I was able to get more reading done this month since I was on vacation!

Books

The Red Necklace and The Silver Blade by Sally Gardner – Nice swashbuckling YA historical fiction with a little bit of fantasy set during the French Revolution.
Blood Smoke and Mirrors by Robyn Bachar – Fun, funny urban fantasy novel.
Boneshaker by Cherie Priest – I thought I should read some steampunk.
Dead Travel Fast by Deanna Rayborn – Not as strong as the books in the Lady Julia Grey series.
Nobody Move – Denis Johnson – Great modern crime noir novel.
Last Night’s Scandal, Lord of Scoundrels, and the Sandlewood Princess by Loretta Chase

Manga and Graphic Novels

Gakuen Alice #1, 12
Skip Beat #21
Honey Hunt #5
There’s something about Sunyool #1
Flower in a Storm #2
Nana #21
Handful of Harlequin Manga
Hyde and Closer #1
Alice the 101st #1
Future Diary #7
Alice in the Country of Hearts #4
Happy Cafe #4
Arata #3
Scott Pilgrim #6

Yotsuba&! is one of those titles that I sometimes feel a little bit schizophrenic about. In some ways it is the closest to portraying pure joy out of all the manga series that I’ve read. It is also one of the few series that I laugh out loud while reading. But if I think about this manga a little too much, I start feeling a little unsettled. Yotsuba&! is one of the few series where the gap between the original audience in Japan (readers of the magazine Degenki Daioh) and the marketing of the comic as all-ages, suitable for kids manga in the United states. Sean Gaffney goes into this discussion in his post about Yotsuba&! and Strawberry Marshmallow.

Sometimes people tend to play down the original audience of manga, and shonen series are marketed as shoujo or vice versa. While I certainly don’t think that readers need to remain in silos invented by Japanese manga editors, I think paying attention to the original audience of a manga can be useful when thinking about how to critique it, since it speaks to the intent of the author. While Yotsuba&! is funny and touching, there are some odd elements in the manga that can be a bit disquieting that reflect this disconnect between the audience for the manga in Japan and the audience for the manga in America.

Yotsuba&! shows the single father of our quirky 5 year old protagonist surrounded by girls. There’s his daughter, but the only females he mainly has contact with are the young girls in the Ayase family next door. He occasionally runs into their mother, but he’s basically interacting with either young girls, teenage girls, or his wacky bachelor friends. There are no women Kowai’s age in the series. The image of childhood portrayed in Yotsuba&! is very idealized. There are always festivals for Yotsuba to attend, and new experiences for her to react to in her charmingly literal and often over-the-top manner. But Yotsuba’s world is mainly confined to the family next door. She isn’t shown reacting to other kids her age. She doesn’t go to school, but remains in the sealed bubble of her neighborhood. If she interacted with a bunch of other 5 year olds, her intrinsic ignorance about the world around her and inability to conform to social norms might be seen as a reason to call social services instead of laughing.

Childhood by its very nature is full of change. But I can’t even imagine an older Yotsuba. She remains static and unchanging, the eternal five year old. There’s plenty of lazy summer days, ice cream, and cicada hunting in Yotsuba&!, but none of the aggravating aspects of childhood or parenting are introduced. Everything’s so perfect, the experience of fatherhood is romanticized and presented in such a encapsulated way that the single men who read the comic can see this idealized portrayal of a life with a daughter where the presence of a wife or mother is absent. Yotsuba&! is undeniably funny. Azuma is a talented cartoonist. But I find that there’s something a little hollow at the core of this manga simply due to the way childhood is both romanticized and then used as a consistent punchline.

Future Diary Volume 7 by Sakae Esuno

I enjoyed the first volume of this series. I’ve always meant to pick up more volumes but I was surprised to see that I’m six volumes behind. Future Diary is about a hapless boy named Yukiteru who is given a cell phone that displays his actions in the future. The twist is that he’s also caught up in a game involving a battle to the death with other future diary holders, each with a phone that has slightly different characteristics. He’s aided by a slightly unhinged girl named Yuno, who’s phone also details Yukiteru’s actions.

The seventh volume shows Yuno and Yukiteru fighting another male-female couple, Marco and Ai. Their phones are “journals of love” that note everything the partners do. Marco and Ai challenge Yukiteru and Yuno, saying that the battle will be a test of the power of love. Yuno moves to protect Yukiteru and Marco accuses him of being weak and hiding behind a girl. One of the things I like about Future Diary is the way it appears to play with some of the stereotypical roles in shonen manga. It is fairly common for the weak but growing in power shonen hero to get a devoted girl sidekick. Yukiteru has his sidekick, but her devotion combined with her stalker-like tendencies makes her personality quite unsettling. He isn’t sure if he can trust her or not, despite the fact that she yells in glee “Yuki gave me a compliment!” as she deflects a series of throwing knives aimed at her chosen partner. She’s so devoted to Yuki that her expressions of enthusiasm are unsettling. Yuki’s father returns and he starts to hope that his broken family may get patched up. But his father’s motivations seem just as questionable as Yuno’s and ultimately Yuki has to choose between them.

