Monday, September 3, 2018

ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER

Hi everyone.

Yes, I've been absent for a long time.

I've been grinding hard on the whetstone of life.

Work has been a big thing with Summer Reading Program in June and July. It was a blast. We did rocks, fossils, geodes, clay sculptures, and music. The theme this year was Libraries Rock.  Very easy to interpret into different things like music and geology.

And before that, I was having fun creating a new manga and light novel collection with grant funds for the library. Yes, it sounds horrible. Our public library has had no manga or graphic novels for the entirety of my life until last year.

I was a kid in a candy store! There are so many series that I couldn't make up my mind to get. But I had a poll I did and narrowed it down.

 I have Fairy Tail, Assassination Classroom, Death Note, Black Butler, SAO, and, of course Dragon Ball. As some of my shonen series.  Ouran HSHS, Black Bird, and some smaller shojo series.  For the kiddos, I got Legend of Zelda, Yokai Watch, and a host of new Disney/Tokyo Pop manga.

All in all, my colleague and I processed about 600+ manga on top of the regular monthly orders throughout 2017.

I've been reading quite a a bit too. My new obsession is light novels.  There are so many out there now. According to an article from Japanese Times, Yen On (a manga and light novel imprint of Hatchette Book Group) has had give or take a 1000% increase in four years.

I am definitely on this bandwagon. I love Sword Art Online, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon ?!, Death March To a Parallel World Rhapsody, No Game No Life, Your Name, Log Horizon, Arifureta, Irregular at Magic High School, I've Been Killing Slime For 300 Years and I Maxed Out My Level.

Many series are in the Isekai genre,  Isekai is the "I died and got reincarnated into another world. I was transported to another world. I was sucked into a video game world." or any variation on that theme.

In my experience so far, I find I want to read the books after watching the anime. Death March was one such series.  The anime only from book 1-3. There are now six books published. And now I hope the anime gets a second season so I can watch the next books come to life again.

Wow, that was a huge tangent I went off on.  Heh heh heh.

Anyway, that has been my life for the last while.

If you're a manga or anime fan give some light novels a try. If you are new to the light novel franchise,  there worlds to explore that can only be found in them.

If you have a favorite or want to ask about mu latest obsession, give me a buzz.