Something old, something new…

… something borrowed, but nothing Blu! That describes my reading for the past week. I made two trips to Borders, and on the second one I spotted a bunch of random manga volumes marked 75 percent off, so I bought them all. Meanwhile, several books I had ordered through inter-library loan came through. I wound up with about two dozen new manga and spent much of the holiday weekend reading. Here’s a sampling:

Naoki Urasawa’s Monster: Well drawn psychological thriller about a Japanese doctor in Germany, both before and after the fall of the Berlin wall. Predictable in places but plenty of twists. I’m counting the days until volume 2.

Hikaru no Go: I thought the premise seemed a bit improbable—a manga about a game I know nothing about—but this book is a great read. I particularly like Sai, the fluttery, emotional ghost of a former Go player who haunts the grumbling but likable Hikaru.

Crossroad, vol. 2: Manga-ka Shioko Mizuki pulls back the curtain a little at a time on her characters in this absorbing family drama. No sophomore slump here; volume 2 is even funnier and more gripping than the first.

Planetes: This one took a while to warm up to. I don’t much like sci-fi, and the characters change appearance a few times so they’re hard to follow. But once I locked in on the storyline I couldn’t put it down.

Love Roma: I bought this chiefly because David Welsh really liked it, and our tastes usually correspond. Unfortunately, not this time. It’s a schoolkid love story; he thought it was cute and funny, I thought it was shallow and overdone. De gustibus…

At the moment, I’m reading volume 2 of FAKE, a love story between two New York cops, which is quite entertaining if not great literature, and volume 2 of Cantarella, which is simply wonderful.

Meanwhile, my 13-year-old is really enjoying Shutterbox, which I’m looking forward to reading if she ever lets it go, and both girls liked Crimson Hero, causing me to regret ever thinking that a manga about volleyball was a weird idea.

As for my husband, he claims to be burned out on manga but kept swiping books from my stack. Despite being a sci-fi fan from way back, he didn’t like Planetes, but he did seem to like Monster.