Hikaru No Go was my very first manga, and I really enjoyed it. I’ve seen that purists take exception to some details of the translation, but these problems sped past me without ever causing me to look askance. And it was fun to learn to read back to front (from a Western point of view).

The story itself is about a typical young boy who becomes the unwilling host for the spirit of a long-dead Go master. He’s constantly arguing with this fellow (Sai, the Go master, is constantly referred to as being male in the text, though the drawings are very effeminate) about whether or not they’ll play Go. Hikaru, the protagonist, doesn’t know the first thing about Go, not even how to hold the stones, so he causes quite a commotion when he sits down for his first game and soundly thrashes the resident top-gun, thanks to Sai’s telling him where to play.

Mixed in with all this is a bit about the game. Apparently in Japan this series has created something of a ressurgence of interest in Go among young people. In the US, only the first two books have been published, and finding the second one is proving difficult. And I’m surprised to find myself really wanting to find it so I can learn what happens next in this ‘comic book’ (as my mom would call it).

So now I’m looking to branch out. Anyone have any manga suggestions for me?

A few posts back I talked about Jennifer Fallon’s The Lion of Senet. Since then, I’ve finished the other two books in the trilogy, The Eye of the Labyrinth and The Lord of Shadows. Ms. Fallon did not disappoint. While Lion had a bit of a slow start, the story really got rolling in Eye and putting down Lord was nigh on impossible. The intrigue grew and grew and I was often caught off-guard by twists in the plot.

And happily, unlike many trilogies these days, this one really ended. Is there room for more stories in this universe? Yes, but probably either in the past or future of the characters in Second Sons. Ms. Fallon didn’t leave us dangling, or with too many unanswered questions, and it wasn’t a clear set up for the next triology, as is so often the case.

These books get my highest recommendation. It was the best series I’ve read in quite a while.

Good lord, what’s the world coming to? I actually finished a book for the first time in about 12 years.

It was Jennifer Fallon’s The Lion of Senet and it was quite good, after a bit of a slow start. It’s a relatively traditional fantasy, though its clear that the world was once populated by a more technologically sophisticated culture (possibly it was an earth colony at one time?). Anyway, there are twin suns so its normally never dark, but relatively recently there was an “Age of Shadows” when it not only got dark, but the planet went through a lot of stress (earthquakes and the like). Because of this, there was a big shift in political power, as well as a new religon forming. I don’t want to go into too many details because learning about all this is part of the fun of the book.

Anyway, thus far there’re no magic spells or dragons or anything. Its more a story about politics and people. Fallon has a nice way of introducing characters such that you have no idea if they’re ‘good guys’ or ‘bad guys’ for a long time, and often once you get it all figured out, things shift. If you liked Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire series (aka “Game of Thrones” series) then you’ll probably enjoy this book. It’s not as grandiose or as complex as Ice & Fire, but the struggles and obstacles are similar.

One word of warning, though. This is the first book in a trilogy and it kind of just stops with not much in the way of an ending. If you find yourself liking it, best to be read with volume II, Eye of the Labyrinth.

I wanted to promote a company I’m really liking…

The Teaching Company is a firm that takes college professors and records their lectures, then sells them in a variety of formats. So far all my experience is in the audio CD formats.

The base price is kind of a lot (about $200 for the audio CD version) but they rotate courses through sale prices when they come down to around $50. This is for 12 CDs, generally. 24 lectures.

So far I’ve finished:

King Arthur and Chivalry
Medieval Heroines in History and Legend

King Arthur and Chivalry was pretty good, especially the earlier lectures. When she (the professor is Bonnie Wheeler, who you may have seen in some A&E or Discovery Channel Arthurian shows) gets to de Troyes and Mallory it was more or less review since I was fairly familiar with those works. But early she talked about The Song of Roland and Silence and a few others that I’d never even heard of.

Medieval Heroines (same prof) was excellent. It looked at 4 women’s lives: Hildegard, Heloise (and her lover Abelard), Eleanor of Aquitaine and Joan of Arc. Aside from the latter, I knew -nothing- about any of these women, and I was riveted by the course. Really good stuff.

and I just started

Europe and the Wars of Religion (1500–1700)

I’m only in the first lecture of this one, but so far I think I’m going to like it a lot.

I have these on order:

Famous Romans
The History of the English Language
The Terror of History: Mystics, Heretics, and Witches in the Western Tradition

Anyway, if like me you spend a lot of time commuting, these are a nice change from audio books. Disk for disk, I think they’re cheaper than a typical audio book, too.

