Reading Report: 12 February 2023
This week was another slow one for input. Recovery from the trip has been a bit exhausting in itself and I've also been a bit swamped with work-related stuff. Anyway when I did have energy I polished off the copy of よつばと！ volume 13 that I brought back from Japan and also started on 掟上今日子の備忘録 (a mouthful of a name, thank heavens for IME auto-fill), a light novel by NISIOISIN (the author of the Monogatari series).
よつばと！ Vol 13
Yet another winner. The introduction of the grandma character was really nice. I liked the firm but gentle way she encouraged Yotsuba to be more active around the house. I also liked her dynamic with Yotsudad (who gets a canon name thanks to her, 葉介 (ようすけ)). When she begins to leave and Yotsuba says she'll become unable to do anything again, she'll be unable to know the names of birds, her origami will suck again, and cleaning up will become a bother... it's very relatable.
掟上今日子の備忘録: 37 pages
A NISIOISIN book. True to the author's reputation, it is full of chuuni language and kanji use, but the story itself is sort of simple and easy to follow (so far). The story is about a detective (掟上今日子 (おきてがみきょうこ)) whose memory is reset any time she falls asleep. She promises to solve any case in a single day, and she doesn't keep physical notes, so in away her memory wiping is also a security promise that she won't leave the case with sensitive information. The actual story so far is written from the perspective of an average male NPC-type (隠館厄介 (かくしだてやくすけ)) with bad luck and a tendency to get 巻き込まれた into problems. 厄介 knows 今日子 from a number of past cases she's solved for him (off camera I guess) but she never remembers him, so he lives with sadness that their relationship will never progress. Anyway the first case is a matter involving a missing USB drive with some top secret data on it. Not only does the boss in this situation (笑井室長) want to find the drive, they also wants to find out who "stole it" (it's possible no one did). It's unclear who is the culprit at this point, but 今日子 is on the case!
Life Stuff
I'm still working on compiling a collection of photos I'm happy with (and compressing them to sizes that aren't humongous) but needless to say a post about the Japan vacation is still in the works. As previously mentioned I've also been a bit covered in work stuff. That's partially because I took on an additional project for a new opportunity. It didn't work out, but I learned a lot of new things in the process, so it's not all bad.
University starts in about two weeks. It's pretty stressful to think about. All I can do is hope that all my experiences in the past leading up to this point will be enough to enable me to finally be diligent enough to stick with it for the whole 9 yards.