From the wintry north

I’m usually at a loss to figure out how Amazon’s recommendation system works, because it seems like many of my purchases indicate I would enjoy books I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. An entertaining “Six Degrees of Separation” game could probably be developed to try and figure out how my purchase of, say, the ninth volume of Bleach leads Amazon to believe that I’d like the latest crappy thriller from James Patterson.

The latest suggestion to wind up in my in-box actually sounds pretty promising. It was for Mechademia: An Annual Forum for Anime, Manga and the Fan Arts, published by the University of Minnesota Press. There are only so many times you can re-read Schodt and Gravett (though I haven’t found the number yet), and more academic (or even quasi-academic) writing on the subject is always welcome.

Between this and the exhibition catalog for the Shojo Manga! Girl Power! show that Dirk Deppey reviewed the other day, it looks like I’ve got a couple of interesting books about manga to add to the pile of actual manga waiting to be read.