Quite busy today, so here are just some things for you to click on.

Want to brush up on your Japanese reading comprehension skills in a few seconds a day? Why not follow some Haikasoru author twitter feeds? Nojiri and Ogawa both tweet regularly:

http://twitter.com/nojiri_h

http://twitter.com/ogawaissui

That’ll be less exhausting than reading textbooks!

Speaking of Nojiri, his Usurper of the Sun got a sweeeet review here. It reads, in part:

Usurper is a mini-anthology of classic SF concepts: the logistics and physics of a Dyson structure and nanomachinery; the insignificance of life’s place in the universe, which science only makes more profound as time goes by; and the way a giant external threat could theoretically serve as a unifier for a divided mankind. The latter’s been explored in everything from Watchmen to Theodore Sturgeon’s short story “Unite and Conquer”. Arthur C. Clarke gets a nod on the cover blurb, and Nojiri’s spare, direct writing style brings to mind Clarke’s work (and Asimov’s) as much as the high-science subject matter does.

This was great to read as, so far anyway, many of the reviews our titles have been getting have come from readers and critics very interested in manga and Japanese fiction. It was interesting to get some feedback from a reviewer very well-versed in Western SF.

Somewhat related, here is an interesting article on the pitfalls of a company trying to bring Japanese fiction to a wider audience in the US from the Manga Critic.

Finally, some formerly super-secret stuff: next year will see the release of Loup-Garous Natsuhiko Kyogoku. Aaaand, there will be an anime coming out as well in Japan. May 2010 will be your chance to read the book and be all snooty when your friends check out the anime. You can say, “Well, in the far superior original novel, THIS happens, not THAT!”

That’s all for today. See you midweek with some more substantive stuff. Now back to the comma mines!