75 Book Challenge 2015

In 2008 and 2009 Pope Benedict XVI devoted a series of General Audiences to discussing St. Paul, which have been collected in this book titled, with admirable straightforwardness, Saint Paul. Over the course of twenty chapters he gives an overview of the Apostle’s life and teaching.

Now we move on to an older, shorter work from the mid-1990’s by Yasuhiko Yoshikazu, Joan. It’s a work of historical fiction, about a young woman named Emil who’d been raised as a man near the end of the Hundred Years War, who sees visions of Joan of Arc urging her to follow in her footsteps and serve the French king. I can’t say how historically accurate the work is overall, aside from the fictional Emil, but the last volume includes a short essay by Chojun Otani, a scholar of French literature, who says that Yasuhiko came to him for help in his research, so he’d apparently made at least some effort in keeping the work as accurate as the story allows.

So, I’ve already talked about Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin twice before, so I think I just have a few things to add. The eighth volume does pick up where the fourth left off, having finished Char and Sayla’s backstory. Yasuhiko Yoshikazu’s art is still excellent, and I especially like the colour pages with the watercolours. He also continues to be very good at characterising Gundam’s large cast, even those who are only around for a chapter or two.

I’ve found that a strong majority of books reputed to be classics do indeed live up to their reputation, both in fiction and non-fiction. Once in a while, though, I’ll finish one and think, “That’s it?” Unfortunately, that was my reaction to Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan.

I recently started working out again, so I picked up the recently released e-book Muscle Up!, written by P.D. Mangan, who runs the blog Rogue Health and Fitness. The book primarily covers the benefits of strength training in itself and in comparison to aerobic exercises like running, and includes some tips on how to go about setting up a workout routine and answering some common beginner’s questions.

The Consolation of Philosophy is one of those books that’s difficult to discuss without doing a full analysis, so I’ll be a lot briefer than the book deserves. Boethius covers the problem of evil, the nature of happiness, and a couple related topics, in the form of a dialogue in prison between himself and Lady Philosophy. It does have some more poignancy than most works of philosophy, because Boethius was in fact in prison awaiting trial for an alleged crime of treason, of which he was innocent, while writing the book. Boethius and Lady Philosophy also end or begin each part of the book with poetry, which no other philosopher I’m aware of does and which adds some aesthetic value, though strictly speaking the poetry didn’t seem necessary on my first read-through.

When reviewing Dan Jones’s The Plantagenets, I mentioned that although it’s a good book and well worth reading, Jones did not go into a lot of detail, but focused on the big picture and a handful of people and dramatic events. Those who enjoy getting into the nitty-gritty of archaeology, academic studies, and the like, though, will appreciate this book on medieval history, Emmet Scott’s Mohammed & Charlemagne Revisited.

I was a fan of Kishiro Yukito’s original Battle Angel Alita, which I finished at about the time the omnibus edition of the sequel, Battle Angel Alita: Last Order began, but I fell behind on the Last Order release for a long time. However, I figured there’s no better time to knock out a few graphic novels in a row than when you’re supposed to read seventy-five books in a year and it’s September and you’ve only got forty-three.

Doing some reading and writing on Dante has piqued my interest in Medieval history in general, so while looking for a new e-book I picked up (er, downloaded) Dan Jones’s The Plantagenets, which I remember hearing good things about. Even those who don’t know much about the history of the Middle Ages will recognise many of the kings and queens Jones discusses - Richard the Lionheart, John, Edward Longshanks, and Eleanor of Aquitaine are some of the most famous people in European history.

I wrote about the first two volumes of Zekkyo’s comic adaptation of ToraDora way back in July 2011, and volume three a few months later. Since then, each volume has continued to follow the anime fairly closely (I haven’t read the original novels, so I can’t make a comparison there), and my opinion of it has remained consistent from volume to volume. The character art is good, the jokes generally work, the drama is, perhaps, a bit melodramatic at times, but that’s just part of the style. It does have a high school setting, which I almost always dislike, but I’ll give it a pass since I’ve been following the story for so long.