A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions

Blog update - "Follow by email" service will stop working after July 2021

2021-04-14T20:30:00.000-05:00

Blogger put up a notification that the FollowByEmail widget is going away, and the email subscription service will no longer work after July 2021. So, if you've used it to follow my blog, be aware that it's going to stop working soon. I'll remove the widget in the meantime, but I don't know what, if anything I'm going to replace it with. I don't have a lot of followers anyway as far as I know, so it doesn't seem like something I need to worry about much.

I assume my various RSS feeds will continue to work, since I haven't gotten a notification about the "Subscribe to" widget on my page.

A look back at 2020

2020-12-31T22:27:00.000-06:00

I used to do more thorough "end of the year" posts, with "best" and "worst" lists, stats, etc. The last time I did anything like that was at the end of 2016/beginning of 2017. I figured I'd try to get back to something like that at the end of this year, but less methodical.

So, here goes. As with just about everybody, the pandemic was an issue for me this year, although thankfully it hasn't directly affected me or any of my family members. Neither I nor they have gotten sick or lost jobs so far (although I did have a couple ER visits that were made scarier by the knowledge that, if things got worse, there might not be anyplace else to send me). I worked from home part-time, which was nice in some ways and sucked in others, and I've been back to my physical workplace for some time now, although meetings are thankfully almost all still virtual. I didn't go visit my parents in October/November the way I usually do, so I didn't have my usual vacation manga binge, but I still got quite a bit read during the year.

I got into needle felting at the end of the year, although sometimes I think I like the supplies and the books more than actually doing the felting. We'll see if I'm still doing this craft by the end of 2021, or if I have just have a bunch of rusty needles and a tub of unused wool and doll eyes.

Reading:

I'm really proud of my offload stats in 2020 - I got rid of 61 DVDs and books, more than twice what I offloaded in 2019. My 2019 offloads freed up less than 2 feet of shelf space, while my 2020 offloads freed up about 3.5 feet of shelf space. Overall I need to do a lot better, especially when you consider how many books and DVDs I add to my collection each year (I'm not going to tally that, it would be too depressing), but still, this year's offload total was really good. It helped that I pushed myself to get rid of things I'd read and enjoyed, but didn't particularly think I'd want to read again anytime soon and figured I could easily get via interlibrary loan if necessary.

Best books I read:

This isn't a comprehensive list and doesn't necessarily mean I rated them 5 stars, but here are a few that I really enjoyed.

Exit Strategy by Martha Wells - Technically a novella rather than a book. This is possibly my favorite entry in the whole series. It reunites Murderbot with the humans from the first novella and has some good action and emotional moments.
Anime Supremacy! by Mizuki Tsujimura - I went into this having no idea what to expect and got the fictional stories of three very different but equally dedicated women in the anime industry. I've seen anime like this before, but I don't think I've ever read a book like it, and it was much appreciated.
Sea of Wind by Fuyumi Ono - The second book in Ono's Twelve Kingdoms series, which I keep hoping will get a license rescue. I've reread this many times and will probably reread it yet again in 2021.
Ascendance of a Bookworm, Vol. 1 by Miya Kazuki - This...actually isn't all that great, but I wanted to mention it because it's one of the few light novel series I've read several volumes of and still genuinely plan to continue, and not because I foolishly bought a bunch of volumes of it all at once.
So I'm a Spider, So What?, Vol. 1 by Okina Baba - This series started so well and so strong! Unfortunately, it couldn't maintain that momentum, so although I rated it more highly than the first volume of Ascendance of a Bookworm, my interest in the series as a whole has petered out much more quickly.

Best manga I read:

Sweat & Soap, Vol.1 by Kintetsu Yamada - This is much sweeter than the cover art led me to believe it would be. Although the premise seems to fade into the background pretty quickly after this first volume, I've still enjoyed what I've read of this series overall.
A Man and His Cat, Vol. 1 by Umi Sakurai - I'll have to see how later volumes hold up, but this first one was very enjoyable, a sweet story about an older gentleman who adopts a cat, something he'd originally planned to do while his wife was still alive.
Dekoboko Sugar Days by Atsuko Yusen - I'd actually have liked this more if it hadn't included explicit sex scenes. They meshed badly with what was otherwise a sweet and awkward romance.
BL Metamorphosis, Vol. 1 by Kaori Tsurutani - 2020 was a good year for manga with older protagonists. This featured a nice cross-generational friendship - I'd like to get back to it at some point, but first I'd like some warning as to whether Ichinoi, the older of the two main protagonists, dies at the end of the series.

Watching:

My viewing stats for the year are really inaccurate - I'm bad about remembering to review stuff, and bad about recording that I watched things. Again, this isn't a complete list and doesn't necessarily mean I gave it 5 stars.

