books

one visit to powells is enough to remind me of why i love portland. the first three volumes of appleseed, bruce campbells first book for $7, and two little taschen or other design books: asian houses and small offices. awesome stuff. i’m going back sometime for taschens 1000 chairs, scandinavian design, and a couple small books on various architects from the 40s-60s. le corbusier and lautner.

also a big fat photobook by some thirdly taschen clone company(after phaidon) on dream apartments. and taschen and phaidon’s fruits and fresh fruits, respectively, which are about the insane tokyo youth street fashion. and there’s always the baroque cycle in softcover, although for lack of used copies, i can get new ones cheaper on amazon, and probably will.

scott pilgrim volume three hits at the end of this month, so i’ll be snagging that off amazon next check, along with this and this.

meanwhile, at borders bargain rack today i found a photobook of the life of jfk for $8, and aerial photography of scotland for $6. and while buying the calender of tolkien’s own art for the hobbit, i got a moleskine yearly planner which was part of their ‘all calenders for $4′ sale at the calender store. only the girl mispunched it and it only cost me 40 cents. hooray for bargain books.

picked up the first volume of the blame! import manga. maybe it’s just that it’s the early stuff that wasn’t as well drawn, but either the paper quality or the printing quality isn’t as crisp as the fan-translation on my computer. the darks aren’t dark enough and there’s not enough contrast. and the translation is a little awkward too. it could just be a case of a bad fan translation having more character, like on shaolin soccer.

‘you, the lame, are my special best friend.’

then again, blame got a lot smoother in the later issues so i could simply be remembering it wrong. i’ll dig out my cd of the fansub manga and see how things compare. it is very nice to have a hardcopy that i can flip through.

‘therefore, kung fu is absolutely good for everyone.’