Chuck out +$150 for a PB? LOL
I just got some PB news, which I will talk in a minute. That made me wonder if Aoi Miyazaki had any PBs, so I went to YesAsia to look it up. Amazon.co.jp
Anyway, just read the Juri Ueno, who is planning to release a trip/photobook-y DVD called AO AKUA (YesAsia – Amazon.co.jp
Also… I found this
Also known as Izu no Odoriko, or The Izu Dancer is the first published work (1926) to achieve popularity and acclaimed by Yasunari Kawabata. The book, very much like Kyoto, is about nothing at all… in fact, this is just a compilation of stories put together.
The first one, which gives the name to the book is one of the few interesting ones, as well as Diario de mi Decimosexto Año that tells some of the moments of Kawabata’s dying grandfather. Some other stories I liked were La Princesa del Palacio Dragón, El Camino de Monedas, and Una Oración en Lengua Materna.
Despite that, the just over 200-page book seemed to be a very long and slow book, compared to the reading time it took me to finish Kyoto. If you are a fan of Yasunari Kawabata’s writing about a time and a place and the people, you might enjoy this compilation of stories. If you’re looking for an introduction to him, or an epic tale about Japan… you might want to skip this one.
ARGH! >,<x
So the apartment where me lives is getting new paint, so me is crashing on the other side. They painted the ceiling today, and ARGH!! The paint splattered all over my graphic and photography books… of all the books I had, it had to stain the graphic and photography books. WTF! It splattered all over my Juri Ueno A Piacere, it stained my Yu Aoi Travel Sand and Dandelion… lucky for Yu, those two have plastic cover and they covered the Kaiten TABURU PB… but my Juri PB wasn’t so lucky… neither was my Mario Testino book, or some of my other heavily graphic books.
I thought you’re supposed to cover all stuff with plastic… so how the xxxx do they splattered on THOSE books.
Someone must pay! 8-S Someone’s tainted my PBs…
… or at least scarce.
First, with Maca’s announcement that Twilight earned a little over $70M this past weekend… which isn’t really surprising considering the amount of promotion they did trying to shove it down my throat. Ugh.
If I want smut, I’ll head over to read smutty fanfiction on HP characters, thankyouverymuch.
If I want a broody dark vampire to save my life, I’ll love Angel forever and always. If I wanna rough it up with a bleached rockish vamp with a ‘tude, I’ll pick Spike. If I wanna watch/read an interesting vampire story, I’ll watch/read Let the Right One In (Låt den Rätte Komma in)… and please, NO REMAKES.
THEN! It gets WORSE. UGH! I just read that Pushing Daisies is over. EF it ABC – what the heck, they keep on stretching pretty stupid uninteresting Grey’s Anatomy’s storylines… go wacky with Lost, which I never enjoyed, and you kill Pushing Daisies. WTF! Shut your Pie Hole ABC… >,<x
Over this past weekend, I decided to look for the Osen manga again… I had tried times before, but ended up in nothing. However, this past weekend… THIS PAST WEEKEND! I found a group that are scanlating Osen!
Thank you Kotonoha!
Osen is a 12 volume (and ongoing) manga series, which gave way to Yu Aoi’s Osen NTV adaptation this year. And I liked the series, so I wanted to read the manga… Kotonoha has only uploaded the first two chapters of the first volume, but I am already liking it. MangaOsen is different to JDramaOsen… at first I had an issue with how skanky MangaOsen looked on the cover, but she already has me after the 2nd chapter xD
So I am hoping they continue releasing scanlations for this one, because I wanna continue reading.
Well, just finished reading Toda Mafalda by Quino, which my mom owned but we never bother to finish reading. I only ever read Mafalda on the single strips that are featured on the newspaper, so it was a fun delight to read it all in one go! ^^
Some of the strips are far more fun than others, but nonetheless I enjoyed reading the whole thing as a sequence. I love that while going from vignette to vignette, I could picture friends and members of my family being a little Mafalda inside, as well as a little Manolito, a Susanita, little Felipe… we all have a little Mafalda character inside xD
Though… a big THOUGH – I found the paragraphed text on the history of Mafalda, and other extra info VERY hard to read because of layout, and size of font and amount of info displayed in one page… that’s perhaps the biggest NO in the book. However, doesn’t make it unreadable… if you enjoy Mafalda on your newspaper, you’ll probably enjoy it here as well.
It took me 3 months (almost 4) to finish reading The Sally Lockhart Mysteries series – shameful I tell you! Four books in that time, shameful!
Thank you, Diana, for letting me borrow these. ^^
So Sally… from the books by Pullman that I’ve read, I noticed that I like his style. Though the more you read him, the more you can predict… guess it’s always like that. The first book on this series, The Ruby in the Smoke, was quite interesting in story and themes. I highly doubt they would’ve let me read this book in school, which deals with the opium trade, dealing, and usage… stuff like murders, extorsion… LOL’ not your very typical ‘children’ literature.
