to think of people supporting a cause or doing humanitarian work doing it because they have a personal care/belief associated with it, not because they simply think it's the right thing to do. I also had no clue FDR was rather unfaithful (I had seen a picture of him as a young man prior to this though and damn, he looked good!) and it's making me think even more about how it's funny to have political "dynasties" or even people whose whole career is to be a political and to represent people who live lives completely unlike anything they've ever experienced. Yes you do need some years to develop the skills to be an effective politician but, when people around my own age and have a similar background regarding culture and socio-economic status have no idea of what my life was like just a few states over then how can I trust someone whose even more different than me to even ask the right questions?
So, not my favorite book of the year so far but it is giving me ideas to chew over and become more articulate on which is good!
Finally, for some reason I found a lot of lists of webcomic recommendations this weekend so I felt like sharing the new things I found and enjoyed (bear in mind, I didn't check the last update for a lot of these series until I was caught up so a number of these are on hiatus, fingers crossed they all come back soon). Since Saturday was "Yaoi Day" (Yaoi no Hi) that was the first list I stumbled across, I seem to recall getting great recommendations from this list in years past so be sure to check out the 2012 and 2013 versions of the list if you want even more. From this list I was already familiar but not a fan of half a dozen titles, a reader of Off*Beat (kinda anyway, I finished up the three volume via my library and Sparkler but wasn't interested in the side stories) and then read through Blossom Boys (very short and fun, I feel like this list has a lot of boys on it who are more bi than gay which is fine by me), Check Please (which I saw at Otakon and I couldn't tell from the banner if it was about hockey or a Canadian waiter), Dragon Husbands (which has some seriously cute-ass dragons), Sharp Zero (okay yes I will laugh at no pants jokes), and I've read some of the Tobias and Guy comics over the years.
This Magical Girl webcomic list was compiled earlier in the year but due to twitter drama (as far as I can tell, some other comic reporter or creator made a "we need homegrown magical girl stories!" and completely ignored the literal decades of American examples), I already read Agents of the Realm (although I'm finding it a bit too rote so far), Sleepless Domain (with reservations, I like the writer but the artist sort of abandoned their earlier work Olympus Overdrive), Battle Dog, Metacarpolis (which involves a magical girl but is not the main point of the comic), and just discovered How I Loathe Being a Magical Girl (which might be my favorite "parody" magical girl comic, not just because her outfit kinda looks like a pretty cure outfit). And for a point of reference, I feel like some people don't understand JUST how many comics I try out, I was already familiar with all but five or so and did check them out. I have tried so many webcomics guys, so many!
Finally, a LGTBQ+ list also stumbled across my feed, from there I was already familiar with The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ & Amal (completed), Missing Monday, As the Crow Flies (review here), Prince of Cats (complete), Princess Princess (complete, rather short too), and discovered Ouroborous from here which would have fit in on the BL list rather well judging by the tone so far (so would TJ & Amal and PoC but that list seemed to focus on on-going stories).
