Before a week ago, my biased thoughts succeeded at convincing me that manga was no different from anime, a waste of time. But since I am learning Japanese, I thought I had to take a look at one to see why it has gained all the hype. I searched the internet for some popular manga, and, of course, I found Naruto and other interesting names. I also knew that manga can be read online, although that is illegal (but you know, once would never hurt!). To make a long story short, I started reading Death Note, a well-known manga. To be honest, I have to admit that the plot caught my attention from the very first page. The way the graphics were drawn was magical, and the briefness/simplicity of conversations between characters was captivating. It was totally fun! But then, fearing from instant addiction, I stopped.

I then started to review my thoughts again.  I wondered whether manga is really useless to read. Well, I knew that reading it was like reading any other book, except for the fact that it mainly consists of short conversation between characters, and additional graphics to compensate for action/surrounding descriptions. I also realized that manga graphics can stimulate your mind to try to visualize the scenes in motion, and maybe try to figure the voice of each character (it would be much easier with manga, for the mind already know the character’s looks). Plus, I’m sure many manga will reflect the Japanese culture and way of thinking, and that’s so valuable in my opinion, for getting to know their culture is a bit difficult, especially that I’m not fluent in Japanese! What’s more important, many manga will have a good theme to tell at the end, and no one can deny that Japanese people are geniuses when it comes to creativity!

So after all, manga doesn’t seem to waste time at all. But of course, if reading it exceeded the normal limits, that will definitely be fruitless. So be careful! Now let me recommend some manga I knew they were popular after a thorough search:

• Naruto
• Bleach
• One Piece
• Dragon Ball
• Death Note

P.S. Manga is Japanese word, so it doesn’t have a singular or plural form. I used both forms while writing.

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As you can notice, I named the story ‘The Oath’, since that word does have its value in the plot. As for the story’s genre, I believe it is something in between mystery-realistic fiction. And regarding the writing quality, I never claim that I’m significantly talented at writing. What I’m trying to do is improve my skills through writing as much as possible. So I will be writing more books later and sharing them here. But for now, I’d like to read your opinions about The Oath. Writing reviews as the comments will be so appreciated!

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Want to know a bit about the haiku’s origin? Continue reading. Don’t want to? Then skip this paragraph. So basically, decades ago there was nothing called haiku, but something called renga. Renga was an orthodox collaborative linked poem, where a group people collaborate with each other and write it. It usually consisted of two stanzas or more, with the opening stanza named hokku. Between 1644–1694, the hokku began to appear alone. Then after about two hundred years, Masaoka Shiki, a Japanese author, renamed the hokku to haiku, the term we use today to describe the three phrases poem. Pretty simple, isn’t it?                                                                                                                                                                          Renga → Hokku → Haiku

As I mentioned above, a haiku consists of three phrases. In Japanese, the first phrase consists of 5 moras, the second one consists of 7, and third one of 5. You’re wondering what is a ‘mora’? Well, it is a pretty complicated term to explain and understand, but I can say that it is something similar to syllables. That’s why in english, we use syllables instead of moras as a reference. So the first english haiku’s phrase would consist of 5 syllables, etc.. The Japanese haiku is traditionally written as a vertical line and usually talks about the world’s nature. Unlike the English haiku, which is written as three lines underline each other and talks about any subject matter. It seems that the most famous Japanese haiku is one written by Bosho. It is called ‘old pond’ and it says:                                  古池や　蛙飛込む　水の音                                                                                                              Translated in English as:                                                                                                                    Old pond                                                                                                                                                    A frog leaps in                                                                                                                                          Water’s sound

Although it seems too brief, a haiku can be translated into many forms, and thus having various similar meanings.

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“If you find a book that looks interesting but is part of a series, do you always start with the first title?”

My answer is yes for sure. For example, I read the book Eragon, which is book 1, merely because I was interested in reading book 3, Brisingr. Unfortunately, I didn’t even make it to book 2 for me to read the third. It is not that I didn’t like the first, but I had some confusion not worth talking about. But I will definitely read the trilogy (or series, since they are 4 books now). If I missed a book from a series, there will be for sure some important events I will miss that might be a key to understand other events in later books.

Before ending the post, I want to say that I found the Book Blogger Hop a very creative idea for bloggers to connect and share with other book lovers across the internet. I will certainly Book Blogger Hop (is it a verb?) someday again!

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Here’s a brief glimpse at the books’ main plot: The Chronicles of Narnia talks about how (except in The Horse and His Boy) four children from our world were magically transported by the help of the Lion Aslan into the world of Narnia. There, several adventures start in a world where animals talk and magic meets reality.  The four children are thrust into peril to save a world where good fights evil.

Let’s have some general boring information about The Chronicles of Narnia. The most important thing everyone needs to know about it is that it is a series of seven fantasy novels named: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew, The Last Battle. It took C.S. Lewis seven years to write the seven novels, each one taking about one year to finish. Unfortunately, C.S. Lewis died 47 years ago. His full name was Clive Staples Lewis, and he was a close friend to J.R.R Tolkein, the author of The Lord of the RIngs. Anyways, the series C.S. Lewis wrote has been translated into 47 different languages and has sold more than 100 million copies. Because the novels were not written in a chronological way, many readers have argued into which order the novels must be read (That means whether they should read them according to the novels’ publication order or according to the novels’ internal chronological order). In my opinion, I say it would be better to read them chronologically, since the novels are called The Chronicles of Narnia. Also, reading them in that way will explain from the beginning how the goings and comings from the Narnian world have started. Here’s what Lewis has replied to a fan who was arguing with his mother regarding the order for reading the novels:

I think I agree with your [chronological] order for reading the books more than with your mother’s. The series was not planned beforehand as she thinks. When I wrote The Lion I did not know I was going to write any more. Then I wrote P. Caspian as a sequel and still didn’t think there would be any more, and when I had done The Voyage I felt quite sure it would be the last, but I found I was wrong. So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone read them. I’m not even sure that all the others were written in the same order in which they were published.

