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Book Buying Sprees
Jul. 31st, 2010 11:16 pmWell, I'm gearing up to ordering my newest stack of uni books, this time for autumn semester - I keep eyeing my bookshelves and thinking how soon enough my bedroom will be more suited towards being a library than a room to sleep in. I still have fears of being crushed by all my books, should the walls crack under the weight of the shelves and I end up squashed under all the literature (well, and the geekier bits of my collection).
Lately, though, I've had a bit of a compulsive manga purchasing problem - namely Trinity Blood, which has battered my purse by being too pretty and buy-able. Plus, there was getting up-to-date with Genbu Kaiden, FINALLY managing to buy the final three vols of Fushigi Yugi after several years, just going ahead and buying Black Butler (because I knew it would happen sooner or later), and grabbing Kyousuke Motomi's Beast Master and Dengeki Daisy (which Viz has finally licensed, hurrah!). Personally, I think the root cause of all this is my weird guilt over how badly the manga industry's doing at the mo (though, they can't shelve the whole anime problem on me because I bloody SHELL OUT TOO MUCH MONEY FOR ANIME DVDS ALREADY - and the ones I do have to watch online will most probably never be licensed or were licensed several years ago and have fell into that gaping black hole where old anime boxsets go to die) and with how intimate I am with scanlations, yeah, so the ol' bank account is feeling the guilt.
Though, I don't know how many times I've had to rearrange my shelves, trying to get all my manga and anime to cohabit peacefully - but, with this new set of books coming in, I'll have to get creative. Well, it won't be too bad - the good thing about third year is there are less modules because of bigger courses, which inevitably leads to fewer course texts (though, those books will probably be thrashed out to within an inch of their lives). I only have four courses in autumn semester and two of them I'm already prepared for - creative writing doesn't really require a text (just your brain and many sleepless nights agonising over culling adverbs and the placement of commas [which is weirdly harder than you think]) and I already have my obscenely heavy Norton Shakespeare sitting on the shelf upstairs for the Shakespeare's Histories course. I have to get a few books for the 'War and Memory' module, though thanks to it involving books in pretty wide circulation (here's looking at you, 'Atonement'), I can get them all cheap off play.com's marketplace. Plus, 'Religion, Politics and Sex' requires just another one of those horrendously large anthologies.
I'll have quite the collection of bloody literary anthologies by graduation.
Still, mama is the owner of the debit card that will purchase the books, so my own account won't be feeling the economic strain - just my own self-imposed strain caused by manic manga buying. Damn you, Trinity Blood...
Also, latest animes I decided to dip into - Durarara (which revolves around the Irish myth of the dullahan and therefore made me want to laugh over the Japanese take on Irish people) and Serial Experiments Lain (which is one of those infamous anime series that seem to be required watching - so far, it is FUCKING WEIRD but, according to reviews I've looked over, that seems to be the universal response. I think I'm most disturbed by the animation's take on shadows, which are these quite devious-looking glowy spots spattered about with these kind of blood puddles. Still, the anime brings in the Japanese's seeming love of Western philosophy regarding the self and is based within a kind of internet related called the Wired [the anime was produced in the net's early days, like late 90s]). Also been following Kuroshitsuji II each week, an anime that has only compounded by bemusement towards Japanese censorship. I mean, seriously, a main character gouges another's eyeball out in the first episode and then we get a lot of naked female buttcheeks in the fifth - and we're talking about an anime open to a fairly young-ish audience, not one of the gorier, more action-based ones!
It makes me love the Japanese even more.
According to surveys done here in the West (namely, America), apparently 51% of anime consumers are over 25 and 40% are between 18-24 (hello, me), which I thought was really interesting. I guess those age bands kind of grew up with anime when it was new and harder to get your hands on, so we've held on to that initial love. Plus, there's all this bandying about at the moment of the 'death of anime', that it'll be a lost medium within 50 years, so that makes the current young adults officially the generation of geekery.
Closer to home, I've been avoiding London because - hell - the place is probably madness right now with all the tourists and people off work for holidays. Rickmansworth is already bad enough with all the slouchy, bored teenagers about (who I feel a weird amount of hostility towards - funny how just not being a teenager anymore makes you realise how damn annoying they are. I got stopped by this one little shit last week who asked in front of his gang of mates, in a really smarmy tone, what book I was carrying, as if making fun of a person with a book is the most hilarious thing ever [still, it was Poe, so he might enjoy some of the author's weirder stories]). Though, autumn collections are thankfully coming into the shops now, so I'll have to get down there at some point. Me and mama are interested in going into the City for geekier reasons, as London Zoo has late nights all Fridays in August, where apparently you get served mojitos, can dance around at a silent disco (?!?!), eat at a seafood buffet, and amble about looking at the animals. Plus, to further our animal geekery, we want to go visit the Marwell Zoo in Hampshire at some point and we've already got our tickets for BirdFair at the end of the month (because we had to push our geekery just that bit further).
