(no subject)
Wed, Jun. 23rd, 2004 07:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterFeel vaguely guilty for the fit of self pity previously. Also feel guilty for spending money at Borders right after the meeting purely to cheer myself up. Ended up buying Sorcery and Cecelia (it looks like it will be a comfort read) in hardcover instead of waiting for the library hold to come through or waiting for the paperback to come out. Or even waiting for it to show up at the store. I feel guilty.
Feel even more guilty about being lax about the job search and moving lately. So tired. Tired isn't even the right word, even though I am a perpetual insomniac. I feel weary, like everything is dragging me down, like there are lead weights attached to me. My mind's in a fog, my body is tired, and the spirit is feeling pretty down.
A few things keeping me going: books and book recs (it's sort of an imaginary land my brain can rest in now, far removed from this world), the rats (who could care less if I got a job or not, as long as I fed them and scritched their backs), the boy, and LJers.
Sometimes I wonder what it means when most of what's keeping you going is not of the "real world."
I really need to read a Crusie book. Or watch season 6 of Buffy... both are comforting in very different ways. Crusie's appeal is pretty obvious, but S6 is also helpful for catharsis. As I've probably said before, I over-identify with Buffy to a huge degree in S6. Maybe I should whip out Two to Go/Grave and have a total sobfest (the yellow crayon scene).
Was skimming through the manga shelves at Borders, checking for more manga publishers. Unfortunately, looks like no more are around the Bay Area =(. I was rather pleasantly surprised (and shocked out of aforementioned self-pitying) when I turned from the one bookshelf I'd been scanning to notice four more behind me! I remember writing in my thesis a year ago how manga was finally fulfilling the hype of 1999 (Pokemon frenzy and Princess Mononoke) because I had seen two bookshelves at the Borders in Princeton. When I wrote it, I was wondering if I had been exaggerating, especially in my point that they had the same amount of shelf space as the graphic novels did. Apparently I was not exaggerating at all!
Feel even more guilty about being lax about the job search and moving lately. So tired. Tired isn't even the right word, even though I am a perpetual insomniac. I feel weary, like everything is dragging me down, like there are lead weights attached to me. My mind's in a fog, my body is tired, and the spirit is feeling pretty down.
A few things keeping me going: books and book recs (it's sort of an imaginary land my brain can rest in now, far removed from this world), the rats (who could care less if I got a job or not, as long as I fed them and scritched their backs), the boy, and LJers.
Sometimes I wonder what it means when most of what's keeping you going is not of the "real world."
I really need to read a Crusie book. Or watch season 6 of Buffy... both are comforting in very different ways. Crusie's appeal is pretty obvious, but S6 is also helpful for catharsis. As I've probably said before, I over-identify with Buffy to a huge degree in S6. Maybe I should whip out Two to Go/Grave and have a total sobfest (the yellow crayon scene).
Was skimming through the manga shelves at Borders, checking for more manga publishers. Unfortunately, looks like no more are around the Bay Area =(. I was rather pleasantly surprised (and shocked out of aforementioned self-pitying) when I turned from the one bookshelf I'd been scanning to notice four more behind me! I remember writing in my thesis a year ago how manga was finally fulfilling the hype of 1999 (Pokemon frenzy and Princess Mononoke) because I had seen two bookshelves at the Borders in Princeton. When I wrote it, I was wondering if I had been exaggerating, especially in my point that they had the same amount of shelf space as the graphic novels did. Apparently I was not exaggerating at all!
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(no subject)
Wed, Jun. 23rd, 2004 07:26 pm (UTC)Funny how the movie thing and vids work for people. I'm sort of at the opposite end. I go straight for the junkfood. (We're watching Xmen2 tonight and just finished My Fair Lady.)
And about the "real world" thing, funny that you mention it. One of my earliest memories is getting totally trashed by a teacher in Catholic school. We were asked to name what we were most grateful for in the world, and I said:
Books.
(no subject)
Thu, Jun. 24th, 2004 06:37 pm (UTC)*giggles* I like your answer to your teacher. I think sometimes I might not have stayed sane or something without them.
(no subject)
Wed, Jun. 23rd, 2004 08:03 pm (UTC)I found that Sorcery and Cecelia was great comfort reading when Ara was less than a month old, although my mom kept trying to pry it away from me so I could pay even more attention to the baby, which would have destroyed my sanity entirely. It's confusing at first, but in a pleasant washing-over-you sort of way, and slowly the characters become clear, I'm not sure how. Or maybe you'll figure it out from the first.
Hope things go better for you!
(no subject)
Thu, Jun. 24th, 2004 06:38 pm (UTC)Sorcery & Cecilia is like hot chocolate and mashed potatoes...
Wed, Jun. 23rd, 2004 08:11 pm (UTC)Hmm. I should re-read it.
Re: Sorcery & Cecilia is like hot chocolate and mashed potatoes...
Thu, Jun. 24th, 2004 06:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Jun. 24th, 2004 06:36 am (UTC)I think you will like the Stevermer book.
(no subject)
Thu, Jun. 24th, 2004 06:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Jun. 24th, 2004 07:01 am (UTC)Sorcery and Cecelia is loads of fun. If you like it, you might try to find Patricia Wrede's Mairelon the Magician and Magician's Ward, which are also set in a Regency England with magic involved. They don't require a huge investment of time or energy but they're fun, good comfort reading.
(no subject)
Thu, Jun. 24th, 2004 06:48 pm (UTC)Thanks for the other recs ^_^. Will keep my eye out for the other Wredes (I assume they're OOP?)
Women's history, feminism, etc, East Asia
Thu, Jun. 24th, 2004 01:43 pm (UTC)Under Confucian eyes : writings on gender in Chinese history, edited by Susan Mann and Yu-Yin Cheng (Berkeley : University of California Press, c2001); Wang Ping. Aching for beauty : footbinding in China (Minneapolis ; University of Minnesota Press, c2000); Chinese women in the imperial past : new perspectives , edited by Harriet T. Zurndorfer (Leiden : Brill, 1999); Fan Hong, Footbinding, feminism, and freedom : the liberation of women's bodies in modern China (London ; Portland, Or. : Frank Cass, 1997); Gail Hershatter, Dangerous pleasures : prostitution and modernity in twentieth-century Shanghai (Berkeley ; London : University of California Press, c1997); Frank Dikötter, Sex, culture and modernity in China : medical science and the construction of sexual identities in the early Republican period (London : Hurst & Co., c1995)
I've heard Wang Ping and Dikotter speak, and both were fascinating.
Re: Women's history, feminism, etc, East Asia
Thu, Jun. 24th, 2004 09:20 pm (UTC)