woolf woolf

Welcome. The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.

Orwell said the best way to figure out the best books would be letting the reviewers only write about those they deem worth of praise. Not quite these words, but the same idea.

In the meantime I've been reading Kare Kano: His or Her Circumstances, it flows a lot and it doesn't have much occupying the pages, so it can be read fast. But some drawings are pretty cool. I can't read any physical book today because there's a party in the living room and I'm uncapable of reading prose when noisy. It's a good manga, at the beginning it was a little boring but in time it got more interesting. The end of Afterstory. The fourth volume ends here: http://www.mangareader.net/187-53997-26/clannad/chapter-28.html

I'm sorry if I sounded condescending. No matter what, I always sound patronizing to someone.

I'm also curious about that one. I think Scott is making a Prometheus sequel,

It might, because it's from Ghibli and because it's nominated for the oscars: http://oscar.go.com/nominees/animated-feature-film/the-tale-of-the-princess-kaguya

You write good reviews, Weave.

That's cool, if it's an interesting case. But, if it is an interesting case, the responsibility will be bigger. Please attend the jury service with a clear head and an open mind.

Does your local library have foreign books? I wish mine had.

Thanks anisia, Marie H, frankie. I said I would read one of those two, but last night I had none of those near me and so I started Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, by Philip K. Dick. It's a good science fiction book, somehow original at least in introducing the world, characters and building up. It's small and if everything goes smoothly I might end it very soon. Thanks for the suggestions; I'll start with Kare Kano, it seems a reading for a long time.

I've finished Clannad's fourth volume, a series of manga (japanese comics). The main character is Tomoya Okazaki, a reserved boy with a non-existent family life, a cynical view of life and without motivation to put his best efforts in anything; things start to change when he meets Nagisa Furukawa, a queer and cute girl with low self-esteem and childish tastes. They meet at the beginning, in a path leading to school, and Tomoya feels a growing duty of helping overcome her sadness and achieve her objectives. Through this, they make new friendships at school and their relationship grow stronger throughout young adulthood. Although with some silly moments, this story is very down-to-earth, without action or artificial elements to spice it up (there is one but it proved irrelevant, more like a side-story to fill some pages). I enjoyed reading it, it's not great but it's not bad either, and it felt fresh because I hadn't yet known more realistic animes or mangas (but this might be because I don't know much of it). Apparently, the story isn't yet finished, and more mangas are to be published. But thanks to the wiki, I discovered the ending of the anime series and it ruined things a bit. Fortunately, manga covered almost all of the elements of the anime except the bad ones, and hopefully will give a more realistic and credible closing arc.

There are also some earbuds whose purpose is to block the external sounds. I never used them, but I want to; either way, I think they allow someone to read in silence. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/28/six-of-the-best-noise-cancelling-headphones-to-silence-the-commute

I knew more before, from school. When I bought the book I tried Duolingo, but other things came around and I've never returned to it.

Thanks poppyshake. Yes, it will be challenging, especially because I'll try to read Camus on the way home and I won't have a dictionary around. As to the other, I'll likely finish it in a few months and read others inbetween. I'm a slow reader when it comes to big books. I bought that one in french, as an incentive to learn the language. It's not working.

For now I'm reading the four Clannad manga volumes by Jyuri Misaki; then I may read War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy or The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus.

04/02/15 . Brave New World - Huxley, Aldous 08/02/15 . Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Dick, Philip K. 28/06/15 . Murder on the Orient Express - Christie, Agatha 03/08/15 . Parade's End, Books 1 to 3 - Ford, Ford Madox 11/10/15 . The Russian Master and Other Stories - Chekhov, Anton 02/11/15 . Dracula - Stoker, Bram 25/12/15 . My Struggle, Book 1 - Knausgaard, Karl Ove 21/04/16. Selected Stories - Munro, Alice 27/08/16. To Kill a Mockingbird - Lee, Harper 28/08/16. The Outsider - Camus, Albert

Finished the last quarter now, some events happened. It's an interesting book.

