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Books read, November
Jan. 18th, 2025 08:29 pmThis inevitable ruin, Matt Dinniman
The luckiest girl in the school, Angela Brazil
The madcap of the school, Angela Brazil
A patriotic school girl, Angela Brazil
What did you eat yesterday 1,2, Fumi Yoshinaga
She loves to cook and she loves to eat 2,3, Sakaomi Yozaki
Dick Fight Island 1, Reibun Ike
A coming evil, Vivian van Velde
This Inevitable Ruin, Matt Dinniman. Book seven in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I read this serially on Patreon but stopped several chapters before the end so I could read it all in one glorious binge.
( “Spoilers.” )
The luckiest girl in the school, Angela Brazil
The madcap of the school, Angela Brazil
A patriotic school girl, Angela Brazil
I’m doing a talk on WWI in vintage children’s books and these are for the first part - books written/published roughly contemporaneously with the war itself. Will post separately but these are standard Brazils, complete with plucky uniquely named heroines, escapades, and triumphant resolutions. The war part is most interesting in the last.
What Did You Eat Yesterday, v 1&2, Fumi Yoshinaga (reread). Such a soothing series. I am intending to read all my copies in order as I own up to 19 and I haven’t read past seven due to various house moves and not being able to find them all at once. I was meaning to make more notes but I ended up just writing down recipe ideas.
She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat, v 2&3, Sakaomi Yozaki. Nomoto Yuki relaxes by cooking, posting pictures of her creations to social media, but she doesn’t have much of an appetite. Her neighbour two doors down, Kasuga Totoko, accepts her offer of spare food one night when Yuki has cooked too much; Totoko loves food but was raised in a conservative family where men took priority. Slow burn relationship wise, this is a great manga about food and identity and community, and although it’s comforting, it’s not comfortable - it deals with sexism, homophobia, mental health issues and other social stresses, as well as the joy of sharing food you love with someone you love. It’s interesting to read with What Did You Eat Yesterday, which is really a generation earlier (there’s an obvious social media divide). Kinokuniya only had these volumes when I visited but I’ve subsequently tracked down 1&4, and 5 is out. There’s a live-action adaption that is meant to be good.
A Coming Evil, Vivan Van Velde. Conuly recommended this as a much better long-dead ghost occupied France holocaust novel, and it is! Much more grounded, and smaller stakes - but that means it’s about the survival of one small group of desperate people rather than an escape route saving hundreds, and it makes it more tense rather than less, because there are so many ways for them to be lost. Lisette’s parents send her out of Paris to her aunt’s farm in 1940; her aunt is hiding Jewish and Romani orphans. Lisette, who gets on badly with her cousin, stomps out at one point and meets the ghost of Gerard, a Knight Templar from the 14th century, when King Philip IV of France had arrested the Knights, framed them for heresy, tortured them for false confessions and, coincidentally, acquired all their assets. As such, he’s a more convincing addition than Catherine de Medici. Tense, with good emotion through lines, and a lack of tidy resolution that works.
Dick Fight Island, v1, Reibun Ike. A fantastic choice of English title for a manga that is called “The Eight Warriors” in Japanese. Harto returns to his homeland, a secret eight-island archipelago, in order to take part in a 4-yearly tournament (the Great Wyrm) that will determine the overall ruler - naturally, this consists of one-on-one contests between each island’s champions in which whoever comes first loses. Over time the champions have created elaborate penis armour as well as fiendish strategies such as vibrating whips (oh, and I should mention that in this island, once boys become men they are allowed to show their ass at all times) BUT Harto, who has been studying at an American college overseas, is the first champion ever to have discovered the secret of the prostate gland. Everyone in this story is totally committed to the premise and the art, especially the penis armour, is great. I made my sister buy me volume 2 when she went to Kinokuniya.
The luckiest girl in the school, Angela Brazil
The madcap of the school, Angela Brazil
A patriotic school girl, Angela Brazil
What did you eat yesterday 1,2, Fumi Yoshinaga
She loves to cook and she loves to eat 2,3, Sakaomi Yozaki
Dick Fight Island 1, Reibun Ike
A coming evil, Vivian van Velde
This Inevitable Ruin, Matt Dinniman. Book seven in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I read this serially on Patreon but stopped several chapters before the end so I could read it all in one glorious binge.
( “Spoilers.” )
The luckiest girl in the school, Angela Brazil
The madcap of the school, Angela Brazil
A patriotic school girl, Angela Brazil
I’m doing a talk on WWI in vintage children’s books and these are for the first part - books written/published roughly contemporaneously with the war itself. Will post separately but these are standard Brazils, complete with plucky uniquely named heroines, escapades, and triumphant resolutions. The war part is most interesting in the last.
What Did You Eat Yesterday, v 1&2, Fumi Yoshinaga (reread). Such a soothing series. I am intending to read all my copies in order as I own up to 19 and I haven’t read past seven due to various house moves and not being able to find them all at once. I was meaning to make more notes but I ended up just writing down recipe ideas.
She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat, v 2&3, Sakaomi Yozaki. Nomoto Yuki relaxes by cooking, posting pictures of her creations to social media, but she doesn’t have much of an appetite. Her neighbour two doors down, Kasuga Totoko, accepts her offer of spare food one night when Yuki has cooked too much; Totoko loves food but was raised in a conservative family where men took priority. Slow burn relationship wise, this is a great manga about food and identity and community, and although it’s comforting, it’s not comfortable - it deals with sexism, homophobia, mental health issues and other social stresses, as well as the joy of sharing food you love with someone you love. It’s interesting to read with What Did You Eat Yesterday, which is really a generation earlier (there’s an obvious social media divide). Kinokuniya only had these volumes when I visited but I’ve subsequently tracked down 1&4, and 5 is out. There’s a live-action adaption that is meant to be good.
A Coming Evil, Vivan Van Velde. Conuly recommended this as a much better long-dead ghost occupied France holocaust novel, and it is! Much more grounded, and smaller stakes - but that means it’s about the survival of one small group of desperate people rather than an escape route saving hundreds, and it makes it more tense rather than less, because there are so many ways for them to be lost. Lisette’s parents send her out of Paris to her aunt’s farm in 1940; her aunt is hiding Jewish and Romani orphans. Lisette, who gets on badly with her cousin, stomps out at one point and meets the ghost of Gerard, a Knight Templar from the 14th century, when King Philip IV of France had arrested the Knights, framed them for heresy, tortured them for false confessions and, coincidentally, acquired all their assets. As such, he’s a more convincing addition than Catherine de Medici. Tense, with good emotion through lines, and a lack of tidy resolution that works.
Dick Fight Island, v1, Reibun Ike. A fantastic choice of English title for a manga that is called “The Eight Warriors” in Japanese. Harto returns to his homeland, a secret eight-island archipelago, in order to take part in a 4-yearly tournament (the Great Wyrm) that will determine the overall ruler - naturally, this consists of one-on-one contests between each island’s champions in which whoever comes first loses. Over time the champions have created elaborate penis armour as well as fiendish strategies such as vibrating whips (oh, and I should mention that in this island, once boys become men they are allowed to show their ass at all times) BUT Harto, who has been studying at an American college overseas, is the first champion ever to have discovered the secret of the prostate gland. Everyone in this story is totally committed to the premise and the art, especially the penis armour, is great. I made my sister buy me volume 2 when she went to Kinokuniya.