Best stuff I watched:

Mononoke (anime TV series) - This series is visually stunning. Yes, it has some extremely off-putting moments, but I still consider it very much worth watching.
Knives Out (live action movie) - I found this just as enjoyable on a rewatch as it was when I originally saw it in theaters, despite knowing all the twists and turns.
Violet Evergarden (anime TV series) - This is the kind of thing I'd rewatch if I needed a good therapeutic cry. There's so much grief and heartache, but it also pays a lot of attention to emotional healing as well.
My Roommate Is a Cat (anime TV series) - Another "healing" sort of series, although a bit less of an unrelenting sob-fest than Violet Evergarden.

Gaming:

And now for games, which I've kept even worse track of than TV and movies.

Best games I played (but haven't necessarily finished):

Disco Elysium - I haven't actually gotten very far into this and am pretty terrible at it, but the gameplay is fascinating. You set up your character stats so that you are a certain kind of very messed up detective, and then you go and try to solve a mystery - the same one each time, although having different skills means you'll have access to a different set of clues and way of doing things.
Baba Is You - As you shift words around, you change the rules of the game. For example "Baba Is You" means that you control the movement of the little Baba character. If you change it to something like "Key Is You," you control the movement of the key instead and Baba becomes stationary. If you can think outside the box and arrange the words in the right way, you can solve the puzzles. I'm currently stuck and haven't bothered to look for a walkthrough, but this is another one with fascinating gameplay. It's a simple but at the same time very difficult game, and it's rewarding when you manage to figure out the right thing to do.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons - I played this a LOT when I first got my Switch Lite, and discovered that my hands can't handle the Switch for very long. I've since stopped playing much - the last time I went into the game my house had cockroaches - but I still have fond memories of it and hope to get a full Switch and some good controllers at some point, so I can hopefully get back to it without destroying my hands.
Untitled Goose Game - Another game I played on the Switch. You're a horrible goose who enjoys ruining people's days. It's simple, but very fun.
Murder By Numbers - If you really, really like Picross, this is a fabulous game - great visuals and fun dialogue and stories. The only reason I haven't finished yet is because of a demoralizing glitch - I completed one of the cases and, since it was late, didn't want to start the next one and deal with a bunch of intro stuff I'd be forced to watch before I could save the game. Unfortunately, I must not have saved, or the game just plain forgot where I was, and so I was forced to have to recomplete that same case.
Stardew Valley - Yup, I got back into this, although I haven't played it since its latest big update. I've been trying to accomplish any achievements that felt reachable (cooking all recipes, befriending all villagers). I have hundreds of hours in this game, and it's safe to say that it's one of my all-time favorite. Although I wish that instead of updates, we could just get a whole new game set in another part of the same world - same sort of gameplay, but new secrets to learn and NPCs to get to know.
Cloud Gardens - Some would argue that this isn't really a game. There's a slight puzzle aspect - you have to arrange objects around your plant seeds to that you'll get enough growth to move on to the next scene - but it's really meant for people who'd just like to create pretty overgrown scenes while listening to soothing music.
Hades - Yes, I have jumped on the Hades bandwagon, and surprisingly I don't regret it. I've made six escape attempts so far and tend to die embarrassingly quickly, but I like to think that I'm getting better. Or the boons and other boosts are starting to help a noticeable amount. I actually managed to get through a few rooms without any damage. Granted, there are still times I literally run into enemy blasts while accidentally aiming in the opposite direction I intended. It's highly likely I'll end up turning on God Mode at some point, but for now I'm enjoying this, frequent death and all. The voice acting is great, getting new boons and power-ups is fun, and I like talking to the NPCs.

Update

2019-06-08T12:48:00.000-05:00

It's been over a month, and I still can't seem to bring myself to write reviews, although I've read and listened to quite a few books and finished an anime TV series. I'm not sure what's up, but it's probably at least partly due to stress and general tiredness.

Work...could be going better. After very nearly stressing myself to pieces training my new staff member (see this post - yes, it's only been a couple a months), I learned that she applied for a different position in my library. I was shocked and unhappy when I first found out. I eventually learned more about the reasons behind it all - it wasn't anything I could fix or do anything about, and if she didn't get that other position, it was very likely I'd lose her to something else in the near future. When a different position in my library opened up, I agreed to have her moved into that one, an option she was also fine with.

So the situation is about as amicable as possible, considering, but it means I'm going to continue to be deeply anxious and stressed out for a while, and I have periods where I feel like an utter failure even though there was nothing I could have done to prevent what happened. There are also a lot of other changes coming down the road, and I'm currently in "wait and see" mode as I decide whether they're changes for the better or changes that reveal more of the cracks in the foundation.

