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I haven't read very many comics, but I've been reading The Punisher: War Zone. I'm really digging it so far. Any Punisher comic fans here?

Memory and the Mediterranean by Fernand Braudel

In fact Anaximander had a geometric image of the universe. The elements, however they struggled and whatever forms they assumed, had to be in some kind of equilibrium, an "equality of power." All of them derived ultimately from the infinite indeterminate substance which he called apeiron, a neutral material from which binary oppositions emerged: dark and light, hot and cold, dry and wet, thick and thin, as well as Water, Vapour and Fire. These elements in turn combined to give rise to living creatures, plants, animals, humans, according to a natural order whereby no one element dominated the others in any form of dunasteia or monarchia. A doctor and Pythagorean philosopher, Alcmeon, repeated in the early fifth century the image which by then had become commonplace that "health was a balance of powers, isonomia ton dunameon, while sickness resulted on the contrary from the domination of one element over the others: (J.-P. Vernant).

In short, this was a view of a cosmos without a hierarchy, where no one element fully obeyed another, a world in which conflicts balanced out, reminding us irresistibly of the social and political structure of the polis. Government was no longer in the hands of gods or kings but in the hands of men who had equal rights. Anaximander's universe reflected the idealized equilibrium of the city-state. The world view changed because the world had changed and it became possible to project the everyday world on to the cosmos.

Pilgermann by Russell Hoban

'Yes,' says Bruder Pförtner, 'I do understand, you've no idea how often I hear this sort of thing. So many people are urgently needed elsewhere when the time comes. And what about me, eh? Have you perhaps a little thought for me? I am like a diligent housewife who cleans the house and cooks the meal and lays the table, all is in readiness but the expected guest suddenly can't be bothered to come. Only in this case I've cleaned the house and cooked the meal and laid the table of history, and one can't take liberties with history; it isn't possible, the complexity of the energy exchanges is absolutely staggering.'
'History!' I say, 'I'm talking about human lives!'
'And I'm talking about human deaths,' says Bruder Pförtner. 'Tonight is the fall of Antioch and I need all the Jews and Muslims I can lay my hands on. You have no more time for rushing about, this must be the whole world for you in the time you have left.' With that he disappears. When I turn back to my young death he also is gone.

Bunny Drop

best manga I read recently. "The plot follows thirty-year old Daikichi as he becomes the guardian of Rin, the illegitimate six-year old daughter of his grandfather."

Gone Girl.

The Whisperer in Darkness by H.P. Lovecraft

"But remember - that dark world of fungoid gardens and windowless cities isn’t really terrible. It is only to us that it would seem so. Probably this world seemed just as terrible to the beings when they first explored it in the primal age. You know they were here long before the fabulous epoch of Cthulhu was over, and remember all about sunken R’lyeh when it was above the waters. They’ve been inside the earth, too - there are openings which human beings know nothing of - some of them in these very Vermont hills - and great worlds of unknown life down there; blue-litten K’n-yan, red-litten Yoth, and black, lightless N’kai. It’s from N’kai that frightful Tsathoggua came - you know, the amorphous, toad-like god-creature mentioned in the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon and the Commoriom myth-cycle preserved by the Atlantean high-priest Klarkash-Ton.

"But we will talk of all this later on. It must be four or five o’clock by this time. Better bring the stuff from your bag, take a bite, and then come back for a comfortable chat."

A fun mix of hard sci-fi and Pratchett's weird fanstasy style. I'm reading The Long War at the moment - the second book in the trilogy.

Dubliners by James Joyce

The two men went along some tortuous passages and up a dark staircase and came to a secluded room where one of the stewards was uncorking bottles for a few gentlemen. One of these gentlemen was Mr. O'Madden Burke, who had found out the room by instinct. He was a suave, elderly man who balanced his imposing body, when at rest, upon a large silk umbrella. His magniloquent western name was the moral umbrella upon which he balanced the fine problem of his finances. He was widely respected.

I love Terry Pratchett, might have to give the trilogy a look.

