long and useless

You know, you don't really think about it at first; there's so much going on in the seventh book, that all the stories meld together into this single narrative that you get drawn into and then the next moment, poof! you've finished and are now grumbling about the epilogue. (For the record, I'm now mostly neutral about the epilogue. Coulda definitely lived without it, but I get why she wrote it the way she did.)

I remember not liking Dumbledore a great deal through sections of the series, like in PoA through OotP, and in HBP, it was odd to start liking him again. And then you get the whole Dumbledore backstory in DH and you think, oh. so that's it. No wonder. And it really changes your perspective on this guy you thought was as big a manipulator as anyone else in the series; he's still a manipulator, but you can almost love him for it. (Sort of...)

I guess this is just me professing a love for Professor Dumbledore. I'm not sure why the sudden upwelling of emotion, but it might have something to do with rereading books six and seven and remembering how much I loved those books and the fact that I quite think Albus and Gellert have one of those sorrowful stories that are always there, lurking in the background, but don't surface enough so that it's shoved in your face. The story itself is obviously still all Harry's; it's just that if you think about it, if you really think about it, it was very much Albus' story as well.

And I can't help get all weepy and stupid over things like Grindelwald not telling Voldemort where the wand is, Albus delaying his duel with Gindelwald because he was afraid of knowing his greatest fear - who actually killed Ariana, the long estrangement between him and Aberforth, and the fact that Albus really was alone in the world, for all people said the school and staff were his family. But considering it took Rita Skeeter to give us something even resembling a history for this character, I'm thinking that for a large part, Dumbledore never let anyone close enough to have them truly become his family.

Okay. Now I'm all maudlin. It's the holidays, I swear.

Dude, I really wish I understood the appeal of High School Musical.

The new season of Smallville is wonderful; Lois and Clark moments abound! I've been waiting since, well, season four for this to start and get some steam going. I know, essentially, the Clark and Lana relationship had to resolve first, but it took so very, very long.

House is not very interesting this season, thus far.

I keep missing Bones.

I finally watched the second X-Files movie and it... was... odd.

I need to find a new anime-viewing-partner since I left all mine back in Japan. *weeps*

Is it weird that I don't like the Twilight books, but I can't wait for the movie to come out? I totally want to be in the theatre for that and see how they do 'sparkly vampires' and whether a screen!Edward would tick me off quite so much.

The Chaos;head anime is strangely hilarious. Creepy!Otaku for the win!

I just read Yotsuba and seriously, one of the funniest manga I've read of late. No relationship drama! No angst drama! No four-panel comedy sketches! Just lots of wackiness, and I am so into it right now.

I'm finally catching up with Tsubasa and XXXholic.

Catching up with Inuyasha is something I'm debating right now; can I really go through fifty+ volumes of Inuyasha/Kagome angst again?

Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece are somewhere on that list.

I bought five new yaoi manga volumes yesterday, and I haven't touched them yet. I was perusing the shelves and there sure are a lot of new ones. As in, there are ones I never thought would get translated and published in the US.

I'm really boring today.

That is all.

Honor Harrington was very interesting in the first novel. The second and third weren't bad either. You know... I loved the first few novels of the series. I really did.

And then she became this terrible bitch and it's not even a very good bitch. I can't believe how much I dislike her now. From Ashes of Victory (the ninth book in the series) to the current one, At All Costs (the eleventh), it's clear to me that the Honor Harrington from books 1-3 is no longer in existence. And I really freaking want to throttle her.

If you read the titles in sequence and get to the last three, you'll know exactly what I mean. So many things she disliked and felt uncomfortable with in the first part has come back and become her tools, her 'useful' things that she can pull out whenever something makes her unhappy. One chapter particularly steamed me up like nothing. An investigator - competent, effective, without fault - gives a dissenting opinion to her own and while nominally she's right (oh, we know she's right because Weber (the author) tells us she's right), she immediately fires him because he doesn't agree with her. No attempt to calmly change his mind, no attempt to try to reason it out. She uses her own grief as an excuse to assign someone she knows will give the answer she wants and to me, that is just utterly unforgivable. She thinks to herself that she has the rank and right and she throws out all her titles and JUST HOW IS THAT different from the people she hated for doing that exact same thing?

ARJEOINFOEI:R#(JFEWRJI:OEJFIJIRO

This just makes me so mad, because I seriously loved this series! She was so cool in book 1, strong and yet... she was also unsure of herself at times. She worked hard to do what she needed to do, and she questioned her actions. Compared to book 1, the later books are like a squalling newborn throwing a temper tantrum.

*weeps* This was a really good series...

All my classes got cancelled today and I am supremely bored.

So I'm browsing Amazon.co.jp and looking for books to add to my cart. I've been kind of getting into thrillers and mysteries and medical horros. Well, I was into them once upon a time, but now, they're getting interesting again. I also love horror.

*skull grin*

I'm starting to feel like I'm becoming a wee bit too dependent on my flist.

I haven't partied this hard since... well, since never. I have a tendency of liking quiet nights at home, but ever since coming to Japan, I've been out and about way more than ever. It might be because everything still feels temporary and I'm still adjusting to the fact that yes, I will have a whole year here where I can explore Japan, get a feel of a whole new world, and become One with my desk. =P

I have requests again.

It turns out that I have plenty of free time too. Enough so that I've been getting back to my oldest hobby: reading. During college, it was hard to find free time (or any time) to read besides the shitload of stuff we read for classes (which, while very good on its own, is not something I personally relax too. Maybe some of you do. And more power to you). Here, I have a few hours where I can just sprawl on my loveseat and absorb material I'd been meaning to read but never got around to. It's quite gratifying.

So.

So far I either have with me in Japan or is on its merry way in one of the four boxes coming:

Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrell
The Historian
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Kafka on the Shore
Good Omens, random Discworld books
A Heartbreaking Work of a Staggering Genius
Kushiel Trilogy
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Catch-22
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Handmaid's Tale
Lolita
Fight Club
Wicked
Harry Potter (eventually all six)
Sandman Vol 1 (still haven't read this, but ellen_fredemon suggested it a long time ago (Nimbus) and I've finally gotten around to getting it)
Anita Blake (the first one)

Yeah, it's a pretty random selection of books, but I would love more books to put on my booshelves. For one... these are finally MY bookshelves! My home! My little hole in the world! It's an unbelievable feeling and I want to make it a cozy little place with books and love and food and... anime and manga and just so much stuff. =)

Um, yeah.

Also, cedarlibrarian - is there any website you'd recommend to browse through on a regular basis to find books? My way and tendency is to wander around the bookstore and library looking at random covers, but that's a little difficult to do in Japan.

Still need to send out a torrent of things.