whee~

Bumming around~
11:35 PM August 27, 2008

Since my acconting exam is over (and as always, a great storm is followed by a certain lull of peace), I've been ~~over~~indulging myself in some of my most favorite pastimes: reading and watching some of my downloads. Hence, as a result, I was able to finish the ebook I've been reading for a couple of weeks now, as well as an anime series that I watched out of the blue simply because its CD was partly ruined. ^^;

First, the book. It was The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory, and it focused on the life of Queen Katherine of Aragon, first wife of King Henry VIII. Sounds boring? Well, I'll explain how I came to read such a novel pretty shortly. It's a historical novel, so most of the events in the book actually occurred in real life. What the author did was to simply take these events and think up reasons and motives for why such things happened, etc. It actually added to the depth and to the fun of the book, in my opinion. Like the time when I was reading Tracy Chevalier's Girl with the Pearl Earring, I would constantly look up things, people and places in Wikipedia and experience a profound delight in finding evidence to support the novel's story. XD Plus, it makes the tragedies and triumphs much more touching since you know that they really occurred (like the various miscarriages of Katherine. Sad... T_T)

Anyway, so why in the world am I even reading a historical novel? And enjoying it too, at that? It all started about a year ago(?) or maybe more, when I found an interesting mystery novel, WychWood, in a secondhand bookstore. The novel was really good. (In fact I let France read it because I wanted desperately to discuss it with someone - but I had already told Bianca everything about the book hence making it useless for her to still read the book - and my little cousin liked it. Bianca thought was interesting as well.) The novel's heroine was a Tudor scholar, and the novel itself slightly circled around a love triangle between Catherine Parr, the 6th wife of Henry VIII, Thomas Seymour the brother of the third wife i think, and Elizabeth, Henry's daughter. This led to a self-imposed crash course on the Tudor (that's what this family and their reign was called) History c/o Wikipedia, which also led me to download and watch one of the Elizabeth movies of Cate Blanchett. Later on, I was very amused to find out that a new movie was coming out, the Other Boleyn Girl, and that it was about the 2nd wife of Henry, Anne Boleyn. So I ended up reading about Anne Boleyn in Wikipedia, and then watching the movie, and then reading the book. Consequently, it had a sequel/prequel (i really don't know), the Constant Princess. ^^

I never thought I would end up a slight history buff, and if you had asked me before all this, I'd have probably said that I Vigile had a greater tendency for it. I mean, she actually wanted to read our History textbook over summer. ^^; But really, the Tudor history is quite fascinating, and it touches on other things that I remember feeling curious about in high school. I remember one of the few things in High school history that I found interesting was the stories about Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille, about how they married and united two warring kingdoms of Spain. And here is their daughter Katherine, with a very good story of her own. ^^

I was actually very very very surprised when I got to the end of the book, cause it came a little abruptly, and besides, it's sometimes hard to gauge your progress when reading an ebook. So anyway, being that the novel I'm reading is either the sequel/prequel of another book, the story somehow jumps forward in time at the end, and if I wasn't observant enough to notice the sudden 14 year advance in the date stated in the chapter, I probably would have been confused out of my wits. :p It was a historical novel, and if you remember me ranting about the last book I read, the one where 2 of my favorite characters died while the third lived a totally wretched life somewhere, this is its prequel/sequel, and Katherine was one of my favorites. Hmm... I think I'll declare it the prequel. Though chronologically this story happens first, the other one is the more famous aspect of the story, so the author may have written the other one earlier. @_@ Plus the jump in the end might not make sense if you don't read the other one first. But then again, the way she didn't mention who was who at the end.... Erg. Fine. I won't confuse you any further with this internal debate. @_@

I have to say though, I have a feeling that the author is a bit too promiscuous. -___- She made most of her characters waaay too sensual than I think was proper for that period of time. It's understandable in Henry VIII, cause he really turned out to be a disgusting old man, but not for the others. :p Trust me on this. I'm not being delicate. --___-- I explained it to Vigile, and I think she agreed. ^^ That's my biggest complaint, but other than that, the story was pretty good. ^^

Moving on...

Next is the anime, Lunar Legend Tsukihime. It was ok, overall. I kind of liked it, but not enough to send me gushing about it. ^^ Old-ish anime, art is ok - sometimes not good sometimes good, I wasn't too crazy about the character designs although I got used to them eventually, and it had a so-so ending. I think it ended too abruptly as well. ^^ It's a vampire anime, but i think the producers couldn't properly fit the story in just 12 episodes, so the ending was so rushed. @_@ And some things weren't fully explained. I guess that leaves room for thought, but I'm not in the mood to think much right now. :P All I can say is that it's always so much more painful to be the one left behind than to be the one leaving, even if the one leaving has always been the one waiting. u_u

That's it, I'm tired. @_@

come fly ~ gen