I'm going to sit down today and write something review-ish. Lately, I seem to be dealing with stress by trying new games, so I've played a lot of games in the past month. I haven't actually finished anything, but I've at least enjoyed nearly everything I've tried.

Happy New Year!

2019-01-01T11:32:00.000-06:00

For the first time, I still have vacation reading notes to write up at the start of the new year. I really need to get those done, or it'll interfere with my ability to pick up where I left off during my next vacation.

One of the things I realized at the tail end of 2018 is that it has become really hard for me to force myself to write reviews. I'm not sure what's up. I don't want to stop blogging/reviewing, but I think I need to figure out a different way of doing things. Maybe I need to change my reviewing style.

I also realized that I need to actively work at offloading (donating, recycling, or selling) more of my collection, more regularly. In the past couple years, I haven't offloaded more than 30 items a year, whereas I've definitely purchased more than that. I just bought a new bookcase that's taller than me, and that's certainly helped a lot, but I can't keep adding and upgrading bookcases. So, one of the things I'm trying in 2019 is sticker rewards, since Booklikes Bingo has taught me that I apparently have an inner small child that still loves stickers. I have a sheet of paper with a blank table with 56 spots on it. For every item I offload in some way, I get to put one sticker on the sheet. Ideally, I should have the whole sheet filled up in a year. It's not much, but it'd be an improvement over previous years, if it works.

Beyond that, I don't have a whole lot of reading/reviewing goals. As far as goals not related to books go, I'd like to continue to go to the gym regularly and get back to my pre-Hep C medication weight. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but in the past few months I was diagnosed with mild arthritis in my right hip. After being referred to multiple doctors, each of whom thought surgery might be a good idea, I was finally reluctantly given a prescription for physical therapy, which I'm very happy to report worked wonders. Since then, I've been going to the gym regularly and doing my physical therapy exercises and stretches semi-regularly (yeah, I need to work on that). I've also made it a quarter of the way to my weight goal. My hip's still occasionally a bit stiff, and flexibility is still an issue, but things are so much better. I'd like my progress to continue into 2019.

Status update

2018-05-28T15:53:00.000-05:00

I've been reading and watching a lot more than my recent reviews indicate. The problem is that I've been having trouble making myself write reviews. Although I managed to post a few in the past couple days, I have many more to go. Here's what my current backlog looks like, assuming I'm not forgetting anything:

Porco Rosso (anime movie)
Deadpool (live action movie)
The Haunting of Hill House (book) by Shirley Jackson
Kenka Bancho Otome: Love's Battle Royale (manga, vol. 1)
Let's Talk About Love (book) by Claire Kann
Nine Princes in Amber (audiobook) by Roger Zelazny, narrated by Alessandro Juliani
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (audiobook) by Agatha Christie, narrated by Hugh Fraser
Bingo Love (graphic novel)
Making Arrangements (e-short story) by Rosefox - This is an original work on Archive of Our Own. It isn't currently listed in Goodreads, although I suppose I could still review it and just skip cross-posting there.
Fullmetal Alchemist (live action movie)
Yuri on Ice (anime TV series) - Yes, I've technically already reviewed this, but I bought the discs and could write a review of my impressions of the show the second/third time around, the English dub, and the extras.

Crap, that's 11 reviews I should have written. Some of these have been sitting in my backlog long enough that I'd probably need to give myself a refresher first.

At the moment, the only show I'm seriously watching is Land of the Lustrous on Amazon Prime (I've almost caught up to my stopping point in the manga), although I have several others that I've started and stalled on. What I should do is sit down and plow through some of my anime discs. The amount of anime that I own and have never watched is ridiculous.

Reading-wise, I've finally caught up with my interlibrary loan books. I'm in the process of reading Jenn McKinlay's Book, Line, and Sinker (paper) and Wes Kennedy's To Terminator, With Love (e-book on my phone). In theory, I'm also still reading L. Rowyn's A Rational Arrangment on my e-reader, but I've stalled on that one so badly that my e-read is collecting dust. I'm tempted to move on to something else.

I'm considering giving my local public library's book club a shot. For once, I managed to find out what their current book is well before their next meeting. Unfortunately, it's one that I've heard terrible things about, Judith Newman's To Siri With Love. Do I want to read a book in which the author writes about wanting to forcibly sterilize her autistic son when he turns 18? Not really. But I miss being involved with a book club, so I might make myself read it anyway.

Happy New Year

2018-01-01T00:10:00.002-06:00

It's now 2018 where I am - happy new year! My "best" and "worst" posts for 2017 will probably be very late this year, as I'm still working my way through the backlog of reviews I'd hoped to get through before 2018.

