abibliophobia (n.)
the fear of running out of reading materials
biblichor (n.)
the characteristic, faint, musty smell of old books
tsundoku 積ん読 (つんどく) (n. Japanese)
the act of leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piled up together with other such unread books
vāde mēcum (n. Latin)
favorite book carried everywhere; a handbook of useful information kept at one’s side lit. “go with me”
dhvani (n. Sanskrit)
lit. ‘sound’ or ‘echo’; the feature of a poem/line of having a hidden meaning that strikes you in the second or further readings, but not the first
Tag: books
Went to the Pacific Northwest for a week. Normally I’m landlocked in an area with low Japanese population and have to pay exorbitant amounts of money to get anything shipped. So I went to a couple bookstores in Oregon (Powells) and Washington (Kinokuniya), while I was there, and got some awesome deals.
Gals!, the first book of Earthsea, and the two 国語 books were from Powells, for a steal of $18 total. The others were from Kinokuniya. 日本人の知らない日本語 has been on my wishlist on White Rabbit for a while, but I don’t know that I’m quite ready to read them, so I didn’t want to pay the shipping for it. Apparently vol 4 is also new, too. The store clerk commented on it since she’d read the first three, but didn’t know 4 was out already. They had a workbook in the same set that didn’t seem wholly worth it to me, and one that I might get sometime, but not sure how useful it is to me so much as entertaining as an English-speaker, since it was about the things Japanese people mess up when using English (saying things like “I like street walking” not realizing the double meaning to that phrase, etc).
Aside from Gals! which actually was vol. 1, FMA and Hourou Musuko were not the volumes I wanted (I need FMA #2 and wanted to start from #1 of Hourou Musuko), but I figure I have to get them eventually, so at least picked up a couple of each.
I’m ridiculously excited about Earthsea, though, you have no idea.
My Japanese bookshelf… mostly. I kind of just wanted to see if it all would even fit on one shelf, and the answer is: no. There’s more HanaKimi on another shelf, as well as random one-off books I probably forgot about. Also underneath are books for Taiwanese and Mandarin, ahah.
- ハガレンかるた. A set of karuta cards, FMA-themed. I don’t know how to play karuta, and even if I did, I have no one to play with, so they’re just in the box?
- The tiny yellow book next took the karuta set is a random deconstruction of Earthsea that someday I will be able to read. They were giving them out for free in front of Kinokuniya one year I was in Japan, and I love Earthsea, so I picked one up even though I can’t read it. Mostly the rest is 十二国記 (Twelve Kingdoms) and the three on the end are Rose of Versailles, none of which I’m able to read yet. But someday.
- Vols 1, 12-16, & 18 of FMA (I’m in the process of completing the set… don’t ask me why I bought them out of order in the first place), Clover.
- Bilingual readers. The one on the far left is very old, it was my parents’. The Japanese is rather antiquated, but it’s kind of a neat book. The other two I picked up at the regular bookstore. They’re still a bit beyond my level, so I keep starting and stopping them.
- Grammar dictionaries.
- Japanese readers. The first three are all for 一年生. The others are some of the White Rabbit set.
- More manga. Utena, vol 1 of HanaKimi (rest is elsewhere), vol 1 of XXXHolic (which is all I have), Wish, Tokyo Babylon. I haven’t read any of these in Japanese yet.
- And more manga. 2, 3, & 5 of D.N.Angel on top of Card Captor Sakura.
- Novels. Something I don’t even know on top of the Japanese translation of Songmaster, 雨ふる本屋, and Harry Potter. Things I will read at some point, when I can?
- Doujin by yoshitoshi aBe.
- Old textbooks for Japanese and Classical Japanese (aka Tale of the Bamboo Cutter and 古い日本語 dictionaries).
- JLPT prep books. Some old? Like the red one is the old N3, so more or less the current N4. The two horizontal ones up top are the two I’m actually working on with my tutors. Several are for N2 and N1 which I haven’t even looked at yet.
- Miscellaneous things. Colloquial Kansai, Japanese Slang, Jazz Up Your Japanese with Onomatopoeia, Words in Context, A Dictionary of Japanese Idioms, Making Sense of Japanese, Essential Japanese, and then several books my mother bought me that I have no idea what they even are, because I don’t even read the other things I own, lulz.
