#reading project

1) I've read over 50 of her mystery and thriller novels

2) Plus many short stories

3) I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of them

4) Also her autobiography and more recent biographies (I recommend Lucy Worsley's). It does add to certain books to remember Christie trained as a nurse and then as a dispenser in a pharmacy during WW1. Including getting to take amputated limbs down to the furnace to be burned.

5) I've learned more about 20th century history because of them

BTW, if you are interested: I got most from the library, AND, the earliest is in public domain. English ebooks are at Project Gutenberg. Some are a bit clunky at times but The Mysterious Affair At Styles and The Murder of Rodger Ackroyd are first-rate.

One of my major goals for 2023 was to get my physical TBR down to 10 books. This includes anything I pick up during the year from book shopping or preorders that come in. I read four books from this shelf this past month, but then today I literally went out and bought three. Whoops.

So! I finished my re-reading of these first seven volumes… okay, re-read the first two and read the other five for the first time… of this wonderful comic by Paru Itagaki. 

What can I say? That it is a much more complex story than it seems at first. And that like the best Furry stories, it uses anthropomorphic animals to talk about human nature. It can recall classic examples like “Contro Natura” (aka ‘Unnatural’) by Mirka Andolfo and “Blacksad”, by Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Garrido. 

This is, remember, a very old tradition all over the world… although, certain people’s only previous frame of reference appears to be the movie “Zootopia”. Oh, well. Always try to expand your horizons, you all. It’s quite rewarding, I assure you. 

Anyway, the crux of “Beastars” is that it presents a world populated by intelligent animals (some anthropomorphic, and some actually not), whose differences serve to illustrate how hard yet how absolutely necessary empathy is. A world full of highly corrupt authority figures, in which the young often have to make their own way, going through a lot of pain and suffering in the process. 

It is also, and this is something to keep in mind however obvious it might seem, a world that explores the possibilities of imagination. A world that may or may nor remind us of ours, but that also creates it’s own convincing rules. When we read it, it is at once familiar and new to us. 

In summary, it’s a comic that I loved, whose characters are memorable (either because they are wonderful or because they are monstrous), and whose plot twists in ways that don’t just surprise us, but invite us to carefully reconsider things and concepts we take for granted. A story that you can get so, so much out of. 

I invite all of you to read and re-read it, and draw your own conclusions. 

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P. S. Today, Friday the 13th (hehe), I began watching the Anime adaptation on Netflix. It’s worth a look, an adaptation that mixes things up, even altering the order of the facts, and that every so often experiments with different animation techniques. 

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P. P. S. And here is my next reading project, which I hope to start next week: 

“Golden Kamuy”, by Satoru Noda, is a harsh and hard-hitting adventure drama. It is also one of the few comics that delve deep into Ainu culture (they even include a Bibliography at the end of each volume). The first two volumes were imported in English to Mexico and I started with those —but then the official Spanish translation arrived. 

Let’s see what I can get out of it…

okay as per this post, here’s the update! if you missed the post but are interested, no worries - this is still in early stages so hop on in!! 

updates: just read this page and follow the steps!

I finally read a book by Ayn Rand, and while the name still leaves a horrible taste in my mouth I can say that she's an alright author and I appreciated most of the story. The book was Anthem which my sister handed to me because it was a quick read and she's so disconnected from the world she doesn't understand why I don't enjoy the author as a person.

Anyway the book tells the story of a dystopian world built around collectivism and loss of individuality which sure yeah its Ayn Rand I get why this is the thing she decided could turn the world into a whole new hell. Over the course of the story the protagonist deals with guilt over their desire for individual expression and their feelings of favoritism for people and other such things. My only issue comes in the conclusion of the story which I believe I can say without spoiling the story, turns into a strange manifesto about how living life for others is the worst way to live and you should live only for yourself, you get the gist.

Nation of Origin: America? Maybe you could count it as Russia idk

Overall I'd say the book was enjoyable, it had a clear message, and it was easy to read for the most part. I can recommend it to anyone looking for a quick read that is willing to deal with challenging ideas.

Umm let's make a format for this why not

Author: Ayn Rand

Title: Anthem

Length: 105 pages/about an hour or so

Nation of Origin: America? Maybe Russia