My cat is still sick, but also still mostly the same. Her behavior is normal (I have no clue how she still manages to have any energy), and she seems to be decently hydrated. She ate quite a bit more today than she had in the past four days, but far less than she should have. Maybe 1/4 cup of food instead of 1/12? And unfortunately she threw some of it up, so it may have ended up being 1/12 cup anyway. Crossing my fingers that she eats a bit more while I'm sleeping. I'm still force feeding her baby food with Nutri-Cal mixed into it, and still hoping that she'll finally start eating on her own without throwing any of it up. We'll be seeing the vet on Tuesday, whether her eating picks up or not.

My reviewing plans have gone out the window

2017-12-30T11:58:00.000-06:00

I was going to do a big push to write short reviews of everything I hadn't yet reviewed from 2017, to get it all done before 2018. Well, then my cat got sick. She's barely eaten anything for days - at the moment, I'm following the vet's advice and force-feeding her chicken baby food a few times a day. The current theory is that she might be constipated, or she might have eaten a non-food item. She lost half a pound over the course of three days, bringing her weight down to about 7.5 pounds. She's still behaving relatively normally, but I don't know how long that will last considering she isn't getting anywhere near the calories she should be. I have a feeling I'll be making another vet appointment on Tuesday, assuming I don't have to make an emergency appointment between now and then.

I'm very worried, and it's making it difficult to concentrate. I'm still planning on writing up a few reviews, but it won't be as many as I'd hoped. I had originally intended to start 2018 fresh - anything I hadn't reviewed by then wasn't going to be reviewed. Now, I'm not so sure. I definitely want to get my vacation reading reviews written. Those will happen, even if I have to write them after 2018 starts.

Vacation

2017-11-03T12:10:00.000-05:00

I'm about to go on vacation for a couple weeks. I'll still have access to the Internet, but it'll mostly be via my phone, so don't expect anything in the way of reviews. If I post at all, it'll be over at Booklikes, although I'll probably add books and ratings to LibraryThing and maybe Goodreads as well.

I plan on reading lots of manga volumes, so you can expect lots of spoilery review posts in late November and December.

As for today, I have to clean, pack, and take care of a million other things before I leave for the airport. I have a few reviews I might finish up and push out, as well.

Booklikes issues

2016-12-09T20:06:00.001-06:00

I don't know that many people who read this blog also followed me via Booklikes, but I figured I'd talk about it a bit here just in case. Booklikes has been having serious problems for the past year or so. If you recall, I wrote a post back in May about it possibly having been sold. This was later denied by a Booklikes employee, although no one from Booklikes ever contacted The Hundert to ask them to issue a correction about the bit that said one of the site's founders had sold it, so who knows what's really going on. What it comes down to is that the site has been working like crap, or not at all, for months. Also, neither I nor any of the other users I've spoken to have had any contact with a Booklikes employee since sometime in July 2016 - no one responds to emails, Facebook posts, Twitter comments, posts in Booklikes discussion groups, or anything else.

The site was down for me a day or two ago, and it's down for me again today. I had hoped to continue using it until at least the end of the year, so that I could finish up my yearly reading challenge, but it's looking like that might not be possible.

I'm still considering what to do. I've removed the Booklikes widget from this blog because the site is down so often now that it's basically useless. I have no plans to close my Booklikes account or delete my Booklikes blog (if I even could, what with the site being down), but I might not be updating it anymore. It's sad, because in the past few years I've been posting there more than here. I loved the community, chatted with a lot of great people, discovered lots of new books, and got hooked on loose-leaf tea.

I think I'll probably start posting on Goodreads again. I still have issues with the mindset of those in charge of the site, and I hate that at least one of the people I got to know via Booklikes is banned from GR and doesn't even have the option of going back, but it's the only book site I can think of with even halfway decent social features, and it's the best way I know of to keep in touch with the majority of the folks I got to know via Booklikes.

That said, I'm probably going to use GR differently than I used to. Back when I first got started with it, it was my personal reading catalog as well as a place to mirror my reviews. Now, however, LibraryThing has taken over that role, and I think it does a better job than GR. No one but me (with very rare exceptions) can change my data, my cover image choices, etc., and I actually get to edit my own data instead of having to make do with something that isn't quite correct. Instead of being my primary catalog, GR is just going to be a place where I can interact with other readers. That means it doesn't matter if my data isn't quite right or if I haven't posted everything I've reviewed over there. I doubt I'll be importing all the reviews I've written in the past three or so years, for example.

So, that's basically it. Even if Booklikes magically comes back online by tomorrow, I'm to the point where I don't trust that it will still be there the day after that.

