Someone stole my package of a Japanese textbook. Enjoy studying?
James Anear
@jamesanear.bsky.social
Speculative litfic writer working on deconstructing American culture with queerness | Published in Westwind Magazine, Stone of Madness Press etc. | Represented by Kelly Karczewski at UTA publishing | Read my writing ➡️ jamesanear.net
You know you're deep into an author's work when you start reading arguments about translation quality. I was curious why there were so many tonal changes in my No Longer Human copy, turns out the arguments about this particular translator (Keene) are endless. I might pick up a Gibeau copy.
Book translation work is fascinating... the original, vs my (probably bad) translation of the second sentence, vs an official translation. I had no idea translators took so many liberties?? Both in style and content.
Finished reading these two today. Really enjoyed the short story collection in the White Nights special edition. I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. The Siken book took me forever to get through, because it was so good I kept taking a long time to read each poem carefully. Loved both.
Always complaining that I can't read books in Japanese well, so I bought a few Dazai books in Japanese to force myself to learn. I'll just go page by page.
I'd rather we get false positives for AI on Substack vs like the enslopification run wild like it has. Even if my writing got a false flag, I'd prefer that to BS unfiltered slop spam.
Right after this photo she started trying to eat the Murakami library book
Officially adopted my kitty, Lady!! I took this photo for the rescue to use on their website ❤️
Lobotomizing my phone was a fantastic decision. I spend so much less time on it, and instead do other things. Like reading or playing with the cat.
I use Edge for browsing and microslop keeps your new tab page hostage with their MSN news site. It was always making me mad with various ragebait news articles. So, I switched the language to Chinese a while ago and it's working great. I can't understand a word of this.
I'm glad I stopped going to the overpriced cafes nearby and instead have been reading at the library. I'm saving money and I get to look at the ocean LOL.
I finished it! I really liked it, I'll write a review about it after having some time to think more
Went and read at the library today, it's nice because they have a view of the ocean
my cat changed my mind on the cover thing because I realized there's nothing cuter than a cat standing on top of a book that says "I am a cat"
Quickly snapped a photo because the book she's on was too perfect!
My "anti-design" concept isn't that graphic design is evil, only that it's been hijacked by advertising and commercialism. Every logo becomes an advertisement. Every font. Even illustration work becomes advertisement. How can we undo this? It's a question worth pondering.
Continuing my "anti-design" experiments: removing/obscuring labels on products. Makes me consider if the product itself is doing the work rather than the marketing. So far already realized there are some skin care products I kept around because they looked expensive, but I was not using them.
