stuff I've been reading

Bridge to Terabithia is coming out as a movie? The trailer is....so terribly misleading...unless they've changed the story considerably? I hope they didn't ruin it.

Has anyone read the manwha titles "Let Dai" by Sooyeon Won or "Not So Bad" by E. Hae? Are they any good?

Abareru Inu is a cute manga by Sakura Haiji, whom I know as the illustrator of the novel Seventeen Drops (which I squee over in this post). Yuuji and Takatoshi have known each other since they were kids. Takatoshi, five years younger, has always tried hanging out with Yuuji. He figures that at 22 and working, he's finally at the same level with Yuuji and able to hang out with him instead of being pushed away as a bother. But Yuuji has his own problems...He actually likes Takatoshi romantically. It's...fluffy cute and I love big puppy semes and it's been scanlated by Doki Doki. XD

I've always liked Yokan by Tateno Makoto, about a rocker and a former rocker. Not very original, but the art more than made up for it. Yokan EX ~Noise~ is a great addition and continuation. I loved how it dealt with lingering issues, and highlighted Akira's uncompromising attitude towards what he believes important.

In the wow, I can't believe I bothered spending any amount of time reading this crap category is the BL novel Aijin keiyaku by Shuhdoh Rena and illustrated by Minase Misara. Basic premise is that uke was the kept man of the president of a fairly good sized company. The president dies in a traffic accident, and a year later the younger brother of the previous president, now the new president, comes calling at the nice condo the president had bought for uke. The dead guy's widow has found out about uke and wants him out of the condo (title is half in uke's name, half in dead guy's name). The new president, whom I shall call otouto-kun (sorry, don't really want to bother looking up the names of the characters), is very forceful. He kind of gets our extremely passive uke to become his secretary. Uke ends up living in otouto-kun's condo, as well. Otouto-kun also sleeps with uke, telling him that part of his job can also include this. In any case, this is pretty obviously one of those stories in which seme hides his deeply felt true feelings very well (so well that no one really can tell they exist--we the readers only infer their existence because this is a BL novel and that's the way things go, I suppose the uke only figures it out when the seme finally confesses) and doesn't always treat the uke well, but despite the not so nice treatment the uke falls in love with the seme and they live happily ever after. Otouto-kun has a terrible complex regarding his father and older brother. His father had always put all his expectations and affections on his older brother, who was talented and able to meet them. Otouto-kun did the rebellion thing and was in general treated as an embarrassment. It's all very mortifying to the company (who adored Otouto-kun's older brother) to have this worthless brother run it.

In any case, I don't bother to remember these people's names because it's pretty damn pointless. Not a single character has any kind of dimension to them. All very cardboard cut-out stereotypes lifted from thousands of similar titles. Same goes with the plot. Very ho-hum, and it can't even make me care by sucking us into a maelstrom of emotions. Uke is passive to the point of...I don't know. I wish he was abused more, because he seems to only have any kind of strong reaction when something bad happens to him. He has a dark past (of course), which we get some flashes of throughout. Talk about waste of an opportunity (even though the dark past itself kind of moves past cliched and been there done that and ends up at totally saw that coming and wow, that was beyond lame). The evil abusive past boyfriend comes back only to be used as a minor plot point to spur the uke into a retarded course of action (flee! blindly!) that of course has the seme come after him.

I could say more bad things about the book, but why bother?

more adventures in buying too many books...

I once again made an Amazon Japan order that was probably a bit too much...I comfort myself with the fact that almost half the order was for a friend, but still. *sighs* And here I just spent hours and hours putting together a budget outline last week and resigning myself to living a more simple life in order to achieve my goals (I feel so...adult talking of such things. ^^;). But I wasn't foolish--I actually budgeted quite a lot for books. I know myself far too well. XD

Of course, it was only after I put in my order did I realize a book I've been wanting for a long time had come out last month...I was even willing to cancel the order and reorder everything in order to add the book, but unfortunately the order had already gone into the ready to be shipped stage which meant no cancellation...So I decided it was a good a time as any to try BK1 finally. I was at a loss as to what else to buy (I didn't think buying ONE book was really cost effective...) so I ended up ordering more random crap. *sighs*

I almost bought 100% SHONEN-ba but I noticed that shipping was in 3-5 WEEKS. It sounds rather cute, oh well.

I was tempted to buy this book because the cover was unusually revealing and the story sounded like just the kind of cliche I wanted to read. (Also, men in uniforms!) Maybe I will get it, someday.

I also realized after I had put in the orders that I realized I forgot to order Gakuen Emperor: Aishite miyagare!! It sounds terribly cheesy, but possibly in a good way...I hope I remember to eventually pick this title up. -_-

I forgot about Sex Pistols 5 as well. Has this been on hiatus or something? Haven't seen a new chapter in a while...I wish she'd get back to the story she had started in the first place and finish it before venturing out into random shorts about random couples. I don't mind the varied shorts so much because they are surprisingly entertaining, but I feel like I've been left hanging at this point...

Ah, crap, I didn't realize the last volume of Fruitsbasket just came out either. *sighs* I'm not that excited about reading the end, frankly, but...I just want to finish it up.