I appreciate Esuno’s art more with every volume of his manga that I read. He has a mobile, expressive line when drawing his characters. He switches from portraying enraged fighting to panic to pathos with ease. There’s a certain amount of world-weary cynicism in the way that Marco and Ai meet their ultimate destinies that I appreciated. Future Diary does appear to be a little more complex than the typical fighting shonen series, and the presence of characters who seem to be genuinely unhinged creates some surprising plot developments.

Review copy provided by the publisher

Hyde and Closer Volume 1 by Haro Aso

How much you enjoy this manga largely depends on how amusing you find cigar-chomping, chainsaw-wielding magical fighting teddy bears. I always enjoy the juxtaposition of chainsaws and cute cuddly things, so I found this manga amusing despite the fairly unsurprising shonen storyline. The Closer in the book is Shunpei Closer who displays many of the prototypical sad-sack hero traits shown in the first volumes of almost every shonen manga. Shunpei has absolutely no self confidence. He’s bullied at school and not particularly talented at anything. But his life is about to change.

Shunpei’s beloved grandfather turns out to be the Sorcerer King of the 20th Century. Grandpa’s gone missing so now Shunpei is the target of rival magicians who want to tear out his heart and consume it in order to inherit the magic of his bloodline. The way sorcerers do battle is to send cursed stuffed animals to their enemies. Shunpei gets a delivery of a little stuffed monkey. When he turns his back on the monkey it comes after him with an exacto knife. The deranged cursed monkey informs Shunpei of his predicament. Shunpei freaks out and runs away, only to be rescued by Hyde, the teddy bear his grandfather gave him years ago. Hyde wears a fedora, swigs honey out of a shot glass, and chomps on chocolate cigars. The bear has a world-weary cynical attitude and level of care for Shunpei that is explained by his personality taking after the traits of his creator, Shunpei’s missing grandfather.

One thing I enjoyed about this manga was the character designs. The sorcerers that Shunpei battles are all very distinct, with cursed stuffed animals that reflect their personalities. Having magical battles take place through sentient stuffed animals is funny, and the contrast of the weak and sniveling Shunpei with the old-man tough-ass attitude of Hyde was amusing. In some ways Shunpei seemed almost too weak in the first volume. It is easy to see that Hyde will train him to perfect his magical abilities, but Shunpei always seems to be drenched in flop sweat or on the verge of tears. I’d probably panic too if stuffed monkeys with knives were coming after me, but it would have been nice if Shunpei’s personality was a tiny bit more nuanced.

Still, with many shonen manga titles just consisting of dudes with rippling muscles duking it out I found the idea of battle through magical stuffed animals a little refreshing. I also find Hyde as a character totally amusing. His button eyes and diagonal stitched mouth gives him an air of casual menace that is at odds with his teddy bear body. He always seems to have an evil grin on his face as he’s helping Shunpei out of magical death traps. I think that the combination of humor and vicious teddy bear battles make Hyde and Closer more entertaining than the typical shonen fighting manga.

This is a Shonen Sunday title, so you can read some of the chapters of the manga online.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Alice the 101st Volume 1 by Chigusa Kawai

Strong art enlivens a somewhat typical music school storyline in the manga Alice the 101st. At an exclusive music academy the students are buzzing about the admission of a 101st student. Who is the special case who secured an extra spot at the school? Aristide Lang is a violinist with unconventional training who announces to his roommate Theo that his nickname is “Aristo.” Everyone ends up calling him “Alice” instead. Alice initially seems to be utterly lacking in technique, appearing amazingly unproficient when he’s asked to play a piece when reading music. Alice struggles to fit in with the school, dealing with teachers who have no patience to teach the fundamentals when most of the students arrive at the school after training intensely for years. But when Alice plays a memorized piece by his long-lost father he blows the listeners away by the power of his music.

An older viola student Victor sets Alice up as a rival for the school prodigy Maximilian. Maximilian is a brilliant technician, but the music he produces is cold and empty. If Alice can master the fundamentals and get over his block about playing while reading music, he might end up being able to challenge the best student at the school. Alice quickly bonds with his roommate, and they have a few encounters with a quiet girl who seems to have no awareness of the size of her cello because she hits everyone with her cello case wherever she goes.

