February? Really?

Time has moved again and left me behind, but now I notice it and say, goodness, how did February get here so quickly? I blame the children; with all this growing that they do, where is the time for anything else?

Aside from parenting, I have been reading a great, great deal, writing much less than I would like, knitting a little, and watching more television than used to be my way. We have finished the first season of Spice and Wolf, an amusing anime about a wolf-deity in the shape of a girl becoming the companion of a travelling merchant. I like the personality of Holo, the wolf-deity, with her intense fondness for apples (which I share) and the sudden moments in which one is reminded that she is not, after all, human, and her values and choices upon a different scale and frame of time. But it is all interesting and well-done, and I liked to see a non-modern story in which much of the weight of plot was upon market values and currency speculation, rather than fighting or questing.

The other television I am watching regularly is Person of Interest -- we are more than halfway through the second season, and it is quite, quite enjoyable, and so very well done. The only problem with seeing something with such good craft is that it makes it impossible to enjoy even the amusing moments of a show (such as Warehouse 13 which we watched for a while and then stopped) which is poorly crafted.

This coming weekend I am going to Potlatch SF, to discuss China Miéville's The City and The City and meet other local and semi-local fans for the first time in a long while. The hotel is a few light rail stops away from my home, which combined with the literary nature of the con made it irresistible. I am some combination of anticipatory and anxious, and strangely also already missing the weekend with my family, despite the fact that I spend every weekend with them -- I think it is knowing how much my daughter will be upset that I am going away for long periods each day. It is truly fine, but it surprises me to feel it.

Reading

Oh, how I have been reading. I have made a decision this year to try not to read anything I can tell is badly written; when I realise it so, I declare myself done with it. It is both simpler and more complicated than it might seen, as I have always been the sort of person to keep going just in case the book gets better, or just in case the flaw is in myself and I might suddenly understand the true glory of the work before me. This year, no; if it is bad, then it is bad, and I quit. This had slowed my reading speed a good deal, because I am no longer racing through poor works to find out how the story ends, and instead only reading those things I may give my full time and attention to.

I find it interesting that, when I have told people in my circle of friends about this decision, so many react with outrage, as though I were in some way criticising or challenging them. It relates to other thoughts I have had, about media consumption and identity, but they are not fully formed yet.

So what have I read? A great deal of manga, some terrible that I gave up on partially through, one indifferent series that I finished and then put into the bags going to the used bookstore. One I am quite fond of -- CLAMP's xxxHolic does not yet exhibit the difficulties I find with almost all other CLAMP series, but then I have not finished it yet, so it still has time to fall apart. Combining as it does the visual and the text, reading manga puts my mind into a usefully liminal state, where the urge for image and word balances, and sometimes I may get to my own feelings more clearly through it. And sometimes of course, not, and it is just enjoyable, like any reading might be.

More titles must wait for another post, as I should eat something.