Each story is loosely connected by a few recurring characters that are new to the series, but as usual CLAMP threw in some familiar faces.  Supporting characters from titles like xxxHolic, Chobits, Suki, Angelic Layer and more all pop up.  I like trying to figure out if I can recognize old characters in a different art style, since the look of CLAMP’s series shift enough to make it tricky.  Yen did a good job of adding notes to the back identifying everyone so I got to see if my guesses were right or not.  The art itself makes quick shifts between pretty, cute and comical and was enough to keep my attention going through the episodic nature of the first volume.

Volume 2 deals more with Kobato trying to figure out how to help people recover from their emotional hurts.  As usual she has no clue as to how to go about it and her missteps are pretty entertaining.  (She also trips a lot, which becomes a running gag.)  She eventually gets a job helping at a local rundown kindergarten where the two new characters from volume 1 work – Sayaka-sensei and Fujimoto (the part timer who seems to have a million different jobs).  You find out why he’s so hardworking in this volume as the story runs through the whole volume, unlike the format of the first. 

Here is a bit from the Spring chapter in volume 1. 

I had to add this last scan because the first two panels are just so damn cute.  (She’s saving a spot, btw, which is very very important!)

I also wanted to talk about this chapter because I got to see the sakura trees here in Toronto this year (the trees were planted in High Park as a gift from Japan) and had meant to post some photos I took a couple of weeks ago.  Sadly we were unable to make a day of it like they do in Japan (because it was f-f-freezing!) though it probably would have been rude to try.  Even in the off time that we went (just before sundown on a Thursday night) there were a bunch of people there taking pictures before the blossoms fell.

I am disappointed to report that once again I did not witness the kind of rain of petals they are always showing in anime and continue to feel deceived.  Next year I’ll go on a windy day and see if that finally works.

Anyway, here are the pictures.  I thought they turned out well considering I took them with my cell phone.  They look just like the ones I took in Kyoto.  (Except without the elderly Japanese gentleman who kept wandering into every shot I wanted to take….)

First, this thing was due yesterday. I’ve had it for three weeks and hadn’t had the urge to read it (it showed up on the new book list and I threw it on hold since it’s not normally the kind of book I’d buy) and now it’s overdue. So I started out feeling like I had an obligation to read it before returning it which isn’t the best way to approach a book. :)

My reading experience went something like this:

Yesterday
-Threw it in a bag to read at lunch since I was supposed to return it to the library on the way home.
-Pulled it out on the ride to work.
-It’s a hardcover, but the only place the title is shown on the book is on the spine. Weird. I ignored the dull grey side with text and flipped to the colourful part of the book and started reading.
-Thought, “Who are these kids on the bikes and how many of them are there?” and “Why does that little girl think there’s a man in the tap?” and “Who the hell is Yuki? Is he the boy or the rabbit? Is he both? I’m so confused right now.” Flipped back towards the front and saw the words “The End” on a page I had missed and wondered if this is going to be one of those weird arty type books that’s going to be all over the place and is going to make me feel guilty for not liking it since it got such good reviews online. (This happens to me all the time.)
-Realized that I was READING THE BOOK FROM THE WRONG END!! Yes, like this was my first manga ever and I had no idea what I was doing. And I only clued in because I finally noticed the page numbers.

In my defense, I had only been awake for about 1/2 an hour at that point and I really did think that the front would be the visually attractive part of the book cover.

So I chucked it back in my bag because I was disgruntled at that point. I also ignored Gogo Monster at lunch in favour of a trip to the comic store to buy some new manga. I decided to keep it an extra day since I still had guilt (enough to ignore a $.30 overdue fine anyway), but wasn’t exactly feeling warm and fuzzy about it at all.