I found the art in Alice the 101st really appealing. Alice is shown with his emotions all over the place, ranging from mischievous to overwhelmed and depressed as he struggles with his new environment at school. Kawai’s character designs are expressive, and she’s able to portray the intensity and focus of the music students as they master new skills. I think out of all the classical music related manga I’ve read so far (La Corda d’Oro, Versus, etc) Alice the 101st is my favorite.

Access to electronic copy provided by the publisher.

The new issue of Cites and Insights has an excerpt of the book But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009, click on over for the PDF if you enjoy reading some interesting number crunching about library blogs. I find it a little odd to be included in the project, just because I don’t tend to think of this as a “library blog” very much anymore. I’m at a point in my career where I don’t feel very much like blogging about the daily details of my library jobs. I’ve moved away from feeling affiliated with the library blogosphere.

While I do think that blogging about manga serves a very librarian-like function of readers advisory, there’s a bit of a disconnect between the folks who blog about library technology and trends and the people that blog about books and reading. It seems to me like the liblog hype and attention mostly seems to rest with the techie people, and while I very much am a techie person in my daily life I don’t feel like blogging about it anymore. I think most of my disaffected feeling with library blogging originated with all the Library 2.0 hoopla. I just got tired with the idea of following many online conversations about technology and libraries, even though I do stay as current as I can with the things I need to know for my jobs.

The people I’m most connected to online aren’t library bloggers, they’re the group of people that make up The Bureau Chiefs. FakeAPStylebook (book comes out Spring 2011!!!) has had the most attention and hype of anything I’ve ever been involved with online, and it has nothing to do with libraries. So while it is nice to be included in a study of library bloggers I’m now at the point where it feels a little odd to be listed among groups of library blogs.

Alice in the Country of Hearts Volume 4 by Quinrose and Hoshino Soumei

I’m always happy to see a new volume of Alice in the Country of Hearts. It continues to display more depth and character development than one would expect from a dating sim manga adaptation. This volume shows the “game” Alice has been playing getting a bit of a reset. Alice is starting to feel comfortable in her new life, feeling affection for most of the inhabitants of the Country of Hearts. She almost inspires Julius of the clocktower to express his feelings for her, but he ends up displaying the overly stoic qualities of the typical Japanese shoujo hero by inviting her to stay with him in an offhand manner. The threat of violence is always present in this series, and here we see Ace acting like even more of a sociopath than usual. Alice manages to be an admirable shoujo heroine by speaking her mind, treating the people around her kindly, and not acting helpless even when she was thrown into another world.

The reset button is hit on this manga as the “season of April” arrives. Time has always been fluid in the Country of Hearts, and now the seasons change hourly as well. As Alice travels to locations hit by strange weather, other new visitors arrive from the Country of Clovers. Now there’s a new cast of characters for Alice to interact with, and one of them challenges Alice to a new game. Despite the dating sim like progression of introducing new handsome male characters for Alice with every volume, I’m still enjoying this manga even though it is taking a long time for Alice to unravel the mysteries of the Country of Hearts.

Happy Cafe Volume 4 by Kou Matsuzuki

Happy Cafe doesn’t really present anything new in this volume as it still features feel-good stories of Uru and her co-workers Ichiro and Shindo at Cafe Bonheur. Ichiro’s youngest sibling comes to the cafe, hellbent on hating Uru because it seems that Ichiro likes her so much. Uru and Shindo get closer when she nurses him through an illness. While I was surprised and a little intrigued by the plot developments in Alice in the Country of Hearts, Happy Cafe remains the same from volume to volume. While I can see why some readers might grow a little frustrated at the episodic nature of this manga which veers perilously close to plotlessness, to me it has a cozy feel and the sameness is really part of its charm. The potential romance between Uru and Shindo is developing at a glacial pace, but I find it to be a relaxing escape to pick up this simple manga and disappear into the angst free world the characters inhabit. Any issues are swiftly delt with and everyone cares about each other, so Happy Cafe ends up being extremely nice. This volume also features a longish, more dramatic back-up story about an orphaned girl coming to terms with her life called “Flower and Butterfly in Summer.”

Review copies provided by the publisher.

There’s Something about Sunyool, Volume 1 by Youngran Lee

This is an exceptionally silly manhwa, which can be both good and bad. It will be highly amusing to people who enjoy Cinderella stories and arranged marriages, and potentially annoying for people with a low tolerance of such plot devices. Fortunately I am the type to embrace silly manhwa, so I enjoyed the first volume of this series. Sunyool manages to be the classic poor heroine and rich enough for a same marriage at the same time because she was brought up by a single mother, then found out that she was the daughter of an important political figure. After her mother died, she went to live with her father and stepmother, and they now want her to go on blind dates to meet eligible bachelors.

