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I am following along with this every day before I start a writing session. I'm only on day 6 but sometimes I feel so validated, other days, I feel rightly called out. I hope I can keep this up for the rest of the year.

Twenty pages in. du Maurier is quite heavy on the prose. She really likes to set the scene. Things started to pick up for me once characters were finally introduced.

I didn't realize this was the end of the series. It certainly didn't feel like the end. It just felt like the beginning. The series did prompt me to look up Aki Nikaido (she has a YouTube channel!) but I was surprised how she is not quite relevant as the series alludes to her being (or maybe there just aren't as many articles about her in English).

I don't know anything about mahjong, but I still ended up reading this "sports" manga. This manga is based on mahjong master, Aki Nikaido's life. I wonder just how much of it is exaggerated, but it's definitely an interesting story, if true. The art is a little dated but quite cute (although too sexualized at points in my opinion). A turn your brain off kind of series.

Note, I know next to nothing about philosophy, so I am quite literally going into this blind. In this little book, Craig goes through a few philosophers. To name most of them: mainly Plato, Descartes, Hobbes, Marx, Darwin, Mill, and Epicurus. He also goes through some concepts, such as the big "isms" (like consequentialism, dualism, materialism, idealism), free will, the importance of philosophy, and epistemology. It's a nice (opinionated) introduction, but it really makes you realize just how philosophy is out there. There's a lot to think about.

I've seen this cliche before: MC meeting their celebrity crush who they revere to an unhealthy degree but realize they are not at all what they expected them to be. Obviously, she'll eventually fall in love with the "real" Sumika but I am curious to see how. The cute art is enough for me to keep reading.

I've always wanted to read this series. I tried once, years ago, but I found it to be quite vapid. I still think it's pretty vapid, but I can take it this time around. It's rather silly, very happy-go-lucky, and so far, lacking any ounce of seriousness. But it's a fun read, if you want to turn off your brain for a bit.

Compared to their previous works, the author's art really upgraded in this volume. I can sense their is a consistent theme that they like to explore and that's the sense of a "fated" partner. Unfortunately, their concepts are often a little ambiguous and I wish more things were revealed and revealed more clearly.

I took out this book from my library on a whim. The cover art was quite interesting, and, despite not really liking science-fiction, my curiousity was piqued. I was relieved that the graphic novel wasn't entirely rooted in sci-fi.

The mechanism that the book hinges on is really unique. As things progressed, I got a bit a concerned for the protagonist. Things would start to improve but then suddenly go a different way entirely. This happened a few times. A lot of these detours were purely due to the protagonist's actions. The protagonist is one that I could see being controversial, but I saw a lot of myself in her, so I let it slide. By the end, I wasn't fully convinced of her growth arc, but it was better than nothing.

I will say, a lot of what kept me reading was the art. The art is extremely beautiful. The artist does not shy away from the naked body, so take caution when reading this in the presence of others. Throughout the entire thing, I got Evangelion vibes, and, in the author notes, the writer talked in depth of just how Evangelion inspired this story was. It was cool to read someone to nerd out about it and then make their own art out of it, too.

All in all, a great journey. I gotta buy myself a copy, it's that good.