Hello, the bout of books readathon is over! I read! And because Wednesday is already spoken for, I decided to make an extra blog post for today instead!
My goals were to read two manga and two novels. I almost got there.
I managed to read three manga, one novel, and make progress in three others.
Manga
Silver Spoon vol 1 by Hiromu Arakawa
The author of Fullmetal Alchemist started a new series! This is a slice of life manga, following a boy who enrolls in agricultural school. The book is light and fluffy and funny, but it also doesn’t shy away from the grit required to raise farm animals. I really liked this, and I plan to continue with the series. It’ll also get a full blabber from me, eventually.
Fruits Basket Another vols 1-2 by Natsuki Takaya
The first volume was a reread for me, but the second was a new read. This is the sequel to the original Fruits Basket series and follows the next generation of Sohmas. If you are interested in this one, make sure you finish the original series first because mondo spoilers in here for it.
This series gives me such nostalgia. I finished Fruits Basket back in high school but never purchased the whole thing – I have about half the books. I kinda wanna get the rest now and reread it all. This was really good, this series.
Novels
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
I wrote a full blabber on this one. It suffered from over-hype unfortunately, so I didn’t love it, but it was still pretty decent.
Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo
This one I didn’t finish – still in the process. As of writing this, I’m 137 pages into it. I’m already liking it more than the first one, so I’m hoping for good things as I continue.
Blood of Tyrants by Naomi Novik
I finally picked this up on audio. I’ve been slowly reading through this series, but ended up pausing at this one for a while: it has the amnesia trope in it, which I’m not a huge fan of. It seems to be handling it rather ok so far though. The character might actually cause things to happen that won’t just get fixed with the ‘huzzah’ moment of his memory coming back. Fingers crossed that this ends up being a unique twist on the trope, wah. I didn’t finished this one either – I got roughly 123 pages into it.
Blood of Dragons by Robin Hobb
I didn’t really read this for the readathon, but I read it during the readathon, so I figured I’d include it. This is a buddy read I’m doing with Zezee, and considering we need to stay on par with each other, I couldn’t exactly consume it all this week. I got 63 pages into this one, and am rather enjoying it so far.
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And that’s it! While I didn’t finish a second book, I definitely got a good chunk into quite a few, so I’m rather satisfied. If you participated in Bout of Books, let me know how you did! Happy reading!
Last month or so I began my reread of Novik’s Temeraire series – I read it originally back in high school and at that point there were only five books out. When six through nine came out I didn’t ever get to them. So since the series is finished now and because I’ve touted it as one of my favorites for a long time, I figured I should actually finish it. And just like the first one, this one was also 5 stars. I’m glad that I’m enjoying it just as much this time around as I did last time.
I picked this one up as an ebook years ago and honestly forgot it was on my account. When I picked up another ebook recently I saw this on there and figured I should read it.
These were both 4 star reads for me and honestly they would have been five, except that I’m also currently watching the anime and had already watched the plot these two volumes covered. So I didn’t get the same ‘wow’ factor as I did if it would have been my first exposure. But the anime series I’m really digging and the manga is just as high quality in my opinion. I can see why this is the new ‘it anime’. It’s really great.
This manga I picked up as part of borrowathon, and honestly it was not my cup of tea. The premise is that this merman shows up in this guy’s tub one day…. and that’s it. Like, there’s no plot other than ‘oh hey this merman is here’. And what’s worse is that the merman is essentially a giant man child. The author tries to portray him as this tiny little adorable creature and the house owner treating him with an ‘you’re a bit exasperating but you’re lucky you’re cute’ kind of manner, but it comes off as this merman mooching off this guy, acting totally helpless, and doing this weird very childlike ‘well I’ll help!’ stuff that goes as far as a normal five year old would be able to take it. And I’m reading and waiting for a plot to pick up… and it never does. My friend lent me the first six volumes of this, and I read the synopsis of the back of the rest and it’s more ‘oh hey this merman is still here, what a hoot!’. So I give them back to my friend and ask if a plot ever pops up and she says not really, that the manga is meant to just be light and fluffy. I suppose I can understand that, but the merman acting like a child the whole time kind of ruined it for me. I gave this 2 stars and won’t be continuing.
This manga I picked up from borrowathon as well, right after quitting the above, and went into it expecting the worst. My friend and I swap manga and books all the time and our tastes align roughly fifty percent of the time. Sooo I was expecting this one to be another miss. But! This one actually turned out to be pretty neat, and I’m currently in the middle of volume 2.
Embuhleeliest 
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