For forty-five years, since I was a middle-schooler in Dallas, Ives’sEssays before a Sonatahas been one of the most important books in my life. Lately it’s become tremendously underrated. Some Ives scholars have dismissed it nearly entirely as a jumble of psuedo-intellectual bloviations. ...
By the middle of the 1960s, even Matsumoto Seicho, the very man whose works ushered in this era of socially-conscious mystery stories, was calling for authors to begin to incorporate aspects of the honkaku genre into their writing (Saito, 1978). To this end, he edited and published a 10...
Noragamifollows middle-schooler Hiyori Iki, who meets an unfortunate fate involving a bus. This accident places Hiyori in the unique position of being aware of two, and able to interact with, two other worlds, known as the Near Shore and Far Shore. The titular Stray God is Yato, a kami ...
Japanese fan organization for Iron Klaus – around since 1978 (the story, as I’ve heard it, is that there is a whole group of women–surely middle aged by now–who never married, because their hearts were only for Klaus) Ranking of Best 50 mangas – according to Japanese votes, done ...
Plot Summary: The diaries of middle schooler Greg Heffley as he navigates the world of popularity, mean older brothers, friendship drama, and, of course, the cheese touch. I was just starting in middle school when the books were first published, and they were so relatable. Jeff Kinney's ar...