Weekly Reading
Dec. 20th, 2025 11:49 amRecently Finished
Strange Pictures
I was going to hold off on reading the novel version of this until the final volume(s) of the manga are released, since I've already read three volumes of the manga, but it came up again as recommended, this time on Hoopla, so I went for it. I do think Uketsu's novels work better as manga. Inserting the illustrations in the novel version feels more repetitive, whereas since the manga is all pictures, having the characters refer back to stuff feels more natural. I'm still going to read the rest of the manga when it's released (Strange Houses was five volumes, but Strange Pictures feels like it could be just four, so the next one might be the final one), just to see if there are any major differences. Anyway, I enjoyed this one but I do like Strange Houses better.
The Bletchley Riddle
Middle grade book about a girl who is trying to investigate her mother's disappearance. When she runs away from the man her grandmother hired to take her to live with her in America, she instead goes to live with her brother, who is working at Bletchley Park as a code breaker. The book is told in alternating POV chapters between brother and sister, and the audiobook had two narrators. I liked it a lot.
Murder on Platform Four
Another Tate and Bell mystery. These are very quick reads.
The Kamogawa Food Detectives
Speaking of quick reads, this one was super short. I got the audiobook in a sale and figured I'd check it out. It was only about five hours long. I did like the narrator, decent Japanese pronunciation, but the book itself was pretty dull. I think I might enjoy this okay as a manga, where you can just glance at the pictures of food and be on your way, but I don't need to listen to long descriptions. And a lot of what I like about mysteries is the process of the characters finding clues and working things out, but the way this is written is each customer's request is broken into two chapters, one where they come to the restaurant and tell them what kind of food they are looking to recreate. Then the second chapter is the food being presented to them. There is some exposition about how the guy figured out what they were remembering and how to find it, but it wasn't at all satisfying in any sort of mystery way. There are several more books in the series, but I'm not going to bother with them. It's not bad, just not for me.
Maps of the Disney Parks: Charting 60 Years from California to Shanghai
I bought this at Disneyland the other day. Nice coffee table book of maps of all the Disney parks currently in existence, with a small amount of text sprinkled throughout. I noticed several other reviewers on GR mentioned what I was feeling, which is that while this is nice, it's not quite what I was expecting or wanted from the title, which was the actual park maps. This has a few, but the vast majority of the maps are concept drawings and things like that. I would a book that compared park maps over the years.
My Home Hero vol. 18-19
Strange Pictures
I was going to hold off on reading the novel version of this until the final volume(s) of the manga are released, since I've already read three volumes of the manga, but it came up again as recommended, this time on Hoopla, so I went for it. I do think Uketsu's novels work better as manga. Inserting the illustrations in the novel version feels more repetitive, whereas since the manga is all pictures, having the characters refer back to stuff feels more natural. I'm still going to read the rest of the manga when it's released (Strange Houses was five volumes, but Strange Pictures feels like it could be just four, so the next one might be the final one), just to see if there are any major differences. Anyway, I enjoyed this one but I do like Strange Houses better.
The Bletchley Riddle
Middle grade book about a girl who is trying to investigate her mother's disappearance. When she runs away from the man her grandmother hired to take her to live with her in America, she instead goes to live with her brother, who is working at Bletchley Park as a code breaker. The book is told in alternating POV chapters between brother and sister, and the audiobook had two narrators. I liked it a lot.
Murder on Platform Four
Another Tate and Bell mystery. These are very quick reads.
The Kamogawa Food Detectives
Speaking of quick reads, this one was super short. I got the audiobook in a sale and figured I'd check it out. It was only about five hours long. I did like the narrator, decent Japanese pronunciation, but the book itself was pretty dull. I think I might enjoy this okay as a manga, where you can just glance at the pictures of food and be on your way, but I don't need to listen to long descriptions. And a lot of what I like about mysteries is the process of the characters finding clues and working things out, but the way this is written is each customer's request is broken into two chapters, one where they come to the restaurant and tell them what kind of food they are looking to recreate. Then the second chapter is the food being presented to them. There is some exposition about how the guy figured out what they were remembering and how to find it, but it wasn't at all satisfying in any sort of mystery way. There are several more books in the series, but I'm not going to bother with them. It's not bad, just not for me.
Maps of the Disney Parks: Charting 60 Years from California to Shanghai
I bought this at Disneyland the other day. Nice coffee table book of maps of all the Disney parks currently in existence, with a small amount of text sprinkled throughout. I noticed several other reviewers on GR mentioned what I was feeling, which is that while this is nice, it's not quite what I was expecting or wanted from the title, which was the actual park maps. This has a few, but the vast majority of the maps are concept drawings and things like that. I would a book that compared park maps over the years.
My Home Hero vol. 18-19