So just read them in the order you find suitable and reasonable.

The series is said to be a classic of children‘s literature, but I consider it a classic of literature, meant to be enjoyed by people of all ages. Many people have criticized it (not necessarily negatively) saying that it contained obvious Christian themes. I can’t understand how these themes might ruin the pleasure of reading such a masterpiece.

You might notice that I haven’t talked much about the plot of the books, and that’s because I meant this post to be a mere introduction to the seven books. I will be reviewing each book alone in later posts. In general, however, I absolutely recommend everyone to start reading this series if you haven’t done so. Reading the books with your children will be pure fun! Of course, you can buy the books from Amazon here.

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About three weeks ago, I began writing a short story. I have always wanted to write one, but I hadn’t enough courage to try. To be honest, I did try last year and the result was awful. Since then, I began searching the internet for some tips that may help improve my writing skills, and of course I tried to learn from the previous mistakes I did in my first short story.  I’m currently writing the second one which, if I thought was good enough, I will post on the blog for people to read. Since my English isn’t my native language, I’m not expecting the final result to be that good. Anyway, I’m still trying right now.

Of course, the short story is going to be fiction. I’ve been trying my best to make the plot an interesting one, and I wonder if I’ll succeed. I didn’t think writing a story (or anything in general) is so difficult. Although I’m enjoying it, I find myself procrastinating the work everyday. Hopefully, I’ll be completely finishing it after about three weeks. I know it’s too much, but writing anything with a decent quality needs both effort and time.

Anyways, during this month, and while I was randomly searching for videos, I came across a video of a guy named Kaleb Nation. The video’s title intrigued me, and I ended up watching it. It was about that 21 years old guy, Kaleb Nation, who received from his publishers the first copies of his book ‘Bran Hambrick: The Farfield Curse’. Seeing that he was a published young author, I became more interested in him, and so I watched more of his videos. After spending much time on his channel, I finally knew his story. It turned out that when he was 16 years old, while he was lying in his bed, an idea struck his mind, and he directly knew that this is going to be a successful idea for a novel. He spent the following six years expanding the plot, creating and developing the characters, and writing the novel. After honing, editing, and revising it, he knew that it was ready to be published. After various attempts of sending query letters to agents, his novel idea caught the attention of one agent, who then found an appropriate publisher who published his first novel.

Kaleb Nation promoted his novel even more on his channel, and many people showed great interest in reading it. As for me, I haven’t read the story, but I saw many positive reviews on Amazon from people who found the story worth reading. Well, I do not know much about the story’s plot, only that a boy named Bran Hambrick was found in locked vault in the city of Dunce, a place where mages were forbidden to live, with no memory of his parents. As it appears, Bran Hambrick’s mother, who was a mage, was killed after committing a crime (which was magic), leaving a curse after her. After Bran grew up, he discovers that people were searching for him to end the curse his mother left. The story blends magic with real life, adding gnomes and other creatures, to create an interesting story full of adventures. You can support him and buy his story on Amazon here.

From his channel, I also knew that the sequel to the Bran Hambrick book, Bran Hambrick: The Specter Key, is going to be released on 10/10/1010 (a pretty unique date!). So only 2 days are left! I’m really impressed by Kaleb Nation for being a published successful author although he is young. He reminds me of Christopher Paolini, who managed to publish his novel, Eragon, when he was 16 years old. You can still pre-order (or buy, since it says nothing about pre-ordering on Amazon) Kaleb Nation’s novel here. You can also know more about him, his book tours, and how to buy a signed copy  of his new book on his website www.kalebnation.com.

I’d say the books are meant to children to children between 9-12 years, and that is true, for the section from where I brought the series was specialized for children of that age. You know, I was somehow bashful when I asked for the books, but it was okay when I said that the books were for my younger brother. To be honest, I did enjoy them, but not that much. Yes, they were full action and new events popping up every now and then, but they were too uncomplicated. I still don’t know why did the authors Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black separate the plot into books. In my opinion, each book of the series should be a made a single chapter, and all of the four books should be joined into one book made up of four chapters.

The environment, including the creatures the authors created, is interesting, and I won’t lie. I loved the idea of goblins, elves, and ogres, and would definitely love to see (and maybe read) Aurthur Spiderwick’s Guide to the Fantastical World Around You. However, I think the authors should’ve made the books a bit longer, adding more details and making the characters more realistic. Although the authors greatly depended on the illustrations to convey their description of events, that didn’t mean they shouldn’t have included the details in the story. Children who love fantasy and fiction would probably like the books, but old readers would probably not. I don’t say don’t read the books, but don’t expect a plot similar to that of Harry Potter (I mean in terms of complication and the way the story is written).

Note: Thanks to my friend Emily, I’ve now changed the blog’s header picture. Isn’t it lovely?

So while I was there, I started thinking about things I can do to improve the blog, and the first thing that popped up in my mind was the blog’s url. I mean, wouldn’t it look much more professional if the ‘.wordpress’ thing wasn’t there? So I came up with the idea of buying a domain for the blog in order to remove the ‘.wordpress’ extension. A problem occurred. My blog’s name has already been taken. So yes, I’m now I’m obliged to change the name of the blog for the sake of buying a domain. I know it is a sad news. I was really annoyed. So soon I’ll be choosing a new name for the blog. And don’t worry for I’ll inform you. Until then, I’ll be writing some new posts, refreshing the blog!