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 togrow up as he battles his new girlfriend's evil exes and navigatesregrets, living without limits and his future. Thematic explorationchanges 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 withthe cane is mentioned three times before. taking the piss is aninteresting phrase, and i didnt particularly like the overdescriptiveintroduction, but i loved the arc back to normalcy that the bookprovided - the convenience store was right, and sometimes we must trendback to comfort, even if comfort is a different convenience store in adifferent place. i'm glad those cute literary tricks were ported throughthe translation but given some passages that seem kind of strange isense there are many more in the original japanese - there seems to besome interesting playing with names, and addressing people in differentways in different contexts, that doesn't come through because we don'thave the robust honorific system of Japan.

i wasn't a fan of the Shiraha character and feel that a more mixedinfluence rather than one decidedly negative may have been helpful topropel the story forwarda, because denying things that were positiveinfluences as well for the convenience store, perhaps, may have made thereturn to normalcy more impactful, as we see that her experience withShiraha is decidedly negative. phrases like taking the piss areinteresting, as well as the choice to translate greetings in some placesbut use only a phonetic translation in others. i love the description offeeling the convenience store, feeling at home, trying toaccommodate others to fit in, using food as a resource rather than atemptation, 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 doingwhatever you want to do and being really really good at it and fuckingaround until you win basically, because pursuing that passion and thefeeling of this is what you are meant to do is so much more importantthan anything else, and miss fukuhara realizes this. there's also asense to not tightly curate your influences but to be constantly awareof them - things like adopting mannerisms from those around you -because these are inevitable, so absorbing good works with goodinfluences is so so important.

uzumaki, gyo

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

chainsaw man

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