Vacation reading summary

2016-11-20T22:53:00.001-06:00

I didn't get through as many books during my vacation as I had during past vacations, but I knew in advance that that was probably going to happen. I still took notes on everything, though, so here's what I should hopefully be posting about soon:

Alice in the Country of Clover: The March Hare's Revolution (one-shot)
Alice in the Country of Clover: Twin Lovers (one-shot)
Attack on Titan: Junior High (vol. 1)
Chi's Sweet Home (vol. 12 - Finished!)
Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto (vol. 1)
Kobato (vol. 6 - Finished!)
Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun (vols. 1-3)
Natsume's Book of Friends (vols. 9-10)
A Silent Voice (vols. 3-7 - Finished!)
Skip Beat! (vols. 35-36)

That makes 18 volumes total, with 3 series finished up. Skip Beat!, Natsume's Book of Friends, and Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun were the best of the bunch. The worst was probably Attack on Titan: Junior High and Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto.

Manga wasn't the only thing I read. I also got through a few pages of Helen S. Wright's A Matter of Oaths and all of M.C.A. Hogarth's Mindtouch. I think I can safely say that Mindtouch has achieved the status of "comfort read" for me, although I still wish that Hogarth had ended it at a different point.

Back from vacation

2016-11-14T08:32:00.000-06:00

I'm technically back from vacation, but not quite ready yet to write quickie review posts for everything. Today will be all about mopping up some final To Do list items before dragging my butt back into work tomorrow.

I haven't done an official tally yet, but, between my sister's kids and my post-election funk, my reading total was pathetic. Maybe 18 manga volumes and 1 book (reread). For perspective, last year I read 50 manga volumes, and the year before I managed to plow through 44 manga volumes and 2 books. Well, at least the write-ups should be quicker and easier to get through this year.

The current status of my anime reviewing

2016-06-21T00:44:00.001-05:00

Update (6/24/16): I've received my third DMCA takedown notice. The first one was on the 17th, so that makes three in just a week. This one was for my review of Taisho Baseball Girls, which I bought on DVD - watching stuff via streaming services definitely isn't the problem. I've written my third counter-claim and saved some default text I can copy and paste for the next DMCA takedown notice, because at this point I wouldn't be surprised if there were another one. I've written 110 anime reviews over the years, so there's a lot that could be targeted.

I'm starting to think that I should change the way I title my posts, maybe put the word "review" at the beginning. Nearly all of my posts are reviews, so it feels a bit silly, but it's the only thing I can think of that would help distinguish my posts from those with illegal downloads.

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Update (6/22/16): A discussion on BookLikes led to me deciding to submit counter-claims for both posts. They're both reviews and should both be covered under fair use (thanks to Libromancer's Apprentice for reminding me of this), regardless of my having watched the shows via streaming services. I had already edited the Angelic Layer post a bit and couldn't remember what it used to look like, so I'm crossing my fingers that doesn't turn out to be a problem. Now I get to see how long it takes to find out what happens next. At least I haven't gotten any more bogus DMCA takedown notices since that second one.

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I had been wondering why I had been getting so many pageviews in the past month, and I think I might finally know the answer: bots scanning my blog for possible copyright violations. In the past week, I've received two DMCA takedown notifications, one for my review of the Angelic Layer anime and one for my review of the This Boy Can Fight Aliens anime (the links point to the DMCA complaints to Google, so you can see just how little information I'm given).

The problem (besides the fact that the takedown notifications were issued in the first place): as far as I can tell, there's no way for me to find out what, specifically, prompted the takedown notices. I scanned both posts, and the only links they include are ones to Anime News Network encyclopedia pages. If that's a problem, a huge chunk of my blog is doomed, because ANN is what I link to every time I recommend an anime or manga series as a watch-alike or read-alike.

The other possibility is that I viewed both series via streaming services. I won't name them outright, because at this point I'm worried that the wrong combination of keywords might get this post taken down (yeah, I'm paranoid), but I'll say that Angelic Layer was viewed via a streaming service beginning with the letter J. I don't think it exists anymore. I'm pretty sure it was legal, but maybe I'm wrong. This Boy Can Fight Aliens, however, was most definitely viewed on a legal streaming service, a currently existing one beginning with the letter H.

The email I received tells me that "You may edit the post to remove the offending content and republish, at which point the post in question will be visible to your readers again." However: "If it is brought to our attention that you have republished the post without removing the content/link in question, then we will delete your post and count it as a violation on your account. Repeated violations to our Terms of Service may result in further remedial action taken against your Blogger account including deleting your blog and/or terminating your account."

Like I said, I can only guess that the mentions of the streaming services are what caused my blog posts to be taken down. I haven't decided yet whether it's worth risking my entire blog to edit out what I think is the offending content and repost, but at the moment I'm leaning towards "it's not worth the risk." I now own a DVD copy of This Boy Can Fight Aliens, so I might write a new post or heavily edit my old post with that in mind. My Angelic Layer post is likely going to stay in draft forever. I'm crossing my fingers that none of my other blog posts get a takedown notice, but since I'm still getting slammed with mysterious pageviews, I'm not holding my breath.

