Wazamonogatari Read:

When the books are good they're easy to read quickly, one after the other.  I've been wanting to read these books ever since the anime ended, and finally I now have the chance.  Wazamonogatari (volume 20 of the Bakemonogatari series in the Japanese release) is probably the best volume in the series.  Karen Ogre is pretty much the funniest thing I've ever read, it had me in conniptions.  The amount of trouble she got herself in, the silly ways she was rescued, and her complete inability to put two and two together, all worked together to create a happiness typhoon.

Tsubasa Sleeping was okay, sort of like Tsubasa herself.

Shinobu's origin story, what was it called?  Acerola bon appetit?  Anyway, the first short story in the volume, was fantastic.  Princess Beauty was a very difficult concept to put into words and a unique scenario in all of literature, but Nisio Isin pulled it off.  That's phenomenal skill right there.  Then you have Deathtopia as a great contrast, somehow the kidnapping vampire being the hero and the kidnapped princess being the villain.  It's sort of sad that all of Deathtopia's schemes about how to cure the curse failed, and in the end they could only substitute one curse for another.  (too much beauty for vampirism.)  But it made perfect sense, everything in the story makes sense and makes a lot of sense of Shinobu's behavior in the future as well.  I wish Bakemonogatari had started with all this vampire lore instead of Araragi looking at Tsubasa's panties.  The series would have made more sense and been taken more seriously by critics that way. . . But oh well, probably the author wasn't capable of writing this volume until he'd had the previous 19 volumes of practice.  This was the culmination of decades of loving craft.  You can tell how much better he is now at writing these characters than when he started.

Tsukihi Undo was pretty funny itself, but Karen Ogre is off the charts.  What's with these fire sisters?  Anyway, this volume was sufficiently good to put Nisio Isin back in my good books hall of fame.  He was there before but it's a value added hall of fame and earlier everything I had read from this series was animated so there was nothing value added left.  Well here is the value added:  Wazamonogatari is a heaping helping of value added.  If you're a fan of Bakemonogatari you have to read this book.  Even if you aren't a fan of Bakemonogatari you should probably read this book and thereby become a fan already.

I kicked out Takumi Yanai, the author of GATE, to make room.  The books not covered by the anime weren't actually much good, so there was little value added to all the work he's done since then.  His series wasn't something I was looking forward to reading more of.  An easily dismissible honoree.

Next up is Nademonogatari, which I read with trepidation.  I love Nadeko, but it doesn't seem like the author does, he's always running her down, so I don't want to read an entire volume of the author insulting my favorite character in the series.  But it is his character, so I have no choice but to bear with the choices he makes about her.  Maybe something good will come of it, and I'll find out something else to love about Nadeko I didn't know before.  There's always hope.