Djinn, by Alain Robbe-Grillet

"I can lie very well, even when it's pointless. When one lies out of necessity, it has less value, obviously. I can go a whole day without saying a single true thing. I even won a lying award, at school, last year."
"You're lying," I say. But my reply doesn't bother her for a second.

That's a cracker Lines

Currently reading Fight Club. Book is also great.

And I must say, Fincher did a great job adapting the book onto a movie screen, seamlessly.

Jo's Boys, and How They Turned Out by Louisa May Alcott

'You needn't say yes, if I guess right and you are under oath to keep silent. I shall know by your face, and never tell. Now see if I'm not right. Out there they have wild doings, and it's my belief you were in some of 'em. I don't mean robbing mails, and KluKluxing, and that sort of thing; but defending the settlers, or hanging some scamp, or even shooting a few, as a fellow must sometimes, in self-defence. Ah, ha! I've hit it, I see. Needn't speak; I know the flash of your old eye, and the clench of your big fist.' And Ted pranced with satisfaction.
'Drive on, smart boy, and don't lose the trail,' said Dan, finding a curious sense of comfort in some of these random words, and longing, but not daring, to confirm the true ones. He might have confessed the crime, but not the punishment that followed, the sense of its disgrace was still so strong upon him.
'I knew I should get it; can't deceive me long,' began Ted, with such an air of pride Dan could not help a short laugh.
'It's a relief, isn't it, to have it off your mind? Now, just confide in me and it's all safe, unless you've sworn not to tell.'
'I have.'
'Oh, well, then don't'; and Ted's face fell, but he was himself again in a moment and said, with the air of a man of the world: 'It's all right--I understand--honour binds--silence to death, etc. Glad you stood by your mate in the hospital. How many did you kill?'
'Only one.'
'Bad lot, of course?'
'A damned rascal.'
'Well, don't look so fierce; I've no objection. Wouldn't mind popping at some of those bloodthirsty blackguards myself. Had to dodge and keep quiet after it, I suppose.'
'Pretty quiet for a long spell.'
'Got off all right in the end, and headed for your mines and did that jolly brave thing. Now, I call that decidedly interesting and capital. I'm glad to know it; but I won't blab.'
'Mind you don't. Look here. Ted, if you'd killed a man, would it trouble you--a bad one, I mean?'
The lad opened his mouth to say, 'Not a bit,' but checked that answer as if something in Dan's face made him change his mind. 'Well, if it was my duty in war or self-defence, I suppose I shouldn't; but if I'd pitched into him in a rage, I guess I should be very sorry. Shouldn't wonder if he sort of haunted me, and remorse gnawed me as it did Aram and those fellows. You don't mind, do you? It was a fair fight, wasn't it?'

Highest form of literature, moe manga:

K-On!
By Kakifly (I believe to the be author's pen name)

Animation and film have now became boring to me: I find myself losing interested even when watching even my guiltiest pleasure anime series. Now what I am finding interesting are graphic novels! Manga also have greater artistic consistency and integrity than movies and series because they are the work of a single or a pair of persons so it's much more personal and gives the creator full artistic control like in novels.

Knights of Sidonia - vols. 9-12

Fastest page turner I ever read at around 4-5 pages a minute. I am usually slow in reading comics, Nausicaa took me 40 hours to read through 1,100 pages. Though Nausicaa is a very special manga with several times more text per page than the average manga.

Haganai first 6 volumes -

Those teenager scapist stuff but in this case it's really well made. Really exceptional.

Law Legislation and Liberty - not "rateable"

A work of political philosophy and legal theory is not exactly a work of literature but Hayek's prose is so awe inspiring bad: worse than mine even! Well, he never was a native speaker, but it's really incredible how long his sentences get:

Wikipedia's description: "Law, Legislation and Liberty is the 1973 magnum opus in three volumes by Nobel laureate economist and political philosopher Friedrich Hayek. In it, Hayek further develops the philosophical principles he discussed earlier in The Road to Serfdom, The Constitution of Liberty, and other writings. Law, Legislation and Liberty is more abstract than Hayek's earlier work, and it focuses on the conflicting views of society as either a design, a made order ("taxis"), on the one hand, or an emergent system, a grown order ("cosmos"), on the other. These ideas are then connected to two different forms of law: law proper, or "nomos" coinciding more or less with the traditional concept of natural law, which is an emergent property of social interaction, and legislation, or "thesis", which is properly confined to the administration of non-coercive government services, but is easily confused with the occasional acts of legislature that do actually straighten out flaws in the nomos."

