On my way out the door…
Just a quick note before I run off to work this morning! Over at Manga Recon, we have a new roundtable discussion about which series we’d like to see licensed over here. As I said in my answer, I’m still playing catch-up on all the series that have already been licensed, so everyone else has much more to contribute than I do. Still, it gave me a chance to talk about Bakuman again. :D My other picks were a couple of older Ai Yazawa series, and Hikaru Nakamura’s Saint Oniisan which I’m dying to be able to share with my mother.
Work and life have been pretty busy this week, so I haven’t had a lot of time to spend on manga, but what time there is, I’ve mainly been spending reading Basara. It reads more slowly for me than most series (I’m a notoriously fast reader), which is a real pleasure, though I’ll be out of volumes soon and need to figure out how to pick up more. You may recall that I was a bit iffy on this series at first, but wow, continuing with it has really paid off. I’m completely enthralled. And Shuri is slooooowly moving toward a place where he may be able to shake off the title I gave him after volume 2 (“The Jerk King”), though I’m not entirely sure how much of that can really be credited to him, and how much is just due to the fact that I’ve now met one who is much worse.
Off to work now. Happy Friday everyone! More later, perhaps!
January 9th, 2009 at 8:20 am
Yay, Basara! I’m so glad you’re “enthralled.”
Speaking of books that read slowly, OMG it takes forever to get through a volume of With the Light. Last night I read for a couple hours, then checked my progress and I was only, like, 1/5 through. Of course, I’m a notoriously slow reader, but this particular series is like molasses to me.
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Melinda Beasi Reply:
January 9th, 2009 at 9:18 am
I am very much so! :) :) And I credit you with lighting the much-needed fire under my butt to move these books to the top of my priority list.
Ooooo I should try for the molasses series! I need books that read slowly!
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jun Reply:
January 9th, 2009 at 9:35 am
One good thing to note about Basara is that though it’s 27 volumes long, the last two are side stories. The real epic concludes in volume 25. The other 2 you can kind of acquire at your leisure.
I guess molasses books are good for fast readers, but they’re not good for me, especially when I’m supposed to do a combo review of volumes two and three. It’s gonna take me forever!
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Melinda Beasi Reply:
January 9th, 2009 at 9:40 am
True true… you know, the one problem I *do* have is when I don’t love a novel (this doesn’t apply to manga) it is really hard for me to get through it. I’m having trouble with that right now regarding my impending Otaku Bookshelf review. I’m not even halfway through that book. I need to force myself to finish it soon!
Thanks for the info regarding Basara!
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jun Reply:
January 9th, 2009 at 9:52 am
Here’s my deal with novels:
I really have to get to page 50 in the first “sitting” in order to get into it. If I stop before that point, I’ll read in tiny spurts, sometimes even falling asleep, until I FINALLY make some significant inroad, at which point I can devour the rest of it quite handily.
This generally doesn’t happen with manga but while With the Light isn’t bad, I can’t see it ever going above a B+ for me. Also, each volume includes two of the Japanese volumes, so I am really reading volumes three through six. It’s probably a good idea that Yen only releases this twice a year; I do intend on continuing the series and that release schedule sounds just about perfect for such ginormous chunks of story.
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May 3rd, 2009 at 3:16 pm
“…though I’m not entirely sure how much of that can really be credited to him, and how much is just due to the fact that I’ve now met one who is much worse.”
Surely this sentence is not referring to my favorite character in Basara, my darling Asagi.
And how far are you in Basara anyway? Have you finished it?
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Melinda Beasi Reply:
May 3rd, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Hi Sara… ahhhhh ha, well, I’ll be interested to see what happens with him as the story goes on. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to pick up any more volumes since the 8th one (aside from a stray 15 given to me by a friend), so I’m far from finished. I’m hoping to rectify that soon!
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Sara K. Reply:
May 3rd, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Don’t worry, Asagi gets to do lots of things in the upcoming volumes. Betraying people, selling a main character into slavery, and of course, cooking. Asagi sure likes cooking and cleaning (cleaning himself that is, he isn’t so fond of cleaning anything else).
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Melinda Beasi Reply:
May 4th, 2009 at 8:21 am
Ha! Nice. :D I look forward to all of this. :)
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