A Silent Voice vol. 7

This is it. This is the final volume in the series. Oh all the feels. Let me try and capture how awesome this series was.

So, if you saw my first review of volume 1 (only posted days ago because I couldn't put these manga down!) then you got the bare bones of how the story starts. Let me give you a little more of a recap. Shoya was the middle school daredevil, the kid that jumped off bridges to prove his worth to the other boys he considered his friends. He hated boredom. So when they get a transfer student who happens to be deaf, Shoya makes it his purpose in life to torment Shoko and pit the other classmates against her. Even though it works, all the other students, even the teacher, bully poor Shoko, it all backfires terribly when Shoko's mother demands recompense for the numerous hearing aides Shoya has destroyed. Suddenly Shoya finds himself on the other end of the stick as the others in his class begin bullying him. Unable to take it, Skoya lashes out at Shoko one final time that causes her to finally leave the school.

The meat of the tale begins when Shoya, having had enough of the loneliness he has had to endure over the years since his actions, decides to take his own life. Getting his affairs in order, Shoya realizes there is one last thing he must do before he ends it all: apologize to Shoko for what he did. But when he goes to confront her she is understandably upset, and when he "speaks" to her (because he actually learned sign language to get his message across) he realizes that he wasn't the only one just done. Deciding to try and right the wrongs he caused this girl, Shoya resolves to push on, resulting in one of the most incredible pictures in manga that I fell in love with.

The rest of the series is about their growing friendship. That's not to say everything is rainbows and unicorns from there on out, oh no! Shoko and Shoya both have a lot of pain that lies just beneath the surface, and sometimes it rises up and people get hurt. They also have a lot of people they have effected over the course of time they have known each other, and not everyone is as forgiving as Shoko or as determined to make amends as Shoya. The ride is bumpy and incredible.

To say I loved this series would be an understatement! The story was so real, from the bullying to the difficulty in making things right; the characters were real, from Shoya's complicated feelings about Shoko to the mothers who are trying to raise difficult children alone; the plot was real, and all of it came together to form a story that will stick with me for some time. This is a series I plan on buying to reread in the future and recommend to everyone who reads manga. This one was just amazing! So if you haven't read it yet, go find it, now! And if you have, tell me what you think. I would love to talk about this one all day!

A Silent Voice vol. 1

Last year I saw a trailer for an anime that looked really interesting, but I have been unable to find it. So imagine my surprise and excitement when I stumbled upon the manga at the library! I am so eager to read this series!

A Silent Voice is the story of Shoya, a middle school boy that hates to be bored. So when the new transfer student turns out to be just another girl, he is disappointed because girls never want to have fun like the boys do. Only, Shoko, the new student, is deaf! This leads to Shoya deciding that the newest way he is going to keep himself entertained is by tormenting Shoko. Until karma strikes and Shoya looses everything.

In this first volume we hate Shoya, that's exactly how the creator wanted it. You need someone just horrible to suffer for what he has done, otherwise it seems unnecessary. But in this story we cheer karma on after Shoya becomes the target for all the bullying in the school in retaliation for all he put young Shoko through. Yet, I still feel a bit of sympathy for Shoya at the end of this one, and can't wait to see where the story takes him and Shoko!

Seriously, this is a great story already, and I encourage all my manga fans to pick this one up! And if you have seen the anime, please, tell me where I can find it!

Confessions of a Middle School Nerd

Ok, so I found this one on the local authors shelf as well, and I picked it up for my 10 yr old son who is now part of the middle school in our small town school system. But he has a long to read list of his own, so I decided to go ahead and read it by myself. A very interesting choice.

Confessions of a Middle School Nerd is a very short read, only 81 pages with the text taking up only a small block of each page. But it was a fun and quick read for that reason. Written in the first person by a narrator who is quirky and funny, this book is almost like a journal for the writer. The narrator starts off by saying that she wrote most of this down to work through a few things, mostly days in her life that she feels should be highlighted to help her come to a conclusion she can only catch glimpses of. So we get little tidbits of this middle schooler's days. The stories are all focused around one main point, the narrator is awkward. But in the end she comes to the realization that not only is she ok with this fact about herself, she can revel in it, because she likes who she is.

Like I said, the book was short and sweet. I enjoyed taking a little time to read it, especially since I could so relate to some of these moments in the narrator's time in middle school. So I encourage anyone to pick it up. Have a laugh or a knowing nod of the head, and pass it on to a middle schooler that might need a little reinforcement that they are not the only ones out there being awkward, and it's perfectly fine to be so. Let me know if you have read this one!

Geek Lust

How could I not pick up a book that not only gets so close to my own blog's title, but is literally about the driving force behind everything I am interested in? I saw this on the Local Author shelf and that was just an even better reason to pick it up, because you guys know I love reading things written by people close by. So I picked it up and while I didn't absolutely love this book, it was fun to read.

Alex Langley binds together in these pages everything that makes a geek a geek. Covering everything from the original geeks, scientist that started things, to all the mediums that geeks revel in, including but not limited to books, shows, movies, podcasts, and games. While the book is divided in a pretty clear manor, moving from one subject to the next in a cohesive manor that ties it all together, Langley's lists and frequent content jumping does make this book a bit more chaotic to read than I would have liked.

But it was fun! I mean, a whole book listing the many reasons people mark me as weird, yeah I enjoyed seeing in print that there are whole groups that love the things I love. It was also a lot of fun to pick out which of the many names in each medium I have enjoyed over the years. Who doesn't love it when someone acknowledges their love of that one book series you thought you were alone in reading!

I had fun with this book and recommend it to anyone with the willingness to basically read a book of lists. After all, it helped me discover a lot more shows, books, and games I should be partaking in!