March Reading

So...where's March gone so quickly? Seems all I did was work and learn about taxes and marketing, start to grumble about the constant snow, and spend the rest of the time waiting for better times. Quick hint: That hardly ever works.

Anyway, I did manage to get some reading done. Not as much as I wanted. But some.

Jim Butcher - Small Favour
Jim Butcher - Turncoat
Jim Butcher - Changes
Jim Butcher - Sidejobs

Will Eisner - Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative
Scott McCloud - Understanding Comics

No reviews today. I might do them later. Or never. These are all books worthy of reading, that's all I can say. Loved every single one of them.

Now that I look at it, my reading fell in just two groups - reading Dresden Files and reading about comics. You may ask, why, that's 6 books, that's not bad for a month. What more did you mean to accomplish? And my answer is this: March is not simply March anymore, it has become DWJ March. DWJ as in Diana Wynne Jones, beloved British fantasy author, who I knew nothing about until I discovered that one of my favourite movies, Ghibli's Howl's Moving Castle, was based on one of her books. Which I then read, and fell in love with as completely as I could.
So the idea was to read a lot of DWJ in March (even though I only found out about it on the 14th or so), participate in the #howlalong (ie watch the movie and post on Twitter, all people at the same time), and generally have a good time. None of which worked. What I did was sort of participate in the #howlalong, only just in the gap between the two scheduled viewings (hah), then I discovered that I'd lent my book to my aunt (in Germany) and had to borrow another copy from a friend (and only managed to get it 2/3 read so far, haha), and I bought the two follow-up books to Howl which I thankfully found out exist, which my boyfriend is reading now (hahaha). Well, at least one of us is getting some DWJ books into him. :P
And that, my friends, is the main reason I'm a little unhappy with that reading list. As well as the fact that I started the next Dresden book around two weeks ago (or more?), and have not progressed beyond maybe the halfway point. Maybe. I'm not even blaming it on the book. The second half of March had me going a little off the comfortable daily structure I had tried to establish for myself, and the end of March has now successfully thrown my carefully laid plans for self-employed bliss a little off track...and reading is sort of taking backseat to thinking and researching and cleaning the flat to order my thoughts. And writing a long-overdue conference paper. On comics, yep, see above. (Secondary reason I'm not happy with that list, I thought there'd be much more stuff on comics.)

Anyway...I did read a lot, and that unhappiness about the list not being long enough is definitely due to unrealistic expectations and me being a little unhappy generally right at this moment. Nothing to worry about, this too shall pass, and soon enough. :)

February Reading

I guess I'm not really getting the 'blog once a week' thing done yet, but hey, here's some books I read. For a change.

Jim Butcher, Dead Beat
This was a little odd, because I didn't recognise some of the bad guys as bad guys until quite late in the book. I didn't get the reasoning employed. Oh well. Other than that, it was a lot of fun. :)

Jim Butcher, Proven Guilty
Also a little odd. Hm, maybe because the books have turned away from the formula they had going in the beginning. I really enjoy that they're getting more and more interconnected. :)

Quellen heiterer Tierweisheit
One of those small books you buy to give a little gift to someone. However, this one is really really nice - nice paper, nice illustrations, different styles of script used for each saying...very nice. I think in the 90s we had a lot of these going around. Wonder if they're still being produced...

Jim Butcher, White Night
Yay, vampires! Pretty crazy. Maybe even really crazy.

Neil Gaiman, Odd and the Frost Giants
Quick little read. Very funny, and touching. First 'short' story I read by him. I know, I know. :P Guess I really should go and finally read the Calendar of Tales stories...so much magic in so few words.

Nitya Lacroix, 101 Essential Tips Relaxation
I bought this one ages ago. Probably in 1999, when on holiday in the USA. Back then, I was stuffed to the brim with teenage angst and relationship problems, and quite rightly thought I needed to relax. Didn't work that well, but hey.
Now, many many years later, I'm stuffed to the brim with work that needs to be done and rightly think I need to relax. The tips given now also make more sense to me than they did way back when. Slowly getting to implementing at least some of them.

Andreas Platthaus, Die 101 wichtigsten Fragen. Comics und Manga.
Research! YES! Research for a paper I should have sent in yesterday (...), actually. Well, they'll get it on Tuesday or something. Anyway...RESEARCH. Ahahahaha.
(In relating news, I found out yesterday that something called 'Game Studies' actually exists...not that I doubted that it did, somewhere, or would soon, but...there's an Austrian university that is actually doing some work in that area. Honestly, I'm slowly starting to think that my university here is one of the most backwards places in literary studies you could find. :P)

And right now I'm in the middle of:
Jim Butcher - Small Favour
Jim Butcher - Side Jobs (reading the stories when appropriate)
Frederik L. Schodt - Dreamland Japan. Writings on Modern Manga.

More wizards, more research. And then only four more Dresden books to go and I'm finally caught up. Phew!