I picked up two new Death Note books at Books-A-Million Saturday afternoon. One of them is Volume 13, called “How to Read”. It’s a book with in-depth character bios and highlights of the events during the Kira case. I’m excited about reading it, but I’m afraid I cannot read it now–as it contains spoilers. Apparently, it’s why it’s the “13th edition”, out of 12 volumes of the graphic novels (in order), though it just reveals secrets of the story. At the time of writing this, I am now at Chapter 100–which means 8 more chapters to go until the Grand Finale! I flew through a few pages of the book to find a couple of things I didn’t want to know about at the moment. Fortunately, I still don’t know L/Ryuuzaki’s true name. Although, when you open the book, you see a “True Name Card”. If you look at the back of it, it says “-L-”. If I think that’s what I think it is, then kudos to Viz for keeping us in suspense until the very end. So, if you’re in the middle of reading Death Note, I do not recommend reading this until you finish every single chapter–unless you like taking risks. That doesn’t stop you from buying it.

The other Death Note book I brought is a novel, based on the L spin-off movie that was released in theaters earlier this month in Japan. I didn’t see this until started to walk away from the aisle, because it wasn’t like a traditional paperback novel format. It’s pimped up with a white book cover, covering half of the book, with shiny, silver writing, which makes the book look a little like the Death Note itself–in English, and not in Shinigami writing. Reading this shouldn’t spoil you too much, since it’s a prequel to the chronicles of L…