Books I've read and would like to read.

Inspired by great lists of great books - Tommy Collison's Great Books Program and Nick Cammarrata's bookshelf.

Reviews

Blame!

an incredible navigation of dystopia in a world as a city

Scott Pilgrim

Such a joyful adventure! Follows a kid out of college and two old to grow up as he battles his new girlfriend's evil exes and navigates regrets, living without limits and his future. Thematic exploration changes with the art style.

Ghost in the Shell

Far too hard to follow. Gave up on it.

convenience store woman

i love the flow and repetition of this book. the way the old woman with the cane is mentioned three times before. taking the piss is an interesting phrase, and i didnt particularly like the overdescriptive introduction, but i loved the arc back to normalcy that the book provided - the convenience store was right, and sometimes we must trend back to comfort, even if comfort is a different convenience store in a different place. i'm glad those cute literary tricks were ported through the translation but given some passages that seem kind of strange i sense there are many more in the original japanese - there seems to be some interesting playing with names, and addressing people in different ways in different contexts, that doesn't come through because we don't have the robust honorific system of Japan.

i wasn't a fan of the Shiraha character and feel that a more mixed influence rather than one decidedly negative may have been helpful to propel the story forwarda, because denying things that were positive influences as well for the convenience store, perhaps, may have made the return to normalcy more impactful, as we see that her experience with Shiraha is decidedly negative. phrases like taking the piss are interesting, as well as the choice to translate greetings in some places but use only a phonetic translation in others. i love the description of feeling the convenience store, feeling at home, trying to accommodate others to fit in, using food as a resource rather than a temptation, and developing as a result from influences around us. some

key learnings (lmfao): i disagree with 'not betraying your nature' philosophy and with 'conforming to society', the third path being doing whatever you want to do and being really really good at it and fucking around until you win basically, because pursuing that passion and the feeling of this is what you are meant to do is so much more important than anything else, and miss fukuhara realizes this. there's also a sense to not tightly curate your influences but to be constantly aware of them - things like adopting mannerisms from those around you - because these are inevitable, so absorbing good works with good influences is so so important.

uzumaki, gyo

just finished uzumaki and gyo. brilliant, haunting stories, but very simple as well.

chainsaw man

lovely combination of critical humor, great art, action and storytelling. precursor attempts some of the same things but gets them wrong: masks kind of flat. naked religious criticism in a dystopian action story that doesn't entirely add up, and whrrein some plot points are just dropped entirely or obfuscated away into nothing