Sunyool agrees and promptly makes a mockery of the whole process. She shows up in traditional Korean costume and announces that she has to wear a wig due to partial baldness to her first potential husband, the handsome heir to a powerful company. She verbally picks apart her second date. But she decides to marry Sihyun, bachelor #1 after all and they begin a strange platonic courtship after the wedding. There’s plenty of humor in this manga, as Sunyool’s unusually forthright way of expressing herself causes issues with the high society she’s forced to live in. Sunyool and Sihyun eventually turn into the most sickeningly sweet couple I have ever seen, down to wearing matching outfits and calling each other darling and honey.

Of course, such perfect love is not going to last and as the volume ends Sunyool is shown embarking on a new chapter of her life. Wherever she goes, she seems to be surrounded by beautiful men. The art in There’s Something about Sunyool has that vaguely static feel that I see in a lot of manhwa. Some of the character poses look a little stiff, but there’s plenty of detail lavished on everyone’s eyelashes. Lee often shows the characters in chibi mode during episodes of physical comedy. This was a fun manhwa to read even though it was utterly lightweight and frivolous. Sunyool has a sassy and indefatigable personality that makes her an interesting heroine. I’ll be on the lookout for the next volume of this series.

I’m sampling a few more Harlequin manga on emanga.com. Since I’m on vacation now I didn’t take any manga with me, so it is nice to have online access to a library of titles. This time I’m reading Harlequin manga about billionaires!

The Billionaire’s Secret Baby by Carol Devine and Masako Ogimaru

This manga opens with a funeral. Meg’s husband has just passed away, leaving her alone with her 5 year old daughter. But! All of a sudden notorious playboy and billionaire Jack Tarkenton shows up at her house! It turns out that Meg and Jack had a one night stand together a few weeks before she married her husband, an old friend. Meg’s daughter Katie is Jack’s biological daughter. Jack tells Meg that he’s had her thoroughly investigated by a private detective and now he’s determined to spend time with his daughter. He proposes to Meg, saying that she can choose to marry him or face a public and humiliating custody battle. Meg agrees to a marriage in name only, but did the initial attraction between Meg and Jack mean something more? As is the case with most incorrigible billionaire playboys in romance novels, Jack is actually a softie at heart who is great with children. Ogimaru’s art has a pleasant retro simplicity to it, capably rendering Katie’s reactions to her new family and Meg’s tension as she works through her feelings towards her unexpected second husband. This was pleasant to read, even if there wasn’t anything particularly memorable about the story.

Billionaire Bachelors: Stone by Esu Chihara and Anne Marie Winston

There’s a daddy-long-legs vibe to this story, as it opens with Faith negotiating with her billionaire guardian Stone. Faith and Stone’s fathers both died in a boating accident years before, and Stone took over managing Faith and her mother’s finances. Unfortunately his management style consisted of paying for everything to support Faith and her mother since her father was nearly bankrupt when he died. Faith just turned 21 and after learning of Stone’s generosity she’s determined to pay him back. He doesn’t want her money. She’s decided to work on opening her own business in order to be independent.

Stone has major abandonment issues because his mother left him home alone most of the time while she was forced to run a huge multinational corporation. His mother calls him up when he’s taking Faith to dinner and announces that if he gets married and lives with his new wife for a year she’ll hand over the company to him. Stone doesn’t want to lose the business and he realizes that Faith may be the solution to his problem. He asks her to marry him “in name only” and in return he’ll consider her debt to him repaid. Faith agrees, but of course she secretly loves Stone and decides she has to work on seducing him.

Chihara’s art has more of a fashionable josei vibe than the art in some of the other Harlequin titles. Faith is drawn with a mass of curly locks and bee stung lips, which gives her an appealing innocent look, while Stone is the picture of tall, dark, and handsome with straight hair constantly falling in his face. Faith keeps trying to make herself useful around the house by cooking and trying to get a part-time job. Stone spends most of his time working and stranding his wife in social occasions while being incredibly jealous if she speaks to other men.

The main thing I have learned from reading these two titles is that billionaires really love marriages of convenience, domestic women, and kids. Who would have thunk it?

One thing I didn’t realize about these manga is that there are Kindle editions of them here: Harlequin Manga Kindle editions. So that might be handy if you’d like to read them on your Kindle, or on your iPad with the Kindle app.

Access to electronic copies provided by the publisher.

I review an ARC of Personal Demons on The Bureau Chiefs website. Click on over if you are interested in books about teenage girls who are the lust objects of angels and demons.