complaints

 The one thing I dreadfully miss is the ease of buying books in languages that I can read.

Here they aren't even available online anymore, not since Amazon packed up shop and left and Taobao has everything but not the kind of books I need.

99 problems 

tidbits

Say one thing about lunch say it was leftovers that combined to make too huge a meal portion and I ate it all.

I sit at home waiting for people to come and install the machine and it might take a while since it's pouring. The rain has abruptly started and ts coming down like a flood.

Ah well, not like I've to be out someplace.

---

I've started watching a new Japanese series on Netflix called 'the naked director' and it's looking quite interesting.
No one does sex stuff like the Japanese do.
They pick out the oddest topics to build upon and do it exceedingly well.

So far I've watched 'my husband won't fit' and 'Love fortune' and they were both excellent, both in terms of the kind of sexual intimacy they show and the issues they amplify.

Also in the market for a new anime and there's this lovely manga I'm reading up on called 'Gogol' which is also going pretty good.

oh yes, and the current audiobook after Black Knife Caine is from Dresden Files called 'the change' and after caine, it just feels so mellow.

I also did a bit of palette cleansing with an Agatha Christie audiobook called 'the third girl'. It was a Poirot mystery and pretty interesting as these books go.

Yeah, so there has been a lot of content consumption and while I read the 9th Malazan book I realize the need for reading something else because Malazan isn't what one would call a binge read and so I'm contemplating some serious literature or something madly fluffy.
Can't decide.

and then some

After editing over a 100 pictures I have not the energy left to give words to those pictures. Sad, but that's the way of it.

Yes I have time to get on with writing a half decent food blog, but what am I if not calculative of time?
Half decent won't do you see, or so I make excuses, because there are things to read, and by things I mean 'Deadhouse Gates', yessir, I have been reading that little word atomic bomb and can I just say that it has blown a fuse inside of me.
That I've not read a book so fantastically complete and thrilling would be to put it rather mildly because it has taken me apart bit by bit and blasted away whatever remains of me in awestruck wonder.
I am little windblown puffs of myself or rather whatever semblance of me ever existed..and I'm not just saying that because the book is liberally doused with some of my favourite wordage like 'chitinous', 'chalcedony' and the likes..

speaking of books, I'm currently listening to 'death masks' by 'jim Butcher' which is probably the 5th of Dresden Files books and it's going fantastically.
been listening to it while editing pictures..yes I have.

I'm also going to start on a new drawing in a couple of days..a thought that's been swirling in my head like a thick drop of ink in a vase of water which needs putting on paper before it dissolves into a murky liquid.

reads

I was first introduced to Orhan Pamuk via "museum of innocence', a book I'd picked up innocently enough about 5 years ago. It looked fat and promising and once I began reading it, I realized it was deeply engaging in a rather enlightening way.

Enlightenment not in the form of some ground breaking philosophical movement, but as a window into another culture; more like a cultural cross section of another country, where you're not only provided a birds eye view but also thrust deep into its underlying politico socio economic imagery which runs as a background to a story that's taking place on center stage. 

It's a lot about how lives are intertwined and sometimes mired and affected both discordantly and positively. 

The canvas is small but the story keeps changing colours; running,merging, intersecting with many a rationalities and values. A stream of parallel attitudes, theories, paradox and reasonings working alongside that one story which doesn't promise to entertain, but rather deconstructs without baring any conclusions. 

The nuances are subtle and prose utterly gorgeous. He works beautifully with contradictions and its rather easy to be engulfed in his story telling. 

I'd followed up on some more of his works with 'the silent house' and 'my name is red' and picked up 'snow' while I was visiting home. It was sitting pretty on my dads bookshelf and I had to borrow it.

Is it depressing? well, it's not the kind of work of fiction that depresses you or exhilarates you. It doesn't have the kind of entertainment value that fantasy books have.. this is a different sort of read. You read it from a literature point of view and every time you surface up to breathe, you know you've etched out a few more indents added new surfaces to understanding

Morse code books and long day

Today has been an unforgivably long day. So long, that I was almost ready to call it a night this afternoon. It's not 3:00pm still, and yet it feels like this day is done with. 

My study table is occupied for various other reason, which means I'm effectively out of drawing business this pm. 

No skin off my nose, because I've books that need to be made love to. 

I haven't started reading this book yet, and I'm already attached to it through invisible strings.

 A metaphorical harp to my heart, so to say. Each page, a sonorous twang of nostalgic chords. 

I love how this book smells. 

That my soul forensics have a perfect match for fingerprints found on each page of this book. 

That it's had a pair of almond eyes hovering on them..that it's been held by digits so warm—one'd gleefully combust under their touch. 

  A bodiless exchange of esoteric secret atoms. 

Asomatous mathematical equation that only those disposed to finding wormholes in torn fabrics of space and time would solve and understand..of how physical objects assume intangible qualities, capable of broadcasting unfathomable signals of passion to stir melancholy and fervor. 

Book update

Finished reading 'salvation of a saint' by Keigo Higashino, and I'm like wha??? times infinity. I mean come on, I mean whaa??oh man. It's rattled my rib cage and splintered my brain and I couldn't have guessed the perfect crime. 

The thing about Higashino's crime investigations is that you end up taking sides with the killer. You're in absolute sympathy with the murderer. 

Also that you're aware from chapter one about the real identity of the killer. You knows who's done the deed, but HOW is the big question and that mon amour is where the crux of the matter lies. The how and wtf? of it.

Ah, tomorrow I start with another book..and after that I give myself a break for a while. Or maybe not. Who knows. 

