(no subject)

[trinityvixen]

I've started to keep a checklist of things I've read/watched/listened to for the first time this year. It's a useful little tool for me as I've absolutely no memory for these things otherwise (I'm realizing I can't keep track of half the Discworld books I've read already).

I was jotting down my entry for last night, in which I finished the last installment of Horatio Hornblower, and took a count of movies versus books. By a margin of 6-to-1, I've watched more movies than I've read books. If you count installments of miniseries, like Jeeves and Wooster or Horatio Hornblower separately, the margin is much larger (and I've not counted television shows on DVD, yet, so I'm not sure what to do about "The Pretender" discs I have on loan).

So, I decided to start requesting more books from the NYPL. There is a part of me that's just in it for the excitement of getting e-mails saying such-and-such a book I don't remember ordering is now waiting for me (I call this the "Netflix effect"). But I'd like to think there's good fun to be had in some of my selections. I'm fairly boring, I went to Amazon and looked at top critic's picks for 2005 to catch me up on some good reading. To that, I embellished the list with a selection of book titles garnered from Newsweek, one of which involves zombies, so should be fun. I also added a request for a soon-to-be-ordered biography of Lord Nelson, after many outraged f'listers couldn't believe I wasn't familiar with his exploits (there, now, you see? I soon will be).

Some of the titles are really promising-sounding. The March by EL Doctorow promises to be thrillingly horrific. It's about Sherman's March in the Civil War, which is easily one of the most awful things ever perpetrated by Americans on Americans, so let's hope it's a good read. There were some conservative-baiting, liberal-leaning books about religion and politics that I couldn't resist. I think I snuck in a short story collection called Twilight of the Superheroes, which I had to include after reading the Wilde-esque quote from one of the stories and seeing the cover with the sad Batman-wannabe fellow on the cover.

Any recommendations to be had would be welcome, I guess is what I'm getting at.

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you're paying for a fansub or something like. I remember someone had an enviably cheap boxset of something and then I saw it and knew why...

[cbreakr.livejournal.com]

I got a bootleg box set of Trigun for 20 bucks. It was shitty (and there was one scene which had no subtitles at all), but it was worth it.

There was an option for Chinese dubbing, and it was the most disorienting experience.