GRAR! LIBRARY!

[snarp]

Graduating seniors who work at the library are supposed to pick out a book to be put on display at the end of the year, with our photo and an explanation of why we think the book's important. When they take it down, they put a little plate in it with our name and year of graduation. It's kind of stupid, because they don't let us pick out a book for the library to buy - we just choose one they already own - and nobody can check out the book we recommend while it's on display.

But, yes. I decided to donate my copy of A, A', by Hagio Moto for my book. I gave it to the woman in charge, let her take my picture, wrote my little tagline, and left.

That was a couple months ago, and it's only in the past few days the books actually went up. So I have no recollection as to why "my" explanation of the manga's import might read thusly:

A,A' Prime: a Graphic Novel. It's the only book by Moto Hagia, without whom, modern Manga, wouldn't exist in English.

...I WILL KILL YOU SO HARD WOMAN ohhh this is character assassination.

Even if she can't form a coherent sentence, she could at least have made the effort to spell the author's name correctly.

My assumption is that she had a comma spasm and lost the meaning of the original sentence, which I guess was something like, "It's the only book by Moto Hagio, without whom modern manga wouldn't exist, available in English."

I got my supervisor's permission to make myself a new sign. I've got a fairly well-behaved version finished - it's slightly snazzier than the original, with a less clashing color scheme and a better photo of me (that's important, too!), which I think I deserve after having such words put in my mouth. But I'm still teetering on the edge of adding something horrible. I wonder if they'll take it down if I use one of my Nekozawa Halloween photos. Or just a screenshot of Haruhi's mom's iei. Or a picture of Hunter S. Thompson.

Comments

Grar! is right, especially about the spelling...

[(Anonymous)]

And that was a pretty convoluted, badly written sentence. Speaking of the difficulty in finding other works of Hagio Moto's in English, I just wanted to mention that my Japanese husband and I just started a blog where we translate and discuss one of the classic shojo manga of hers, "Poe no Ichizoku". (http://ponoichizoku.blogspot.com) It's a complex, poignant story about a family of vampires who travel through time. Please stop by and leave comments--we'd love for this groundbreaking manga-ka to gain a much wider audience outside of Japan, and eventually want to translate as many of her works as we can. Thanks! By the way, I haven't read A,A' yet, but I know the guy who translated it, Matt Thorn. I'm sure he did an excellent job and I'll have to pick up a copy.