At the halfway point - My 2021 offloading goal is going pretty well

I own lots of physical books and DVDs. I like owning them, but at the same time, I live in an apartment and have limited space. Also, if I ever do end up moving to a new place, that stuff translates into lots of heavy boxes or lots of things I'd have to find a way to whittle down fast.

I've had some vague offloading goals since 2016, but my efforts usually haven't gone well and/or haven't been consistent. In 2016, my offload stack was 5.5 ft. In 2017, it dropped down to a measly 1.4 ft. The next couple years weren't any better: 1.3 ft. and 1.9 ft. I felt amazingly productive when, in 2020, I somehow managed to offload 3.5 ft.

At the beginning of 2021, I decided to try being a little more purposeful about my offloading. I set up a goal of 1 foot per month, but told myself that if I didn't manage it, I wouldn't beat myself up over it. I figured that I'd initially do very well but would have issues meeting my monthly goal by this point in the year. Surprisingly, the project is actually going extremely well.

I've been using LibraryThing to keep track of my offloads, as I've done since 2016. My "1 foot per month" goal makes it easy to figure out whether I'm on track, because I know my number of feet needs to match my current month at some point before the end of the month.

Right now, I'm at 5.9 ft. offloaded, more than I've ever managed. It's been going much better than I expected, although I'll admit that it has definitely affected my reading choices. I concentrate a lot more on books I suspect I'd be comfortable offloading, and I've been getting through more of my manga collection. And it's forced me to be slightly more comfortable with DNFing - I've tried to make myself feel better about those by writing brief DNF reviews that I add to LibraryThing for my own benefit (when Future Me sees the book again and is maybe tempted to rebuy it, for example). A small number of my offloads have been things that, in a perfect world with much more shelf space, I'd have preferred to keep, but so far I haven't actively regretted getting rid of anything. 

Ultimately, I'd like to free up enough space so that I no longer need to keep any books in boxes and can have them all on bookshelves. At my current rate, considering that I still buy new stuff to add to my collection, that's definitely going to take longer than a year or two. But I'm still happy with my progress so far - I can actually see space opening up. Crossing my fingers that I continue to do this well during the second half of the year.

Comfort rewatch time

Heaven Official's Blessing has been released on Netflix, and since today has been terrible, I've decided I'll do a comfort rewatch even though I haven't finished the other two shows I'm watching yet. I'm only in the second episode, but so far I can say that, yes, minor changes were made to the subtitles, and it does seem to be for the better. For example, Xiao Ying's dress is now "torn" rather than "broken."

Anyway, my workplace is losing another couple people by the end of the month, and we haven't even replaced any of the other people who have left yet. Honestly, I'm not even sure anymore which positions are considered open and which are just gone. I think this means we'll have five positions open, but I'd be a lot more comfortable if we filled at least seven. There's been a lot of talk lately about all the new things we'll be expected to do, and I have no idea how we'll do any of it and get our regular work done. Possibly our regular work isn't viewed as being very worthwhile, I don't know. For instance, it's been hinted that I may have library instruction work added to my duties, which I'm extremely uncomfortable with. I'm a great cataloger, but I'd be a horrible instruction librarian, and it would make me miserable and anxious to boot.

Here's hoping comfort rewatching helps at least temporarily. On the plus side, we were all asked to submit updated resumes for accreditation purposes, so I have a freshly updated resume if I finally decide it's time for me to move on as well. I know I've tossed the idea around for a few years, but things are especially uncomfortable right now.

Heaven Official's Blessing is coming to Netflix!

I just noticed it in the "coming next week" section. Yes, I'll probably be rewatching it, or at least most of it, to see whether the subtitles are better. This is part of the reason why my streaming queues are never-ending.

(Currently watching: Lupin on Netflix and Bungo and Alchemist: Gears of Judgement on Funimation. Lupin is pretty good, even though I can't always follow Assane's various tricks very well. Bungo and Alchemist is not really all that good, but my lack of familiarity with most of the works and authors mentioned may be part of the problem.)

ER billing "fun"

Content warning for blood and medical issues.

During the weekend just prior to Thanksgiving, I had the worst nosebleed of my life and went to the ER to try to get it stopped. It looked at first like their efforts worked, although my sinuses felt alarmingly sloshy when I left. Unfortunately, minutes after getting home, the bleeding started up again, just as bad as before, so I went back to the ER. Several hours and some vomited blood later, they finally packed my nostril and I was actually able to go home and get some rest.

Fast forward a few weeks, and the bill from the ER arrived. It was more than I'd have liked to pay but at least less than my rent, and the itemized version I hunted down (or thought I hunted down) made it look like it covered both visits. Just this past weekend, I unexpectedly got yet another bill. After some checking, it seemed like it was the physician's bill (which is apparently separate from the ER bill, because US medical billing is awful).

I decided to make a few phone calls to my insurance and the ER just to double check things, though, and it turns out it's even worse than I thought. Those first two bills were just for the first ER visit. There are another two claims for the second ER visit that insurance has currently denied - the ER has sent them stuff to convince them that, yes, it's a second visit and they didn't mistakenly send two claims for one visit.

