fallen on bookish days

Lust struck in the bookstore once again. I twitched. I went a bit dizzy.

And now I have two new books in my possession.

To the left is Ume Kayo’s book of photographs, Danshi (男子), which I have wanted for awhile.

To the right is Dandelion – a book of photographs by Takahashi Yoko of actress Aoi Yu traveling through Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railway. (You can see some photographs from the book here)

Of course, Dandelion was purchased on superficial inclinations. Aoi Yu is very pretty, and the clothes, colors, & setting lull me into lip-biting whimsy.

**

Working on a new project, so my floor and desk have fallen on gloomily disorganized days. Details soon.

**

Saw ASA-CHANG&巡礼 in concert the other day, and how rare! I feel invigorated about music again.

asa-chang & junray performing in france:

…and a music video:

Hat Collection / Paperwork

Click here to view the entire book. Can you tell I adore hats?

In boring life news, I finally have turned in graduate school applications. It always seems, however, that whenever I get a chance to breathe a sigh of relief, the list of errands and to-be-filled-out forms expands. Future tax forms loom especially in my horizon. I suppose no one enjoys these things, though. I wish humans could hibernate and not think about anything for half a year. Wouldn’t that be delightful? Maybe then my eyes wouldn’t twitch so much…

But – and this is my not-boring life news – I have tickets to go away for a bit and ignore/worry about paperwork from afar. That means that I can look forward to almost-hibernating from the doldrums of life for a couple of weeks. Bangkok, Kunming, Hong Kong I go!!!

Books of 2008

(In order that I read them)
1. Snow Country Yasunari Kawabata
2. Austerlitz W.G. Sebald
3. Kokoro Natsume Soseki
4. Lizard Banana Yoshimoto
5. 猫目小僧 (Cat-Eyed Boy) 楳図かずお (Kazuo Umezu) *
6. Some Prefer Nettles Junichiro Tanizaki
7. Confessions of a Mask Yukio Mishima
8. ブッダ 第１巻:カピラヴァストウ (Buddha Volume 1: Kapilavastu) 手塚治 (Osamu Tezuka)*
9. Thousand Cranes Yasunari Kawabata
10. Modern Japanese Literature ed. by Donald Keene
11. The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy
12. Nausea Jean-Paul Sartre
13. Modern Japanese Stories ed. by Ivan Morris
14. Patriotism Yukio Mishima
15. 双子のオヤジ (The Twin Middle-Aged Men) しりあがり寿 (Shiriagari Kotobuki)*
16. 子供の遊び (Child’s Play) 西岡兄妹 (Nishioka Kyoudai)*
*read in Japanese

An unremarkable year in reading. One of my goals in 2009 is to read a little more, and my aim is to read one manga in Japanese and one book in English every month.

I don’t really know why I really like reading in the first place, but whenever I do stumble upon a good book, I think its ability to make me believe (however fleetingly) that books are capable of influencing insight and the imagination is usually enough for me. Sometimes, certain books (anthologies I read in 2008) are hard to get through, though, and the only goal I have then is to just finish since I don’t want to see such heavy, boring books hanging around, anymore. Out of the books I read, though, I can recommend some interesting, non-boring ones: Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask (This is the only book I like by him that I’ve read so far), Sartre’s Nausea, and the manga I read this year was pretty all right, too.

I’m now halfway through Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, having picked it out from the dust of my bookshelves after many months. It’s not light reading, and I won’t get through it by the new year. It’s quite good, but my brain is rotting…

And lastly, HAPPY NEW YEAR, everyone! I hope you all have a merry time. I will be eating mochi cream all day, and I hope you will also have many delicious, delicious treats!