Books in January

[starfishstar]

Oh dear, I'm such a dork for 1) doing this, 2) being this excited about this and 3) being so excited about this that I'm actually bragging about it in public, but I've been reading a bunch this month, and when I realized the goal of 10 books in one month was in sight, I set myself about accomplishing it...and I just did it, just turned the last page of the 10th book right now.

Not quite 40 books in all of last year, and then 10 just this month! Heh. It's not a pace I could keep up under normal circumstances, but right now (moving, starting over in a new/old place, everything in flux) it's been a nice sort of through-line, while all else is chaos.

Don't hold me to the same for February, though!

Comments

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

Sounds like fun! Were they all fiction, or was it a mix?

I'm hardly reading anything this month, including even fics :( . Work is eating my lunch. I've got some non-fiction I'm hoping to read, including some history books in preparation for some upcoming trips.

Hope the moving is going well! Have you relocated yet?

[starfishstar]

All (almost all?) fiction, but a nice mix – a couple fantasy, a couple mystery, one sci-fi, several serious/literary/adult/whatever-we-want-to-call-it, an autobiographical graphic novel and even a play.

I've relocated, in the sense that I'm now in the US, but the place I'm supposed to be able to stay isn't ready quite yet, so I'm sort of camped out in my parents' house for a bit – it's an odd sort of limbo. I think I'll feel more like I'm actually here when I have a place of my own...

Where will your upcoming trips be to (if you feel like saying)?

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

(I feel funny replying so fast -- I'm not really stalking you, lol, it's just that I'm about to go to bed and the way my life is going lately I was afraid if I didn't answer now I'd forget to come back later...)

That does sound like a nice mix of things to read! I have a possibly unhealthy addiction to mysteries (though even there I haven't read any since the holiday break). Any particular recommendations?

Congratulations on getting across the ocean -- being in limbo can be tough, but I hope your new place is ready for you soon.

My first trip is the one to Germany I first mentioned back before I knew you were moving -- my guy is going to a conference in Leipzig right before our Spring Break, so I'll go over and join him over break and we'll do some Hanseatic towns and maybe Rügen Island. Then there's the annual linguistics conference in England in May; I just went last year, and normally skip a year in between, but for various reason I'm trying to go again this year (assuming I can get a submission together in the next two weeks -- and it gets accepted, which of course it might not). Then the third one is, I've been invited to teach an intensive course in June at the university in Japan where I spent three semesters between college and grad school back in the mid 1990s. This semester is looking to be rather hectic!

So I'm hoping to finish a book on the Meiji Restoration that I've had sitting on my shelf for a few years. And I'd like to read some stuff about the Hanseatic League to sharpen up my very dim recollections from high school history class, and possibly some modern history of northern East Germany as well. Assuming I get to where I'm reading again, that is. :/ I should totally ask you: Do you have a favorite book on German history, 20th-century or otherwise? (In English, that is. My guy's German is very, very good, but mine is 20-year-old high school German and thus very stumbly.)

[starfishstar]

(Ha, no worries! I also was up late too, and also seeing comments come in in real time... ;-)

I doubt I can recommend many or any mysteries to you, since it's a genre I actually read little of, most of the time. My big exceptions are the Peter Wimsey mysteries, which I'm guessing you know, but if you don't, highly recommended! And Laurie R. King's Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes books. And of course Conan Doyle himself!

Ah, I wish I were still in Germany and could meet up or show you around somehow – that would be really fun. But I can definitely recommend Rügen. I took my parents on a bike trip around the island the last time they visited, and it was great. I love the Baltic Sea so much. I wish I could tell you anything at all about books on German history, but I don't think I can think of a single thing to recommend – my knowledge of German history (and especially East German history) has been absorbed through people I know, and just generally through living steeped in it. Good for me, but no so good when it comes to being a resource for others. :-/

And wow, you're going to teach in Japan! Sounds great!

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

I do like the Wimsey mysteries very much, despite the unfortunate anti-Semitic overtones that pop up sometimes. And Conan Doyle, yes! But although I've heard about the Mary Russell stories, I've never tried those, so that might be something to look into.

I also like Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone series, and recently gilpin25 has got me reading the George Felse series by Ellis Peters (of Brother Cadfael fame, but these are set in the 1960s and 70s and Peters's voice is strikingly different). And the Rivers of London series -- that's been fun, but still waiting for the 5th book to come out in the US.

No worries on the German history books! I was just wondering if you might have a favorite. My guy is actually quite into history, so he probably has a lot of resources already. I've been to Germany for a few short visits: Tübingen and Munich for conferences, and once for fun with my guy and his sister where we saw Regensburg, Berlin, Leipzig, Halle (for a particular exhibit at the historical museum -- long story), and Augsburg. But this will be my first time on the north coast, and likewise for my guy, who lived in Franconia for a couple of years in the 1990s. It's too bad we won't have a chance to meet up over there -- it would definitely be interesting to hear your perspective as a long-time resident.

I'm looking forward to Japan, too: a couple of weeks for my course, and probably an extra week to travel around and see friends there.

[starfishstar]

I do like the Wimsey mysteries very much, despite the unfortunate anti-Semitic overtones that pop up sometimes.

