nikavia

Other than that it was a dull day of… dullness. Finished Vampirates: Demons of the Ocean.

Went to the library… and borders. 4 mangas and another billion books.

Basilisk returned to my purchases… I also jumped on a bandwagon and… I bought the first volume of Naruto… which is bad as it is over 40 volumes long and still going.

Seeing Redd by Frank Beddor (sequel for sister who is soon to be done with Looking Glass Wars)

Outlaws of Moonshadow Marsh: Sign of the Qin by L.G.Bass (pretty cover… shallow shallow me… shallow shallow me)

Spy High Mission One by A. J. Butcher (….. too many book series… bad…)

Spy High Mission Two by A. J. Butcher

Spy High Mission Three by A. J. Butcher

Faerie Wars by Herbie Brennan (against advisement I want to see if I can read it)

The True Prince J.B Cheaney (… acting book with pretty cover)

Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire (we want to see if this one is better)

Barbarian by Lynne Ewing (… uh… no idea… bad Nyssa)

Basilisk by N.M. Browne (… pretty cover… no really look it up)

I love Fridays! I bought 4 mangas today: Fruits Basket vol 15, Ouran High School Host Club vol 6-7 and Baku. The problem is of course that I haven’t bought a Fruits Basket or a Host Club in… a long time… which means that there is much… refreashing that needs to be done. Baku is done by the manga artist who created The Demon Ororon. They have been publishing a lot of their works. I hope they print TDO sequel. In other manga news: Petshop of Horrors’ sequel is going to be published by Tokyopop in February! I am so excited!
Laters
Nyssa
Manga Count: 532
Comic Book Count: 12
Word Count:

389 / 10,000 (3.9%)

Book Count: 56

… So I went to Borders today and bought another 5 mangas… sigh I need impulse control. I bought two of the 4 Getbackers I am missing. I have still not read SDK but I don’t remember anything from Getbackers so I have to reread 16 volumes before I can read the two that I bought. So that is a chunk of my weekend gone. Not to mention the fact that I spent several hours playing Kingdom Hearts today… **shrugs**

I finished Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town today as well. It was a good book… exceedingly weird but pretty good. I recommend it but only for people who are awake when they read it as it is a hard read.

I took a calc test…. I think it went well… I am tired… 
Laters
Nyssa
Manga Count: 522
Comic Book Count: 12
Word Count: 
Word Count:

0 / 10,000 (0.0%)

Book Count: 42

My arm hurts **whinewhinewhine** I had to do a blood test today so my arm is all wonky and strange. I am also not feeling 100%. I woke up with a scratchy throat, used cough drops and attempted to help study group with statics before my brain was fully functional. I went to my classes and froze in statics. That was unpleasant. I then went home-ish and got blood drawn. Then I came home and read a whole book.

Surrender is a clever book. I liked it. It was… disturbing and poignant. The books title comes from the name of a dog within the book. The story follows two boys (though it is more of a reflection, looking back). One is called Gabriel and the other Finnegan, though Gabriel isn’t Gabriel’s real name. Gabriel is called an angel by Finnegan.  Boyhood promises abound, Finnegan promising to do evil, Gabriel promising to do good. The book however is mostly set around them at the age of 20 with Gabriel on his death bed with a degenerative disease and reflecting on their relationship. It’s dark… I like it…

I went to borders and spent $5.73 on a manga due to 5 borders bucks and many discounts… tomorrow I think I will return my eight billion library books… since I have read too much in the past week.

Went to dinner with Dusty but got sick. Totally sucks… am not trying to update while watching Smallville. Ugh tired… and books….
Laters
Nyssa
Manga Count: 512
Comic Book Count: 12
Word Count: 
Word Count:

0 / 10,000 (0.0%)

Book Count: 32

Yay home! I am so glad to just lean back and relax again. I started Wicked, got like 4 pages into it before I got distracted by other things. I also watched The Closer, which is an interesting and fascinating drama as it doesn’t lead you to the ending and just kind of springs it on you. I like it.

I bought a manga today but I am saving my money for a bit to buy some anime and things from this retail thing I found. Today is a wonderful day of boredom and updating and other things.
Laters
Nyssa
Manga Count: 509
Comic Book Count: 12
Word Count:

1,346 / 10,000 (13.5%)

Book Count: 21
Mood Theme: 0/132 
Library Collection: Heir Apparent, Vampirates: Demons of the Ocean, Hawksong, Snakecharm, Wolfcry, Falcondance, Stormbreaker, Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, The Death Collector, A Killing in the Comics, The Black Tattoo

Ugh Thursdays. Went to Borders today. Bought 4 mangas. I know I know bad Nyssa but I couldn’t resist. I love Mangas. I completed a series and bought one by one of my favorite artists. I also bought one more by another manga artist that I have… which is strange. Its like… lets dub it “manga-cest”. But the funny part is that instead of skipping home and reading said mangas, I skipped home, pulled out said mangas, made the stupid mistake of looking behind me on my bookshelf and read a whole book in two hours… Yeah that was special.

