Pattern Recognition
Feb. 17th, 2003 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petronia#1: the new William Gibson novel. Saw it in the McGill bookstore this morning, and read the first page while queuing up to buy a phone line splitter. It's... William Gibson doing William Gibson-ishly, I reckon. XD I read a review the other day that said Gibson was a better short story writer than he was a novelist; I've enjoyed all his novels but the judgment is probably true. Gibson can be positively baroque in a very few words - a new refrigerator, he writes, smells of "cold and long-chain polymers".
(Well, something like that. I've just realised I don't remember the quote exactly, ai yai yai.)
#2: Hikaru no Go, up to the end of tankoubon 11. Aaaahhhh~~ thank goodness I took six volumes instead of five, I'd be forced to choose between online spoilers and a week's worth of un-productivity otherwise. XD XD I was on tenterhooks that they were going to end the book on a cliff-hanger.
It's interesting, isn't it, most shounen manga don't happen in real time, the match-ups take too long. HikaGo is unusual that way. Each game takes a very few pages, even the important ones. (Though I suppose a decent player would be able to get the gist of the thing just by looking at the final disposition... ^^;) Mind you I wouldn't have thought anything of it, if it didn't seem to me that Akira's grown a little taller in the last couple of volumes. ^^;; I wasted a few minutes squinting at him, because shounen manga characters never actually get taller, even if they're in high school and should rightly be shooting up like bamboo - well, Sakuragi did by like a centimetre, but you can't really tell, and anyhow the series do tend to take place over a short timespan. ...Hikaru, for instance, obviously hasn't grown a bit. ^^;;; Unnh.. I think the boy's got a long way to go.
(Well, something like that. I've just realised I don't remember the quote exactly, ai yai yai.)
#2: Hikaru no Go, up to the end of tankoubon 11. Aaaahhhh~~ thank goodness I took six volumes instead of five, I'd be forced to choose between online spoilers and a week's worth of un-productivity otherwise. XD XD I was on tenterhooks that they were going to end the book on a cliff-hanger.
It's interesting, isn't it, most shounen manga don't happen in real time, the match-ups take too long. HikaGo is unusual that way. Each game takes a very few pages, even the important ones. (Though I suppose a decent player would be able to get the gist of the thing just by looking at the final disposition... ^^;) Mind you I wouldn't have thought anything of it, if it didn't seem to me that Akira's grown a little taller in the last couple of volumes. ^^;; I wasted a few minutes squinting at him, because shounen manga characters never actually get taller, even if they're in high school and should rightly be shooting up like bamboo - well, Sakuragi did by like a centimetre, but you can't really tell, and anyhow the series do tend to take place over a short timespan. ...Hikaru, for instance, obviously hasn't grown a bit. ^^;;; Unnh.. I think the boy's got a long way to go.
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Date: 2003-02-18 05:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-02-18 09:42 am (UTC)In popular opinion, yes. I'd read the two other books set in the Neuromancer universe first, and then Virtual Light, which is the first book set in the Idoru universe. I'm fairly fond of that one. There's also The Difference Engine, which is with Bruce Sterling and a whole 'nother barrel of oats.
Oh, but they grow up. Do they ever.
Oh, good. Glad I'm not imagining things. XD (Puzzled puzzled - "Didn't Akira and Hikaru start off the same height?" - but it's hard to judge when Akira never hangs around any of the other kids. Except Ochi, who's a worse measuring stick for height than he is for go. >_>)
Thanks mightily for the links!
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Date: 2003-02-18 07:38 pm (UTC)