Just finished A Canticle for Leibowitz, for the Bibliophages comm. Truly a powerful work. Shall have more to say when discussion week comes. I kind of feel like I should read another book, especially because this time there are so few participants.

Am also reading more Kindaichi Shounen Jikenbo (The Case Files of the Young Kindaichi), which is a mystery manga. I’ve read the first ten or so volumes in English, but the translations started to get really slow. Anyhow, it’s fairly simple to read in Japanese, except for the discussions of the mechanics of the case (to be honest, I like mysteries more for the psychology than for the puzzles. So I read for characterization and suspense, and sometimes I kind of uh… (don’t tell anyone) skim over the details, especially if a timetable is involved, or a cipher), where I sometimes have to look up vocab. Kindaichi is especially good if you like super angst and melodrama, because in every crime, it’s an elaborate plot conceived to take REVENGE for an even earlier crime by the now-victims. And so therefore the villains always have a semi-sympathetic sob story, and like most of the time, they commit suicide or die dramatically. Well, except for the recurring villain, who is an unrepentant psychopath. Anyhow, reading Kindaichi, although because of the nature of the plot (Kindaichi goes somewhere, and then there is KILLING, or Kindaichi is called in to investigate some mysterious case, or Kindaichi goes to a fun mystery event and then it suddenly turns into KILLING) is kind of repetitive, is pretty fun.