I was in the mood for something interactive, but not too interactive, so I got myself this horror visual novel, which is still 30% off for the next 39 hours.

Premise: A young woman moves into an apartment and tries to introduce herself to her neighbors. The ones above and below are fine, if a bit tense or hesitant. However, the apartment right next door to hers is downright creepy, despite supposedly being empty, and it soon becomes clear that the place is horribly haunted.

So far this is so-so, but the voice acting (in Japanese only) is good, the sound effects are okay (there have been a couple that didn't seem quite appropriate), and I'm in the right mood for a "haunted apartment" story. "Auto play" means I can just sit back and read the text as it comes, and this particular visual novel has no choices, so I don't have to worry about hunting down different story paths and endings. I do wish it were possible to tell how much story was left, though. I'm about four or five chapters in, but that tells me nothing since I don't know how many chapters there are or how long each one is. Judging by the playing times in the reviews, I have anywhere from four to seven hours left.

Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎 駿) who brought us Totoro shared his favourite children books. 

Hayao Miyazaki’s Top 50 Children’s Books

The Borrowers -- Mary Norton
The Little Prince -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Children of Noisy Village -- Astrid Lindgren
When Marnie Was There -- Joan G. Robinson
Swallows and Amazons -- Arthur Ransome
The Flying Classroom -- Erich Kästner
There Were Five of Us -- Karel Poláček
What the Neighbours Did, and Other Stories -- Ann Philippa Pearce
Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates -- Mary Mapes Dodge
The Secret Garden -- Frances Hodgson Burnett
Eagle of The Ninth -- Rosemary Sutcliff
The Treasure of the Nibelungs -- Gustav Schalk
The Three Musketeers -- Alexandre Dumas, père
A Wizard of Earthsea -- Ursula K. Le Guin
Les Princes du Vent -- Michel-Aime Baudouy
The Flambards Series -- K. M. Peyton
Souvenirs entomologiques -- Jean Henri Fabre
The Long Winter -- Laura Ingalls Wilder
A Norwegian Farm -- Marie Hamsun
Heidi -- Johanna Spyri
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer -- Mark Twain
Little Lord Fauntleroy -- Frances Hodgson Burnett
Tistou of the Green Thumbs -- Maurice Druon
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes -- Arthur Conan Doyle
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler -- E. L. Konigsburg
The Otterbury Incident -- Cecil Day-Lewis
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland -- Lewis Carroll
The Little Bookroom -- Eleanor Farjeon
The Forest is Alive or Twelve Months -- Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak
The Restaurant of Many Orders -- Kenji Miyazawa
Winnie-the-Pooh -- A. A. Milne
Nihon Ryōiki -- Kyokai
Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio -- Pu Songling
Nine Fairy Tales: And One More Thrown in For Good Measure -- Karel Čapek
The Man Who Has Planted Welsh Onions -- Kim So-un
Robinson Crusoe -- Daniel Defoe
The Hobbit -- J. R. R. Tolkien
Journey to the West -- Wu Cheng'en
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea -- Jules Verne
The Adventures of the Little Onion -- Gianni Rodari
Treasure Island -- Robert Louis Stevenson
The Ship that Flew -- Hilda Winifred Lewis
The Wind in the Willows -- Kenneth Grahame
The Little Humpbacked Horse -- Pyotr Pavlovich Yershov (Ershoff)
The Little White Horse -- Elizabeth Goudge
The Rose and the Ring -- William Makepeace Thackeray
The Radium Woman -- Eleanor Doorly
City Neighbor, The Story of Jane Addams -- Clara Ingram Judson
Ivan the Fool -- Leo Tolstoy
The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle -- Hugh Lofting

This was my first 48 hour challenge, and I’m happy to say that I 1) successfully completed it 2) got a lot of reading done and 3) read some books I really enjoyed.

The Grand Plan to Fix Everything by Uma Krishnaswami-finished
Sister Mine by Nalo Hopkinson-finished
Pointe by Brandy Colbert-finished
Cold Steel by Kate Elliott
A Moment Comes by Jennifer Bradbury
Flygirl by Sherri Smith-finished
Lost Girl Found by Leah Bassoff
A Bride’s Story 2 by Kaoru Mori-finished
She Is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick
Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes-finished
Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear-finished
Tin Star by Cecil Castellucci-finished
My Neighbor Totoro-finished
Melusine by Sarah Monette-finished

Reading time: 19 hours total
Blogging time: 45 min total

Brief reviews for the four I read yesterday:
Flygirl by Sherri Smith: The story of a young African-American girl during WWII who passes for white in order to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots. Smith tells the story well, with a lot of sympathy for Ida Mae, as well as a look at the consequences of her decision and what she both gains and loses. I will also admit that I thought a lot about Code Name Verity–this is a great readalike for CNV fans who like the flying bits. Also, someone mentions “Dream a Little Dream” which is just not fair; ow, my heart.

My Neighbor Totoro: An elementary age novelization of Miyazaki’s classic film which…I have not seen. The novelization stands well in its own right. There are some slightly awkward moments which I suspect are due to the vagaries of translation, but there’s also a lovely timeless, magical quality to the story.

Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes: It seems strange to call a book set in New Orleans just before and during Hurricane Katrina gentle, but I kept thinking of Ninth Ward as just that. Lanesha faces extraordinary difficulties, but her story is about much more than the hurricane. It’s about friendship, and about family, about love and loss and finding out who you are. I also love the cover–perfect for the tone of the book, and for Lanesha herself.

Melusine by Sarah Monette: I loved The Goblin Emperor, written by Monette under the pen-name Katherine Addison, SO MUCH. So much that I immediately checked out the first book in her debut series, The Doctrine of Labyrinths. It’s very, very dark and intense, which means that I couldn’t quite love it as whole-heartedly as The Goblin Emperor. I do very much appreciate what it does, and some of the things that happened were horrifying because I cared so much about the characters. (I also think there would be an interesting little essay on how it fits into and resists the grimdark genre.) That said, I’m not sure if I’ll be reading the rest of the books in the series.