Though, in less dorky recreation, we've got Julius Caeser in Stratford next Saturday - a matinée, so we're only up for the day but hopefully the weather will be fine so we can have a wander about the locks and there's usually random musicians out around the river when it is sunny.
Lately, though, I've had a bit of a compulsive manga purchasing problem - namely Trinity Blood, which has battered my purse by being too pretty and buy-able. Plus, there was getting up-to-date with Genbu Kaiden, FINALLY managing to buy the final three vols of Fushigi Yugi after several years, just going ahead and buying Black Butler (because I knew it would happen sooner or later), and grabbing Kyousuke Motomi's Beast Master and Dengeki Daisy (which Viz has finally licensed, hurrah!). Personally, I think the root cause of all this is my weird guilt over how badly the manga industry's doing at the mo (though, they can't shelve the whole anime problem on me because I bloody SHELL OUT TOO MUCH MONEY FOR ANIME DVDS ALREADY - and the ones I do have to watch online will most probably never be licensed or were licensed several years ago and have fell into that gaping black hole where old anime boxsets go to die) and with how intimate I am with scanlations, yeah, so the ol' bank account is feeling the guilt.
Though, I don't know how many times I've had to rearrange my shelves, trying to get all my manga and anime to cohabit peacefully - but, with this new set of books coming in, I'll have to get creative. Well, it won't be too bad - the good thing about third year is there are less modules because of bigger courses, which inevitably leads to fewer course texts (though, those books will probably be thrashed out to within an inch of their lives). I only have four courses in autumn semester and two of them I'm already prepared for - creative writing doesn't really require a text (just your brain and many sleepless nights agonising over culling adverbs and the placement of commas [which is weirdly harder than you think]) and I already have my obscenely heavy Norton Shakespeare sitting on the shelf upstairs for the Shakespeare's Histories course. I have to get a few books for the 'War and Memory' module, though thanks to it involving books in pretty wide circulation (here's looking at you, 'Atonement'), I can get them all cheap off play.com's marketplace. Plus, 'Religion, Politics and Sex' requires just another one of those horrendously large anthologies.
I'll have quite the collection of bloody literary anthologies by graduation.
Still, mama is the owner of the debit card that will purchase the books, so my own account won't be feeling the economic strain - just my own self-imposed strain caused by manic manga buying. Damn you, Trinity Blood...
Also, latest animes I decided to dip into - Durarara (which revolves around the Irish myth of the dullahan and therefore made me want to laugh over the Japanese take on Irish people) and Serial Experiments Lain (which is one of those infamous anime series that seem to be required watching - so far, it is FUCKING WEIRD but, according to reviews I've looked over, that seems to be the universal response. I think I'm most disturbed by the animation's take on shadows, which are these quite devious-looking glowy spots spattered about with these kind of blood puddles. Still, the anime brings in the Japanese's seeming love of Western philosophy regarding the self and is based within a kind of internet related called the Wired [the anime was produced in the net's early days, like late 90s]). Also been following Kuroshitsuji II each week, an anime that has only compounded by bemusement towards Japanese censorship. I mean, seriously, a main character gouges another's eyeball out in the first episode and then we get a lot of naked female buttcheeks in the fifth - and we're talking about an anime open to a fairly young-ish audience, not one of the gorier, more action-based ones!
It makes me love the Japanese even more.
According to surveys done here in the West (namely, America), apparently 51% of anime consumers are over 25 and 40% are between 18-24 (hello, me), which I thought was really interesting. I guess those age bands kind of grew up with anime when it was new and harder to get your hands on, so we've held on to that initial love. Plus, there's all this bandying about at the moment of the 'death of anime', that it'll be a lost medium within 50 years, so that makes the current young adults officially the generation of geekery.
Closer to home, I've been avoiding London because - hell - the place is probably madness right now with all the tourists and people off work for holidays. Rickmansworth is already bad enough with all the slouchy, bored teenagers about (who I feel a weird amount of hostility towards - funny how just not being a teenager anymore makes you realise how damn annoying they are. I got stopped by this one little shit last week who asked in front of his gang of mates, in a really smarmy tone, what book I was carrying, as if making fun of a person with a book is the most hilarious thing ever [still, it was Poe, so he might enjoy some of the author's weirder stories]). Though, autumn collections are thankfully coming into the shops now, so I'll have to get down there at some point. Me and mama are interested in going into the City for geekier reasons, as London Zoo has late nights all Fridays in August, where apparently you get served mojitos, can dance around at a silent disco (?!?!), eat at a seafood buffet, and amble about looking at the animals. Plus, to further our animal geekery, we want to go visit the Marwell Zoo in Hampshire at some point and we've already got our tickets for BirdFair at the end of the month (because we had to push our geekery just that bit further).
Though, in less dorky recreation, we've got Julius Caeser in Stratford next Saturday - a matinée, so we're only up for the day but hopefully the weather will be fine so we can have a wander about the locks and there's usually random musicians out around the river when it is sunny.
