some favorite authors

While I am taking a (ahem) break from work, I thought I'd list some of my most beloved authors and books. A lot of these books were required for various English classes. American public school education is pretty good!

Jane Austen. I love rereading her books. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I get something new out of it. Every sentence is marvelous. Such a contrast with Dickens, hee. My middle school friend gave me this book and a couple other classics for my birthday. I read the book so much that I wore out the binding.

John Steinbeck. I adored the "Grapes of Wrath." The first book I read was probably The Pearl, which is good but pretty depressing. But The Grapes of Wrath blew me away. I think I read it in a couple days.

Aldous Huxley. A Brave New World.

Catch-22.

Farhenheit 451.

The Moomins!

William Faulkner. As I Lay Dying demonstrated to me that a book of characters I hated could still be fascinating and brilliant. I've never read any other of his books though, and I read this one for English class.

All Quiet on the Western Front.

J.R.R. Tolkien. I think the animated movie The Hobbit prompted me to read his books. That movie was great. I think I read the trilogy and The Hobbit, but the main thing that stuck in my head was how scary Gollum was. Freaky!

The Great Gatsby. Adults out of control. This book was really disturbing to me, but I can understand why it's considered a classic.

J.D. Salinger. The Catcher in the Rye. Having spent my childhood trying to please various adult figures in my life, just reading this story was an awakening.

Shakespeare. Opened my eyes to the possibilities in tragedies, and the marvelousness of dialogue. I perhaps was most impressed by Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet.

The Stranger. Fascinating. Hadn't a clue while reading it, and even now only have a dim understanding of it.

Authors of lesser impact:

P.G. Wodehouse. British people are really funny. But I already knew that. Have you ever seen Are You Being Served? Funny show.

The English Patient. Beautiful prose. Not that I'm much of a judge of prose, but I loved the writing, and really identified with the message.

Siddhartha. Wow, fascinating book.

You know, compared to the books I used to read when I was young, I'm not reading books of particular quality these days.

Pride and Prejudice

The movie just came to theatres in Japan a couple weeks ago. You know, I don't think I want to watch a version of Pride and Prejudice that doesn't have Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy.

He just had the perfect combination of natural arrogance and sensibility for the part.

I'll just have to buy the BBC miniseries. I wonder if my mother would like it. It's only $26.17 at overstock.com!

All the Slam Dunk english comic books

Did I mention that I bought the entire set of the Slam Dunk manga (a basketball masterpiece) in the Singapore English edition? All 31 books in one fell swoop at Kinokuniya in Shinjuku. I also got a set for my cousin, who is still waiting for the last 8 books (that I am being lazy about mailing). The U.S. edition only got up to volume 5 before the publisher folded.

The Kinokuniya staff must think I'm obsessed, heh. I wonder if the Singapore publisher is noticing high sales in Japan.

I still want the Slam Dunk Perfect Edition (Japanese only), which is 24 large format books with lovely covers and nice paper. But that would come to another $250 or so, when I already have the regular Japanese version (mostly used books) and now the English one. Maybe when I'm completely fluent in Japanese.

The life of a moderate otaku. (-_-;) I can say I'm moderate because:
a) I have savings. Every month even!
b) My conversation doesn't relate to Slam Dunk and Studio Ghibli (most of the time)
c) Reasons too innumerable to list.

Minus point:
a) I don't particularly care about college or pro basketball (but the women's teams rock!!) but I adore this comic
b) The need to defend myself against the label "otaku" is itself a little incriminating
c) Knowing what "otaku" means is also a little incriminating (Otaku is a Japanese colloquialism for fanatic [such as comic fanatic/video-game addict] according to my dictionary. I was going to say anime geek. In the U.S. it just means Japanese anime/manga fan, methinks).

I am apparently a nerd because I say "parse" to mean distinguishing individual words in a sentence.