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I can’t remember the last book that had me up all night reading and completely unable to put it down. But I started “The Other Boleyn Girl” last night and once again found myself now being able to fall asleep until 1 AM. And it was incredibly difficult to do that. I love that the book is amazing enough to keep me so enamored with it to keep reading. I hate it because I lose much needed sleep and end up sleeping in the next morning. Not exactly something your baby boy likes when he wants some attention. 
I’m not a huge history buff and don’t remember much from high school, so the indiscretions between fact and fiction are completely lost on me. Movies like “Marie Antoinette” and “Vanity Fair” mesmerize me because everyone seemed to dress in these amazing dresses and go to fabulous parties, have witty conversation and the like despite class. Well, sometimes.
All I know for sure right now is that I’m definitely leaning towards being a huge Philippa Gregory fan.
Today I finished up “The Friday Night Knitting Club” and was very impressed. Throughout various parts of the book I had tears in my eyes and it was an amazing ending. It’s definitely one of those books that you read for fun and to feel good about life.
I have to admit though that I was less impressed with the first few chapters. Given the blurb on the back of the book, I expected to immediately be found with the beginnings of all the different women’s stories. Instead the author spent a few chapters giving us a feel for Georgia and her life. If I reread the book with different expectations, I suspect I’ll feel differently about those first chapters.
I do wish that we were told more about the lives of all the different women. Georgia and her daughter became well rounded figures throughout the novel. But as for Anita, Lucie, Darwin, K.C., Peri, Cat, and James, I felt as if a little more detail could have been given.
The book also reminded me how important it is to have that tight circle of friends. As cheesy as it sounds, a girlfriend of mine and I decided to start getting together again at least once a week and work on our knitting/crocheting. And now that I’m done with this book, I’m excited to start “The Other Boleyn Girl”!
It was my birthday the other day so I raked in some birthday $$. I promptly spent half of it on new clothes and then some of it on books. Since I’m still reading “Original Fire” by Louise Erdrich, I didn’t want to get something super serious or anything. So I picked up “The Other Boleyn Girl” and “The Friday Night Knitting Club”. I remember reading an unimpressed review of “The Other Boleyn Girl” but the owner of the bookstore highly recommended the author and I’m curious. As for the other book, it sounded like a good ol’ fun book that’ll probably take me a day to read.
I know for sure that I want to read “World War Z” which Andy just finished a couple weeks ago. Every time I sit down to think about it, my reading list grows longer and longer
Last night Andy & I watched the anime “Karas”. It was….interesting as anime tends to be. I wasn’t necessarily blown away by it and neither was I bored by it. Andy & I agreed that it needed more ass-kicking by the female Karas and that Nue’s fights needed to be more intense. Overall it was meh and I was often confused by what was going on.
The basic storyline is that each city has a Karas, a supernatural protector. Each Karas has a Yurinne, a kind of muse and watchdog for the Karas. In the city of Shinjuku, Japan, the former Karas, Eko, has become corrupt. He wishes to purge the city of its own corruption and start anew. The city keeps fighting against his will in the form of Otoha, the new Karas.
Eko believes that humans have become arrogant and forgotten the presence of other beings; but by destroying the humans, he is also slowly destroying the beings because belief is what makes them real. Nue, a Mikuras, is the anit-hero of the story. The Mikuras are spirits who have been modified with machinery. (There’s another word I want to use, but it completely escapes me at the moment) It is Nue’s intent to stop Eko at all costs and to rescue his brother, who is at the heart of Eko’s plan. Both Nue and his brother can manipulate electricity, which Eko plans to take full advantage of when he destroys the city.
Minoru Sagisaka and Narumi Kure are two detectives who are in the business of researching the supernatural. Sagisaka has been in the Interventions Department for 3 years; which is how long his daughter has been in the mental hospital. He fervently believes in all things superstitious and otherworldly. Yoshiko, his daughter, was the only survivor of a Mikuras attack on her elementary school class. The ordeal left her traumatized and Sagisaka is the only person to believe her story.
Throughout the episodes, we see Nue hunting down the Mikuras one at a time. As he’s exacting revenge, Sagisaka and Kure believe that he is the antagonist. At the same time, Eko is recruiting more Mikuras to be part of his plan. The governor and Chief of police are among the Mikuras recruited. Otoha, the Karas, suddenly loses his ability to be a Karas when his Yurinne is abducted and his human form attacked. Here we learn that a Karas is determined by what the soul wants. At the end battle between the human form Karas and Eko, who has forged himself with the city’s lifeblood and various Mikuras, we see something rare. Otoha’s physical body dies and from it, a new Yurinne is born. The new Yurinne is the city’s hope and thus Otoha’s Karas can once again be its protector. With the help of Homura (the female Karas), Otoha destroys Eko. In the end the humans are still as arrogant as ever, but Otoha is proof that there is still hope for change in the city.
The animation and CG was impressive. There were a couple of spots where it felt choppy, but it could have been the style. I loved the look of the Karas and the opening fight was intense. So, if you’ve got 3 hours to kill, watching “Karas” won’t be a complete waste of time.
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