The Book Thread! What are you reading?

[erilaz]

I recently bought a couple of out-of-print and hard-to-find volumes of Tolkien Studies and just finished reading Volume V (2008). My friend David Bratman's overviews of "The Year's Work in Tolkien Studies" are always a joy to read, especially when he gets snarky about ill-conceived and inaccurate "scholarship".

Starting tomorrow: Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning by Owen Barfield.

[erilaz]

The other day I read Fortunately, the Milk, a silly sci-fi time travel book for kids by Neil Gaiman. Lots of fun.

I've started reading through the copy of Essential Japanese by Samuel E. Martin that I picked up at the library book sale last weekend, filling in some of the gaps in my knowledge with bits and pieces that I had forgotten or never learned in the first place. I love Martin's explanation of sumimasen:

When you don't know what to say in a polite situation, use sumimasén, a slightly less formal equivalent of osóre irimasu; it means 'please', 'thank you', 'I don't mind if I do have a second cup of coffee if it isn't too much trouble', and just about everything else.

[erilaz]

I just finished reading Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne, which I hadn't read since I was in 7th or 8th grade.

Next up: Writings from Japan, an anthology by Lafcadio Hearn. It includes some pieces that I've read before, including "My First Day in the Orient", which tells the following truth about shopping in Japan:

Curiosities and dainty objects bewilder you by their very multitude: on either side of you, wherever you turn your eyes, are countless wonderful things as yet incomprehensible.

But it is perilous to look at them. Every time you dare to look, something obliges you to buy it — unless, as may often happen, the smiling vendor invites your inspection of so many varieties of one article, each specially and all unspeakably desirable, that you flee away out of mere terror at your own impulses. The shopkeeper never asks you to buy; but his wares are enchanted, and if you once begin buying you are lost. Cheapness means only a temptation to commit bankruptcy; for the resources of irresistible artistic cheapness are inexhaustible. The largest steamer that crosses the Pacific could not contain what you wish to purchase.

He wrote that in 1890, but some things never change.

[erilaz]

I just finished Japanese Words and Their Uses by Akira Miura. It's an alphabetical list of about 300 Japanese vocabulary items, mostly very common ones, with detailed discussion and examples of how they're used. The focus is on Japanese words that are liable to be misused by English speakers on the basis of inadequate dictionary definitions, and generally the words are compared and contrasted with Japanese synonyms and near-synonyms, as well as with their usual English translations. It's a very informative reference book.

[erin]

I'm really not a reader, I have some disabilities that makes it difficult for me but every once in awhile I'll (attempt to) read a book. I love the movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World so I purchased the first book awhile ago on amazon. I just got it in the mail today. Hopefully I can get through it without wanting to rip my hair out, lol. I read most of the first chapter so far.

The last book I read was Assassin's Creed: The Secret Crusade.

[Moh]

I'm finally reading a book, but don't feel totally comfortable disclosing the title.

[TotallyUncool]

it isn't Illustratio Systematis Sexualis Linnaei. Denuo edita, revisa ac translatione Germanica locupletata per M.B. Borckhausen adiectis tabulis CVIII ad originale Millerianum aeri incisis et coloratis, by any chance, is it? I'd have trouble with that title.

[erilaz]

^ Books in those days didn't need publisher's blurbs, because everything was already in the title.

Started today: Idoru by William Gibson. A virtual idol named Rei Toei is hugely popular in Japan of the not-too-distant future, and it is rumored that a big-name rock star intends to marry her.

It should be obvious why I was drawn to this book; the big question is why I hadn't read it before. It's interesting to read it nearly twenty years after its publication, in our current Hatsune Miku era. I find it rather irksome that the title isn't spelt Aidoru, though.

[Mirai]

I'm currently reading the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness. I'm on the second book Shadow of the Night. It's good, but sometimes gets a little too goofy like an adult version of a teen paranormal romance.

[Moh]

it isn't Illustratio Systematis Sexualis Linnaei. Denuo edita, revisa ac translatione Germanica locupletata per M.B. Borckhausen adiectis tabulis CVIII ad originale Millerianum aeri incisis et coloratis, by any chance, is it? I'd have trouble with that title.

Who needs a description with that title?

Spoiler: show

It's a book on religion called Not a Fan. My pastor suggested it, and so far, I actually like a lot of things the author has to say.
I am 1% comfortable with disclosing my ~views~, which is why this is under a spoiler!