Today
-Pulled it out at lunch to start reading. It looked long, and I was going to take a short lunch so I figured I’d get about half way through and finish on the streetcar ride to the library.
-Started at the right end of the manga this time.
-Read the oddly coloured pages at the front of the book.
-The story seemed really random right away, but still made more sense than starting at the end did.
-That fell apart about 4 pages in. Was feeling confused again.
-Flipped forward to see if these pages were duplicated in the “regular” part of the book, like they do for coloured pages at the beginning of other manga I had read. If so, would they make more sense somehow?
-DAMNIT!!! Looking at the page numbers, I realized I was reading it backwards AGAIN!

Yes! You have to open the cover, flip to the beginning of the odd coloured pages and read left to right. Then you have to turn the pages past where you just started reading, past the title pages and the story finally starts. But since I was wondering why I had just finished page 7 and the next number shown was 9 I turned back again, because at this point I had lost all faith in this freaking volume being logical. See, in my mind logic would have page 8 be the title page for the chapter… but it’s not. Page 8 is actually the front cover of the book. Arg arg.

Basically, the right to left pagination goes like this:
Cover as page 8, then 7-6-5-4-3-2-1, then 2 black pages, the title page, table of contents, another title page, a map spread, chapter title page, then 9-10-11-etc etc etc.

At this point I didn’t even care what the plot was, I was just annoyed that I had to expend that much energy trying to figure out how the book was laid out!

Heh.

So the story itself? I ended up really liking it. It’s one of those tales that leaves you wondering if everything is actually happening as shown or if the main characters are just detached from reality. I did like that the adults let one of the students wear a box over his head at school without giving him much grief about it. :) I ended up taking not only my full hour lunch break so I could keep reading, but also snuck in an extra 10 minutes to finish it off. I could see me buying this sometime, and definitely recommending it to friends who are looking for a manga that’s a little out of the ordinary.

But only with a warning to check page numbers before starting.

UPDATE: Partial mystery solved!  bahamut has pointed out that there is actually a dust jacket for this volume which was removed by the library.  I’m so used to NOT having dust jackets on manga (even DMP stopped them) that I didn’t even consider it.  Must try to be more awake when reading in the future….

I did start watching Criminal Minds in January (watching 4 1/2 seasons eats up some time, I admit), but for the most part I was just rereading books I’d already reread. One sick day was filled with Jennifer Crusie books. I went through my Sharon Shinn novels after reading her new short story collection Quatrain. (Which is very good and I don’t think you need to have read the novels each story is from to appreciate it.) Lois McMaster Bujold got a lot of love during a mini vacation. But no manga, and at one point I even started giving my wall o’ shelves small glares, wondering why I was taking up so much room in my home for the darn things.

So eventually I grabbed my Christmas gift certificates for the bookstore and slunk over after I was done work at the library for some inspiration. I was going to get a couple of new volumes – just a couple – to get me over my reading block and refuel my manga love. I picked up High School Debut 13 (since it was the last volume), Kimi Ni Todoke 3 (because it is awesome) Zombie Loan 5 and 07-Ghost 2 (these two almost didn’t count because they were continuing the resolution manga I did manage to get through).

“But wait!” I thought. “There’s a new Baby and Me out. I can’t not get Baby and Me!” So I did some more semi-guilty slinking (with a side of glee because now I had new things to read) over to the Hairy T to pick it up. And what did I see when I got there? A new Venus in Love! I love that series and I thought the next volume wasn’t coming out until the summer! And a new book by Taisho Zaou? She’s on my “always read list!” The staff person working made a hard sell by mentioning that 07-Ghost #3 was there (we were talking about the lack of new Go Comi volumes). I think I ended up lugging home a dozen new volumes of manga that day.

I was honest with my friends about breaking my resolution and have gotten some “you failed!” raised eyebrows for it. I have, however, come to the realization that I managed to keep the spirit of my resolution even if I flunked the specifics. Here is the new tally:

January 1 – February 19 – 12 1/2 manga read
February 20 – February 24 – 5 graphic novels, 25 manga read (mostly from my backlog)

Considering that what I have left to read is batches of volumes from Tower of the Future, Nana, Tsubasa, Eyeshield 21 and Fullmetal Alchemist I’m not really worried about stopping my reading spree (though I seem to have been concentrating on manga from the library lately). I *have* lost track of how much I’ve read since then, and thankfully my love of manga has been renewed.

