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What are you reading?

I can't read ! Talk about a weird deal. A few years ago as I was driving , I suddenly went blind in one eye and could just see a little bit out of the other . I pulled to the side of the road and thought I was having a stroke. I closed my eyes for about 5 minutes and the blindness went away. I should have gone to a doctor but figured it was a fluke and I ignored it. Just a week later , it happened again while driving and took longer to go away. I went to an eye specialist and she said I was prone to/suffering from Ocular migraines . Turns out I was reading several hours a day and also on the computer several hours. The cause was eyestrain. She said I had to pick one or the other , reading or the computer. So , I chose the computer and quit reading. I can be on the PC for 10 or 12 hours a day with no eye problems and have not had a "blackout" since I gave up books , although I do miss them.
 
Currently reading 白蘭の歌, a novel serialized in the Mainichi Shimbun between 1938 and 1940, later put out in book form, made into a movie (debut appearance of 李香蘭 and featuring several hit songs which still get radio play every now and then)....and which sadly now exists only in the form of scanned pages in the National Diet Library. I had to download it as a batch of pdf files and load them into Kindle so I can read them on my iPad.

Sort of a propaganda piece and tragic love story set in Japan-occupied Manchuria.
 
Working my way (slowly) through In A Grove. I took too much of a break recently from reading and studying due to other life issues, but hopefully I'm back on track.
 
Mostly historical volumes on my bedside table; and a lot of textbooks on kanji and kana, waiting to be reviewed (sorry T**tle). I'm looking forward to reading some "non-nonfiction" over the holidays.

@Mike Cash
Mike, how do you like the Kindle?
 
Mostly historical volumes on my bedside table; and a lot of textbooks on kanji and kana, waiting to be reviewed (sorry T**tle). I'm looking forward to reading some "non-nonfiction" over the holidays.

@Mike Cash
Mike, how do you like the Kindle?

I think I have ended up liking it more in principle than in practice. I think they're wonderful devices but it turns out I don't use mine very much. Without the Kindle app on my iPad, though, I'd have no way at all to read some materials. I think I would have been better served by a Kindle Fire than by a Paperwhite.
 
I can't read ! Talk about a weird deal. A few years ago as I was driving , I suddenly went blind in one eye and could just see a little bit out of the other . I pulled to the side of the road and thought I was having a stroke. I closed my eyes for about 5 minutes and the blindness went away. I should have gone to a doctor but figured it was a fluke and I ignored it. Just a week later , it happened again while driving and took longer to go away. I went to an eye specialist and she said I was prone to/suffering from Ocular migraines . Turns out I was reading several hours a day and also on the computer several hours. The cause was eyestrain. She said I had to pick one or the other , reading or the computer. So , I chose the computer and quit reading. I can be on the PC for 10 or 12 hours a day with no eye problems and have not had a "blackout" since I gave up books , although I do miss them.

Sorry to hear that, but glad you can at least use the computer.

Although it's not really the same, have you ever listened to audio books?
 
I have a bad habit of always having a police scanner turned on in the house and car , I don't even listen to music anymore. As long as I have the PC , I never get bored or miss books too much now.
 
Have been reading a lot of higashino keigo these days. Now: journey under the midnight sun.
 
Currently reading "Nemesis" from Agatha Christie. I like the old-fashioned crime novels.
Also, I started trying to read japanese fairy tales in japanese, to get some reading practice. It's hard though~ and I really have to concentrate hard, so it's progressing reaaaaly slowly.
 
I just started "Naked Lunch" by William S. Burroughs. I really love the beat generation.
 
I've been going through IQ84 on my kindle. I enjoy Murakami's spin on magical realism, though sometimes you just gotta accept that you have no idea what's going on!

The going has been slow, I make myself way too busy to enjoy much reading these days. Need to make more time for it in between all the other responsibilities I've foisted upon myself.

Has anyone put Japanese books on a US kindle? I haven't had a chance to play with it yet but I wouldn't mind getting some additional reading material
 
Has anyone put Japanese books on a US kindle? I haven't had a chance to play with it yet but I wouldn't mind getting some additional reading material
Not personally, but people have done so.

You have to use a Japanese credit card and a Japanese IP address every single time you use your kindle though, if Amazon ever thinks for a moment that you are in another country, they will lock you out of all your Japanese purchases until you provide proof that you're residing in Japan.

This also means you can't use the same device for purchases from the American and Japanese stores, of course.

The risk of navigating that correctly is why I don't own a kindle. One absent-minded moment of accessing the amazon store with your proxy service down and all your books are gone.
 
hmm, I hardly ever connect my kindle to the internet, and I manage most of my books and PDFs manually, downloaded from a variety of sources outside of Amazon, so I would think that might only affect my amazon-managed kindle library?
 
I would think that might only affect my amazon-managed kindle library?
Oh, yes, I believe that's correct. They only block you out of titles they sold you that they think you didn't have the right to buy from them. If you plan to put Japanese books on from other sources you should be fine and it should work on many models. If you have accessed the amazon store from outside Japan on that device though, you may have issues with amazon purchases.

I've not kept up with which models can or can't display what. I think you'd have to have an ancient model to not be able to read Japanese on it at all, everything contemporary should support Japanese. There are details about vertical vs. horizontal text and builtin vs. add-on dictionaries that vary by model but you'd have to ask someone else what those details are.
 
I am reading Dogs: Bullets and Carnage volume one.
I tend to not spend 10 minutes on a manga volume but try to enjoy every page and artwork making it last 5 hours.
 
I just finished Haruki Murakami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. I enjoyed the book very much, but I'm still trying to figure out if Tsukuru ended up with Sarah. The ending left much open to debate! Anyone else read this?
 
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