Tonight I watched The Tale of Princess Kaguya. Another one by Studio Ghibli, from Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies). I liked this one very much, with a seemingly more traditional japanese style (definitely uncommon in cinema); it's a bit reminiscent of the game Okami, I guess. The film is based on a japanese folktale, about a bamboo cutter that finds a small girl inside a shining bamboo shoot and raises her into a beautiful and delicate princess. I recommend this film, it's pure and unique with dream-inducing cinematography and a peaceful soundtrack. I firmly believe this film will last for generations.

I haven't read "To Kill a Mockingbird". To me it looks like the first book was good, but the editor didn't think it appealed enough to sell. Perhaps it was a stroke of genius telling Lee to focus on the flashbacks. Remember that in the 50s the stories about lawyers, trials and courts were very successful, at least in cinema; more important was the rising social uproar against racial discrimination. Why have a book set in that time, with important contemporary elements figuring in flashbacks, when you could have those flashbacks in the present as the story itself?

I'm reading this one, and I think I've read three quarters of it. I had to put a little effort in the beginning, but now I'm reading it with ease and flow. His Fordship Aldous Huxley certainly presents here a strong and self-sufficient society, but I'm divided between thinking how good it would be if ours evolved to be like this and how sad a loveless world would be. I guess some of them would be like Bernard Marx, resilient to all kinds of indoctrination, but decided to play along, become soma addicts or just face the world and be crushed by it. I guess plenty of people dislike this book just for the ideas it conveys. I'm expecting the book to make itself the exercise of proving why this world would be wrong, via John; one of my favourite parts in this book is how this outsider with strong monogamous feelings and shakespearean quotations experiences the culture shock. I really like the characters' multilingual names, like Lenina Crowne or Helmholtz Watson, and curiously enough at least some famous people's names would be like this, if they wouldn't decide to englishify both their first and last names (I'm not against it).

Once upon a time, I've decided to rewatch some animated classics from all decades and found many flaws in all of them, it was a real disappointment. They were still good in the end, though. It was after this loss of nostalgia that I've watched the modern Walt Disney films, like "Frozen" and "Winnie the Pooh" and, although they're flawed, they don't fall behind the older classics. I know that if I'd seen them without rewatching the older films, I'd be harsher and unfair to them. The Disney animated film I now like the most is "Beauty and the Beast", it's a clichéd answer I know. I still enjoy "The Lion King", it was my favourite throughout childhood, but I feel you don't like it that much. Is Shakespeare to blame? I've never seen this one, though it's in my watchlist. I still am to watch some Ghibli classics, like this or "Princess Mononoke". I've read plenty of good things about "Porco Rosso", I just happen to have a huge pile of films to watch. I haven't seen the video you shared, because I want to see the film someday without being spoiled.

It's a very good film, with a firm fanbase. To me it's one of the best films from Studio Ghibli, it was also their first as a proper studio. My favourite from them is actualy the most recent, The Wind Rises. It's the one with less fantasy, but everything in it is very well made and it's a film full of subtleties, which I appreciate a lot. When the film was launched, many complained about making a hero out of a war criminal, but the film itself doesn't try to justify his actions more than show eventual thoughts he might had had about it and why he would do it anyway. In my opinion he hadn't hasn't done anything bad, he was just born in the losing side and dreamt the dream the world used for war. The end is absolutely beautiful. I wish more films like this were made, but directors and producers don't want to risk their films being misunderstood, like this one was.

I don't remember reading many horror books, so I'll play safe and also mention Room 101 from Nineteen Eighty-Four. It would probably be everyone's scariest place in fiction, [spoilers] given that the government knows everyone's worst nightmares and this room is about facing that same nightmare. Room 101 is different for each person. [spoilers end] But I don't know if this place counts, because it's not the place itself that is scary, but what people are forced to face inside it. Perhaps I'd have a different answer if I read more horror literature.

I just re-watched Castle in the Sky, an animation film by Studio Ghibli, directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It's about a girl, Lusheeta, that falls from an airship attacked by pirates but is saved by her necklace. The boy who discovers her, Pazu, dreams of following his father's steps in finding Laputa, a remnant in the sky from older times when humans lived in advanced civilizations airborne. They soon leave his village in an adventure. I really like this film, not just for the environmental message Ghibli loves to pass, but also for Lusheeta and Pazu's kind hearts.