Reading in February

As the shortest month, February always feels a bit cramped for reading.

Manga

This month, I finished up my reread of Reborn! - or at least as much of Reborn as was put out in the US. They left off just at the start of the TYL arc, which is by all accounts one of the better ones in the series. I find myself somewhat curious and may get to those eps in the anime on my Crunchyroll account. Reborn! is always a fun but weird little read, with a lot of weird physics and the abrupt tonal shift in the middle of the series as it was released here. But I really enjoy it when I get it into my head to read.

Also started reading Toriko. I'd hear this was a pretty fun series and was recommended for those who liked One Piece. But... well, I don't dislike Toriko. I enjoy it when I'm reading it. But there's no biting urge to read the next volume, the way there was when I started reading One Piece. The characters don't grab me, the world is interesting but not particularly exciting. I am curious and satisfied enough to keep going, but that will probably only hold as long as the library's issues. (The library's manga collection is weirdly spotty, not just in series, but in what books it has in a series)

The new Fairy Tail issue came out, and honestly I couldn't really have hoped for a better conclusion to the arc.

Comics

I read and very much enjoyed Persepolis this month. It had its moments where the story got too bogged down in side-stuff and I lost interest a bit, but overall it was a really fantastic read.

Less fantastic was the Beautiful Creatures comic (Yeah, THAT Beautiful Creatures). I ordered it before I was aware of the movie or book. And honestly, I could see this working a lot better in either of those mediums. A comic was just not right for this story.

I also got a pretty heaping helping of Gambit, rereading Gambit Classic 1 and then reading 2 for the first time. I really enjoy stories with Gambit in them, when they get the tone right. I think Gambit tends to work best when written with the sort of humorous eye that good She-Hulk is. Sometimes the melodrama gets a bit much, but I really enjoyed both of these books  (Not the least because Rogue and Storm also make major appearances - <3 and="" p="" rogue="" storm="">

My sister also loaned me the cute book The Adventures ofSuperhero Girl. While it wasn't anything groundbreaking or super memorable, it was highly enjoyable and super cute. Superhero Girl's fighting against not only evil, but also the sucking feeling of mediocrity that comes from being a non-corporate superhero in a smaller city. She was totally relatable to me, and pretty funny to boot.

Books

I think The Drawing of the Three may be the Dark Tower book that most benefitted from multiple rereads for me. The first time I read it, I was meh. But as I went back to it time and time again, I found more to love. More complexity. More little details. My love for Susannah and Eddie and their relationship makes this sometimes a tough book to reread, but it's rewarding as well.

I read a pair of books for book clubs this month as well. For the first book club, I read The Darkest Minds, a dystopia about an America where an illness sweeps America and either kills or gives superpowers to all the kids. Things go full-on despot and internment camps, and some of the worldbuilding feels sort of light in this regard. I was also not particularly enamored with our main characters, but the secondaries more than made up for it. Until the ending. I was SO FRUSTRATED with the ending of this book. I know it didn't read that way  for everyone, but I felt insulted as a reader.

The Magicians, read for the other book club,  wasn't insulting, but it also wasn't that engaging. The main character was a jerk, book smart but also incredibly self absorbed. This seemed to be by design, but it persisted unchecked for so long that I just couldn't *care* when things happened to him.  I couldn't care about any of it. It just never reached me emotionally.

Also read Blameless and Heartless, continuing a fun little series. I'm enjoying them very much, my previous complain notwithstanding. I do, however, think I enjoyed the first two better than either of these.

Storm Thief, the final book I read this month, struck me as being the sort of book I would have found utterly enchanting if I had read it in middle or high school. There's some legitimately great worldbuilding here, but like with the Magicians, I never got emotionally invested in the characters and being kept outside of the story like that is the quickest way to lose me.