defaulting

I finished Osamu Tezuka's Buddha manga series. My sister bought me almost the whole set for my birthday because it was my birthday, and refused to buy the last two because those weren't on sale. I bought them myself (not on sale) at the Kinokuniya in New York. (Which by the way is huge! And has a great stationery collection.) It was a pretty quick read; I sped through them in about an hour, and that's including the time it took to take in the artwork, which as with most of Tezuka's work, deceptively simple. It was also surprising in a lot of ways; Buddha is imperfect and weak throughout, and struggles a lot with doubts about the nature of his work. It was still dissatisfying on the religious aspect, but I doubt I'll ever find something that will fulfill what I'm looking for. There are a lot of pissing jokes, as well. I noticed that the translation was very tailored for an American audience; there was a lot of slang, and some of it felt wrong to me. That being said, I know how tough translations are, especially Japanese translations since a lot of humor relies on punning, and the translators did a pretty good job overall. The publisher, Vertical is a small press that also does a lot of interesting-looking books and manga.

I got some free sci-fi books from a neighbor in one of our apartments. I read James Tiptree, Jr.'s The Starry Rift. I really liked it; I'd never actually gotten around to reading her works before, and I think it was a perfect introduction, even if the book was published towards the end of her life. The characters felt real to me, and her writing style is also plain, but elegant. I will definitely start checking out her other works.

I made the zucchini bread recipe. It is very good and really easy to make. I made it three times so far and I still have half a zucchini left. I brought some to work and everyone raved about it.

On being a "colorblind" reader - post by David Anthony Durham. I thought Durham's post was very interesting, although some of the commenters predictably, missed the point of his post. I've never been a "colorblind" reader - given the sort of education I had, it was impossible anyway.  I once rattled off a list of the authors I loved to someone who was interviewing me, and she was like, "You're not one for the dead white guys, huh?" and I said, "Yeah, not really."