If you start to notice that more of my older anime reviews are missing, this is why. As far as any posts from here on out go, I think I'm going to drop my policy of stating where I watched shows and movies. If I watched something on DVD, Blu-ray, or at the movie theater, I'll say so, but that's it. And I might as well apply this to everything, not just anime.

I'm still trying to decide if I should stop linking to Anime News Network, in case that's the real problem. I suppose it depends on any additional takedown notices I'm given.

Oh, and if the problem turns out to be that I wrote reviews of series I wasn't supposed to review (a bizarre thought)...I may stop reviewing anime entirely, or experiment with only posting them on LibraryThing. Here's hoping it doesn't come to that.

ETA: I just came across this, posted by someone who has a similar experience, fought the DMCA takedown notice, and got their content reinstated. Hm. I'll keep it in mind in case more of my posts get takedown notices.

Reading and reviewing goals

2016-01-10T13:36:00.001-06:00

I've been really bad about posting non-review stuff on Booklikes but not here. A large part of it is that social interaction is so much easier on Booklikes. I know I have a few readers here, but most of my commenters/visitors seem to be temporary first-time visitors who stumbled over here via Google or a link somewhere.

Anyway, one of the things I posted about on Booklikes was my reading and reviewing goals for the year. I'm not calling them resolutions, because for some reason that feels more intimidating and set in stone than "goals." I've already gotten a start on a few of them. Here they are:

Be more organized. This particular goal involves taking greater advantage of LibraryThing. One of the things I've spent the past few days doing is cataloging my entire paper book collection.* During LibraryThing's holiday sale, I broke down and bought a CueCat, which I have so far used to scan over 970 books. During that process, I identified 15 unintentional duplicate purchases and 7 books I'd already reviewed (usually because it was easier to just get the book from the library than to figure out where I'd put my personal copy). I still have a little bit more work to do, but I'm done with the most important stuff - I now have a catalog I can search when I'm trying to remember whether I already own, say, volume 20 of a particular manga series.
Use LibraryThing to keep track of my movie/TV watching. I've already started doing this. It'll be nice to have a backup of my movie and TV reviews, and I'm hoping that it will make my end-of-year "best" and "worst" lists easier to compile.
Use LibraryThing to keep track of my acquisition and offloading of physical items (books, DVDs). I've already started doing this too. I kept paper lists of both in 2015, but I got tired of writing stuff down and began slacking off after a few months. Here's hoping I do a better job this time around.
Read 143 works. I base my Booklikes Reading Challenge on what I managed to finish in the previous year (rereads count too), so that puts me at 143 for 2016. It was very hard to reach my goal of 142 last year, so we'll see how this year goes.

* - I had a twinge of privacy concerns about doing this. It was one of the reasons I hadn't done it up until now. However, since I add all my new e-book purchases and generally try pretty hard to review everything I read and watch, I figure I gave up on book collection privacy a long time ago.

I read a lot while on vacation

2015-11-29T16:49:00.000-06:00

I didn't mention it on this blog, but one of the reasons why I didn't post for so long was because I was on vacation. If I counted correctly, while I was gone I read 50 volumes of manga. Not bad.

As usual, I plan on writing up posts that cover each of the series I read, with short synopses and reviews of each volume. It'll take a while, but it's pretty much the only way I'm able to get back into a series a year or so later and not be completely lost.

The 50 volumes I read were part of 18 different series. Here's what you can hopefully expect posts for in the coming weeks:

Alice in the Country of Clover: Ace of Hearts (one-shot)
Alice in the Country of Clover: Cheshire Cat Waltz (vols. 1-6)
Alice in the Country of Clover: The Lizard Aide (one-shot)
Alice in the Country of Clover: March Hare (one-shot)
Alice in the Country of Clover: Nightmare (one-shot)
Alice in the Country of Hearts: The Clockmaker's Story (one-shot)
Alice in the Country of Joker: Circus and Liar's Game (vols. 1-7)
Alice in the Country of Joker: The Nightmare Trilogy (vols. 1-3)
Are You Alice? (vols. 1-2)
Attack on Titan: No Regrets (vol. 2)
Black Butler (vols. 15-20)
Chi's Sweet Home (vol. 11)
Naruto (vol. 55)
Natsume's Book of Friends (vols. 1-8)
Secret (vol. 1)
A Silent Voice (vols. 1-2)
Skip Beat! (vols. 33-34)
Wandering Son (vols. 1-5)

The best surprise was probably A Silent Voice, while the biggest disappointment was probably Are You Alice? As far as the Alice in the Country of stuff went, I made a huge mistake when I chose to tackle the one-shots first. I highly recommend starting with the multi-volume stories, because those cover new world rules in the best amount of detail. Also, try to start with all the Hearts stuff, then Clover, then Joker. I'm still trying to decide whether I'll review that series by title or by country, or if I should just put all of it on one giant post.

