Tag: Shuna’s Journey

WWW Wednesday – March 6, 2024

Ryan1 Comment
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Death in Her HandsI’m still making my way through Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh. I think I’ve only managed another chapter or so since last week, but I’m continuing to enjoy it. However, I’m starting to feel like this experience is going to go one of two ways for me: either a shoe will drop that makes the story a lot more interesting or things will stay nebulous with the character ruminating on the ideas of her wild imagination. Though I don’t think I’ll hate the latter thanks to the strength of Moshfegh’s writing, I will be somewhat disappointed. On the one hand, the character does seem to be a really anxious person, more so than she realizes, and on the other hand she does seem sound enough of mind that I don’t think she’s imagining everything. Perhaps by next week we’ll see how things turn out for me.

Recently Finished

Shuna's JourneyOver the weekend I read through Shuna’s Journey by Hayao Miyazaki, an illustrated work by the author that was originally published in 1983, before he even founded Studio Ghibli. Though I referred to it as a manga last week, it actually reads a lot more like a picture book, though with greater visual and thematic depth than one made for children. This actually had some of the weirdest and most quietly disturbing ideas I think I’ve seen from a work of his, specifically in the otherworldly forces presented in the story. It was fun to see early iterations on ideas that would pop up in later works too like the films Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke. Though this was a library read, I enjoyed it so much that I will likely pick up a copy to own for myself someday.

Reading Next

I still don’t really know what I’m going to be reading next, but I’ll have to make up my mind soon since I will likely be wrapping up Death in Her Hands pretty soon. I just don’t know what I’m in the mood for, only that I don’t want to read more nonfiction right now.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – February 28, 2024

Ryan1 Comment
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Death in Her HandsQuite on a whim, I decided to start reading Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh; I was glancing at my shelf wondering what I wanted to read next, and I realized that I hadn’t read any of her books in a minute and this one was just sitting right there. I’m just under halfway through at the moment, and while I am enjoying it, it is also a little slow. Much of it has been about Vesta, the elderly main character, slowly divulging details about her life as we follow her stream of consciousness after finding a note in the woods talking about a supposedly murdered girl who is nowhere in sight. I had thought a more direct mystery would be at the heart of this story, but it seems it is much more about the narratives we weave on our own about the world around us, as well as how we go about constructing narrative for creative writing. I’m intrigued to see where this will go.

Recently Finished

Video Game of the YearOver the weekend I managed to finally finish reading Video Game of the Year by Jordan Minor. Though I enjoyed it fine, I once again felt that he indulged himself a little too much with editorializing, this time in particular about games by the studio FromSoftware; if he wanted to talk about the conversations around game difficulty with their games, fine, but I didn’t need a personal anecdote on why he doesn’t like them and feels like they don’t respect his time. It’s a shame, because I know he is capable of writing entries in a more personally detached way because that’s how the earlier entries were done. I’m sure there’s a wealth of places to read Minor’s opinions elsewhere, and I hope this book brings people to those places, but this wasn’t the stage for them. I won’t be giving this book a full review, but I’d rate it a 3.5 out of 5.

Reading Next

Shuna's JourneyThe next book I plan on reading soon is something I picked up at the library after randomly coming across it: Shuna’s Journey by Hayao Miyazaki. This manga was originally published all the way back in 1983 but only saw a release in English in 2022. I’m a fan of Miyazaki’s animation work and had no idea he’d authored/illustrated any manga, so it was an easy choice to pick this up. I’d been needing a comic to read next too, and while this isn’t from the backlog of books I own, it’s still nice to have found something that immediately grabbed my interest. The aesthetics remind me of some of his films, but it appears that this is an original story unconnected to any of those.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.