celebrity blogs and great literature

I am so tired right now. I barely slept last night due to drinking coca-cola at 8pm. My body doesn't deal with caffeine very well. Most readers probably know this but I do not drink coffee. I don't know how to. I don't like the taste and the effect on my body is too much for me to bear. I drink pop or tea.

Anyhow, yesterday Sally returned from her trip to NYC and brought me this book! Her boyfriend had bought it for me. It is a book of Narimiya Hiroki's blog entries. He blogged for about 1.5 years. This is the perfect gift! I love the actor...blogging is my new hobby and reading this book of blog entries in Japanese will help me become better at the language. There is one thing I don't like about Narimiya (who is beautiful) that is so common among many actors with talent. He has the potential of being great but sometimes his awareness of his ability affects his acting. This is true of Ninomiya Kazunari, Lee-Byung-Hun, Jude Law...the list goes on. They were born with the gift but at times, their keen awareness of their gift makes their acting painful to watch. But some works that are unaffected by this awareness are genius.

Using Sally's train of thought-approach...I will now talk about Murakami Haruki. He is Narimiya's favorite author. How I know this, I don't remember. I love Murakami. One of the great things about being bilingual is that so much more work by geniuses is accessible in better forms. I read Murakami's work in Korean. I've tried reading him in English but hated it. Absolutely hated it. I don't think he translates well in English. His original work is in Japanese for those who are unfamiliar with him. Because I know that the structure of the Korean language is similar to that of the Japanese language, I have faith that the translation isn't too terrible. However, in English, Murakami sucks. Even I can tell you that authoritatively. I don't understand why anyone bothers to read Murakami in English-- it intrigues me. But maybe they see something I don't in Murakami's work in English. One of my life goals is to be able to read Murakami's work in the original language in which it was written.

I'm not at all interested in what Murakami has to say. I don't care too much for his plots (they're usually about psychotic lost people who I can't relate to). What I love about Murakami is how he says what he has to say. He is to me a Japanese version of Joseph Conrad or Ernest Hemingway. It's not the plot. It's every single sentence that attracts me. I am reading his latest novel "1Q84" that Liz sent me. The plot is blah. But I can't help but express amazement at how wonderfully he writes.

It's a little unfortunate that the work of Korean literary giants aren't translated often...or very well in comparison to Murakami. I think there are some great authors out there...both living and dead. There is one confession I must make. I judge people by the books they read. If you read a lame book, I will probably think you are lame. Even though it's not always true, I can get snotty about this. I'm not even close to being "well-read" myself. I don't like it when people show off that they're so well-read either. It's so snotty. However, if your favorite author is Dan Brown, I will definitely look down on you. I will probably smirk if you read trashy one-time best sellers too. I actually don't think reading is better than not reading if you're reading lame stuff written by lame people. It's a waste of time. One of my favorite things about my mom and my sister is that they do not read lame books. They're so well-read in comparison to me-- I especially respect that they always find time to read. I have a hard time finding time to read. I now "read" casebooks.

It took longer than I expected to express my snotty thoughts. Thanks for reading, girls and boys.

P.S. Tina, thanks for spamming my blog. I love how you manually check in to see if there are updates. I think the update function should work now though <3