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#291 - Sometimes it's sweet, tingling your senses in a lollapalooza of sensation...
It would appear that an English version of Custom Battler Bomberman (called Bomberman 2 for the English release) has finally been released. This English version is also, bafflingly enough, a Europe-only release, much in the same way that Bomberman Story DS was. I'm hoping to eventually get my little pink spherical hands on this game, since it looks like it'll be a hell of a lot more interesting than any of the Bomberman Land installments. I'm not sure what the hell Hudson was thinking in releasing a Bomberman game like this, and especially only in Europe, but at least it's not Act Zero.
Where in the world is my copy of Bomberman Story DS, anyway? I was whoring it out to other Bomberman fans...I think![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kiirobon still has it?
***
You know what kind of book I really need to get more of?* Coffee table art books.
It's true that you can just go on the web and look up inspiration almost instantly, but there's a visceral satisfaction for me in physically having a book to look at. And art books tend to be designed interestingly as well, which definitely colors (pun intended) the experience. I just bought Art Now: Volume 2 while shopping for art supplies at Blick today - it's one of the smaller and tamer volumes in the world of coffee table art books, but it's a good start. And anyway, I don't currently have the money or the shelf space to be dealing with Gigantor Coffee Table Books of Doom at the moment, sadly.**
***
Speaking of books, my old JPN104 professor, Miho-san (well, that's what I tend to call her now that I don't actually have a class with her), is going to get me a copy of Bad Girls of Japan, as a thank-you gift for helping her design flyers to advertise her Queer Japan class being taught next quarter. I, uh, was totally not expecting anything like this, since it wasn't such a huge deal to come up with the flyer designs, but she was insistent on paying me back somehow, whether it was buying me lunch or something else. So hey, I can has another book! I'm really excited, though, 'cause I read a chapter from the book that Miho-san photocopied for a class she's teaching this quarter on geisha, and it was really interesting.
I also asked Miho-san on Facebook for translated novels by contemporary Japanese authors. She gave me some recs, but also invited me to come down to her office to look at her shelves there. So I went today, and left with a bunch of books and even two DVDs. (Because clearly I don't have enough stuff to read already...) She didn't have one book that really caught my eye, though - Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino. Still, I expect I'll be occupied in the meantime: I started reading Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki (he's actually an author from the '20s and '30s, I think) at the lunch table today, and I'm intrigued. I'm on the fifth chapter, and the setup of the story reminds me, in many ways, of Nabokov's Lolita, seeing as the plot revolves around a 28-year-old electrical engineer having a romantic relationship with a girl who's 15 at the start of things. It would be interesting to compare Lolita and Naomi, since I already know about one point of divergence (the man actually does get married to Naomi, quite early on in their relationship, and is still married to her, it seems - not a spoiler, he specifically mentions this at the beginning of the book). Depending on how I feel and how much of my brain cells get killed in this last week and a half of winter quarter, I may talk more about this book.
(I'm sure the analysis has been done a million times before, but it'll be good practice for me.)
-Reileen
I want more wenches, more wenches and mead
*Well, all kinds of books, really. I want to eventually have a bookshelf full of different religious texts, such as various translations/versions of the Bible, a copy of the Qu'ran, the Ramayana, the Upanishads, etc., and I have ideas for how I want to expand both my fiction and non-fiction sections.
**I think I'd sell my soul to be able to get shelf space like this.
Where in the world is my copy of Bomberman Story DS, anyway? I was whoring it out to other Bomberman fans...I think
kiirobon still has it?***
You know what kind of book I really need to get more of?* Coffee table art books.
It's true that you can just go on the web and look up inspiration almost instantly, but there's a visceral satisfaction for me in physically having a book to look at. And art books tend to be designed interestingly as well, which definitely colors (pun intended) the experience. I just bought Art Now: Volume 2 while shopping for art supplies at Blick today - it's one of the smaller and tamer volumes in the world of coffee table art books, but it's a good start. And anyway, I don't currently have the money or the shelf space to be dealing with Gigantor Coffee Table Books of Doom at the moment, sadly.**
***
Speaking of books, my old JPN104 professor, Miho-san (well, that's what I tend to call her now that I don't actually have a class with her), is going to get me a copy of Bad Girls of Japan, as a thank-you gift for helping her design flyers to advertise her Queer Japan class being taught next quarter. I, uh, was totally not expecting anything like this, since it wasn't such a huge deal to come up with the flyer designs, but she was insistent on paying me back somehow, whether it was buying me lunch or something else. So hey, I can has another book! I'm really excited, though, 'cause I read a chapter from the book that Miho-san photocopied for a class she's teaching this quarter on geisha, and it was really interesting.
I also asked Miho-san on Facebook for translated novels by contemporary Japanese authors. She gave me some recs, but also invited me to come down to her office to look at her shelves there. So I went today, and left with a bunch of books and even two DVDs. (Because clearly I don't have enough stuff to read already...) She didn't have one book that really caught my eye, though - Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino. Still, I expect I'll be occupied in the meantime: I started reading Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki (he's actually an author from the '20s and '30s, I think) at the lunch table today, and I'm intrigued. I'm on the fifth chapter, and the setup of the story reminds me, in many ways, of Nabokov's Lolita, seeing as the plot revolves around a 28-year-old electrical engineer having a romantic relationship with a girl who's 15 at the start of things. It would be interesting to compare Lolita and Naomi, since I already know about one point of divergence (the man actually does get married to Naomi, quite early on in their relationship, and is still married to her, it seems - not a spoiler, he specifically mentions this at the beginning of the book). Depending on how I feel and how much of my brain cells get killed in this last week and a half of winter quarter, I may talk more about this book.
(I'm sure the analysis has been done a million times before, but it'll be good practice for me.)
-Reileen
I want more wenches, more wenches and mead
*Well, all kinds of books, really. I want to eventually have a bookshelf full of different religious texts, such as various translations/versions of the Bible, a copy of the Qu'ran, the Ramayana, the Upanishads, etc., and I have ideas for how I want to expand both my fiction and non-fiction sections.
**I think I'd sell my soul to be able to get shelf space like this.
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