Reading Wednesday

Finished reading: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera. Still digesting how I feel about this one... The only other novel by this author that I've read was One Hundred Years of Solitude, and I liked that one better than this. But there were some things I really enjoyed about it. I found Fermina Daza really interesting as a character (though I can't say I'm all that fond of Florentino Ariza). I also liked that the novel dealt with love in old age... That's something that I definitely wish appeared more often in fiction. At least, I don't stumble across it much in my reading, usually. So often, I find that fiction depicts elderly people, especially elderly women, as without romantic love or sexual passion or - well, anything like that. It's something I'd like to stumble across more often.

Also finished reading: The Dream We Carry, collection of poetry by Olav H Hauge, translated by Robert Bly and Robert Hedin. It's a parallel text translation, which might not be everybody's thing, but I love it, even though I have a lot of difficulty reading the dialect-heavy Norwegian that he writes in. I love, love, love Hauge's work, and I feel this is a pretty good representation of it. I have another collection of it that I'm looking forward to reading; I'm not sure how much overlap there is between the two.

Currently reading: The Professor of Secrets: Mystery, Medicine, and Alchemy in Renaissance Italy by William Eamon. It's a biography of renaissance-era surgeon Leonardo Fioravanti, and so far I'm finding it really, really enjoyable, and as a bonus, I've somehow been able to read it on the bus without falling asleep. While I'm not all that interested in Italy, I am very interested in the history of science, especially the history of medicine, so overall it's pretty relevant to my interests. Hmm, maybe this is the kind of thing that I should read about more often; it could come in use for fic.

Reading next: ... I have no idea. Maybe some Discworld? I have a lot of history that I should be reading, but ugh, I don't want to.

My aesthetic: Cheesy late '90s anime

Deciding to rewatch Weiss Kreuz for the Nth time was a very good idea.

I love it, love it, love it, in all its cheesy badly-animated late 90s glory. I still remember all the words to "Velvet Underworld", even.

... 'Scuse me a moment, I'm just plain overwhelmed with nostalgia.

While I'm thinking about it - I remember I used to hear people saying the first episode was pretty blah, didn't have much to do with the plot ("...plot"), and was skipable. Well, maybe that's true. But I've always been rather fond of it. Representative of the rest of the series? Nah. Enjoyable? For me, yes! Somehow. I don't know. I've never claimed to have good taste.

I wonder who'll turn out to be my favourite this time. Last time I did a re-watch, I fell in love with Ken and Omi. This time, who knows. Maybe I'll end up obsessed with Ran again. (Probably not. He appealed to me a lot in high school. Now... not so much. Though I will confess to wishing that I had his hideous orange sweater. It looks comfy.)

Confession: After I bought the DVD, I threw my VHS fansubs out. It was a hard decision, you guys. So hard. But as much as I loved squinting at fuzzy fansubs, it was time to let it go. To everything there is a season etc etc etc. ...I kept the tape with the OAVs, though, since there isn't a disc for it. WHY ISN'T THERE A DVD RELEASE FOR THAT, I WANT TO KNOW. I WOULD BUY IT. SO HARD. THE OAVS WERE SO GOOD. Well, um. "Good". I mean. In comparison to the rest of the series. Uh. Well.

I can hardly wait to rewatch this entire awful, cheesy, delightfully ridiculous series.