Good Morning, Good Evening

Hans Holbein The Younger, Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam Writing 1523

Good Morning

Library journal has a nice short article on personal finance books. I think I will add some of the titles which I have not ordered yet to my financial literacy order.

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6608058.html?nid=4683&rid=#reg_visitor_id_2#&source=title

A large portion of this morning has been spent going through my desk throwing out old things and sorting things into files. The piles are slowly disappearing from my desk. I also am clearing some old work, mostly discards which I hadn't made the final decision on. My desk should be cleaned out by tomorrow or the next day.

I also have been clearing things from the reference desk. There is some older material than needs to be put away or discarded. It might take me a little while to look through everything.

There was a pile of magazines Publishers Weekly, New York Times Book Review, and Library Journal which had been routed to me this morning. I spent a portion of my lunch time reading through them. There wasn't anything particularly striking in the library news today.

I am still working on doing more discards in the social science books. It is a job which will take me a very long time to do.

Good Evening

Today was one of those days where nothing went quite the way I expected it to go. I got a chance to work a little more on cleaning up my desk, but did not get far. I still have quite a bit to do. I'll have to work on it some more tomorrow.

I compiled a list of films for my boss to order of animation, anime, and martial arts films. There are a couple of films that I really want to see which I ordered, Ong Bak, Once Upon A Time In China, some early popeye cartoons, and a collected Max Fleischer Superman.

Some books came in for to read through the interchange, Winning by Jack Welch with Suzy Welch. I am on the second chapter of the book. I stopped reading Winning, and finished reading Dororo Volume 3 by Osamu Tezuka. The finish of the story is excellent. My favorite part of the story is when Hyakimaru fights the shark demon. The Van Rijn Method by Poul Anderson also came in. I am going to read it after I finish reading Winning.

I rather like reading practical books sometimes. I still have not finished using Organizing for Dummies. I think of books as tools for self-education. That is one of the primary purposes of libraries. I am still doing the simple yoga exercises from Yoga RX as well.

I never did get a chance to order any of the personal finance books. I was too busy. Sometimes work gets like that. There were a couple other things which I did not finish as well.

Good Morning, Dororo by Osamu Tezuka

Good Morning, Dororo by Osamu Tezuka

Good morning. Last night on the train, I read Dororo. We have the first two volumes at our library. I put the third volume on hold. The author is Osamu Tezuka one of Manga's most famous writers. He is best known for Astroboy, and won the Harvey and Eisner Awards for his manga Buddha.

This ranks with one of the strangest manga I have ever read. Dororo is a young orphan thief and troublemaker who wanders around during the warring states period of feudal Japan. He meets up with a wandering Ronin, Hyakkimaru who is a very odd character.

Hyakkimaru was born without any body parts. His father gave 48 pieces of him to various mythological demons. A doctor found him, raised him, and replaced his parts with prostheses. Now Hyakkimaru is wandering the countryside seeking the demons and killing them. Each time he kills a demon, a body part grows back, and he no longer needs a prosthesis.

This makes for a very bizarre story. The two heros wander through the ravaged war torn countryside seeking out demons. The demons are all different. There is a moth demon, a demon that steals faces, a demon that grows as a face on peoples bodies, a fox demon, and many other strange creatures from Japanese legend. Dororo is always getting into trouble with the villagers stealing food and valuables and Hyakkimaru is always trying to make Dororo act good.

The art work is in black and white. It has a kind of cute quality to it with big eyed innocent looking characters. It is written for boys. There are allegories throughout the story about seeking to become complete. There is a lot of fighting and bloodshed in this manga.

The cover art is unique on this series. The publisher is Vertical, Inc. who publishes a lot of better quality manga that is not quite mainstream. I really enjoyed reading this. It may not be for everyone. I do not think this was originally written for export and translation.

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3