- Two books I’ve had since I was a kid: Kaguya-hime (I loved this picture book and her fancy kimono), and The Giving Tree in Japanese (or おおきな木 as it actually is titled).
30 Days of Books: Day 05
A book or series you hate
Oh goodness. During high school, a couple friends and I decided to have our own book club, and this was the second (and last, sadly, we weren’t very diligent) book we chose to read for it. I’m pretty sure I hated it after twenty pages, and I forced myself to read the whole thing, thinking both Catherine and Heathcliff and pretty much everyone involved were making such incredibly stupid choices I couldn’t forgive or be sympathetic towards any of them. I actually cannot remember the story very well anymore, honestly, as with me, it tends to take multiple re-reads of a book to remember more than vague details. But I remember hating this book a lot in a way where I’m absolutely positive I wouldn’t feel differently if I tried to pick it up again.
Hilariously, the guy who suggested we read this book did not bother to finish it, though myself and our other friend did, and we ranted about it the whole time.
Close second? Heart of Darkness. But at least I didn’t inflict that one on myself.
30 Days of Books: Day 04
Your favorite book or series ever
I’m sort of between favorites right now. For the longest time I didn’t have one, then I found Ender’s Game, and fell in love with it. Various small things have thrown me out of love with it, and I haven’t found a real replacement yet. But in lieu of a steals-my-heart-away favorite, I’ll put down Earthsea, because I’ve had a quiet sort of love for it since I was a wee thing. I actually picked it out while I was in Japan, because my parents let me choose just ONE book from the bookstore to read, and they stocked the UK 4-volume version of Earthsea. And man, four-books-in-one made it the largest English-print book they had in stock in the sci-fi/fantasy section that I saw. But I’ve gone off on a tangent…
Anyway, point being, even though I don’t love Earthsea in that way where it is passionate and I want to recommend it to everyone, it’s the only book or series I can think of that I enjoyed just as much as a kidlet as I do now when I re-read it. It’s the true names that get me, probably.
30 Days of Books: Day 03
The best book you’ve read in the last 12 months
Okay, and this actually feels like it reflects oddly on me, because while I liked this book, I wouldn’t normally put it on a list of “best books” by my reckoning. Right now, though, I’m not reading all that much new material, and what I have read has mostly been in “I enjoyed this, and might recommend it to someone interested in [particular thing about the book]” but yeah. It’s just fluff reading.
Anyway, not to say His Majesty’s Dragon is a bad read, but a lot of my initial excitement for the first book simmered down after I read the second, and I haven’t really gotten into the third yet, so it was somewhat short-lived.
Runners up in this category, because it was kind of a close call on “books I just was entertained by”:
- Soulless
- Havemercy
(I do not understand why I can’t get the queue to work on this account. So I’m just publishing this manually or something whatever.)
30 Days of Books: Day 02
A book or series you wish more people were reading and talking about
After a bit of thinking, I’ll go with this as just kind of a general “I wish people were more into books like this” even though I’m not sure if I’d recommend it to most people or not. My father got me Catch the Lightning when I was thirteen-ish, and I read a couple other Skolian Empire books, but man I love The Last Hawk. Networking dice games and implanted tech with personalities, sci-fi heart? I’d be kind of interested to read other peoples’ takes on the female-warrior/male-submissive societies as well.
And…
somekindofboywonder replied to your post: 30 Days of Books: Day 01 Oh hey a book one! I may have to do this.
Uh. I’m so confused as to how to reply to the reply like apparently everyone else can do, so yey for c&p. List!
30 Days of Books: Day 01
A book series you wish had gone on longer OR a book series you wish would just freaking end already (or both!)
I can’t think of any series I wish had gone on longer but didn’t, oddly enough. On the front of things that really should have ended, I dearly hope/wish the Enderverse is done with. Loved the original book, thought the original quartet was pretty good, thought the second quartet was different and not quite fitting, but still decent, and the latest book makes me headdesk.
(15.15 – ETA: Added a cover image… picked this one mainly because gnnng, Sam Weber paints gorgeous things, even though I have longstanding issues with Ender being a blond kid. And also I don’t really understand what is supposed to be going on with all the shiny lights. But ignore that, because it is pretty!)