I'm so behind on reviews

2015-04-09T19:52:00.001-05:00

I'm currently behind by 2 book reviews (Voyage to the Moon World by Kaoru Shizuka, Saronna's Gift by Carmen Webster Buxton), 2 manga reviews (Aquarian Age: Juvenile Orion vols. 1-2), 1 audiobook review (The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett), and 1 movie review (Confessions of a Shopaholic).

I haven't been this behind in a while. Part of the problem, I think, is that I just want to keep plowing ahead with new stuff. Except that just makes me fall more behind. Ugh.

Vacation!

2013-10-17T11:23:00.002-05:00

FYI - I'm on vacation for the next couple of weeks and will soon be flying to my parents' place. I plan to relax, play with my parents' dogs, and read lots and lots of manga. I'm not currently planning on doing much, if any, blogging, but I might finish up a few of my draft posts and schedule them.

Making some changes

2013-06-30T11:29:00.000-05:00

I'm so behind on my posts right now that I'm going to institute some short-term (or not so short-term - who knows?) changes to my blog. From this point to whenever I decide to change back, any live action stuff I watch will not include watch-alikes/read-alikes, unless I really want to include them. I'm also iffy about whether I'll include any for audiobooks. I still plan to put in the effort for anime, manga, and books/novellas, though.

At the moment, I need to write posts for two audiobooks, one movie, one TV series, two novels, and one short story. I'm very close to finishing a short story anthology and another audiobook. I'd skip writing posts about some of these, except my blog works out really well for me as a way to keep track of what I've read/watched and what I thought about what I've read/watched.

I don't know if I'll post anything today, since I'm Sunday Librarian, but I've at least got a rough outline typed out for one of the books I've finished.

Getting caught up

2013-06-23T12:52:00.000-05:00

I really need to get caught up on my posts, so I'm going to bang out a series of short-ish reviews about a few things I've either waited too long to post about or simply don't want to put a lot of time into writing about. None of these posts will include read-alikes/watch-alikes, which is usually the stuff that sucks up most of my time.

Enjoy!

This blog and the next few months

2012-09-02T13:07:00.001-05:00

Hey, folks! It's been a while since I've written a more personal post. Anyway, this is mostly an FYI to let my handful of regular readers know that my posting schedule may get kind of wonky over the next few months. I recently started taking some nasty medication. So far, side effects have been relatively mild, and I'm hoping they will stay that way. Nausea, fatigue, and a couple other things have cropped up. Naps seemed to have helped with the fatigue, and, if ginger ale and crackers don't start working for my nausea, I'm hoping the meds my doctor prescribed will.

Currently, my last day of meds is supposed to be February 1, 2013. I have it marked on a calendar, and I'm counting down the days. In the meantime, I'd like to continue writing this blog, but I don't know how often I'll manage to post, or how often I'll finish something I can post about. It seems to be taking longer than usual for me to finish writing or reading anything.

Well, with any luck, I'll be writing a post soon about the first season of Downton Abbey. I started watching it over the weekend, and I love it. My mom has given me a few spoilers, and now I'm fretting over Mr. Bates.

Spirits, Alaska, infanticide, and a cross-dressing heroine

2012-08-23T07:37:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I've written one of these posts. Anyway, as usual, I'm behind. If I get around to writing posts about all of these, here's what you can expect to see in the near future:

Spirited Away (anime movie) - I've seen this movie lots of times. I've liked every one of Miyazaki's films I've seen, but this is one of my favorites. The young heroine's parents get turned into pigs, so she works at a bathhouse intended for spirits while she tries to find a way to free them.
Northern Lights (live action movie) - A movie based on one of Nora Roberts' books. I haven't read the book, although I can see the bones of it in this movie. Just the bones, unfortunately. The hero moves to a small Alaskan town to get away from his past. The heroine has a chip on her shoulder due to her father leaving her family when she was younger.
The Mountains of Mourning (e-novella) by Lois McMaster Bujold - Now that I have finished this, I have officially finished all the Miles Vorkosigan stories and books in my possession. That makes me sad. I liked this, although maybe not quite as much as The Warrior's Apprentice. In this novella, Miles investigates an infanticide case.
Sungkyunkwan Scandal (live action TV series) - This is the second K-drama (Korean drama) I've watched from beginning to end. It's pretty, a little cheesy, and features a cross-dressing heroine. I liked it, but I think I liked Coffee Prince more.

My dad's visiting!

