Weekly reading/watching meme

[petronia]

Back to Friday for the moment, because I don't have enough time on Mondays. I'll probably just edit this over the weekend. XD;

What are you reading/watching now?

Hmm, let's review the list (only stuff that's moved forward this week):

• Jorge Luis Borges, Other Inquisitions: followed by interviews in this French edition. Borges can throw out five pages of opinion on Chesterton or Hawthorne, essentially blog entries, and trip you the fuck out.
• Mark Atherton, There And Back Again
• "Supervert," Perversity Think Tank (I think I have like 10 pages left in this)
• "Supervert," Extraterrestrial Sex Fetish
• Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

What did you just finish reading/watching?

Books/comics:

• Anne Carson, Eros The Bittersweet: highly recommended. Not only about Greek pederasty love but poetry, language, writing, cognition, and Velasquez too. I'd read this before undertaking any of her poetry.
• JRR Tolkien, Unfinished Tales: finished this last week and forgot to mention it. The part I had left was Théodred's death at the Fords, the character cast of which made it essentially intact into the movie.
• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Chronicles - Art & Design: should probably also note this even though I read it in the bookstore, really. XD
• Yamazaki Mari, Thermae Romae vol.1
• Saint Young Men vol.1: this was hilarious. It's very gentle humour, too -- Jesus and Buddha as two young dorky gap-year expat dudes of the type one meets on the Euro hostel/TripAdvisor/couch surfing circuit, with pure hearts and uncontrollable supernatural powers. This stuff seems to be its own genre in Japan right now, eg. Thermae Romae: fantasy gaijin culture clash, as it were, where at least some of the point seems to be taking a sidewise step in order to look at 21st century Japan. (Yamazaki Mari lives in Chicago, and previously lived in Italy, like Ono Natsume. Nakamura Hikaru, as far as I can tell, is just a weirdo, and I mean that as a compliment.)
• Guardians of the Galaxy: Infinite Comics #1-3: I'm not sure how to refer to these -- they're free tablet-optimized comics I got off the web site. They're sort of semi-animated? More like flipping through a movie storyboard than reading a comic. Which is to say, also more like reading manga, or French BD. Anyway, I'm reading these because I've come to realize Bendis is essentially writing them for little ol' me -- I represent the intended audience, as it were.

What will you read/watch next?

We'll see? XD I could probably stand to finish one or two things before starting anything else. In practice I'm probably going to read Barthes.

BONUS QUESTION: what books/movies did you acquire?

• Doctor Strange Year One: in French. Because I was in the French comics store. I basically bought this for Emma Rios.
• Mori Kaoru, Bride Stories vol.3-4
• Jorge Luis Borges, Other Inquisitions
• Roland Barthes, Mythologies
• Roland Barthes, Éléments de sémiologie: I know, I know, but if you find pristine second-hand works by a mid-century French theorist for $15 or under, I'd recommend you take advantage of it, too. Note to self however that the "proper" step up from Anne Carson's Socratic springboard may be S/Z, The Pleasure Of The Text, or A Lover's Discourse: Fragments, but neither of the above (Carson certainly read Barthes for her last chapters, because she quotes him; I suspect she meant to critique him, without coming right out and saying so). Incidentally, I'd really appreciate it if someone could point me to a ready-made queer theory 101 (...OK, maybe 201) reading list.
• Diane Duane, So You Want To Be A Wizard
• Diane Duane, Deep Wizardry: similarly pristine paperbacks, $4 each, not next to the Barthes.

Comments

[whatistigerbalm]

I like this list. I found that I didn't like Borges in interviews (mind you, he could've been old and cranky in the ones I read) but his essays still floor me every time.

[petronia]

Borges actually makes me want to read Nathaniel Hawthorne, for the first time EVER.

I should think I'd've read Borges in interview, but now that I'm trying to remember I can't think of any. XD The ones at the end of this book are new to me, at any rate; will report back.

[uminohikari.livejournal.com]

Yessssss Diane Duane

[kuroraka.livejournal.com]

Oh, Thermae Romae! I really enjoyed the anime, even though it looked pretty...cheap. Sadly enough, nobody seems to want to scanlate the manga...

Slightly unrelated, did you watch the latest JoJo anime? I only checked it out because i remebemred you posting about JoJo way back and i was pleasantly surprised, so here's a belated thank you for introducing me to this series!XD

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Hmm, Yamazaki's art must be fairly hard to animate (she's a trained painter not mangaka). I heard there was supposed to be a live-ac adaptation too?

I would really like to watch the JoJo anime, now that I might have some more time. It seems like it hews really closely to the manga! But I need to find a source. XD

[kuroraka.livejournal.com]

There's a live-action movie for Thermae Romae afaik, not sure if there's a series, too.

I think none of the streaming sites picked up the JoJo anime, so there's no legal way to watch it right now, but there are several subs.