Happy Monday and Happy May, Epic Insiders! Here’s what we’ve got for you today:
Announcements
— Did you catch last week’s Behind the Scenes post where Cici shared her five favorite video games?
What Are You Reading?
Insiders! Excited to be sharing my reading with you all once again. We won’t talk about how half the year is almost gone *eep*.
Lately, a lot of my reading has been influenced by what I’ve been watching. Seeing that the Jujutsu Kaisen movie was out got me hype, so I rewatched season one of the anime for the third time (for real) as a sort of lead up to watching the movie. All of this was done only to find out that the showings of the movie that were nearest me didn’t have it dubbed in English. It’s hard for me to pay attention to what’s happening and read subtitles, but since I had been so excited to finally be past season one of the show, I took to reading the manga.
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If you’re unfamiliar, Jujutsu Kaisen is one of the most popular anime— with a similarly popular manga— in the U.S. right now. It follows teenager Yuji Itadori as he learns that there are things called curses that plague humanity. Still reeling from the loss of his grandfather, Yuji decides to save another high schooler and becomes possessed by the 1,000- year old king of curses, Sukuna, in the process.
Normally, I don’t really read shounen manga much because I assumed the black and white color palette would make it hard for me to follow the action. My impatience in wanting to know the rest of the story made me realize that I could actually mostly follow things. Having already seen how everything looks in motion from watching the show helped me when reading the manga, too, I think. So, I read all the volumes that are out so far. This eventually led me to reading the individual chapters as they get released on the Shounen Jump app, which offers some free chapters and charges only $1.99/month for a premium subscription. My only complaint about the individual chapters is that they don’t have the author’s side notes.
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A part from manga, I’ve been reading Queen of the Tiles for the Hey YA podcast. It’s a YA murder mystery set in Malaysia against the backdrop of a Scrabble competition. In other words, it has all the things. My cohost, Tirzah Price, and I invited listeners to read the book with us for a special book club episode and will be discussing listener comments on the book as well as our own thoughts. Should be fun!
Lastly, I also recently started a Frankenstein retelling, The Children on the Hill, which starts off with who I think is the monster planning to abduct someone. Color me intrigued!
What have y’all been reading? Click through to add your reading list to the comments!
Erica