Next year I’m going back to my resolution to not make resolutions.

The focus of my reading block was falling on the shoulders of one title in particular.  After going through 8 or 9 of my single volumes hanging about I thought I should start on Firefighter! Daigo of Fire Company M next.  Purchased on a whim over a year ago at a convention because someone I kind of know liked it and it was also ridiculously cheap.  It seemed like a safe bet.

But! I stalled on volume 1.  I got the basics – 18 year old Daigo is the newest rookie at M Station.  He was rescued from a fire as a boy and the heroic firefighter made enough of an impression on him that he decided he wanted to be one too.  So fresh from the academy he shows up at M Station only to find that it’s a relatively quiet post.  The other firefighters seem to spend a lot of time relaxing and playing games, and the captain is a pretty laid back kind of guy.  Daigo is one of those overly enthusiastic types who likes to shout a lot, jump into situations without thinking things through and says ”grr!”  I kind of cringed through his outbursts and his incredibly low opinions of his seniors (ie the lack of fires had turned them all into cowards.)

You can see where this is going, right?  It’s a common setup in manga.  Daigo was setting himself up for a huge Lesson to be Learned and it came in the form of his first call to a fire.  He started getting scared in the truck, then angry at the others because they’d infected him with their cowardice.  That’s where I stopped reading.  I figured he’d freeze in the fire or do something equally stupid and have to be rescued.  Or he’d end up humiliating himself in some other way that I really didn’t want to suffer through.  (I have a low tolerance for humiliation which doesn’t help.)  I’ve picked this damn book up three different times recently and I wasn’t able to push myself past that point.

Today I woke up, bleary and disgruntled from the aftermath of my idiotic neighbour’s decision to have a party in a building with little or no soundproofing, with the full knowledge that his downstairs neighbour (that would be me) has very low ceilings.  I figured that since I was in a bad mood from lack of sleep and feeling guilty from breaking my resolution I should just hold my nose and get through the rest of volume 1.  Which I did, but only by cheating.  I skipped the big fire scene.

I have no idea what happened, really, but it looks like he rescued someone in the fire.  Good for him.  Daigo goes on to learn that the other guys have time to play because they’re so good at their jobs and he finally starts settling in.  The last part of the volume introduces his rival from the academy and there is some tension as there’s an arsonist in the neighbourhood who is keeping the local firefighting stations hopping.  Daigo’s rival works at a nearby station and they occasionally get called out to the same fires.  Since they’re rivals, this turns into a competition to see who can snag the best water sources for the hoses.  Daigo ends up learning another valuable lesson.  (He’s still very shouty, though.)

The last part of volume 1 ended up on a cliffhanger (Oh no! Recent construction has moved some of the hydrants around and they can’t find a way to fight the fire!) so of course I reached for the second right away.  Volume 2 also had a pretty gripping story of Daigo coming across a car accident on his day off and he tries to help a family trapped in a car that is balanced on the edge of an overpass, a call to a fire at an abandoned building that Daigo runs into because he feels like something is off, and it ends on another cliffhanger!  A diverted river is overflowing, a nearby bridge that is under construction has partly collapsed into the water and the firefighters have just learned that a kid and his would be rescuer were swept away by the current and are heading their way!

The cliffhanger endings are deadly.  You just HAVE to find out what’s going to happen next.

Daigo turned out to be more interesting than I originally thought.  He’s shouty, lazy and doesn’t seem to be very bright, but when he’s in a fire or other perilous situation he turns into this focused guy who takes really stupid chances based on impulse and intuition.  The reactions of the characters around him help to make him more interesting because most of them seem conflicted about Daigo.  He takes these stupid, crazy chances.  He saves lives and gets results.  But he does it by breaking all the rules, generally abandons his team while he goes off on wild tears (which is a pretty stupid thing to do in a fire) and ends up in the hospital with alarming frequency. People seem to regard him with a mixture of horror and awe.

