Reading Report: 23 April 2023
It was a bit of a mixed bag with reading. While I had another fairly slow book pace, I was able to squeeze in 2 volumes of manga and I watched quite a lot of anime. I'm also currently not panicking about school work so it's nice to have a weekend where I feel like I can relax somewhat.
月まで三キロ 44 pages
🚹 天王寺ハイエイタス
The last few pages were okay I guess. In the end probably my least favourite story in this book.
🔬 エイリアンの食堂
This story has been really good. It's about a father and daughter who run a 定食 restaurant. A regular patron, known only as プレア, always rotates between the same meals each night and spends the rest of the evening typing on her computer. 鈴花 (the daughter) is suspicious of プレア and asks if she's an alien from プレアデス星. プレア says that she is an 宇宙人 but not from there exactly... she's a scientist from the planet Earth. They talk a little bit about the ISS. プレア says she's interested in 世界で一番の小さなもの and 世界で一番大きなもの, which she says are Quarks and Space itself, respectively.
We get some background about 鈴花 and 謙介 (the dad) and why the mum isn't in the picture. 鈴花's mum, 望美, died from cancer when 鈴花 was still very young. 鈴花 suffers from insomnia and 謙介 drives her through the streets at night to help her sleep. The night after talking to プレア about her life, they have a drive and go past the area where a particle collider has been built underground (in つくば市) and when they get to a bright part of the city they get out of the car and walk onto a 歩道橋 and comment on how their shadows cast on the road are like 宇宙人.
Finally there's another scene with 鈴花 talking to プレア about science. プレア says that everything that exists is made up of クォークとレプトン. Not only her laptop but the table, herself, the food she's eating, everything. 謙介 thinks to himself (sort of tongue-in-cheek) how that kind of mindset sort of takes the wind out restaurants which try to sell different foods. プレア shares her real name, 本庄聡子, and she shares her history as a child who was interested in all sorts of ちっちゃいもの. She says that at the time of the big bang all existence was possibly quarks and leptons, so the smallest things are the key to understanding the biggest thing of our past.
♑ おかえりアリス６巻
Another good volume from this series. 押見修造 is very good at writing natural-feeling dialogue and touching on some heavy themes. Maybe it was a lack of text or maybe just a lack of challenging text but I read the entire volume in about 40 minutes which feels like a personal best for speed.
🐱 あずまんが大王２年生
Inversely, this one took me quite a while to finish. I read it in parts before bed and accumulated a few hours of reading before I was finally done. There were some amazing laugh out loud moments. I genuinely can't recommend the series enough. The writing feels somewhat dense at times, but that density also means there's a lot to learn from it.
Audio: About 8 hours.
I watched up to episode 45 of 🏴☠️ One Piece. アーロン has been defeated. Highlights were episodes 35 and 36, the ベルメール backstory. I liked the relationship between ナミ and ノジコ. The episode where all the strawhats were finally ready to rock up to アーロン's place together was very funny to me. Just a bunch of guys nodding and walking with like 50 different camera angles to show how serious they were.
Life Stuff
School has settled somewhat. Most classes are just past the halfway point in terms of assignments. The only downside is that almost all of the final assignments are group projects and I have to manage my expectations that others will keep up with my anxious pace 😖
This coming week I'll be seeing my doctor... part of me keeps thinking about writing stuff like this down as writing the preface for some tragic story. I hope it's just me playing it up in my mind and I'll be underwhelmed by a totally normal body change people just don't talk about.
Well, until next time.