![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I am a little ball of stress.
So here's what I've been reading, eating, and watching (theater-wise) lately.
Also a request for those of you on my friends list who've ever lived in Japan for a while.
Oh, and sovay--can you bring the call for papers and the Cordwainer Smith to Baklava Wednesday?
Watching: The first half of A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare on the Common). If you're in the Boston area, tomorrow night is closing night (their sponsor pulled out so they could only afford to go for one week). Get there early so you can beat 1,000 other people for a better seat than I had. Shamefully, I fell asleep during the second half, but kudos to whoever did the sound and costume design: even from the "nosebleed section," you could hear, as well as see the actors. The stage design was also fascinating; I loved how the "moon" (a giant balloon) seemed to be tied to a corner of the greensward that had been pulled up.
Eating: Lambs'-quarters, found in the yard. Thanks to fiddledragon for spotting them today; they were delicious fried with a bit of rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper in oil. My only complaint is that I didn't have enough. I'm definitely planting these next year in a box; I could really use that many B2 vitamins and 16% protein in the seeds.
Reading:
1.) Read or Die (manga, entire series).
2.) Read or Dream (manga, vol. 1 & 2 of 4).
These are great to take to work with me (I can finish one on my way there, one on the way back), and have enough to do with their respective anime that I'm not completely lost. However, they have divergent storylines and some divergent characters, so you end up with four separate but interrelated stories (Read or Die manga, Read or Die original video, Read or Die TV series (featuring the characters from Read or Dream, and the Read or Dream manga. I really like that setup; I think it gives an author more space to tell different parts of a story than a traditional anime-slavishly-follows-manga series. And I think it asks more of the readers. At the same time it's not a hard read by any means, and it's really fun.
3.) Bone (graphic novel), Jeff Smith.
4.) Stupid, Stupid Rat-Tales, " "
5.) Rose, ", illus. by Charles Vess
I gulped down Bone in its 1000+ page entirety in a weekend; it's really very good. It's a lovely example of the medium in the fact that it's impossible to lose any of the three main characters on the page (they're drawn very differently from the rest of the characters), but the rest of the linework is lush and gorgeous. I may be biased, but I found it beautiful to read. A really interesting little morality tale, and loose ends are not always tied up.
The other two are companion volumes. Rat-tales I found forgettable but fun; Rose is beautifully illustrated but I found the story to be almost unnecessary, given that Bone stands so well on its own. I felt like it didn't need backstory. It was nice to have but added nothing to my understanding of the larger story structure and world that wasn't already there.
6.) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
I know, I know. Me and 8.5 million other people in the first printing.
I have some quibbles with character motivation, angst for angst's sake, and unrealistic behaviour from Slytherins, but overall I found that it was what I'd been hoping for from this series all along--some complexity, finally. My only sadness is that she didn't bring that in a bit sooner. Lovely little in-jokes, though. My favorite line? "...Less truth than a chocolate frog card." That says a lot, especially if you notice that she introduced chocolate frog cards in book one and didn't really bring them up too much after that. But the reader knows immediately what she's talking about.
A request: If you have lived in Japan in the past, are currently in Japan, or are Japanese and read my journal (hi, S.!) could you please comment here and let me know if I can contact you for research I am interested in doing for two separate stories set in Japan? One is a short story and the other may be a comic. I want to know things but aren't sure where to start and I am afraid that doing too much digging on my own will lead to skewed research sources.
So here's what I've been reading, eating, and watching (theater-wise) lately.
Also a request for those of you on my friends list who've ever lived in Japan for a while.
Oh, and sovay--can you bring the call for papers and the Cordwainer Smith to Baklava Wednesday?
Watching: The first half of A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare on the Common). If you're in the Boston area, tomorrow night is closing night (their sponsor pulled out so they could only afford to go for one week). Get there early so you can beat 1,000 other people for a better seat than I had. Shamefully, I fell asleep during the second half, but kudos to whoever did the sound and costume design: even from the "nosebleed section," you could hear, as well as see the actors. The stage design was also fascinating; I loved how the "moon" (a giant balloon) seemed to be tied to a corner of the greensward that had been pulled up.
Eating: Lambs'-quarters, found in the yard. Thanks to fiddledragon for spotting them today; they were delicious fried with a bit of rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper in oil. My only complaint is that I didn't have enough. I'm definitely planting these next year in a box; I could really use that many B2 vitamins and 16% protein in the seeds.
Reading:
1.) Read or Die (manga, entire series).
2.) Read or Dream (manga, vol. 1 & 2 of 4).
These are great to take to work with me (I can finish one on my way there, one on the way back), and have enough to do with their respective anime that I'm not completely lost. However, they have divergent storylines and some divergent characters, so you end up with four separate but interrelated stories (Read or Die manga, Read or Die original video, Read or Die TV series (featuring the characters from Read or Dream, and the Read or Dream manga. I really like that setup; I think it gives an author more space to tell different parts of a story than a traditional anime-slavishly-follows-manga series. And I think it asks more of the readers. At the same time it's not a hard read by any means, and it's really fun.
3.) Bone (graphic novel), Jeff Smith.
4.) Stupid, Stupid Rat-Tales, " "
5.) Rose, ", illus. by Charles Vess
I gulped down Bone in its 1000+ page entirety in a weekend; it's really very good. It's a lovely example of the medium in the fact that it's impossible to lose any of the three main characters on the page (they're drawn very differently from the rest of the characters), but the rest of the linework is lush and gorgeous. I may be biased, but I found it beautiful to read. A really interesting little morality tale, and loose ends are not always tied up.
The other two are companion volumes. Rat-tales I found forgettable but fun; Rose is beautifully illustrated but I found the story to be almost unnecessary, given that Bone stands so well on its own. I felt like it didn't need backstory. It was nice to have but added nothing to my understanding of the larger story structure and world that wasn't already there.
6.) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
I know, I know. Me and 8.5 million other people in the first printing.
I have some quibbles with character motivation, angst for angst's sake, and unrealistic behaviour from Slytherins, but overall I found that it was what I'd been hoping for from this series all along--some complexity, finally. My only sadness is that she didn't bring that in a bit sooner. Lovely little in-jokes, though. My favorite line? "...Less truth than a chocolate frog card." That says a lot, especially if you notice that she introduced chocolate frog cards in book one and didn't really bring them up too much after that. But the reader knows immediately what she's talking about.
A request: If you have lived in Japan in the past, are currently in Japan, or are Japanese and read my journal (hi, S.!) could you please comment here and let me know if I can contact you for research I am interested in doing for two separate stories set in Japan? One is a short story and the other may be a comic. I want to know things but aren't sure where to start and I am afraid that doing too much digging on my own will lead to skewed research sources.