The next book, The Shadow in the North, went sort of the same path with murders and extorsion, but focused a lot more on the financing aspect. However the book wasn’t as good, even though you get to care a little bit more about the characters, and grow up with them. There is also a eh… bedroom scene? xD It reminded me of those PG-13 fanfiction stories. It was intimate on its own, awkward… but you know, it does its purpose for the next book~~~ xD
Book 3, The Tiger in the Well, has some very interestingly written chapters… or maybe just paragraphs. However, by this point, I was beginning to think it was so predictable. I clearly remember I began reading the first chapter, and said out loud “I bet this and that is the one behind!” and then BAM! “I knew it!“. Despite the no-surprise, I enjoyed reading this even more than TSitN… Perhaps it was because it was more complex to me, and I enjoyed Sally discovering how as herself she was a lady, but as someone else she was just a woman… and yes, everybody seemed to be lusting over her. LOL’
Finally Book4, The Tin Princess, which is not really a Sally Lockhart mystery… she’s barely in it. This one was okay, I have nothing against Adelaide, or Becky… and I do like Jim. There are some very well written parts in this one two, but I often found myself skimming. The ending… the ending? I didn’t care enough to… care?
You know how His Dark Materials has sort of a bittersweet ending… more bitter than sweet? This one has a bittersweet ending sweeter than bitter~ LOL’
I do… I do like digital downloads, but can’t figured out WHY an eBook is as expensive as buying a book. Also, can’t understand why digital films are as expensive as buying a cheap DVD… and don’t get me started on music~~
Also… region restriction? Sucky. Digital should be for all.
Does anybody know good online stores for digital content available internationally?
*EDIT*
For eBooks, I seemed to have found ebooks.com, who answered my email wondering if international users have access to the books there. They told me that some books have region restrictions, but that most are available to anyone.
Actually name of the book in Spanish is “Kioto,” but I can never get used to writing Kyoto with an “i” – I don’t think I can write “Tokio” either, there’s just something odd for me…
Anyway, I bought this book on Monday… short one, “The Old Capital,” it’s called in English, from the original Japanese title “Koto,” referring to Kyoto which was Japan’s capital back in the day~ xD – I bought this book because I’m superficial and buy books by their covers. LOL’ ~ I had seen a bunch of books in the store, and read a bunch of synopsis, but eventually returned them to the rack… but not this one, because I liked the cover. xD
Written by writer from Osaka, Yasunari Kawabata, who won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968 (First Japanese, and only?). In fact, this was one of the books mentioned (but I didn’t know this) … sadly, he killed himself 4 years later.
Kyoto (sorry, can’t type it with an “i”) is a book about nothing. There’s no BOOM by the end of the story, but yet it is a surprisingly good read. You know? Like one of those films that is about a little about everything, but nothing at all? Just like that. But just so you know exactly… the back of the book says it’s about a 20-year-old girl named Chieko in Post-War Kyoto, daughter of a Kimono maker, who discovers she was an abandoned child, despite her ‘parents’ story. Then one day, she discovers something while attending one of the many festivities in the city.
When I first began reading, I had a picture in my mind of how Chieko looked like (you may have an idea of who)~~ But then, I decided to look it up online, and found out that there was a made-for-tv-movie done for this, and OH SADNESS! I was kinda disappointed with the choice of Chieko~ T_T
Though the Spanish translation seems good enough, it does lose some UMPH… and it makes me wonder how it would look with the use of Japanese Honorifics. I mean, they already used words such as geisha, and maiko… so why not keep the honorifics too? I think it would’ve been a better read…
The book gets very nostalgic at points, there’s also some funny moments here and there, and there are parts that I don’t think I really got… which requires me to read it again. xD All in all, this book is a keeper~ and I want to check out other books by Kawabata.
So… Hayato Ichihara also has a Photobook of his own. It came out in 2006 and it features photos by Yoshiaki Sugiyama of a 19-year-old Hayato… there’s even an image reminding us of his debut of All About Lily Chou Chou (in which he shared the screen with Yu Aoi)~~
Well, you can get his Photobook in here:
beNippon.com [minimum shipping $8 I think…]
YesAsia.com [free shipping when reaching $90 for International orders, and cheaper for US, Canada, etc]
The book features 90+ pages of Hayato being silly, included rabbit costume photos (like the one on the cover), making faces with an oba-chan, and even a naked butt…. LOL’
But don’t worry, it’s not only fun and games~~ there’s also some artistic shots of Hayato wearing his traditional Japanese clothing, some with a tux, and some very cool black and white shots. And I will be posting a teasing image… no, it’s not the butt. It’s a really nice shot of Hayato in Japanese outfit running up a stony set of stairs~~~
As with Yu’s Travel Sand scan, I’ve added some photo and PB credits~~ It’s a wallpaper sized 1680x1050px, there’s also a more ‘squarer’ version of it (fullscreen one sized 1280×1024) if you are interested. Just leave a comment either here or Flickr.
