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End-of-summer reading
Sep. 28th, 2024 04:31 pmI didn't get much reading done over the summer, but in my quest to get through my physical stockpile, I read the first book in the Colors manhwa trilogy by Kim Dong Hwa, The Color of Earth. I liked it enough that got the other two volumes from the library, and I tried to read them outside in the evenings, though the mosquitos chased me off most days. It's a series set in rural early 20th century or so Korea, following a widowed mother and her daughter, Ehwa. The series is about puberty, romance, and sexuality; Ehwa grows up, falls in love, and starts exploring the idea of sex with little to explicitly guide her, and the mother starts a lonely romance with a traveling merchant who she rarely sees.
The art is very pretty, with delicate lines and many panels where the characters quietly walk through a detailed landscape. The pacing/continuity was sometimes a bit odd - there were a couple of scenes where characters switch track and suddenly forget about something they were worrying about, and there was also how Ehwa's eventual husband flees the village after burning down his abusive master's property and narrowly escapes being beaten, but then he returns a few months later with zero anxieties. There are also a lot of metaphors involving flowers and butterflies (where butterflies = men), which I didn't mind, but when I was poking through some reviews of the series, I noticed a lot of people seemed to find them overbearing. (And also didn't like the gender essentialism, which is fair enough, but it didn't seem out of line with the time and place of the setting.) It was one of those works where I enjoyed it but could see why others didn't, but I also wondered how much of that dislike was because of differences with the time/place of the setting and how Korean readers reacted to it.
I also recently bought and read Venus in the Blind Spot, a compilation of Junji Ito works. I'm on the fence about whether to keep it or put in the Little Free Library; I really liked a couple of the stories (it includes the infamous The Enigma of Amigara Fault), and I thought a couple of others were okay, but to be honest, I think a lot of his horror just doesn't work for me. The book also had some printing issues, which was disappointing considering it's a large format hardcover and not a cheap paperback manga volume.
In English, I am also reading The Secret Lives of Color from the library, which is nonfiction about colors and pigment that is 100% aimed at me, haha. I picked it up after watching this video that reads one of the chapters (with permission) about the ancient color of minium and then tries to recreate it. I am also getting back into Japanese practice with some oneshot manga and continuing series I was reading before the summer 💪
The art is very pretty, with delicate lines and many panels where the characters quietly walk through a detailed landscape. The pacing/continuity was sometimes a bit odd - there were a couple of scenes where characters switch track and suddenly forget about something they were worrying about, and there was also how Ehwa's eventual husband flees the village after burning down his abusive master's property and narrowly escapes being beaten, but then he returns a few months later with zero anxieties. There are also a lot of metaphors involving flowers and butterflies (where butterflies = men), which I didn't mind, but when I was poking through some reviews of the series, I noticed a lot of people seemed to find them overbearing. (And also didn't like the gender essentialism, which is fair enough, but it didn't seem out of line with the time and place of the setting.) It was one of those works where I enjoyed it but could see why others didn't, but I also wondered how much of that dislike was because of differences with the time/place of the setting and how Korean readers reacted to it.
I also recently bought and read Venus in the Blind Spot, a compilation of Junji Ito works. I'm on the fence about whether to keep it or put in the Little Free Library; I really liked a couple of the stories (it includes the infamous The Enigma of Amigara Fault), and I thought a couple of others were okay, but to be honest, I think a lot of his horror just doesn't work for me. The book also had some printing issues, which was disappointing considering it's a large format hardcover and not a cheap paperback manga volume.
In English, I am also reading The Secret Lives of Color from the library, which is nonfiction about colors and pigment that is 100% aimed at me, haha. I picked it up after watching this video that reads one of the chapters (with permission) about the ancient color of minium and then tries to recreate it. I am also getting back into Japanese practice with some oneshot manga and continuing series I was reading before the summer 💪