I started reading at 11:00 in the morning and was done all 9 volumes by 3:00.  It turned out to be pretty entertaining after all!  So in these 9 books, Daigo:

-meets a new member of the company who seems obsessed with fire.  Creepy or just really good at his job?  Daigo finds out!

Volume 9 ends with Daigo in the interview stage of the Rescue Unit test and he may have just given the worst possible answer to a question!  Cliffhanger!

See?  Deadly.  I really want to read volume 10 now.

Verdict: Firefighter! Daigo of Fire Company M ended up being a very delightful surprise.  It’s just as interesting to watch the supporting characters get pulled along in Daigo’s wake, inspired and horrified at the same time as it is to follow Daigo himself.   I kind of felt the same way myself.

Over the past year and a half I have accumulated a slowly growing stack of unread manga.  Some of it I bought as part of bulk sales at conventions, some I was saving to read in a batch and others have just slipped through the cracks.  So the resolution?  I can’t buy any more manga or graphic novels until I read the backlog.  I’ve tried this before with little success, but this is not only a resolution, but I’ve told enough of my friends that I’ll feel incredibly lame if I don’t follow through.

I'm thinking the top shelf is going to be the reward for reading the bottom one.

It shouldn’t have been a problem.  There aren’t that many, really, and if I read one a day I should have been done in no time!  Unless (of course) I shift into novel mode and stop reading manga all together.  I’m not even reading *new* books.  I’ve been rereading things.  Sigh.

Up until a week and a half ago I managed to read:

-the last 2/3rds of the first One Piece omnibus.  I really like One Piece, but wasn’t buying it for some reason.  I figured with the 3-in-1 books coming out it would be a great place to start collecting.  I still enjoyed reading them, but man, those collections take forever to get through!  I started it while on vacation at Christmas (which included many failed atte

-Happy Cafe 1 during my lunch at the bookstore.  I had a lot of fun reading this one, but sadly it is published by Tokyopop.  I’ll probably buy it once all the volumes are out if I like the rest of the series as much.

-half of All My Darling Daughters.  I figured if anything was going to get me through my manga stack it would be the knowledge that this was coming out in mid-January.  Nope.  I read most of it at the bookstore – again, during lunch which isn’t long enough to read a manga like this.  You need time to savour it!  I’ve decided to wait until I can read it properly.

So now it’s February 1st, I’m officially missing another batch of Shojo Beat releases (Baby and Me! Kimi Ni Todoke! Beast Master!) and I’ve only read about 8 volumes.  I’m not even going to mention what I did to myself by maxing out my hold list at the library.  I’ve got some vacation days coming up for which the plan is: no plans!  I think the new plan is to lug some manga to a coffee shop and get reading before I’m whining about not being able to buy March’s new manga!

Mental note: no more New Year’s resolutions!

So here’s what I did in the last two classes.

I finished wrapping each piece in the copper foil and assembled it all in the proper order.

After that I had to tack each piece in place (I forgot to take a picture of that part again!) which turned out to be quite challenging as I didn’t have pins to keep everything from moving around.  I ended up using my fingers instead.

(BTW: NO injuries during the soldering process!  I’m so thankful for that!)

This is the flip side of the panel. You can see some of the solder coming through from the other side.

I just finished filling in the gaps here. I thought it looked pretty good just like this! It was nice to be much better at soldering this time. Apparently practice is important. (Pretty good = the interior edges, NOT the gloopy edges or random solder beads.)

 You might also notice that some of the glass is out of order.  I ended up moving some squares around so that everything would fit together a little better.  I think this is the first time I managed to make something with colours non-symmetrical.  I never would have put those two green swoopy pieces so close together if I had planned it!  This is where I left off last week.  All assembled and most of the bubbling soldering done.  The edges are kind of uneven, but I’m still happy with it!

I'm done!

And yes, I paid for them each separately.   Heh heh heh.

So what did I buy?

