Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
For my future reading, to intersperse with the detective novels, I've decided to start reading (or re-reading) the enormous backlog of Baen books I've bought over the last 15 years or so, most of which I've never read
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O_o. And I thought I was a hoarder for picking up interesting-looking discounted stuff during Fictionwise sales* to sample and see if I wanted to buy more from the author/imprint later and ending up with a couple hundred titles I have yet to read.
As for me, I've got a backlog of non-leisure reading things and assignments eating up my time, but in between I'm managing to sneak in chapters of
Hiromu Arakawa's manga
Fullmetal Alchemist, in the French translation by Kurokawa, which they've been recently repackaging in more affordable omnibus editions (only up to tome 9 out of 27 total, though).
It's one of my favourite series, which posits a world in which "science" diverged into alchemy around the time of Newton (at least in the anime), with the principle of Equivalent Exchange being their world's version of the First Law of Thermodynamics, and deals with the effect of an alchemically-based scientific culture brought to "modern" times with technology equivalent to our world (in a non-steampunk manner) and conflict with conquered-neighbour religious beliefs and the mindset of military expansionism enabled by said alchemy.
While I've watched all the original anime adaption (both when it aired on Canada's YTV youth channel in the mid-2000s, and again when I later bought them on sale on DVD and did a nostalgia re-watch last month), I've only read a few scattered volumes of the English-language Viz translation from the library, so it's interesting going through them in order.
I understand the story at some point begins to diverge considerably from the first anime (I've ordered the second FMA anime on Blu-Ray, which is a remake more faithful to the source manga, but won't be receiving the discs for several months yet due to being tied up with another pre-order) because at the time of production, the manga was only halfway finished and the author specifically requested they make up a different ending from what she had planned.
I admit to a certain nostalgia for the original anime ending and follow-up movie, just because I'm a sucker for alternate universe historical crossovers, but it'll be interesting to see how the storyline of the manga actually unfolds (which I expect to find out sooner from watching the second anime than reading, since Kurokawa looks to have been releasing the new omnibuses at 1 every few months at best, though it looks like they're starting to speed up the rate a little).
Kurokawa's editions are pretty nice. They've printed them in the original right-to-left, and have packaged tomes 1-3 in the first omnibus at the same cost as the succeeding 2-tomes-per-omnibus volumes, which is a nice introductory price, and include all the bonus stories and materials and even translate the author's brief introductory remarks for each tome on the front flap as well.
* I actually wish I'd bought more before they collapsed, especially from the sf/f & mystery backlist imprints. Oh B&N, why couldn't you have had one last mega-sale before killing the remains of the once-fatted cow? I would have bought out almost my entire wishlist and you'd have a few more hundred dollars to keep you afloat while your corporate owners squabbled over how best to divvy up the spoils.