Random excerpt: "This 'realistic' view which has now dominated politics for so long has hardly produced the results which it's advocates desired. Instead of having achieved greater mastery over our fate we find ourselves in fact more frequently commited to a path which we have not deliberately chosen, and faced with the 'inevitable necessities' of further action which, though never intended, are the result of what we have done."

K-On! first 4 volumes - +

It get's a little repetitive after a while and now I am thinking that Kakifly might not exist and the whole thing be a designed commercial product by a team instead, as the art looks too processed if compared to other "auteur" mangas, interesting how they managed to make 40 episodes adapting only 600 pages of the manga, though I notice I read faster than I watch manga adaptations, which is the inverse for novels and their adaptations. Still those 600 pages are like the most dense concentration of cuteness in the universe.

Mayo Chiki -

Really average harem stuff: an idiot guy get's a large number of girls failing for him for no reason. Haganai makes a joke about it, showing a guy becomes a "wizard class" when he becomes 30-year old virgin wearing a Mayo Chiki t-shirt.

Lone Wolf and Cub - chapters 65-80

Lone Wolf and Cub is a classic for a reason. The depth of character development in this manga is exceptional and compares with classic novel: it's a monumental work of graphic literature. The art style is also realistic instead of being influenced by Tezuka's cutesy style. Lone Wolf and Cub is to the manga medium as the Illiad is to western literature.

Azumanga Daioh


And I read some Masamune Shirow:

Black Magic


Orion


Dominion Tank Police


The Ghost in the Shell (even better than the two films adapted from it)


The Ghost in the Shell 1.5


The Ghost in the Shell 2.0


And:

Fushigi Yuugi: Genbu Kaiden

Girl's manga are not exactly my thing but this one is interesting though the romance parts are a bit tad too much.

I agree manga in general is more interesting than anime, but it's worth pointing out that most manga artists use a lot of uncredited assistants to produce their artwork and meet weekly deadlines (Miyazaki's Nausicaa was an exception, which is one of the reasons it took so long to complete). There's also more editorial oversight and planning than you might expect. For an interesting account of the manga industry I'd recommend the book Adult Manga by Sharon Kinsella. It's probably out of date now but still interesting in that Kinsella had a research grant to be imbedded within a top publisher in the peak years (mid-1990s) of manga's popularity. It's a pretty dry read (academic writer/publisher) so it's probably only worth reading if you're really interested in how manga gets made (and aren't turned off by Cultural Theory).

I think you are the forum's most experienced reader of manga.

But I actually disagree that manga is more interesting. They are different mediums so if one likes more comics one reads more comics, if one likes more animation one watches more animation. There are many masterpieces in both mediums, comics and animation.

Manga is larger than anime and so has more masterpieces, but I have watched more masterpieces of anime as well because it's cheaper to watch it than to read manga. Now I decided to invest a lot of money on manga and books in general.

I know the author has assistants but even so, the degree of artistic control in manga is larger than in film and animation (except when it's individual work like Shinkai's 30 minutes short film or Norstein's short films). Books also suffer from editorial pressure in many cases, manga are books made using pictures instead of words to describe the physical environment in which the characters inhabit.

Also, Nausicaa took so long also because it's a very dense manga for it's size: each page has an incredible ammount of detail, dialogue and thematic depth. I took way longer to read it than to read 1,150 pages of any other manga (like 3 times longer).

Now counting up the pages to reach 70,000 pages by December 25, 2015.

Nodame Cantabile first 7 volumes (1,400 pages)


K-On! Highschool (150 pages)

Animal Farm (100 pages)

The Idiot (first 140 pages)

total: 1,790/70,000

Apparently, it will take a very long time to get to 70,000 pages