So I can definitely expect another couple bills, and there's currently no way to know if they'll be approximately the same as what I've already been billed, or more. Either way, it's looking like I'd owe a lot less if I had just refused to leave that first time until I was sure the sloshy sensation wasn't going to get worse (it literally took only 20 minutes for the bleeding to start right back up again).

At this point I'm thinking that anyone who's against moving the US to a single payer healthcare system has never had to deal with this kind of thing. And also that anyone who blows off COVID-19 as no big deal hasn't considered that if they end up in the ER, they'll probably have medical debt for the rest of their life (you know, assuming they don't die - but I guess if they die it'll be their family on the hook for the debt). A simple nosebleed is going to cost me at least half a month's paycheck, if not more, so I can only imagine what a hospital stay for COVID-19 must cost.

Long day, no package (*updated!)

A few months ago, Right Stuf had some particularly good sales, and I decided to splurge, even though I knew it might take a while to get everything. A lot of their items have been listed as out of stock for weeks due to the current issues with the US postal service.

I'd been waiting about three months for my super-cheap Kaguya-sama: Love Is War bundle (the first four volumes) to ship, and I was finally notified that they were on their way. They were originally supposed to arrive on Wednesday, but for some reason mail service in my area has been working fine, so the delivery date moved up to Monday, today. It was a busy day at work, so I didn't have time to check my texts, and I didn't see until the end of the day that the package had been delivered to my porch at a little before 2 PM. It always makes me nervous when packages are delivered to my porch instead of the apartment postal lockers, but I've never actually had a package disappear before. Until today.

I got home and no package. No package on any of my neighbors' porches either - I checked, just in case it had been delivered to the wrong apartment. So either it was delivered to entirely the wrong building, or someone stole it. I'd hoped that I'd open my door sometime this evening to find that someone had dropped off the package that was mistakenly put on their porch, but so far no such luck.

I don't think there's anything that can be done about it, and the thought of re-ordering something I've already paid for is upsetting, so I might end up never reading this series, or doing it via ILL one very slow volume at a time sometime in the far future. Tomorrow I'll call up the post office and ask why they haven't been using the postal lockers as much lately, and I guess when future packages arrive I'll be watching my texts like a hawk and hoping that my schedule has room for 20 minutes or so to dash home and back. I guess I should consider myself lucky that this package didn't contain anything really expensive or now out of print.

Update: On Friday I came home to find that the package had been delivered to a postal locker, with no note of explanation. I'm thinking it was either lost at the post office after mistakenly being scanned as delivered, or delivered to the wrong place and the person was kind enough to give it back to the post office to be correctly delivered. Either way, I now I have Kaguya-sama volumes. Yay!

A more personal post

The university I work at had some layoffs a few weeks ago. My library managed to escape without any losses, but that's mostly because we're already understaffed - one person got a job someplace else, one of our librarians passed away, and we've just plain been understaffed for a couple years now, even though not everyone's willing to admit it.

I knew there was a chance I could lose my job, but I figured there was more of chance I'd lose my relatively new employee. I was grateful that neither of those things happened (this time around, anyway - we've all been warned there's a good chance there will be more layoffs in the future), but the work situation is taking a rapid turn for the worse. Our director is retiring, and after weeks of being told that her boss would be taking over as interim director, it was just announced that someone completely different would be doing the job instead.

The news was a gut punch, because that particular person is one of the reasons we're understaffed in certain areas and have high turnover in others. I know for a fact that several incidents this person was involved in have been documented, reported, and/or witnessed by lot of people. At the moment, it's only an interim position, so hopefully the person can behave themselves for a bit and not act abusively towards others (I'm not holding my breath considering what the last couple weeks have been like), but interim positions sometimes become permanent.

I've known for years that my workplace wasn't healthy, but I didn't think it was irredeemable. Now I'm not so sure. Well, I'm crossing my fingers that the next few months are survivable and hoping that there really is a search committee for a new director (we haven't gotten any updates and no one seems to know who's on it, so I'm doubtful). And in the meantime I guess I'll start preparing to abandon ship. My anxiety is going to be an issue, but hopefully I can push through it.

In the meantime, there might be a higher than usual number of reviews of things I dislike, as I try to gradually downsize my collection. Or no reviews at all, if the stress at work gets to be too much and I end up in a reviewing slump.

The status of Booklikes

It might not actually be possible to start a new account on Booklikes, but just in case, I thought I'd advise anyone considering it to steer clear. The site was really great a few years ago, a solid competitor for Goodreads in the world of book social media. Then about four years ago it started having problems, and it's now basically unusable. Even worse, it doesn't seem to be possible to delete your account anymore.

Various other folks who used the site have theorized that its massive influx of spammers are responsible for the site's recent slowdown. The few contacts people have had from Booklikes staff indicate that Booklikes folks have worked on it and done everything they plan to do...which amounted to nothing. The site still works like crap, barely anything loads, and spam bots multiply like bunnies. Another Booklikes user noted that they may have started using ads on the site that are known for being a source of spam, so that doesn't help either. That was part of the last straw that prompted me to try to delete my account.

