it's a slippery slope
Jan. 3rd, 2006 02:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksI discovered earlier today that I was totally out of clean clothes that weren't a very, very short skirt, so I put on the very short skirt, and that led inexorably to a shirt that looks good with it (i.e. cleavage) which led to a corset under the shirt to make the shirt look better which led to... and the upshot is that I spent forty-five minutes getting dressed this morning and am, in fact, wearing fishnets. And fingerless leather gloves. And am in general an impressive specimen of American Goth Trying Not To Freeze, c. 2006, except sans makeup and bitch boots and accessorized nightclub because I have no particular desire to actually leave the house.
Does this ever happen to anyone else?
In other news, I've set up my bookblogging post for 2006, which I may well break up into a month-by-month thing if I always end up reading the quantity of things I read in December '05.
I think this was the first whole month in my entire life in which I actually managed to write down everything I read, excluding single issues of comics and magazines and stuff on the Internet because I didn't want to spend more time logging than actually reading stuff. So it's really interesting to me to see what the trends are. I probably won't go into it carefully every month, though.
It looks to me as though I read eighteen non-graphic books, of which one was analysis of comics and one was discussion of anime fandom. Five of those were re-reads, including almost everything after I went to Ohio-- I seem to have gone into comfort-reading mode on that trip. Two were book-length poetical works (Shelley's The Cenci and Eliot's Four Quartets) and I went into a spasm of poetry about the middle of the month, which had a very definite beginning and end. (Hm.) My only non-comics/anime-related nonfiction books were memoirs. Only two of the fiction books can be classified as not fantasy/SF, and both were read at the instigations of other people (Karen Cushman's The Ballad of Lucy Whipple, recommended by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
coffeeandink, and Owen Wister's The Virginian, read for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
yuletide and also my first e-book ever). I started one book which I gave up because I found it boring, but other than that finished everything I started.
I read twenty-six graphical works, of which eight were not manga. Five of the list were re-reads-- either previous volumes of manga which had just had a new volume released, or things in my Ohio-comfort-reading phase. One work was scanslation and one was a dead-tree version of something previously read online. Of the manga, four were yaoi and one was yuri; of the rest, ten were shoujo and three were shounen. One was Ameri-manga (Dramacon, which I will be following).
I finished reading Kitchen Confidential aloud to my wife.
Thirty-seven of the forty-four things I read are owned by either myself or someone else in the household. (I did not make a library trip this month, which may explain that.)
In conclusion: I read very fast. (I knew that.) I read a lot of manga, which goes by faster than print (I knew that too) and probably too much lousy yaoi. However, I tend not to re-read manga except as a refresher for future installments. (I didn't know that.) This may mean that I ought to stop buying so much manga, as the primary reason I buy books is so that they will be accessible for re-reading. I should probably work at including some non-fantastical fiction and some non-fiction that isn't memoir, but my default is decisively fantasy. I re-read for comfort a lot. (Unsurprising.) I tend to pay no attention to my to-be-read list unless I am actively in a bookstore or library, which is why it hasn't gotten noticeably shorter since I made it.
And I actually don't feel like I spent as much time reading last month as I often do. Certainly I did a lot of other things, including spending a lot of time with other people and on the Net, and a fair quantity of time watching movies (although not much anime last month due to Ohioness). I suspect this of being a middling month book-wise, since I didn't go into any obsessive spasms of any one author, I didn't go to the library, and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell took me five days, because I was savoring it and in the throes of visiting some relatives as well. (My personal record for longest time spent reading any book uninterruptedly before finishing it is Moby Dick, which took two-and-a-half weeks.)
The best new fiction I read in December was Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, followed closely by The Virginian; the best re-read was Stranger Things Happen. The best non-fiction was decidedly Get Me Out of Here, by Rachel Reiland, and the best graphical work was Love My Life, by Ebine Yamaji (in scanslation). I didn't finish anything that actually sucked, except the stupid collection of quotes about dogs I was trapped in a waiting room with.
I need to start creating books more often. I love them too much not to make them.
Coming soon: Things I liked in '05 that other people may not have happened to stumble across, which should also happen to provide some infocoffeeandink was interested in.
Does this ever happen to anyone else?
In other news, I've set up my bookblogging post for 2006, which I may well break up into a month-by-month thing if I always end up reading the quantity of things I read in December '05.
I think this was the first whole month in my entire life in which I actually managed to write down everything I read, excluding single issues of comics and magazines and stuff on the Internet because I didn't want to spend more time logging than actually reading stuff. So it's really interesting to me to see what the trends are. I probably won't go into it carefully every month, though.
