media update: April

I suffered greatly from a dearth of decent reading material this month, and occasionally found myself reduced to reading (shudder) chick lit. Because they're all basically the same (heroine deals with boy trouble, has sympathetic gay male friend, finds True Love at the end), I didn't bother doing summaries for those.

Asterisks denote something I particulary enjoyed or found especially worthy of my time; your mileage may vary.




FICTION


1. Nocturnes* by John Connolly: I'm not ordinarily a fan of short stories, but come on...John Connolly! My favorites were the opening story, "The Cancer Cowboy Rides", and "The Reflecting Eye", a Charlie Parker novella to tide me over until The Black Angel comes out in June, at which point he'll be touring and I can go stalk him again.

2. Speechless by Yvonne Collins and Sandy Rideout

3. The Position by Meg Wolitzer: Four siblings in the 70's try to cope with the publication of their parents' sex manual (complete with graphic illustrations of their mother and father in the act), the runaway success of which continues to affect them far into the future.

4. L.A. Woman by Cathy Yardley



NON-FICTION


1. It Must Have Been Something I Ate* by Jeffrey Steingarten: Terrific, witty essays on the art of eating everything from fried bamboo worms (um, ew) to turducken (a chicken stuffed into a duck, which is then stuffed into a turkey). Word of warning: there are a few disturbing scenes involving the slaughter of animals.



MANGA


1. Golden Cain by Asagiri You
2. Murmur of the Penis* vol. 2 by Yamato Nase
3. Death Note* vols. 1-5 by Ohba Tsugumi and Obata Takeshi: A teenage boy finds a notebook in which are written instructions on how to kill people from a distance: write down their name, think of their face, and they'll be dead in a matter of seconds from a heart attack. The boy, skeptical at first, tries it out on a criminal featured on the news and is astounded when it seems to work. He develops a major god complex and decides he'll use the notebook to clean up the scum of society, and when the police finally figure out that some sort of strange vigilante is at work, they send the brilliant and mysterious detective known only as "L" to find him. The boy can't kill his pursuer with the notebook because he doesn't know the guy's real name...and the chase is on. This is an addictive series that raises all sorts of profound ethical questions; I highly recommend it.
4. Pieta vols. 1-2 by Haruno Nanane
5. Non-Stop Love Train by Miki Araya
6. I Want to Lose Myself* vol. 2 by Yuki Yoshihara
7. Shinyuu Henjou
8. Ears, Tail, and the Magic User by Tohko Mizuno
9. The Poacher of Desire by Tori Maia



MOVIES


1. Alien: Hard to believe I'd never seen the grandmother of all "jump" movies until now.
2. Spiderman 2*: I enjoyed this much more than the first one, and burst into tears during the train scene because I am a BIG PUSS.
3. I, Robot: Not fantastic or anything, but an enjoyable enough way to waste some time. When they showed Will Smith in the shower at the beginning, I turned to G and said, "Okay, nothing else in the movie can top this, so we might as well turn it off." He was not amused, but I was right; nothing else in the movie DID top it.