Honey and Clover 8
When I first started reading this series, I thought more of the focus was going to be on Hagu.  She was the new arrival and a couple of the guys seemed enamored of her so it seemed like a logical conclusion.  Happily the story so far has been equally fair to each of the characters as they go to and graduate from art school, try to figure out what’s next or make their way into the working world.  Volume 8 really focuses on Yamada working her way through her love for Hayama and Nomiya’s growing feelings for her, we learn more about Hayama and Rika’s relationship and get a glimpse into Rika’s past with her husband.  Honey and Clover isn’t a manga that I seem to really look forward to the way I do other titles, but every time I read it I’m struck by how much I like the story.  I thought I was going to get relationship drama, but ended up with multiple coming of age type stories.  I’m more than happy with that.

Junjo Romantica 11
I’m not sure if I’ve ever written about Junjo Romantica before.  I can believe I haven’t simply because of how much I love this series.  I tend not to write about the stuff I really love because I would get gushy and it would be too long and take too much time to write.  (The Baby and Me post that I occasionally compose in my head has now reached epic status.)  This volume starts out with a combination Valentine’s Day/Usagi’s dad story.  Usagi’s father has been pretty open about how much he disapproves of Misaki as a mate for his son and in this first story that conflict finally gets resolved.  (Not telling you which way, though!) 

Next the story takes a rather odd leap into the future as Misaki is suddenly 21 (from 19) and a senior at university.  I’m assuming they’ve had a lovely and peaceful life together in the meantime.  :)  But as Misaki gets closer to finishing school a new set of problems come up.

Yeah, maybe they should have told Misaki’s brother exactly why they’ve been living together all these years…  You’d think this is a fairly easy fix, but no one ever really communicates very well in this series (in one volume Nowaki moves to America to study which takes Hiro completely by surprise, even though they live together.  Like Nowaki never mentioned it once while he was getting ready to go??  Arg.  And that’s not even unusual in manga!)  After a good dose of angst and yet another Usami cousin showing up to throw another wrench in the works, the volume moves on to a sweet story about young Misaki excited about Christmas and wondering if there’s really a Santa.  If you’re unfamiliar with the backstory, Misaki and Takahiro’s parents died when they were younger.  Takahiro dropped out of university to raise his little brother and the end of each volume usually has a little story about Takahiro bragging to Usagi about something his baby brother did.  This is usually the most we see of Takahiro, so it was really nice to get a glimpse of their past and the caring relationship between the two brothers.

Aw.  This chapter was my favorite.

Butterflies, Flowers 1
Ah… finally.  A new josei title.  Purchasing this one was a no brainer, but thankfully it also turned out to be pretty good.  Choko is a woman from an aristocratic family that lost all of their money and land about 13 years back.  While the family runs a soba shop, Choko opens the volume with an interview at a company.  The interviewer is a jerk who sexually harasses her, but since it’s her only job offer she ends up having to go to work for the company.  She immediately gets pulled out of the regular trainee program to work upstairs with the jerk from the interview who turns out to be the director of the administration department for the company executives.  He decides to train her himself and Choko’s personal hell pretty much begins there.

That’s typical of a day at the office.  However!  It comes out pretty quickly that Domoto is actually a young boy who served her family back when they were wealthy.  So while he’s a sadist at the office, he switches between that and protective servant mode which involves things like playing chauffeur for Milady and running errands for her family.   Choko quickly develops a crush on him despite the mood swings and has to figure out how to get Domoto to see her as a woman instead of his Milady.  She has a few personality quirks of her own though, and can go from the timid, unsure woman she usually is at the office to a take charge leader in times of crisis.  It was nice to see she has a side other than the typical subdued woman in love I was expecting.

I found her younger brother to be the most entertaining character, however.  He hasn’t quite let go of his high class past yet.

Ha.  I like the way Yuki Yoshihara sets up gags.

All in all I was very happy with volume 1 and am looking forward to the next installment (which will be in March 2010.)  I thought there was a good balance between the romantic tension (does Domoto really care for Choko or is his kindness towards her only because of his past as her servant?) and comedy.  It’s also quite nice to get to read a romance manga with adults in it.  (Though I have to say that Choko’s office uniform looks way too similar to a school uniform.  It threw me off a couple of times!)