I am tired.
Laters
Nyssa
Manga Count: 507
Comic Book Count: 12
Word Count:

1,346 / 10,000 (13.5%)

Book Count: 16
Mood Theme: 0/132

Today I was awoke by the sound of an enthusiastic dog, who, thus far has not clawed Yuka to death. I am so proud of her. Yuka joined my dad on the walk with the dogs, giving me a good 20 minutes to fall back asleep before they returned and I had to wake up because it I really hard to sleep in the living room of my house… especially with a Holly. Today was pretty easy going in the morning. Lots of dad showing Yuka things and us arguing about what to do on the trip. Yuka is a saint I swear. Each hour I notice an improvement in her English. I have started to remember small bits of Japanese and learn things. For example, one thing I learned yesterday is that the translation of the Japanese word for tornado is “Dragon Roll”, which is just awesome. I also downloaded the character pack for my laptop finally. Yuka pulled out these neat cute little speakers for her ipod. They were pink and they folded up into this little cylinder but when you opened it, it opened up into a perfectly balanced tripod with good surround sound. Anyway she wanted to look something up on yahoo!Japan so I downloaded the character pack and she got to use my laptop. I am so happy!

Yuka made lunch for us too. I missed Soba. Have I mentioned how much I miss Soba? It was one of my favorite foods in Japan. Noodles and sauce and dipping and chopsticks and I miss Soba. I need to find it here and make it I think.

Anyway, later that day while my sister was at her final driving hour, we went to target and to an oriental market place to look for a rice cooker. The thing is tiny but OMG RICE SOON! I was excited!

This evening we went to Flying Star. I ate cheese cake. It was wonderful. For all the fact that flying star is horrendously overpriced and very crowded, they have damn good cheesecake and ice cream.

When we came back, we talked about Yuka’s job. She is working as an art teacher at a middle school. She started just after we left last time I think. This will be her third school she has worked at. The principal at the first school told her to look around first before deciding on anything final. While a full job would mean better pay, she won’t have as much freedom and vacation. Anyway she is also substituting as well at this school. She seems to like it but says it is difficult. The school she is at had 6 classes per grade, wach with 38 students. The school is called Nishidai, the other schools she worked at were Sakura Michi and Izumi, both of which had smaller classes. She has to grade like ten projects per kid a semester. I do not envy her in that regard, but she is teaching what she loves so I am kinda jealous.

She also works as some kind of bus moniter for foreign embassy kids. So she gets to read the names of Saudi Princes and listen to their Ipods on occasion. They like her a lot. She is sooo sweet!

After that everyone went to bed. Yuka had taken a nap that afternoon and I am a night owl so we were both up and got to talking. She game me a list of Manga that is popular in Japan right now with the youth, as well as clicked on some neat things on yahoo!Japan that I am going to go back later and save to my bookmarks. The mangas are:

Boys Over Flowers (popular enough to be a TV Drama, VIZ publishers)

Nana (still popular after 2 years it would seem. Haha I got it before it was cool! VIZ publishers)

Red River (Yuka likes this series so I think I will have to track down volume one and check it out, published by VIZ)

Beck (Yuka’s friend likes this one, since it is a band drama. Tokyopop)

Nodame Cantabile (This is another music drama. Yuka likes this one too. Published by Del Rey)

Kimi Ni Todoke (not published yet as far as I can find)

Kare Kano (Really popular in Japan, Tokyopop)

And maybe a few more. But I will be watching that site now. I will be ahead of the curve once again damnit. We talked about SDK, and she laughed at me because I like a boy’s manga. I laughed to because really, most of my manga is shonen. But anyway, we then moved onto music. We both find Dir en Grey to be a bit terrifying, and I told her how they came here at one point. In Japan right now, someone called GReeeeN is really popular. I listened to a clip and I like it. We then talked American Music and discovered that we both like Maroon 5. I think I am going to have to burn a whole bunch of CDs for her before she leaves.

Eventually though, I started to get tired (at around 1) and we are now calling it quits for the night. I am so excited to show her the Manga collection at the mall! Tomorrow, we are getting up bright and early to go to Bandelier.
Laters
Nyssa
Manga Count: 499
Comic Book Count: 12
Word Count:

Finished Burnt Offerings in three days. Burnt Offerings is one of my favorite Anita Blake books, tied with Obsidian Butterfly, which is set in New Mexico and Lunatic Cafe, which was the first one I read and will always hold a special place in my heart. But upon reading it rapidly, I have determined exactly what it is I do not like about the character Anita Blake. She is a Mary Sue. Like freakin’ Arya from Eragon. She’s perfect, right down to her flaws. The only difference between the two is that I like Anita a good 65% of the time, whereas I can’t stand Arya. Anita is a Mary Sue. LKH is quoted as asking why people continue to read if they don’t like her main character. I can explain it with Burnt Offerings. Burnt Offerings is the perfect mix of technicalities, minor characters, and shifting rules. In Burnt Offerings, Anita does fully bloom into a Mary Sue, but she doesn’t act like one just yet. If anything, her bad move decision to have sex regularly has made her more likable. But Anita Blake is like SDK, cept I hate Anita sometimes. There are many plots and many characters. I love all the characters… cept Nathanial who still kind of freaks me out. But moving back to Anita Sue, she’s pretty, but not beautiful, has a one of a kind gift, is surrounded by men who lust after her, can hold her own with the boys, clashes with ever woman she meets, and is SPECIAL! But most of all, the thing that irritates me most about Anita Blake is she is never wrong and cannot maintain a constant course or thought or choice.

In other news I bought two mangas and two of those Harry Potter ending books. I now have collector items. I am happy… Plus I got Samurai Deep Kyo!... and I found out about this wonderful new thing. Anita Blake Comic book. It will be part of my Amazon Puchase.