Takoyaki Journals

I've been ranting a lot lately...and I'm not done yet.  I have a few more coming up.  But I'd like to take a break to share something good.  I had to go to Chicago for work on Wednesday, and I managed to slip over to Mitsuwa, the big Japanese shopping center they have, which has it's own bookstore.  And though they didn't have any of the Maru books (sadface) they did have the new Arakawa Hiromu manga 'Silver Spoon.'

I can't think of the last time I was this charmed by a manga.  I mean, I adore 'Stepping on Roses' but half of my enjoyment is the overtop ridiculous melodrama.  Silver Spoon is just plain good.

It's a 'Slice of Life' manga that takes place at an agricultural high school in Hokkaido.  The protagonist, Hachiken Yuugo, is a total fish out of water here.  He's basically spent his whole life studying, and now he finds himself totally unprepared for all the manual labor and animals and everything that all the other students are pretty used to. 

It's got all of the Arakawa sense of humor, and I kept laughing out loud when... for instance Hachiken thinks he's stumbled on a group of guys looking at a porn mag...but they're really looking at a catalog of cows for sale.  Or his reaction to finding out that chicken eggs and chicken shit come from the same hole. 

But what really impresses me is the pacing.  Of course, Arakawa is a HUGE name at this point, but it's still refreshing that the manga doesn't lead with a monologue of who Hachiken is and why he's ended up all the way in Hokkaido.  At the end of the first volume we know that by the end of middle school Hachiken was basically burnt out from all the studying and juku, and looking to escape from his home life.  But we don't yet know anything about that home life.  And since all he's done is hit the books, Hachiken hasn't taken the time to really find out what he wants to do, and so now he's looking to figure out what exactly his dream really is.  And I can tell these things are going to unfold slowly, and that's a good thing.  Too many manga front load too much, then have problems when they need to figure out what happens next.

I really hope this one does well, and that it gets an official translation.  And maybe an anime or live action adaptation >.>

You might remember that there were a few...incidents when I listened to Mary Roach's book Bonk on audiobook. My luck continues to hold.

I'm at my parents' this week, and I've been spending most of my time refinishing a dining room table so that I will finally have one of my own.  While I work on the table I've been listening to Richard Dawkins' 'The Selfish Gene' on audiobook.  I thought it would be less dangerous than leaving my music on shuffle and having parents/neighbors hear foul language and/or a grown woman who has Chipmunks music on her playlist. 

So I'm putting the top coat onto the chair legs when my dad comes out to check my progress.  And Richard....who's been talking about cuckoos and fig wasps and wolves suddenly launches into speculation on why humans lost their penis bone, and how a hydraulic erection could be a sign of fitness and health.

*hides face in hands*

So I have totally been in the mood for fluffy, funny historical romance novels lately. Just...something happy you know? But most of what I've been reading is crap.

There is no excuse for this! Genre fiction, and I think romance novels in particular get a bad rap for being trash. But I've read a lot of good ones that I've really enjoyed. So when I was in the mood, and I couldn't find anything, I asked people for reccomendations. And I've been reading my way through them, and half of them make me want to committ an act of violence, because they're nice and readable until they introduce the idiot ball.

( So, yeah, let's talk about the Idiot Ball. )

So I not only watch a lot of odd nonfiction TV, I also read a lot of odd nonfiction books. I was reading Stephen Ray Gould's "Full House," which is an interesting book about evolution and baseball. I skipped the baseball chapters altogether but the evolution bits were interesting. And he talks a lot about the Drunkard's Walk. Which is like a mathematical way of saying 'you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.' And that if you start at a fixed point, and move randomly...you'll end up somewhere.

This resulted in the best diagram in the history of nonfiction ever.
( I give you... )

So, do you guys remember when there was a meme going around about how people don't read anymore, and there was a list of 100 classic books to see if you'd read them or not? (which was totally not the list that was actually in the article, but I digress) Well you see, I like to read nonfiction, and I was sad to see that there were NO nonfiction books on that list.

So I went looking for a list of top 100 nonfiction books...but there wasn't one. So I set out to make one of my own. And with the help of many of you on my flist, I have now put together a list that I think is pretty good. For the most part it's not filled with classics, it's filled with the recent popular. I tried to have a good mix of history, science, memoir and such. I could have probably made a list solely out of food related books. It's not perfect, but I'm still pretty pleased.

I'm going to write up another post with my answers, and I'd be as pleased as punch to see you all put this on your journal, and see what your answers are.

( I love to read nonfiction! )

Last night I bought a couple of books off of Amazon's Marketplace that lets you buy used books from 3rd parties. They're out of print, so I was glad to find them. Even better, when I got my confirmation mail this morning, I found out that the proceeds from my order are going to charity. The dealer, Better World Books, is devoted to World Literacy and has it's own website where you can sell or buy new and used books, organize book drives and all sorts of things.

Cool stuff.

Is there anything worse than being 30 pages from the end of a good mystery novel, knowing you're JUST about to find out whodunnit, when your lunch break ends and you have to go back to work?