Five Books at Once…

Author: JoshMiller

Mar 22

At any given time, I am reading, something like five books at once.  This has the side effect that I feel like I am plodding slowly through everything (which I am).  This feeling is not helped by my wife who reads all the time and goes through like five books a week.  Thanks for making me feel illiterate…

Anyway, these five books stem from the 5 different means that I consume them.

Traditional Print Books

no-hero-jonathan-wood Probably the slowest form of consumption just because I feel like I don’t have time to actually read them, though I feel that Is should make time.  This is probably my least favorite type of book these days for one simple reason.  I buy then used and cheap, and now I have a stack of hem sitting there, staring at me, saying “Why aren’t you reading us you jackass?”

Basically, they make me feel guilty by existing, not being read.

Currently Reading: No Hero by Jonathan Wood, a book I picked up from a closing Borders for cheap because the cover looked interesting.  It’s a sort of modern day set sci-fi paranormal magic involved book.  It’s ok, though the pacing feels a little off and the whole “main character is lost all the time” thing is getting a little old.

Lined up next: Star Trek: Federation

eBooks: Nook

Machine-of-Death cover You know, I like ebooks, I like my nook, I don’t use it quite as much as I want to.  I think my main beef is that organizing all of the ebooks I have on the nook is an absolute chore.  Also I get frustrated by the odd and inconsistent page numbering, which is kind of minor.  I’ve been officially working on the same book for ages, though I occasionally open up something else.

Currently Reading: The Machine of Death.  This book is really dang long, so it’s been taking me a while to get through it.  I want to say it lists as being 800+ pages and in the Nook, it’s something like 3x that number.

Lined up next: The Dreaming Void by Peter F. Hamilton

ebooks: Phone

200px-American_gods I also have started reading some ebooks on my phone via kobo and Nook apps.  This has the nice benefit of being portable.

Currently Reading: American Gods by Neil Gaiman.  I have heard some good things about it being decent and it came up cheap on B&N on some sort of anniversary release special.  I’m not too far into this but it has kept me pretty interested so far.

Graphic Novels & Manga

I’ve started reading quite a few collected comics and manga.  Mostly I’m sticking to what I know.  For example, I’ve been hitting the Transformers comics pretty heavily.  I’ve always had a love of the toys but not so much interest in the actual mythos.  I want ot change that.

My Manga choices are pretty limited as well.  I have little interest in anything released in the past, ten years or so.  Currently I’ve been working my way slowly through the Sailor Moon rereleases.  I also have some Evangelion books.  If I get around to it I may look into some Ranma or Tenchi collections, if they are available.

Audiobooks

the_girl_with_the_dragon_tattoo-large Probably my main way of consuming books.  There are arguments as to how much of this constitutes “reading” but that mostly depends on if you define reading as “translating text to mind” or if you define reading as “consuming books”.  I have a decent drive to and from work and sometimes have time at work while doing work that allows me to listen on my headset.  I also find it keeps my interest better to listen rather then read, and I remember the story better.

Currently Reading: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.  I picked up this book a long while ago in print but couldn’t get into it.  So I went with audio.  I’m really close to wrapping it up.  I want to do The Girl who Played with Fire next but I plan to take a break from this series. 

Lined up next: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

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Manga – FLCL Volume 1

Author: JoshMiller

May 30

101i What am I supposed to be reading here?

Seriously now, is there any plot even remotely to this book? I realize that FLCL is more or less about "random nothingness", but the manga seems to take it to an extreme case.

I do not know which came first, but I do know that if I had not watched the show before reading the manga, I would have absolutely no concept of what is happening. The book feels like someone wrote a full manga, then ripped out ever other block of ten or so pages. There is an extreme lack of coherence one hundred percent of the time in this thing. It also doesn’t help that some of those “removed blocks” tend to be occasionally randomly inserted (in no particular order).

With that out of the way, I suppose I may as well cover a few other aspects of this book. The first volume here more or less covers the same ground as the first two episodes of the anime series (Furi Kuri, Firestarter). Naota is creamed by Haruko, the story cuts around between Naota on the ground and Haruko moving in with his family and a few random bits with the school kids. Eventually Canti emerges and joins the crew. Later the town is plagued by the arsonist while Naota and Haruko bum around on the Vespa. It ends when Canti dukes it out with a second robot (or at least the rest of the first).

That’s the general gist of things. There is a LOT of random space filler that comes out of nowhere and is only half explained in origin, existence, and departure. As I said before, the plot is very disjointed and anyone who has not seen the more coherent (relatively speaking) anime will likely be easily confused.

On a positive note, I really enjoy the art used in this book. It’s very rough (matching the storyline I suppose), and has a real keen sense of style going for it. It’s complex without being overwhelming. The design of the characters means you can always tell who is who, even at a distance. The presentation here is really slick.

Don’t get me wrong here, I actually really like FLCL the anime, and I don’t care much for most anime. This manga is just too jumbled to due itself justice. Perhaps later volumes will help smooth things out a bit, but I doubt it. Mildly recommended for fans of the FLCL anime.

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