#stopped reading

[sleepypandazzz09]

Omg I finally finished

[withania-somnifera]

mizutama honey boy - ike junko

overview: this is a shoujo high-school romance about sengoku mei, captain of the kendo team and tomboyish girl who is only focused on strength and training. fuji shirou, a girly boy with girly mannerisms and a cross-dressing hobby, confesses to her. she turns him down initially but they continue to be friends. it’s a classic will-they-won’t-they where you know eventually they will, but in shoujo style it’s drawn out forever and ever and ever. there are lots of rivals in the mix, most notably the third point of the love triangle, nanao manabu, captain of the boys’ kendo team who also declares himself in love with sengoku and demands that they fight a match, which, if she loses, she has to go out with him. there are lots of other characters getting in the way intentionally or otherwise, it’s a very classic long-form shoujo slow burn. there are 10 volumes of this and i’ve read 6 and that is the point at which i am giving up.

available in english? yep! this is an older series, is complete, and should be easy to find online in english. 

nsfw? nope! this is a shoujo series.

things i liked: i decided to check this out after the last series i reviewed, suenaga yoroshiku onegaishimasu, since it’s by the same mangaka, ike junko. i really love her art a lot, and that is true of this series as well! i also thought the gender role reversal of this manga was really fun and handled in a way that didn’t feel gross to me. fuji is cute and a lot of fun, and sengoku is a fun protagonist for the most part. in general, i think ‘fun’ is the right way to describe the vibe of this compared to other shoujo series. 

things i didn’t like: i’m not reading any more of this after 6 volumes just because i’m sort of tired of it. the pace of the progression of their relationship is glacially slow, with some new manufactured challenge or obstacle every few pages. i know that’s par for the course with a long shoujo series, but it’s personally not my cup of tea (which is probably why i read a lot more josei series tbqh). i’m just kind of tired of waiting for anything to happen between them. i have very little patience for main characters who need several volumes to ‘figure out what their feelings are’ or whatever, which, again, i know is pretty much how it goes with shoujo, but again, is not really my particular cup of tea. 

i would check this out if: you like shoujo high-school romance! this is a fun take on the classic format with small twists on the normal character archetypes that make it feel fresh. its very cute. 

i would avoid this if: you lack patience, are looking for something unique, don’t like cliched tropes or incredibly drawn out plots, are tired of the same old high school stories

sample pages:

BONUS SECTION:

my all-time favorite voice actor is sakurai takahiro, who apparently voiced fuji-kun in a promotional video (and later a drama CD of this series that came out). i... i might have to track down at least a clip of it, because

does he have a girly voice???? i would never have thought to describe it that way. is he doing a really girly voice? is his voice normally girly? he does a lot of more refined or formal characters i guess????? wild 

[eccentric-ocean]

"The fact is," he said, "I liked you from the first moment I saw you, when you looked like you wanted to punch me in the face for just being alive. That probably says something dark about me. And I think you like me because I annoy you. Both of us have real problems, but maybe we should make our weird personalities work for us.”

Stevie had often wondered how these conversations worked, when people talked about feelings and touching, and all of the stuff she thought was meant to be kept carefully bottled inside her own personal apothecary. Now someone wanted in, to take the lids off the vials, to peer at the contents. Stevie was unaware that people were even allowed to talk about emotions this frankly. This was not how things happened at home.

— Maureen Johnson, Truly Devious

[alexalblondo]

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[whoneedsoptimism]

You know what really fucking bothers me about school in general? It took away my passion. Before high school I loved to read. I devoured books over and over, stayed up reading with a flashlight when I needed to know what happened next chapter, cherished every book and refused to crack their spines. Now I can't remember the last time I read a real book. In English class they would assign us Great Gatsby and Frankenstein and Heart of Darkness and Grapes of Wrath and I couldn't bring myself to read a single one. Too many things to do, not enough time. Reading became a burden, not an escape. So I just stopped. I stopped reading every second I had free time. I stopped picking up books in the bookstore. I gave away half my collection. I keep saying "I'll get back into it soon" but it's been years. I stopped reading because I was being forced to read books I wasn't interested in, and now I'm being forced to read 200 pages a week from textbooks to not fail my classes. I stopped reading because school killed that passion.

[bettys-bookshelf]

Lorna Doone by R.D.Blackmore. So, I tried to start reading this book this week to try and have read some classics... this probably want the best to start with. I'm fine with old language, but this was something else! When they spell it, they pronounce it in the dialect. I had to read it out loud to figure out what they were saying - imagine this: I was actually doing this on the bus!!! I didn't need this hassle so I stopped reading at chapter 5 :( sorry Lorna Doone! 28.2.15

[abookblog]

The Country That Stopped Reading by David Toscana, New York Times