All posts for Books in 2012
Flowers of Evil, Vol. 3 (Shuzo Oshimi) 2012-11-03 14:00:00
A further tightening of the screws, and maybe the first step in the next direction for this story.
Heroman Vol. 1 (Tamon Ohta) 2012-10-26 21:21:26
Enjoyable if not-impressively-drawn manga take on Western-style kid's action comics. (Stan Lee had a hand in it, and it shows.)
Paradise Kiss, Part One (Ai Yazawa) 2012-10-13 14:00:00
What makes a story that's nominally a romance into something a little deeper and more insightful? The idea that the characters want to be more than overgrown children, for one.
Silence (John Cage) 2012-09-28 14:00:00
John Cage's first book (and perhaps the only one of his you need) continues to stimulate, infuriate, and amuse over fifty years later.
Limit Vol. 1 (Keiko Suenobu) 2012-09-26 14:00:00
The cost of conformity, explored in a ''Lord of the Flies''-style manga scenario.
Pro Bono (Seicho Matsumoto) 2012-07-16 14:00:00
It all starts when near-penniless Kiriko makes the trip to Tokyo to enlist the help of lawyer Kinzo Otsuka. Kiriko is a hapless woman trying to scrape together a legal defense for her brother; he stands accused of a murder...
Sakuran: Blossoms Wild (Moyoco Anno) 2012-07-14 14:00:00
The anti-"Memoirs of a Geisha". Moyoco Anno's manga, source for the film of the same name, is a brassy and sassy tribute to a milieu that often only gets the sleeve-wringing weepie treatment.
A Guru Is Born (Takeshi Kitano) 2012-07-07 14:00:00
"Beat" Takeshi Kitano's novel about religion and hypocrisy is a quiet little masterwork that invites multiple readings and interpretations.
The Flowers of Evil, Vol. 2 (Shuzo Oshimi) 2012-07-06 14:00:00
Further adventures in antisocial dating, in this sharp little psych-thriller series.
Enma the Immortal (Fumi Nakamura) 2012-05-24 14:00:00
What seems at first glance like a "Blade of the Immortal" clone is anything but.
The Flowers of Evil, Vol. #1 (Shuzo Oshimi) 2012-05-13 14:00:00
First installment in this diabolical manga series about a high schooler's psychological torment at the hands of a female classmate.
Rebel Buddha (Dzogchen Ponlop) 2012-05-01 14:00:00
We are, I think, finally beginning to see the full flowering of a literature of true native Western Buddhism. By this I mean works written by Buddhists who are Westerners first and foremost, and whose understanding of both Western life...
GTO: The Early Years, Vol. #11 (Toru Fujisawa) 2012-03-04 15:00:00
Picking up where Tokyopop left off, it's Onizuka before he was the Great Teacher.
Japan (Buronson / Kentaro Miura) 2012-02-28 15:00:00
Kentaro Miura and Buronson team up for a collaboration that's if anything even worse than the last one I saw from them.
Hell (Yasutaka Tsutsui) 2012-02-27 14:00:00
Yasutaka Tsutsui ("Paprika")'s satire on the afterlife remains stuck on the level of an interesting idea rather than a fully-developed work.
MM9: Monster Magnitude 9 (Hiroshi Yamamoto) 2012-02-21 14:00:00
A love letter to Japanese monster movies, with some clever mythology of its own that could support a more ambitious story.
No Longer Human Vol. #3 (Usamaru Furuya, Osamu Dazai) 2012-02-12 03:30:00
The manga adaptation of Japan's "Requiem for a Dream" comes to an unforgiving close, just as it should.
Black Jack. Vol. #17 (Osamu Tezuka) 2012-02-11 05:38:42
The end. And it’s a fitting end to a manga series that’s always stood poised on the knife-edge between sweet fairy-tale simplicity and the tougher sensibilities of stories for mature audiences. Black Jack might well have been Osamu Tezuka’s finest...
GTO: 14 Days in Shonan, Vol. #1 (Tohru Fujisawa) 2012-02-04 05:19:05
The further (and ever the more over the top) adventures of Great Teacher Onizuka, as he tries to turn around a whole special school full of kids abandoned by their own parents.
What the Buddha Thought (Richard Gombrich) 2012-01-29 00:18:15
Ambitious attempt to place the Buddha in, and outside of, his historical context as a thinker and philosopher.
Princess Knight: Vols. #1-2 (Osamu Tezuka) 2012-01-27 21:10:00
Osamu Tezuka's gender-bending fairy tale, now in English, was worth the wait.
The Cult of Nothingness: The Philosophers and the Buddha (Roger-Pol Droit) 2012-01-14 00:32:38
Intriguing look at how Buddhism was equated with nihilism in 19th-century philosophy, for reasons more to do with politics than the intellect.
