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Quick takes
25/1/12 23:15Oh, Sakuraba Kazuki! Your books have all the FEELINGS in them!
I am so sad that she won the Naoki prize for Watashi no Otoko, a book I couldn't finish because it was too dark and rapey, and not for Shoujo Nanakamado which is such a delicate tender story of love and charting your own course in life. And also incest. But mostly those first two.
And now I come upon The Reading Club For the Youth, which is all about hijinks and gender performativity at an all-girl parochial school and the obvious glee Sakuraba takes in mining the cliches that have been around since Oniisama e and exposing their seamy underbelly is pretty great. I mean, Oniisama e is dark in a way that is noble and melodramatic and high-minded, and -- Sakuraba is playing with that, I think, by having her own darkness be so tawdry and so conventional. But Beniko is this beautifully realized character, an uncultured and weak-willed girl from Osaka who comes into the school not as That Intriguing Transfer Student but That Weird Transfer Student With The Accent, who ends up getting made over into the "prince" of the school by a girl with her own agenda -- the book itself references Cyrano de Bergerac, but it's definitely more Pygmalion to me.
Anyway. FEELINGS.
--
Oh, body. Why is it that I set my bedtime an hour earlier, thinking I'd have an easier time getting up in the morning, and it's only gotten harder? It may be that I'm catching myself in the middle of a sleep cycle, but if that means I have to go to bed even earlier...
--
I rearranged the whole YA section at work today! We didn't have enough space for the graphic novels previously, so we shoved them on the windowsill, which is not a good space for keeping things organized. But the lift to bring children's books up to the 2nd floor got fixed, which meant that some shelves that had been holding shelves for children's materials could be given over to reference, which means that I ended up getting just enough extra shelves to play around with that I could get the graphic novels off the windowsill.
I must have moved at least five hundred books today. Exhausting. But I'm very happy to have it done.
I am so sad that she won the Naoki prize for Watashi no Otoko, a book I couldn't finish because it was too dark and rapey, and not for Shoujo Nanakamado which is such a delicate tender story of love and charting your own course in life. And also incest. But mostly those first two.
And now I come upon The Reading Club For the Youth, which is all about hijinks and gender performativity at an all-girl parochial school and the obvious glee Sakuraba takes in mining the cliches that have been around since Oniisama e and exposing their seamy underbelly is pretty great. I mean, Oniisama e is dark in a way that is noble and melodramatic and high-minded, and -- Sakuraba is playing with that, I think, by having her own darkness be so tawdry and so conventional. But Beniko is this beautifully realized character, an uncultured and weak-willed girl from Osaka who comes into the school not as That Intriguing Transfer Student but That Weird Transfer Student With The Accent, who ends up getting made over into the "prince" of the school by a girl with her own agenda -- the book itself references Cyrano de Bergerac, but it's definitely more Pygmalion to me.
Anyway. FEELINGS.
--
Oh, body. Why is it that I set my bedtime an hour earlier, thinking I'd have an easier time getting up in the morning, and it's only gotten harder? It may be that I'm catching myself in the middle of a sleep cycle, but if that means I have to go to bed even earlier...
--
I rearranged the whole YA section at work today! We didn't have enough space for the graphic novels previously, so we shoved them on the windowsill, which is not a good space for keeping things organized. But the lift to bring children's books up to the 2nd floor got fixed, which meant that some shelves that had been holding shelves for children's materials could be given over to reference, which means that I ended up getting just enough extra shelves to play around with that I could get the graphic novels off the windowsill.
I must have moved at least five hundred books today. Exhausting. But I'm very happy to have it done.