Reading (in between crushing piles of work)

E.W. Hornung's Raffles stories: there is nothing I can do to keep my brain from showing these to me in shoujo manga format. Every single other story involving a gentleman thief I have ever read in my entire life has been in shoujo manga format (if not BL altogether). And the POV character is called Bunny, so half the time I suddenly come to and realize that I have been picturing him in tare-chibi form with bunny ears. Stop it, brain! But the part of it that does the movies has never been fully under my conscious control.

These are really well written! Studies in pacing and economy. They make me a little sad and unnerved, though, because they're stories about trying to finance untenable lifestyles - like post-crisis investment bankers or something.

Bleach vol.36-37: only 1.5-2 years late, bawling. There are more tankoubon out in French, even, I just bought these since they contained wee bishounen Byakuya and Gin meaty backstory. All is explained... okay, no, but some is explained. They also served to resurrect my burning love for Yumichika and the giant misguided internalized Don't Ask Don't Tell metaphor that's his relationship with his zanpakutou ;lkjwesdfkl screaming whenever this comes up in the storyline I just want to give him a hug, not to mention hate Kubo Tite for a while because it also invariably comes with a side order of fourth-grader transphobic jokes. The tragic clusterfuckery of it is that he worries about Kenpachi and Ikkaku finding out, because can you imagine either of those dudes seriously caring? For more than five seconds?

At least, in the flashback, you get a giant Guantanamo metaphor to go along with! Oh, Urahara, so very morally relativistic.