It looks to me as though I read eighteen non-graphic books, of which one was analysis of comics and one was discussion of anime fandom. Five of those were re-reads, including almost everything after I went to Ohio-- I seem to have gone into comfort-reading mode on that trip. Two were book-length poetical works (Shelley's The Cenci and Eliot's Four Quartets) and I went into a spasm of poetry about the middle of the month, which had a very definite beginning and end. (Hm.) My only non-comics/anime-related nonfiction books were memoirs. Only two of the fiction books can be classified as not fantasy/SF, and both were read at the instigations of other people (Karen Cushman's The Ballad of Lucy Whipple, recommended by
coffeeandink, and Owen Wister's The Virginian, read for yuletide and also my first e-book ever). I started one book which I gave up because I found it boring, but other than that finished everything I started.I read twenty-six graphical works, of which eight were not manga. Five of the list were re-reads-- either previous volumes of manga which had just had a new volume released, or things in my Ohio-comfort-reading phase. One work was scanslation and one was a dead-tree version of something previously read online. Of the manga, four were yaoi and one was yuri; of the rest, ten were shoujo and three were shounen. One was Ameri-manga (Dramacon, which I will be following).
I finished reading Kitchen Confidential aloud to my wife.
Thirty-seven of the forty-four things I read are owned by either myself or someone else in the household. (I did not make a library trip this month, which may explain that.)
In conclusion: I read very fast. (I knew that.) I read a lot of manga, which goes by faster than print (I knew that too) and probably too much lousy yaoi. However, I tend not to re-read manga except as a refresher for future installments. (I didn't know that.) This may mean that I ought to stop buying so much manga, as the primary reason I buy books is so that they will be accessible for re-reading. I should probably work at including some non-fantastical fiction and some non-fiction that isn't memoir, but my default is decisively fantasy. I re-read for comfort a lot. (Unsurprising.) I tend to pay no attention to my to-be-read list unless I am actively in a bookstore or library, which is why it hasn't gotten noticeably shorter since I made it.
And I actually don't feel like I spent as much time reading last month as I often do. Certainly I did a lot of other things, including spending a lot of time with other people and on the Net, and a fair quantity of time watching movies (although not much anime last month due to Ohioness). I suspect this of being a middling month book-wise, since I didn't go into any obsessive spasms of any one author, I didn't go to the library, and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell took me five days, because I was savoring it and in the throes of visiting some relatives as well. (My personal record for longest time spent reading any book uninterruptedly before finishing it is Moby Dick, which took two-and-a-half weeks.)
The best new fiction I read in December was Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, followed closely by The Virginian; the best re-read was Stranger Things Happen. The best non-fiction was decidedly Get Me Out of Here, by Rachel Reiland, and the best graphical work was Love My Life, by Ebine Yamaji (in scanslation). I didn't finish anything that actually sucked, except the stupid collection of quotes about dogs I was trapped in a waiting room with.
I need to start creating books more often. I love them too much not to make them.
Coming soon: Things I liked in '05 that other people may not have happened to stumble across, which should also happen to provide some info
coffeeandink was interested in.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-01-03 08:41 pm (UTC)I hope you liked The Ballad of Lucy Whipple and the Yourcenar, at least enough not to be a waste of time; and I am increasingly curious about Please Save My Earth.
La Esperanca seemed so promising when I thought all the problems with it were the fault of the scanslations.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-03 09:33 pm (UTC)Manga I've deliberately reread: Blade of the Immortal, Qwan, Saiyuki/Saiyuki Reload, Death Note. Manga that I dip into for art or layout: Hikaru no Go, Threads of Time, various manga in Shonen Jump and Shojo Beat ... er, well there's a lot more, but I'm blanking on them at the moment.
I recently went through my manga collection and culled about 50% or it, and sold 'em to Half-Price Books. Apparnetly manga are in high demand, because they gave me about twice the usual going rate for books - I had a friend who worked there who told me they give about 10% of what they think they can get for it, and I got 20%, about a buck a book. Whee! Well, not whee when I think about how much money I've spent on them over the past five years, but I try very hard not to think of that.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-03 10:04 pm (UTC)Never.
Well, hardly ever.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-06 05:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-03 10:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-04 12:52 am (UTC)Really.
---L.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-04 12:56 am (UTC)---L.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-04 03:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-04 02:51 pm (UTC)---L.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-04 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-05 03:17 am (UTC)<goes searching for his collected Webster>
---L.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-04 06:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-04 04:32 pm (UTC)Clearly, she shall need to put the outfit on again...
For pictures, of course. I have no ulterior motives whatsoever. None.
my gods, my wife is hot.no subject
Date: 2006-01-06 05:04 am (UTC)Wow. If I'm staying home I just wear pyjamas.