Booxxx

Reading two different books simultaneously is not something I could ever do. 

I can read one book, listen to another audiobook and go through varied comics at the same time, but two reading two proper books isn't a strong suit. 

So let's see

-currently reading 'devotion of suspect x'

-currently listening (audiobook) 'before they are hanged'

-current comics/ graphic novel 'Maus'

 

I think it might be a subconscious thing to consummately devote, to the point of obsessive madness to one thing at a time.  Not a very charming trait I presume, but one that I cannot change. 

Speaking of audiobooks, I might be nearing the end of this one and soon on to the final 'argument of Kings'.

Having heard so many ornamental phrases about Malazan, I'm wondering if I shouldn't listen to those audiobooks, once I've finished 'first law series'. 

Would I turn into a hipster too? ;) 

'Devotion of suspect x', I'll probably finish by tomorrow and on to the next after that. 

 

Book story

Sunk moi fangs in this tonight and it already has me trapped. 

Why is this author publicized as the Japanese 'Stieg Larsson'? Why can't he just be Higashino?

 What's the need to identify someone's written work to some other popular writer's successful piece?

 People do that all the time, and it's so unsettling. It's like 'now I can't even identify my stuff as mine, without having someone compare it to another famous whatever'.

 It's never a compliment. 

Book bait and sensational series

Life feels so depressing after you've finished an excellent book or an awesome tv series. 

You almost feel lifeless, like there's nothing coherent to look forward to in terms of visual/word fixation. Something to curl up to at night, something to stick in your lap under a lamp light. 

One day you're binge watching and the next day you're scavenging your hard drive for something unseen. 

Ok, so I just finished this excellent excellent superbly awesome tv series called 'happy valley'. One of the nicest crime drama you could ever hope to watch. And I didn't just watch it, I binge watched it. Both seasons! In 4 days! Done! 

Speaking of books.. finished 'moving pictures' last night and I'm a Pratchett convert. It had me salivating to turn each page impatiently, just so I could swallow that beautiful abstract eccentricity asap. I hung on the precipice of each sentence, gob smacked, awestruck and squealing in ecstatic mirth. 

So book over, series over what to do? I don't know about series but books I've plenty enqued 

These are the five books I intend on finishing one after another. No dawdling, no excuses. Just reading. 

Today I start with Mr. Capote. How can I ever resist a true crime story? How can I ever? I'm the biggest sucker there ever is for true crime and I expect nothing short of spectacular from Truman. 

Series recommendations are feverishly welcome! The seventh episode for 'preacher' hasn't come out yet, and I intend to jam pack each day, each minute, each moment with something. I shan't spend a fraction of any day wondering what to do or getting bored or sitting idle. (Apparently that's why I was down with fever too) but hah! to that.

Downdates

If I were stuck on an island with only a sack of food, I would not ration well. I'd probably eat it all up the first week and then think of ways to keep myself from starving. Probably dive and catch fish or fashion a spear out of trees or something similarly idiotic, but man oh man I can't ration on good things. 

Case in point all the pending tv series that had collected into a huge heap of virtual gratification during those few weeks I was sunning myself down under. 

There were three episodes of 'The Expanse', three of 'American dad' and two of 'Family guy' and what did I do? 

I downloaded them all within the span of one hour and spent that one whole day watching them all back to back. 

 

No, I didn't think "let's save an episode each for later, until the next ones come out so you won't have a terribly long gap in between"..in fact I did think of that and dismissed it as a fairly silly rational. 

So I watched them all, and by the end of the day I was sitting empty handed, faced with the reality of actually doing some real work now that my excuses for being busy were all exhausted. Ugh!! 

So what did I do? I downloaded another anime I'd been meaning to watch called 'pet shop of horrors' and much to my delight it was not only awesome but fantastically freakin fabulous..and to my dismay it was only four episodes long—each episode not more then 20 minutes (sad face). So yeah that was over before I did dinner..now what? 

My brain feels famished now that I've so much free time on me. 

Strummed on my uke for hours, for a second I thought my neighbors were going to break in and beseech me to stop the music, but then I remembered I have no neighbors so rock on with the foetus guitar.  

In the past few weeks I've finished almost 4 books. I don't know how it came to be, but all the while I was lazing on the beach  or had any spare time be it between eating or traveling, I just read read and read some more. By the gods, I'm done with all the transmetropolitans ( and how much fun were they), a manga, an uber fat novella of horror stories and a book by Terry Pratchett. 

Imagine that, from having a dry reading spell to chomping through a big fat heap of books.

I've started on a new one too..and this one I found in a quaint little second hand store that was right next to my hotel in Sydney.

This one!!!

 Robotech was the first ever anime I watched, and I was but a child that time, and imagine my surprise when I found this. Apparently the author painstakingly incorporated material from the original manga scripts and RPG's to create these wonderful storylines. Being given additional characters details by comic company, these books were created under the Robotech franchise..and man did I jump with glee when I spotted this. So now it's mine, and it's just as much fun to leaf through its musty pages now, as it was watching it as a child. Of course the storyline is completely different, all this happening years after where the series ended..but still. 

The big book disappointment was the collection of horror stories. Man, the front cover was so dark and supposedly scary, but the stories were a fizzle. Just meh. I mean they had no scares, none whatsoever. Most of them ended when I expected to read more. Horror has scaled down these days..from the scary thrills and shocks we seemed to have stepped down into 'let's do something new, born again horror and give chills of a mysterious nature, where the reader is left wondering'..I mean come on. 

This needs to be rectified.

And oh there's more, so much more..and soon.