And if you’re a stay-at-home type, you can get the courses on DVD with visual aids and so forth, too.

I finished reading Is Your Cat Crazy last night. Its a great book if your cat is going to the bathroom in places other than his kitty litter box, and you are an utter moron. Because basically the book consists of case after case after case of cats with litter box problems caused by various maladies.

If your cat is having ‘accidents’ and you’re NOT an utter moron, pick this up in a bookstore, quickly skim through the chapter on litter boxes issues, put the book down, then go home and fix the problem (hint: plastic carpet liners figure prominently). You probably don’t need to be told the same thing 35 times before you get it, right?

If the litter box isn’t the problem spot, then Mr. Wright suggests throwing a toy to distract that cat from his bad behavior, and getting your vet to prescribe anti-anxiety medicine for a while. And that’s pretty much it.

OK, I exaggerate some, but really the information density of this book is pretty light. Is Your Cat Crazy? has more fluff then little Tiger does. Har har har! I slay me. 😛

I finished Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood today. I’m still trying to decide if I liked it or not.

The premise is that the titular wood is the home to creatures of myth, but that these creatures are created out of a kind of race-memory of people. So for instance if enough people truly believe in Bigfoot, Bigfoot would be found in this wood.

It was an interesting premise but it made it all feel kind of artificial. Like it was one huge delusion. And the fact that the protagonist took everything pretty much in stride when he learned about what was happening in the wood made it all feel even more so. There was very little time spent on disbelief and coming to grips with what was going on. “Ah, so Robin Hood and King Arthur’s Knights and some kind of proto-druid tribe all live in the 6 mile stretch of woods? OK, I’ll buy that. Let’s go explore it!” Umm…?

If you can set those two facts aside, then it was a really enjoyable book. What added a nice layer to the whole story was that ‘present day’ for the protagonist was 1948 or thereabouts. Shortly after the war, in any case. So even the non-fantastical portions of the book had an air of ‘other-worldliness’ to those of us too young to have lived through that time.

I guess I can best sum it up this way. I liked it enough to add the next book in the series (Lavondyss) to my Amazon wishlist, but I’m not going to run around raving about the book. On a scale of 1-5 I’d give it a 3 or a 4. Holdstock’s voice is what makes it worth reading. I’m hoping the next book has just a tad more polish. If it does, it should be truly great.

This morning during my commute I started listening to the first course we bought from The Teaching Company. This particular course is King Arthur and Chivalry taught by Bonnie Wheeler. Ms. Wheeler has been on TV a few times, on The History Channel & A&E, so I was familiar with her (which is one of the reasons I picked this course). What I got was a couple of clear plastic cases with CD’s in paper sleeves and a pamphlet with course notes. Its not fancy but its functional and in fact this case will be easier to open one handed while driving when it comes time to change disks. 🙂

Anyway, my initial reaction is very favorable. Its clear that they just recorded her lectures, so it isn’t 100% polished…I get the feeling they didn’t do ‘takes’ or anything. They do record the lectures in a studio, though, so the sound quality is good. So far Ms. Wheeler has proven to be an engaging speaker, but I’d anticipated that after seeing her on TV, where it was clear she was passionate about the subject matter. The first lecture is more or less an overview of what’s to come, but already I’m anxious to hear more.

I’ll report back if things take a turn for the worse, but so far I’m very, very pleased. I may find myself getting a bunch more of these.

I finished Doc Sidhe, by Aaron Allston, tonight. It was a fun ‘pulp fiction’ kind of story. A down-on-his-luck kickboxer gets transported to the FaeWorld (my term, not his) and he and his girlfriend get embroiled in a battle against an evil madman. The other world is whimsical but believable; people there are poisoned/burned by the touch of iron or steel, so most of their technology is based on copper and so forth, which has retarded their technological growth when compared to ours (they call our world the grimworld). But they have magic, so you end up with almost a steam-punk kind of land, but not so gritty as what you might think of when you think of steampunk.

Anyway, the book won’t win any awards for Classic Fiction or The Great American Novel, but it was a darned fun read and an imaginative enough story. And though I’ve linked to it at Amazon, you can d/l it for free (or read it online) at Baen’s Free Library. I read the whole thing on my PDA while waiting in lines or during solo meals and what not. Not a bad way to pass some time.

Elaine just turned me on to this site:
The Teaching Company – Great Courses That Engage The Mind
We’re going to try a couple of courses from them. The on-sale courses are about $50 and we’ll get them on CD so we can listen to them in the car.

Will report back on whether they’re any good, but some of the instructors are familiar to be from seeing them on TV on The History Channel or Discovery.