Goodreads Review: ‘Perfectly Yourself’

I’m running an experiment here: I’m planning to be more consistent about reviewing books on Goodreads, which gives the option to duplicate reviews on a blog (such as this one). Since I do in fact read things other than magical girl manga, this will mean some expansion of the blog’s content, but I’ll try to keep this relatively painless.

Let’s see how it goes.

Perfectly Yourself: New and Revised EditionPerfectly Yourself: New and Revised Edition by Matthew Kelly

Matthew Kelly is gifted as a motivational writer and speaker. Whether he has great religious insights is more debatable.

If treated as a motivational work with a hint of Catholicism for flavor, this is a book with plenty of practical advice about getting off your duff, getting things done, forming good habits, and avoiding pitfalls and discouragement. For that reason, I would recommend it. It should not, however, be mistaken for a spiritual work.

If I were to offer a criticism, I would say there is a little too much of Kelly himself in it. He seems to enjoy tooting his own horn and talking about his fantastic life. I’m happy for him, but it’s a little much.

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Manga Review: ‘Saint Tail’

On a mission from God.

Saint Tail, vols. 1 and 2, written and illustrated by Megumi Tachikawa. Published in Japan by Kodansha Ltd., 1995. Translated by Anita Sengupta. Tokyopop, 2001.

I was unable to complete this in time for Easter Sunday, but, fortunately, Easter is fifty days. So here we go.

The kaitou, or thief, is such a popular figure in Japanese pop culture that kaitou may be considered its own genre. This is probably thanks in large part to the wildly successful Lupin III franchise, which is written to be a sequel of sorts to the stories of Arsène Lupin by Maurice Leblanc. Magical girls had crossed paths with gentleman thieves in franchises such as Minky Momo and Sailor Moon, so a magical girl who is also a gentleman thief—or lady thief, rather—is an obvious next step.

What is perhaps not so obvious is that the magical girl lady thief should be a devout Catholic who steals in service to God, but such is the premise of Saint Tail, and the basic concept of Saint Tail also got recycled, but given a hard twist, in Phantom Thief Jeanne, which we’ll discuss in a later post. Continue reading “Manga Review: ‘Saint Tail’”