(no subject)
Sunday, January 22nd, 2023 10:44 pmMade it to the store while the snow was still flurrying, hard enough to make the streets wet but not enough to require boots. Have enough pepsi to get me through-- well, maybe the week. I really have to find a substitute for that. But then the snow continued and now there's maybe an inch out there, and because it's wet snow it limns all the tree branches quite beautifully.
Have a couple of slim volumes for bag reading, started one today: Isherwood's Prater Violet from my parents' library. Why I thought it would be Ronald Firbanky I can't say, but it's not. It's Christopher writing film scripts in Nazi Germany, or against the background of Nazi Germany, and I'm not up for that at all. Into a Wee Free it goes once I get a chance. We're promised a snow dump on Wednesday afternoon, so it may not be any time soon.
And meanwhile I go back to my reread of Phantom Moon B(T)ower.* I started vol. 6, the one I got this year with Hyakki Yakki, and found it much more readable than I remember PMB/T from the past. Finished it, unearthed vol.5 from the shelves, realized I'd never read that one because it was too difficult at the time, and yes, there was much wordtanking involved but then I got into it and finished that one too. So now I'm on vol.4 which I may have read once, but-- the thing is, Ima-sensei does about one of these stories *a year*- two at most- so yeah, vol.4 came out in 2013. She actually has a little atogaki at the end of vol.6, where she's wondering just how long she's been drawing this series- 'three years? four?' and is shocked to realize it's been twenty years!!
*The character 楼 is translated as tower in all my dictionaries. However this place is not a tower at all, but a building where geisha come to entertain the guests (as opposed to a geisha house proper); the story is set in the 1920s but the Phantom Moon Whatever is older than that. Language was a lot different in early Shouwa, let alone Taishou or Meiji, and classical allusions were more likely to be Chinese. A Chinese friend said that the original meaning of 楼 was more like 'a young lady's quarters, a bower' so I add that. reading.
Have a couple of slim volumes for bag reading, started one today: Isherwood's Prater Violet from my parents' library. Why I thought it would be Ronald Firbanky I can't say, but it's not. It's Christopher writing film scripts in Nazi Germany, or against the background of Nazi Germany, and I'm not up for that at all. Into a Wee Free it goes once I get a chance. We're promised a snow dump on Wednesday afternoon, so it may not be any time soon.
And meanwhile I go back to my reread of Phantom Moon B(T)ower.* I started vol. 6, the one I got this year with Hyakki Yakki, and found it much more readable than I remember PMB/T from the past. Finished it, unearthed vol.5 from the shelves, realized I'd never read that one because it was too difficult at the time, and yes, there was much wordtanking involved but then I got into it and finished that one too. So now I'm on vol.4 which I may have read once, but-- the thing is, Ima-sensei does about one of these stories *a year*- two at most- so yeah, vol.4 came out in 2013. She actually has a little atogaki at the end of vol.6, where she's wondering just how long she's been drawing this series- 'three years? four?' and is shocked to realize it's been twenty years!!
*The character 楼 is translated as tower in all my dictionaries. However this place is not a tower at all, but a building where geisha come to entertain the guests (as opposed to a geisha house proper); the story is set in the 1920s but the Phantom Moon Whatever is older than that. Language was a lot different in early Shouwa, let alone Taishou or Meiji, and classical allusions were more likely to be Chinese. A Chinese friend said that the original meaning of 楼 was more like 'a young lady's quarters, a bower' so I add that. reading.
