Read your eyes out

Back in America without much regret. I (somehow) managed to read most of books that I want with only less than ten of those that I didn't get the chance to finish (or couldn't find at stores. We don't have Thai Amazon.com, so for books from publishers that don't have their own sites, hunting for them can be darn difficult.)

However, a week before my break is over, my eyes suddenly become weak to light and air. My eyes never hurt like this before, so I visited an Eye doctor (whatever technical name they call themselves) for a check. Apparently, (as told by my doctor), I just read too much.

My eyes still hurt right now even though I have only read one book in a few book (on the flight back to US).

This isn't the first time I have done a marathon reading though. I had tried to finish off a Thai Indiana Jone-ish series in a short period of time once. The side-effect of that previous marathon reading was more severe mentally though. After consuming 20-something books in about five days with no other activity apart from eating and sleeping, I started to hallucinate. In the end, I had to give up reading that series, and I haven't continued reading it again yet, even until now. I think it was due to the fact that I was only reading one series without doing anything else at all for days and nights.

I wonder when would my eyes stop hurting. Not that I prefer post-reading-hallucination to this.

Masochist guy and a lot of love (or not)

When a really nice guy with a duo masochist personality is the LEAST screwed up person in the entire cast, you know that you are probably reading a Japanese book...

...which reminds me why I have read this book in the first place!


‘MM!’ by Akinari Matsuno is a Thai-translated Japanese light novel (a new genre of Japanese novels that targets teenagers and young adults by being dialogues-driven and containing comic-style illustrations) that I have picked up during the past holiday. The book is pretty much characters-driven, which is a good thing when you have a book filled with characters in need of psychiatrists. However, even though every character in the book is disturbed (to say at the very least), the book is mostly comical because it doesn’t deal with each mental issue seriously.

To sum things up, the book is a (somewhat) romance-comedy. It sets a love-triangle between a masochist guy and two women who often beat him up (for different reasons). The guy hasn’t set on a certain woman yet, but I have a hunch that he would end up with the megalomaniac lady.

I find this series to be quite entertaining even though I wish that the writer would have pushed the story to be even more extreme with his mentally-unstable characters. For a book that deals with incestuous behavior as a joke, the book is terribly PC (although that is probably the reason why this book can be published in Thailand since our government has a fetish for censoring and banning unconventional media). It is still a nice wacky read though, but it would have been a better book if only it is R-rated not PG-13.

For any Thai parent who happens to be reading this blog, don’t set on burning the book or the publisher. The book is not that unPC. Also, your kid can easily find more screw-up things to read out there.


-NOTE- This book has yet to be translated into English language nor has it been made into any other source of media (i.e. anime), so don’t kill yourself if you can’t find it in (non JP) Amazon.

Read 'em all or die trying...

I am still working on the grand mission that I have given myself ( http://www.eggnog.me/2009/12/may-your-coming-year-be-filled-with.html ) by finishing every Thai & and Thai translated books that I want to read before returning to America. This process is entertaining yet tiresome because I am covering a year worth of release within less than a month.

I have about 12 days left. I have just finished three more books today. Even worse, I have mainly focused on novels and I haven't even really started catching on a year-amount of Thai-translation comic (that doesn't have an US release yet)... I don't know if I would make it...