So not only were all of my new manga cheaper than usual, they were also all really good reads.

I had chosen a pattern for my second project (three flowers with a swoopy background) and picked out some glass I thought would look good together.

Then I stupidly chose to get my flu shot on the day of my class and ended up having to leave early because I got a fever.  First time ever, of course!  I was breaking glass all over the place.  It was pretty pathetic.  Then I caught a cold and had to miss the next class.**  Since the pattern I picked had over 60 pieces I didn’t think I’d have time to do it in the four weeks I had left so I had to find a new one.

I managed to get most of my pieces cut during the next class – also managed three finger slices and two embedded glass chips.  Hence the blood.  Last week I finished the cutting and ground the edges smooth so they wouldn’t be sharp and cut through the foil.  Though some of the flying glass particles got stuck in my arm while I was grinding.  There was more blood.  Sigh.  The equipment in the class isn’t exactly brimming over with safety features.

These are definitely not the colours I would have picked had I known I was doing this one!  I’m usually a little more conservative with my colour choices.  But I didn’t want to waste the glass I bought so I ended up with a flower on a disco dancefloor background. 

This picture ended up with a lot of glare due to my overhead lights and the flash, but I like it because it shows some of the textures in the glass. 

This is half of the pattern wrapped in copper foil.  I picked the black this time, so it should look quite different from my suncatcher.  I’m giving up for the night here, though.  I’ll try to finish the rest tomorrow before my class.  It feels like a waste of time to wrap pieces in foil during class - it’s the only time I have access to any equipment so I try to get as much done there as possible.

I’m feeling better about the way it looks now, however.  The foil seems to be helping.  :)

**I got sick no less than FOUR times this November.  I would feel worse about it, but I don’t actually know anyone who felt great last month.  Even the ones who weren’t actively sick felt off for a while.  Stupid November.

This guy popped up out of nowhere when the zookeeper banged her bucket on the glass.

Elephant! I was actually pretty far away when I took this one.

The lions were quite good at ignoring everyone.

Ah!  You must be thinking.  You had such a wonderful day at the zoo!  Nope.  We got rained out by a massive storm and then came home to find my apartment had been flooded.  Arg.

Now on to the real reason for the post! 

I started my stained glass class a few weeks back and took some pictures of my first work in progress.  I made a suncatcher (we all did) which will be gifted to my mother at Christmas.  And she will like it because she is my mother and it was made by her only daughter.  :)

I forgot to bring my camera to the first two classes (of course), but I got to bring everything home to do some of it there. 

These are all the glass pieces that make up my suncatcher. One of them has copper foil on it.

 It’s really important to have your pieces numbered according to the pattern.  They might all look the same here, but there were enough differences in shape that they wouldn’t have fit together properly if out of the right order.

The outside of the suncatcher!

The whole thing! I didn't really get to choose the colours I wanted, btw. The teacher brought in scrap glass and if you weren't fast you missed the really good colours. I'm not fast, and was too polite to grab all the blue colours, darnit!

 There are gaps between the pieces because the pattern is cut out with special scissors that don’t just cut along a line – a teeny strip of paper is removed along the inside lines.  That way you have room to add the copper foil, yet still have the finished piece end up the same size as the pattern.  My homework was to edge each part in copper foil, which is sticky on one side and can be folded around the edges of the glass.

I finished! Well, mostly. The yellow centerpiece had to be edged as well.

The pieces assembled! You can tell from this picture that I wasn't always the best at following the pattern lines. Some of those gaps are way too big!

The first step in the soldering process is to tack your pieces together. My gaps weren't as bad as I thought they'd be, with the exception of #7. That one is practically floating in space...

