Fall In Love Like a Comic by Chitose Yagami (amazon)
Rena Sakura is a high school student and a mangaka. She’s getting pressure from her editor to include more realistic scenes in her racy manga, but the problem is that she has no life experience to draw from. She’s never had a boyfriend. When Rena [...]

Ask Metafilter: Reapplying to a library job
Temporary Caring Department for Libraries
Library book as shopping list
Bloggers post lists of titles they look forward to in the coming year:
Fuse #8
Chasing Ray (look for more lists in the comments)
Bookshelves of Doom: List 1, List 2

Zig*Zag by Yuki Nakaji (amazon)
I enjoyed Yuki Nakaji’s other manga, Venus in Love, so I decided to give Zig*Zag a try. Takaaki starts at a new school private school that has just recently gone co-ed, but he’s so short and cute he is initially mistaken for a girl. Sonoh is Takaaki’s new roommate, who [...]

Viz is going to produce library editions for first volumes of some popular series. This might be useful, since graphic novel collections in libraries tend to be very high circulating items with a lot of wear and tear:
LIBRARY EDITIONS • MSRP: $15.99 • Available January 2008
In January, the company will also publish new hardcover Library [...]

Cybils Nominations were posted today!

Teen/Young Adult:
The Arrival written and illustrated by Shaun Tan
Flight Volume Four edited by Kazu Kibuishi
Laika written and illustrated by Nick Abadzis
The Plain Janes written by Cecil Castellucci; illustrated by Jim Rugg
The Professor’s Daughter written by Joann Sfar; illustrated by Emmanuel Guibert
Elementary/Middle Grade:
Artemis Fowl: The Graphic Novel written by Eoin Colfer and [...]

Hikkatsu! Strike A Blow to Vivify by Yu Yagami (amazon)
It is good to start the new year off right, which is why I heartily recommend this manga about punching household appliances. Shota takes his karate master’s advice to use martial arts for the benefit of mankind as an order to develop a special Repair [...]

So, for 2007 I read:
46 fiction books, 4 non-fiction books, and I reread 18 books, for a grand total of 58 books read. This is way down from last year’s total of 86 books but being a new parent to twins certainly doesn’t leave me nearly as much time to read, so I think I’m [...]

Books
This was a month of reading reference books devoted to my hobbies.
Bitten by Kelley Armstrong
Manga: The Complete Guide by Jason Thompson
The Knitter’s Book of Yarn by Clara Parkes
Scandal of the Season by Sophie Gee
Manga and Graphic Novels
Basara #25
Suppli #1
Venus In Love #1
Cantarella #8
Skip Beat #7,8
Hana Kimi #21
Dramacon #3
Fruits Basket #18
Fables: Animal Farm
Fables: Homeland
Fables: 1001 [...]