Wednesday reading

[jinian]

• What are you currently reading?

I seem to be still reading Steamlust off and on, but mostly for its nearly weepingcock-level badness. A Thai gentleman's penis is as exotic as the rest of him (*facepalm* and ???) and then later we find out he has derived a sustainable energy source from hot peppers! I could not make this shit up, and some embarrassing part of me is glad somebody did. (Oh, and in case there was any doubt, yes, the one with the bi protagonist turned out to be about her getting with a man. But her sexuality provided the trite romantic misunderstanding plot point!)

Sailor Moon, for the first time ever. I'm surprised at the immediate mortal peril. I guess they are soldiers, after all.

I kinda stalled out on The Summer Prince, which is a bummer since I know oyceter really liked it. I'll keep trying!

• What did you recently finish reading?

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan. Thanks, gwyneira! I was indeed charmed.

From oyceter, A Lily Among Thorns by Rose Lerner, which was darling, and A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant, ditto.

I also reread Skip Beat! 190-198 this morning, for good and adequate reasons.

• What do you think you’ll read next?

I have Sherri Smith's Orleans, plus a few ebooks of things people are reading this week. I'm pretty intrigued by the title of Sean Griswold's Head.

Comments

[oyceter]

I also reread Skip Beat! 190-198 this morning, for good and adequate reasons.

*evil laughter*

Also, you're reading Sailor Moon! Awesome! Do you know most of the plot points already?

I feel Summer Prince seems to really work for some people and not for others, so YMMV?

[jinian]

I would say :P but it's not like I was sorry about it!

No, I know very little about Sailor Moon. The aspects of it that I've gained through pop-culture osmosis are: magical girl team named after planets, some kind of weird time travel with her daughter, canon lesbians, saving the male love interest, heavily edited for US market. I also know there are Sailor Starlights from another planet because of my excessive interest in the mokusei flowers while I was in Japan. That's pretty much it. I'm reading scans because I wasn't sure a licensed translation would be the right thing; what's your opinion on that?

I think I like Johnson's other work more than you do, so maybe we've just swapped for this one. I'm still going to try to get through it, of course.

[oyceter]

Oh fun! The first release of Sailor Moon for the US market by TokyoPop was pretty heavily edited, but I haven't heard much about the recent Kodansha release. (I have vols. 1-5 but have only flipped through them.) Afaik, the Kodansha translations are pretty good, and the volumes include some of the color artwork as well. Also, the new volumes correspond with the newer Japanese release with more chapters per volume (12 vols. total) as opposed to the original Japanese tankobon (18 vols. total). I'm pretty sure any place selling the manga in the US is selling the Kodansha release, since the Tokyopop ones are really OOP and also look very different from most manga published in the US now.