2012-06-22T18:10:00.002-05:00

If I manage to get a post done this weekend, I'll be amazed - my weekend has gone from "slightly booked" to "so much stuff to do!" Assuming all goes well, I'll be picking up my dad tonight and bringing him over for his first visit to my place since I moved here almost 4 years ago. Then I'm working on Sunday. That leaves maybe a little of Saturday for writing, depending on when my dad needs to get back on the road. If I do find time to write something up, here's what you'll likely be reading about:

Dead Inside: Do Not Enter: Notes from the Zombie Apocalypse (book) - This book is part of a collaborative project designed to document humanity's survival in a fictional alternate world in which the zombie apocalypse has taken place. The book is a collection of handwritten or typed notes and photographs.
Last Car to Annwyn Station (e-book) by Michael Merriam - A fantasy novel set in contemporary Minneapolis. It features a magical streetcar, fairies, and an animated corpse. This isn't a romance novel, but there is a bit of romance between the book's two main female characters.

Now, off to go eat something before it's time to go to the truck stop.

4th Anniversary

2012-05-22T21:46:00.000-05:00

This is one of three blogs I've created, and it's the only one that's still going strong.

When I first started blogging I had an...excessive...amount of time to read and watch things and blog about them. I wasn't sure what would happen to this blog after I got a full-time job, but I think I've managed to keep up with my posting fairly well. Sort of. I at least manage to post something almost every week, even if I can't seem to get caught up.

Sometimes it's been tempting to quit, but I keep writing posts because, in the end, it's a great way to encourage myself to think about the things I've read and watched. Some of my posts are really easy to write and some of them are much less so. I've been working on an e-book post for a couple weeks now that just doesn't seem to be coming out right - I'm crossing my fingers that I'll finally have that ready to publish by this weekend.

As you can tell, I really didn't plan out anything for my anniversary post. It's been a rough week, it will probably be an even rougher year, and there's been a lot for me to think about lately. I've been debating changing my review post structure to something shorter, or maybe just doing short posts for the things that give me the most trouble (like that e-book). With manga, I might write posts that cover multiple volumes, since writing single-volume review posts doesn't seem to be working for me. Well, I'll think it over some more.

Now I'm going to go ignore that e-book blog post some more and get some sleep.

The grading experiment

2012-05-01T09:34:00.000-05:00

I think I'm going to give up on grading the things I read and watch - or, at least, I think I'm going to give up on grading them publicly. I've assigned grades on 9 posts in a row. Sometimes it was easy, and sometimes it was really, really hard. When it was hard, I tended to agonize over the grade too much, and my posts started to take even longer than they usually take. Since I'm not sure the grades would do anyone any good, what with my difficulties writing something up that explains what the grades mean (other than "A 'C' is not a bad grade, just an average one"), I think I'll just go back to writing reviews but not assigning grades. I do like assigning grades privately, though - it'll make it easier to come up with my personal "Best" list at the end of the year.

Currently reading...

2012-03-25T10:52:00.001-05:00

My post on Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code might be the only review post you can expect until next weekend. It's hard to tell. Things are a hectic at work, and an unexpected catalog catastrophe made things even more hectic. Sometimes, being able to honestly say "this was in no way my fault" isn't all that much of a mood booster. At least the backup appears to be working and was, as far as I know, only a day or two old. I'm scheduled to work today, so I suppose I'll get to see for myself how things currently stand.

Currently, I'm reading:

Double Dare (book) by Vicki Hinze - This book is taking me forever. It's really not working for me, but I can't bring myself to abandon it and offload it unfinished.
Gosick, Volume 1 (book) story by Kazuki Sakuraba, illustrations by Hinata Takeda - So far, I prefer the anime (not a surprise), but I'm interested to see how the light novels differ. One difference: Avril is present right from the start. Also, Kazuya already knows Victorique. In the anime, they first met in the first episode.
The Collected Works of H.P. Lovecraft (e-book) by H.P. Lovecraft - I'm only on page 160 of 1400+ - this is clearly going to take me a while. However, I'm enjoying it so far.

Dropdown labels lists

2012-03-17T09:59:00.003-05:00

Okay, Blogger has decided to be "helpful" and change something again. Whatever it was they changed made it so that, the instant I updated one of my dropdown labels lists (the authors list), it disappeared. I'm going to have to experiment to see if I can bring it back.

UPDATE: Okay, following the original instructions for adding the dropdown list to my blog did not make the list reappear. FYI, the list does still exist - I can see the gadget in my Blogger layout. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to try next, and I never got any responses to past requests for help I sent to Blogger, so I'm not hopeful I'll get any help now. My labels lists are too huge to include as anything other than dropdown lists, so I'm kind of stuck right now. Until I can figure out how to get my Authors list back, I don't plan on updating either of my remaining dropdown labels lists. Sorry for any inconvenience this causes.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: I have no idea what I did, but I got my dropdown list back. Unfortunately, none of my author labels are selected anymore, so I have to go back and reselect everything.