Ex Libris Bitsy

I am very excited about the upcoming read-a-thon. I participated unofficially in the one last October and used it as a chance to get all caught up on my back-log of reviews (somewhere in the double digits). I then went on to participate in a different one in December. It was loads of fun and I can’t wait to participate in this one!

Like last time I really want to try and stay up the whole 24 hours. I have no idea if this will work or not, but it sounds like a lot of fun and I want to go for it again! As far as the books I have chosen, whew, I went crazy and chose a lot!

From the start I was always planning on having this be my opportunity to get caught up with the mangas I have going, but because I moved to a small town I ended up being able to only get caught up with one of them because the system doesn’t carry any others. That one will probably be enough to keep my going the whole 24 hours though, so I shouldn’t complain!

The manga is Fullmetal Alchemist. Some of you might be familiar with the TV show and subsequent movie or with the video game franchise. The TV show (at least the original, not the new Brotherhood one) only followed the manga for a very short time before splitting off and doing its own thing (and it’s own very frustrating ending, gah!). The new Brotherhood one is sticking much more closely to the manga, and I’m hoping that means this manga is winding to a close. I really want to read about what the original creator wanted to do with these characters and how she wanted to end it. There are 22 books out in English right now and 24 out in all, so I certainly hope that means she’s ending it soon!

Erm, for those not familiar with the series, it’s kind of like steampunk era meets paranormal magical alchemy world meets dystopian society. In between there are lots of lessons about life, love, brotherhood, truth and consequences. It’s about the price of a human soul, what it means to pay for your past sins, and how you work through them towards a better future anyway.

I’ve only read up to book 15, so I’m planning on re-reading the first 15 and then reading all the new ones up to 22, or at least as many as I can stand before I get sick of the series! I pretty much have to re-read because I watched the shows, read the manga, and then watched the shows again so I need to get the plots straight in my head if I expect to make any sense of 16 and on!

Aside from the mangas I also have Dangerous Angels by Francesca Lia Block, an omnibus of her Weetzie Bat series books. I got A Necklace of Kisses for my birthday but haven’t read it yet because I wanted to go back and read the original series first before I read about Weetzie in her older jaded years.

The original series is an awesome story about a girl named Weetzie and the family that she forms around her, by blood, by love, by friendship. It was my first introduction to a GLBT character way back in Junior High and an awesome one at that. The series is a very lyrical, very magical, very Block look at LA and the people that live in it. It’s awesome.

The rest of my reading list is not so distinct. I have a collection of short stories I can read from The Years Best Fantasy and Horror 2008 and I checked out two YA books that have caught my eye: Rampant by Diana Peterfreund and The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams. So I have lots and lots of reading material to choose from!

I’m probably going to be reading all by my lonesome but I hope to tweet a lot of the day and, of course, participate in lots of mini-challenges! I’m really looking forward to it, like I said. I think this is going to be a lot of fun!