Reading Dickens + More FMA Merchandise
Because of Brotherhood there continues to be more and more Fullmetal Alchemist merchandise released, very bad for my wallet. Although admittedly they are still releasing character merchandise they released with the first series so it's not that exciting yet. The only real difference is Winry with a green bandanna. However one new release has got me pretty excited:
Chibi Voice I-Dolls. Now there is no picture of them yet but just google Chibi Voice I-Dolls and you will see examples from other series. Despite the fact that they are Chibi they actually tend to genuinelly look like the actual characters and heck they talk. I've never pre-ordered figures before but I just might for these (although I hope they release a picture before you can pre-order) . Sure $70 is pretty expensive but you get 10 talking figures for that price. Also with 10 I probably won't get every figure I want and I will get some duplicates but I think I can easily sell the extra figures on LJ I don't want so I will end up getting back at least some of the money. They also have a good selection of characters: 3 Ed's, 2 Roy's, Al, & Riza and a mystery character (no Winry though BOO).
Speaking of new merchandise they are also releasing this cool King Bradley figure. I don't care that much about Bradley so I definitely won't be ordering it myself but it's still a nice figure. They also have the typical Ed, Al, & Roy in this set. But they don't look much different from anything that was released before so I probably won't bother either. There has to be a limit to how many Ed, Al, & Roy's I can buy. XD
So anyways I started to read my 2nd Charles Dickens Books David Copperfield. Which happens to be one of his longest books. I picked it up because I was waiting for Foundation by Isaac Asimov to arrive at the library, so maybe I should have chose something shorter since now I doubt I will finish David Copperfield before the Asimov book arrives (I also read I-Robot recently and loved it)
Dickens seems to be a love or hate type of author. He is definitely very verbose (and I am pretty sure he was paid by the word) but I do genuinely enjoy him or at least I really enjoyed the one book I read of his which was A Tale of Two Cities. The funny thing is I did not enjoy it at all at first. For one of my HS classes we were required to read the book only up to a certain point. I found it an extreme chore but I was one of those students who always read the book no matter what. However something happened and somewhere before the point I was required to stop reading I started to really enjoy the book and instead of stopping I finished the book to the end and realized all that boring stuff in the beginning actually made sense. I also think Tale of Two Cities has one of the best endings ever.
Anyways David Copperfield while long is off to a good start. It follows the main character from childhood to adulthood and that alone makes it an intriguing read to me. It doesn't hurt that the book has the following credentials:
Tolstoy regarded Dickens as the best of all English novelists, and considered Copperfield to be his finest work, ranking the "Tempest" chapter (chapter 55, LV - the story of Ham and the storm and the shipwreck) the standard by which the world's great fiction should be judged. Henry James remembered hiding under a small table as a boy to hear installments read by his mother. Dostoyevsky read it enthralled in a Siberian prison camp. Franz Kafka called his first book Amerika a "sheer imitation". James Joyce paid it reverence through parody in Ulysses. Virginia Woolf, who normally had little regard for Dickens, confessed the durability of this one novel, belonging to "the memories and myths of life". It was Freud's favorite novel.
Chibi Voice I-Dolls. Now there is no picture of them yet but just google Chibi Voice I-Dolls and you will see examples from other series. Despite the fact that they are Chibi they actually tend to genuinelly look like the actual characters and heck they talk. I've never pre-ordered figures before but I just might for these (although I hope they release a picture before you can pre-order) . Sure $70 is pretty expensive but you get 10 talking figures for that price. Also with 10 I probably won't get every figure I want and I will get some duplicates but I think I can easily sell the extra figures on LJ I don't want so I will end up getting back at least some of the money. They also have a good selection of characters: 3 Ed's, 2 Roy's, Al, & Riza and a mystery character (no Winry though BOO).
Speaking of new merchandise they are also releasing this cool King Bradley figure. I don't care that much about Bradley so I definitely won't be ordering it myself but it's still a nice figure. They also have the typical Ed, Al, & Roy in this set. But they don't look much different from anything that was released before so I probably won't bother either. There has to be a limit to how many Ed, Al, & Roy's I can buy. XD
So anyways I started to read my 2nd Charles Dickens Books David Copperfield. Which happens to be one of his longest books. I picked it up because I was waiting for Foundation by Isaac Asimov to arrive at the library, so maybe I should have chose something shorter since now I doubt I will finish David Copperfield before the Asimov book arrives (I also read I-Robot recently and loved it)
Dickens seems to be a love or hate type of author. He is definitely very verbose (and I am pretty sure he was paid by the word) but I do genuinely enjoy him or at least I really enjoyed the one book I read of his which was A Tale of Two Cities. The funny thing is I did not enjoy it at all at first. For one of my HS classes we were required to read the book only up to a certain point. I found it an extreme chore but I was one of those students who always read the book no matter what. However something happened and somewhere before the point I was required to stop reading I started to really enjoy the book and instead of stopping I finished the book to the end and realized all that boring stuff in the beginning actually made sense. I also think Tale of Two Cities has one of the best endings ever.
Anyways David Copperfield while long is off to a good start. It follows the main character from childhood to adulthood and that alone makes it an intriguing read to me. It doesn't hurt that the book has the following credentials:
Tolstoy regarded Dickens as the best of all English novelists, and considered Copperfield to be his finest work, ranking the "Tempest" chapter (chapter 55, LV - the story of Ham and the storm and the shipwreck) the standard by which the world's great fiction should be judged. Henry James remembered hiding under a small table as a boy to hear installments read by his mother. Dostoyevsky read it enthralled in a Siberian prison camp. Franz Kafka called his first book Amerika a "sheer imitation". James Joyce paid it reverence through parody in Ulysses. Virginia Woolf, who normally had little regard for Dickens, confessed the durability of this one novel, belonging to "the memories and myths of life". It was Freud's favorite novel.