telophase | (no subject)

Finished Vampire Hunter D. Yeah, 14-year-old boy audience. Worth reading because, dude, Vampire Hunter D, but I hope the translator gets better as time goes by - he really did seem as if he were writing narration for a comic instead of a novel.

I seem to be coming down with the con crud right on schedule, as I now have a sore throat and have started sniffling a bit. Will probably end up missing a day or two of work in the upcoming days. I shall now retire to bed with the copy of The Winter Prince that

rachelmanija so kindly sent me and read until I fall asleep, which feels as if it will be about thirty seconds.

Oh yeah - I've been going through my manga shelves and pulling out the ones that I don't think I'll be following any more. I'll hopefully get around to posting them here for anyone who wants to trade for books or manga or random interesting things.

And I finished Qwan and still love it. Kid-type creature with a past and a purpose mysterious even to him, a sometimes-clueless rogue, and lovely art and expressions. I ♥ it muchly.

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I read the first half of "Qwan" in Hastings tonight but had no cash and had to leave as the store closed, so now I'm scouring Half.com for it. GOOD stuff. Qwan and his little headless flying dog are simultaneously adorable and creepy.

I'd be interested in the manga/book/random interesting thing trade.

Adorable and creepy = Good Stuff. :) Good luck on finding it!

Oh ugh, you had to mention trades when my bookshelves are a thousand miles away. I'm surviving on dregs out here, only a handful of new books, a few favorites, and no manga at all.

Sorry if I missed this the first time, but the Vampire Hunter D novels came out before the first movie? Or was it after the first but before the second? Most English novelizations suck too.

Heehee. I spent a summer in Casper, WY, and then survived 9 months in Vermillion, South Dakota, so I understand surviving on the fringes of civilization where the only bookstore in town is mostly music and has three shelves total of SF books, most of which is taken up for Star Trek novelizations.

The VHD novels came before the movie. Or at least the first one did - there are 17 total so far. I think it was pretty much aimed at the manga-reading 14-year-old-boy audience, but it was also fairly early in the author's writing career, so maybe he improves. OTOH, franchises like that tend to go downhill after a while.

At any rate, they're not spending much time on revising the translated text - the next one comes out in October, so they're planning on pumping them out ASAP.

There were two movies, though? The new one and one in the eighties, which had basically the same story as the new one but wasn't as pretty. Did the novels come out before both?

I'm trying to think of the American equilivent to those novels and I can come up with is Dragonlance and Battletech.

I didn't mean there weren't bookstores here! Ann Arbor is a college town. There are five used bookstores within walking distance, the Borders down the street is the fist Borders ever, there are three comics shops and, if I wanted to drive, a Barnes and Noble larger than a shopping mall. I just meant that I don't have many old books with me to trade.

Yes. The novel came first. The movie was made from the novel. It was not a novelization.

Vampire Hunter D the novel was published in 1982. The first movie, Vampire Huner D, taken directly from that book (they just took out a major subplot and a buch of background explanation and shoved the rest into the movie), came out three years later, in 1985. The second movie, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, came out in 2000, and was not taken from the first novel. I don't know if the story was taken from any of the other novels. Since 1982, there have been 17 Vampire Hunter D novels published.

I think the equivalent here is things like the Dirk Gently [TM] novels, which are fast-paced potboilers that aren't read for the quality of the prose, only horror instead of spy/thriller.

Heh. Forgot you were in Ann Arbor. At any rate, I HAVE BEEN MORE DEPRIVED THAN YOOOOOOOOOUUU!

You win the victim contest, hands down!

(I don't think you mean Dirk Gently. There are only two of those and they are definitely read for the prose. I think you mean something else.)

Erg, sorry, Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt[TM] books.* My brain was blocking out TEH HORROR and replacing it with something much, much nicer.

* You think I'm kidding about the [TM]? That's how it's written on the back of the books.