You can also see where I dropped bits of solder on the glass.  They came off.  And this picture is blurry.  My camera continues to suck at close ups…

I got pretty caught up in the soldering process and didn’t get a chance to take any more pictures.  The next step was filling in all the holes with solder, which you can see I started around pieces 4, 5, 12 and 13.  It took me a while to do #7.  After that was bubble soldering, which meant running another layer around each glass piece, but trying to make it puffy and nice.  Decorative.  Unfortunately I discovered that I was not a natural at soldering.  It took me ages to do and the teacher had to fix a couple of places.  It didn’t help that I can be really anal about things like that.  Sigh.

I would also like to mention that I did NOT get burned by the soldering iron!  I managed to scratch up my thumb the first night on a glass sample, and got a glass chip embedded in a knuckle during class two so I was understandably concerned.  You have to hold a super hot iron in one hand and feed in the solder cable as it melted with the other.  I did get a headache from the fumes, though.  :)

After that we used a tarnishing solution to turn the solder to a colour that matched whichever foil we used.  I used copper, but was quite jealous of how the black foil suncatchers turned out!  After that there was much washing, and we had to rub wax into it and polish polish polish.

I'm done!

Or maybe not. You can see the wax I missed in this picture. Guess I have more polishing to do!

That’s it!  I’m doing a floral panel for my second project, and have picked out a bunch of different glass colours and patterns.  Tonight I was supposed to start to cut the 63 (!) pieces I need, but I (for the first time in my personal history) got a fever from the flu shot and ruined most of what I cut.  Guess it’s hard to be accurate when your hands are shaking!  I’m hoping it was the fever and not me completely sucking at cutting curved lines, anyway…  I think I’m going to find a geometric pattern as a back up.  :)

My main set of shelves are in my living room - these are generally things I am currently collecting and favorites that have finished. Most shelves have two rows of books, but I've tried to stagger them so things in the back peek out. This also makes it easier to find things!

Before my last move I plastic wrapped about 500 or so volumes to free up much needed shelf space. Those boxes now live in my living room closet along with my 3 last boxes of comics. Some day I will actually label them just in case I ever want to find anything again.

One of my yaoi/shonen-ai shelves. Along with a stack of unsorted manga, that Clover omnibus that I have yet to get around to reading and a Totoro musical figurine I bought in a craft village in Japan. (When the clerk heard I was bringing it back to Canada she said, "Ooooh! Totoro is going very far away!" Then she did the shushing gesture and slipped a free magnet in my bag. I liked that clerk.)

Yaoi shelf #2. Carefully edited out is my collection of Fruits Basket stuffed animals that live on top of the shelf along with Mr. Saotome, P-Chan and a few Chococats. That middle shelf holds books I'm planning on covering someday with a second layer. They aren't things I reread much and so are hideable.

When I first put everything away in the new place I went with themes for each shelf.  #1 was shojo, #2 for shonen, then a weird sort of logic for the other 2.  Sadly, the first consideration for the yaoi books are size.  :)  It makes it easy if you’re browsing for roughly the same kind of manga, but I have literally lost things since then.  If a title is tucked behind the front row I’ve had a really hard time finding it.  I’m thinking of switching to alphabetical order.

I do feel the need to point out that Shojo Beat has THE most boring spines ever.  I’ve stood in front of my shojo shelf and tried to find titles that have blended in with the other red, basic print spines.  I make an effort to alternate the occasional CMX or Del Rey series just to break the monotony!  If you look at the top picture, the first shelf on the left is the most boring visually.  It’s mostly Shojo Beat books.  I can identify virtually everything on my shelves from that picture based on the spines *except* that one.  I think Viz is trying to be less yawn-inducing (based on Magic Touch and Otomen, anyway) but it’s already too late for my shelves….

I’m also going to say that while I felt pretty geeky taking pictures of my shelves, when I was looking at the top one and wondering if I should crop the sides I found a graphic novel that had gone missing.  I’ve been trying to lend the first Mouse Guard book to a friend and couldn’t find it anywhere.  I finally decided that I must have lent it to someone and forgotten about it (which happens, and then you can only hope the person who has it brings it back!) and gave up looking.  Nope!  For some reason I stuck it on the shelf next to my Kelley Armstrong books instead of where I normally keep it.  Sigh.