I loved the message in Embrace Your Size: My Own Body Positivity, but I wished it had gone further. Perhaps this is a difference between American and Japanese attitudes. Or perhaps I was just hoping for a different book than this was intended to be. Embrace Your Size is hara’s story of how she came to realize that she could still be interested in fashion and wear cute clothes while being larger-sized (which in Japan is a size bigger than […]

The mystery concludes in Shima Shinya’s Lost Lad London volume 3. (I previously wrote about the first book and the second one.) This final volume begins with a fascinating chapter. Instead of showing the suspect Al and detective Ellis working on the case, we check in on the perspective of several supporting characters: Rosie, a female police officer; Safa, her co-worker, a woman of color who wears a headscarf; and the Asian couple who runs the Chinese restaurant where Al […]

There’s not much progression in the solution of the mystery in this second volume of the series, but Lost Lad London volume 2 sets up more threats against Al as we learn more about the forces arrayed against him. Al ponders the depth of the situation he’s in — framed for murder, and living in the detective’s messy house. He’s in danger, and that makes him wonder about the choices he’s made in his life. Meanwhile, Inspector Ellis, the detective, […]

Lost Lad London by Shima Shinya sets up an intriguing mystery premise. The mayor of London is found dead, stabbed, on an Underground train. Our protagonist is Al, a University student and loner. He’s making his own way by writing papers for other students. A beaten-down detective with a variety of injuries has a history of guilt from when a wrongly charged suspect killed themselves; that case was never solved. He comes to Al’s flat while interviewing witnesses, but Al […]

I Want to Be a Wall by Honami Shirono is the story of an arranged marriage between two people who settle for each other. Yuriko is a BL fangirl who is supposed to have given up her manga fandom by now and also happens to be asexual. Her husband, Gakurouta, is a closeted gay man in love with his straight best friend. They make a supportive pair of friends (even if Yuriko shipping Gakurouta and his friend gets a little […]

I was really enjoying Silver Spoon, the series about a city boy who goes to an agricultural school and learns about himself through hard work and caring for animals. Then I forgot about it, for some reason, which has the beneficial side effect of giving me a complete series (15 books) to come back to. Where I left off, with volume 4, the “Tale of Autumn” storyline had begun. It finally finishes with two chapters in volume 8, but this, […]

With a new installment due out next month, it seemed an excellent time to catch up on the volumes out since I last talked about how much I like this series. (The last book I covered was volume 9 in 2018.) This most recent is A Bride’s Story volume 12, which came out in September 2020. As anthropologist Mr. Smith retraces his tracks before contemplating returning home, that’s an excuse for author Kaoru Mori to check in with the variety […]

It’s been three years since the previous volume, but one of the many charms of Yotsuba&! volume 15 is that it feels timeless. Yotsuba’s wonder at the world, her interest in creating and exploring and learning new things, is soul-restoring. I want to feel like that, and for the amount of time I’m reading this, I do. There’s one chapter where she and friends take a trip to the shore to collect rocks, and it’s all about riding in the […]