Oh, really? I'd like to know about what you think about that... I was actually fairly impressed (you know, relative to the time period) with the way that was handled in the first book, where the victim is Jewish – a point is certainly made of the fact, but he's presented sympathetically, as is wife and her grief. Were you thinking of that book, or others in the series? (I haven't read them all yet.) Actually, given how surprisingly sensitive that particular portrayal was, I was all the more distressed by some unfortunate epithets about Asians in the latest one of the books I read.

The Mary Russell books: I LOVED LOVED LOVED them so much as a teenager. I've gotten a bit weary of some of the later books – whether because they've changed or because I have, I'm not sure – but the series as a whole will always merit a soft spot in my heart. Great feminist character, too!

Rivers of London: I've heard of them, vaguely – actually, because of a Sherlock fic that had crossover elements!

Excited for you for Germany, and Japan! It's too bad I'm not in Germany, but if your work ever takes you to Cornell (seems like an outside possibility, I suppose) or elsewhere in upstate NY, let me know!

[starfishstar]

PS, oh, and Laurie R. King's modern-day mystery series (the Kate Martinelli series) is also good. (And also a feminist character!) There's even one book where the case is Sherlock-Holmes-themed, and can be read as a slight crossover with the Mary Russell 'verse, or not, as the reader chooses...

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

So, update: Not going to Germany! It's a confluence of factors, but mainly the fact that the conference my guy is going to can't cover his airfare if he flies back more than a couple of days after the actual conference ends, but if I were going to join him I couldn't even arrive until after the conference (because the conference is the week before our Spring Break, and he can cancel class to be an invited speaker at a conference, but I probably shouldn't cancel class just to go on vacation, lol).

That plus the fact that I am stretched so thin this semester working on other projects and getting ready for Japan that I haven't even, for example, caught up at rt_morelove, or read the end of Lantern or checked out your newer fics -- just to name a few examples! So it's probably just as well that I should stay here over Spring Break and catch up.

(Also, airfares, gah! So expensive! And stupid connect times from Expedia -- if I'm changing planes in Detroit to fly to Europe, I want more than a 49-minute layover, thank you very much.)

Kate Martinelli, noted. That might be something to do for fun when my guy is in Germany without me. :)

[starfishstar]

Oh, that's too bad! ...But actually sounds like a good decision. Staying in and catching up and getting down time can also be a good way to spend a vacation! (I still don't know how you manage to have an active fandom/online life on top of having an actual career – as opposed to those of us who are just sort of faffing about at the moment...) And letting yourself have this time to focus on Japan instead sounds good, too! I'll look forward to hearing about Japan, if you want to post about it, then or after.

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

I knew I was forgetting something...

I'd like to know about what you think about that... I was actually fairly impressed (you know, relative to the time period) with the way that was handled in the first book, where the victim is Jewish – a point is certainly made of the fact, but he's presented sympathetically, as is wife and her grief. Were you thinking of that book, or others in the series?

Ah, I was thinking of other books -- I agree that the Levys were very sympathetic, and Rachel persists as a relatively important off-stage character. I haven't made systematic notes, but I just feel like there are many instances where a minor character who is Jewish is portrayed unflatteringly either by the narrator, or by another character in the story. I'm thinking about some remarks made to creditors come to collect in Busman's Honeymoon (which I really enjoy aside from a few dated social things like that), and I think also in one of the short stories where a fellow is having recurring nightmares about a tower, there's a very dodgy Jewish character where it's made clear that he's not just dodgy, he's dodgy and Jewish. Things like that.

if your work ever takes you to Cornell (seems like an outside possibility, I suppose) or elsewhere in upstate NY, let me know!

*snort* More of a possibility than you know. I'm an alum, and still have some friends in Ithaca -- admittedly, I don't get there very often these days being based much further south now, but it could happen. (And I was invited back to give a lecture there once about eight years ago. That was kind of cool, to go back actually to my old department.)

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

(I still don't know how you manage to have an active fandom/online life on top of having an actual career – as opposed to those of us who are just sort of faffing about at the moment...)

*sigh* This would be why I'm so sporadic online. It is hard to keep up! I'm just glad I didn't discover online fandom until shortly before it was time to go up for tenure...that could have been dangerous.

A lot of times it's fic (writing or reading) vs. housework, and sometimes the fic wins. ;)

I do expect to post about Japan -- assuming I get my act together to do it (I still have two picspams backlogged that I want to post even just for my own archival purposes, grr.) And I'm sure you have way more interesting things to do than read LJ back-issues, but if you're really bored someday, I do have a few posts (http://shimotsuki.livejournal.com/tag/japan) from the last time I was there, which seems to have been in (yikes) 2009.

[starfishstar]

!!! Oh! Well, then all the more reason that you're more than welcome to drop me a line if you're ever coming this way!

About the Wimsey stories: Ah, that makes sense – I haven't read "Busman's Honeymoon" yet. (I'm still on "Nine Tailors.") Shoot, I was really looking forward to that one. Now I'm looking forward to it, and also feeling a bit of trepidation about it...

I looked at and enjoyed some of your older Japan posts! It's funny, because I even *lived* in Thailand (which is at least the same continent as Japan) and yet Japan seems so foreign and far away to me – much more so than a lot of other countries. So it's fascinating to hear about other people's experiences there!