just received: Revis, Across the Universe; Mihara, The Embalmer vol. 2

Mail-order book addict confession: I like bookstores. I never have the time to go to them, or almost never. I also like reading. A lot. So I order online. Probably too often.

I was happy this morning to collect my new books from the shipping dept. at work. I read the first chapter of Beth Revis' Across the Universe (sci-fi, romance, suspense, who knows what else?) last fall on a promo site, and felt the same electric tension (with more wrenching of viscera) as in Collins' Hunger Games novels. That is to say, a heckuva lot. It will be a struggle to put off reading this till I've whittled down the rest of my reading list.

Also in this shipment, a book I've already read, but for free, illicitly, online. I decided I wanted to own The Embalmer, which Tokyopop publishes in the US, and was having trouble getting vol. 2 from the publisher, so I ordered a used copy. There's a small dent in the cover, but it's otherwise fine. Mihara tells a somewhat unusual story about a pretty darned unusual character, since most Japanese are cremated instead of being buried in caskets. The art and some tropes are typical of seinen manga - the market segment of men over 20 or so. What I read before made me feel like committing to this series. Good thing most seinen manga have short runs. (The top selling shounen (boys') manga, like One Piece and Naruto, run above 200 chapters, that's dozens of $10+ volumes.)