KhepiAri

Webcomic Review: One Day by Pan (link at bottom) Quote: You love the book The Dreamcatcher, right? Hum...right. That novel is really awesome! I've come to your store for three days. Finally, I finished it. What? You finished all of it? One Day is a short webcomic that's sweet, fluffy and warm like pancakes which leave you happy after you devour it. In a rainy city, Bella a bookworm college student meets a backpacker in the bookshop she works at. They bond over an out of print book that Bella hides behind shelves so that she can finish it before someone buys it. They walk around the city, have coffee in Bella's favourite café and talk about their looming future as working adult. Bella doesn't want to work in a corporate job but her family is strict, and her new friend has a little secret of his own. There are two side stories, of a tomboy teen named Luciana who has a crush on her basketball teammate, and how her friends try to d...

Book Review: The Adivasi Will Not Dance by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar Quote: A stork-chick fell on to the centered part of our backyard, writhed and wriggled in agony for few seconds, and died.  Jhi hollered in anger, 'Baahu! Where are you? See, your favourite mango tree had taken another life. It needs a sacrifice every day!' Short stories, my favourite genre of fiction, The Adivasi Will Not Dance has been on my reading list for two-years. The anthology did not disappoint at all. I have a hard time with Indian writers of short stories because of their grand attempts at open endings, a terrible mistake. Each ending here was interesting and didn't leave me irritated. Stories in the book are both known and unknown, we know of the lovers like Gita and Dillip, bickering maa and pishi in the house or the rich spoiled kid and his good-cousin of humble parents. Something sticks out for good in these stories: the politics of environmental-identity is subtle but stings. I enj...

Light Novel Review: Your Name by Makoto Shinkai Quote: ' My name is Mitshua!' The girl shouts, undoing the cord she'd used to tie back her hair and holding it out to me. Without thinking, I reach for it. It's a vivid orange, like a thin ray of evening sun in the dim train. I shove my way into the crowd and grab that colour tight. My third birthday gift was the second read yesterday. Came as a huge surprise and I was 100 pages done by end of lunch break! Rest of the evening I had to take it slow, I savoured the last 75 pages like lemons. Your Name, a story by one of my favourite Japanese animator and storyteller Makoto Shinkai. I was surprised twice yesterday to find that he had written the book and made the cinema simultaneously! There was a light novella instead of manga inside this lovely hardback. Shinkai, to be honest, is obsessed with loneliness and with adolescent love. Taki and Mitshua are geographically miles apart and equally lonely, surviving the bu...

Manga Review: Gintama by Hideaki Sorachi Quote: “If you’ve got time to fantasize about a beautiful ending, why not live beautifully until the end?”- Sakata Gintoki. I am a picky reader of super popular manga(s). But Gintama was my rebound manga, after disastrous ending of Bleach. I needed something funny. And girl did I have fun? After One Piece, it's Gintama that has made me laugh so much that I got a tummy ache and made me weep because of sad moments. The story is set in Edo invaded by Aliens, about a dead-fish-eye samurai, Sakata Gintoki, a protagonist who is not a teen but an aimless pachinko addict twenty-something man, running an odd jobs business with his two apprentices Shinpachi and Kagura, is one of the greatest manga ever created. Initially when I began reading,the one-shot narrative style kept me invested, but I never realised when Baka Sorachi shifted to short arcs to full-blown major action arcs that kept me awake for months! It has everything; hi...

Book Review: Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan Quote: He leans in and kisses. He says he's missed me too. I know this is right. I know he's not going to be amazing all the time, but there's more amazingness in him than in anyone else I've known. He makes me want to be amazing too. June was an interesting month, I read up various kinds of books from non-fiction to rom-com to writing for children despite my lack of reviews here. I wanted to do a pride month reading list, but I got occupied. So I want to end the month with an LGBTQIA book. Paul grew up gay in a town that's accepting, where the gender boundaries have blurred. The homecoming queen is star Quarterback and a drag-queen by day. Paul is popular, loved and has two best friends Joni the quintessential girl best friend prone to fall for red-flag boys, and Tony a gay boy living with his conservative family. And there is Kyle Paul's ex-boyfriend Paul meets Noah in a bookstore, a newbie sophom...

Webcomic Review: Your Letter by Hyeon A Cho Quote: The letter contained the key to the rabbit hutch along with a note asking me to visit early in the morning. Sori-Lee a brave and kind middle-schooler moves to a new school in her old city from her grandmother's, after she stood up to bullies for someone, and facing bullying herself. In her new school, assigned to an unoccupied desk, soon she finds a letter addressed to her; containing names of her new classmates, school map and a clue for the next letter. From one letter to another Sori moves into a world that she can't explain. There is a witch gardener in school who offers her tea. She walks seven and a half steps with closed eyes and ends up finding a magical hideout. From ordering delicious food to school to jumping into the pond to retrieve the letter she and befriends Eugene Park. Eugene an archer is having a hard time concentrating on his sport. So they become partners to un...

Book Review: Rashomon and Other Stories by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke and translated by Takashi Kojima Quote: Flocks of crows flew in from somewhere. During the daytime, these cawing birds circled round the ridgepole of the gate. When the sky overhead turned red in the afterlight of the departed sun, they looked like so many grains of sesame flung across the gate. Ryūnosuke Akutagawa the father of Japanese short stories, has been on my to-be-read-list for years. This is an old translation, which has distilled down the stories to their literal translation instead of the 'transliteration' that present-day readers look for. How to make murder mystery frustratingly interesting? Throw in unreliable narrators and witnesses and watch it unfold, is how I found In a Grove. Though day by day I am getting critical about the use of rape in the story as a plot device, I am glad the author didn't use rapist-robber's confession to describe his heinous crime. The famous Rashomo...