Except that I couldn't. Every time I tried, the site timed out. The best I could manage was changing my profile picture to a blank white square. I'm not even sure I can delete individual posts.

So at this point, there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about my Booklikes account. It'll have to remain as is, but I no longer plan to post there or check how things are going. Booklikes is essentially dead. From here on out, I'll just be posting my reviews on this blog, Goodreads (books only), and LibraryThing (all reviews from my blog, with the added bonus of spoiler tags).

I have a Nintendo Switch Lite and Animal Crossing: New Horizons now

And wow, is it addictive. I didn't research the game much at all before getting it (I already knew enough about the Animal Crossing franchise to know it was probably my kind of thing), so the real-time aspect took me by surprise. It's kind of nice that the game was literally built to have a slower pace, though. Oh, and another thing that took me by surprise: wasps (so many wasps) and tarantulas (OMG). After my poor avatar passed out for the third or fourth time, I looked up whether that has any negative effects, and it seems like it doesn't. Thank goodness.

I played until way too late last night and managed to pay off the first bit of debt and acquire new debt. But at least I have a tiny house (with storage!), a bunch of flimsy tools, and the ability to cross the river now. I haven't actually crossed the river yet, but I hope to do it during my lunch break today.

For US and Canadian folks: #CLOSETHELIBRARIES

You may not realize it, but even in the midst of a pandemic, a lot of libraries still have their doors open to users (the library I work for falls into this category). Even if they're closed, they might still be requiring all of their staff to come in (again, my library mostly falls into this category - in Technical Services, anyone who wishes to work from home due to concerns about the virus must make sure that someone else in their department is still working at the physical building). None of this is safe for staff members, their families, library users, or their communities.

This article provides strategies for getting libraries in your area closed. They link to a Google doc that includes a list of libraries known to still be open. It's a lot. Please do what you can to help your communities and get those libraries closed.

Without the context, all of this feels bizarrely Fahrenheit 451-ish. But here we are.

Recommendations for Steam's 2019 Winter Sale

It's time for one of my favorite events of the year, Steam's Winter Sale. I like being able to buy goodies that I don't have to find physical space to store. FYI, my game tastes run heavily towards visual novels, casual games with little or no combat, and puzzle games, so those are the sorts of recommendations you can expect to find here.

Surprisingly, it doesn't seem like I've written too many game recommendation posts. There's this one for the 2017 Steam Summer Sale. All those recommendations still stand, especially Stardew Valley, which recently got an update that added a few things and improved what was already an amazing game. There's also my 2018 game recommendations post - those recommendations also still stand.

My top recommendations from those two posts, if you'd rather not click through:

• Stardew Valley (on sale for $8.99) - This is a farming game that's largely pretty chill. You plant crops, catch fish, get to know villagers, explore the mines and fight monsters, etc. If there's a particular activity you don't like, it's usually pretty easy to work around it. The newest update adds some quality of life upgrades (when you build items like tree tappers, they stack now instead of taking up individual spaces in your inventory), a few fun things like new breeds of cats or dogs you can have around the farm, new fish, and probably other things I haven't come across yet.
• Plants vs. Zombies (on sale for $1.99) - I haven't actually played this in years, but of all the games on my Steam account, this is maybe the third in terms of number of hours I've put into it. It's a fun little "tower defense" game in which you position plants to protect you against zombies. I'm terrible at stressful games, and even I found this enjoyable.
• Hatoful Boyfriend (on sale for $2.49) - This dating sim/visual novel looks ridiculous - you're a human at a school for sentient birds, and you have the ability to befriend and date those birds. You're permitted to see them as their human equivalents at the very beginning of the game, and then that's it, you're romancing birds for the rest of the game. It turns out that this is actually a post-apocalyptic mystery/thriller, and it's surprisingly good. I ♥ sweet, sad Nageki.
• The Rusty Lake games (complete bundle on sale for $5.07) - The best of the bunch are Rusty Lake: Roots and Rusty Lake Paradise. Weird little puzzle games set in an unsettling and strange universe. If you're not sure about taking the plunge, try out the various Cube Escape games, also set in the same universe. They're available for free on Android or iPhone.
• 428 Shibuya Scramble (on sale for $14.99) - I highly recommend picking this up if you like visual novels. The price is fabulous right now. This is a mystery/thriller/comedy told from multiple POVs. The game requires you to switch between the different POVs in order to progress in the story - sometimes you can move forward in one POV unless a character in another POV has gone to the right location already, for example. The story structure alone makes this one worth checking out.
• Hidden Folks (on sale for $2.47) - A Where's Waldo style hidden object game. The art and little scenarios are cute.
• The Blackwell series (on sale for $7.84) - Do you miss old school adventure games? Then you're in luck, because this series will probably be perfect for you. You play as someone with the ability to see ghosts who has teamed up with a ghost. The games get better as the series progresses, although I would generally recommend playing them in order for story continuity purposes.

 What else do I recommend?

• Donut County (on sale for $6.49) - It's a puzzle game that's probably going to be too easy for some folks to enjoy, but I personally think the humor makes up for it. You play as a racoon controlling a hole in the ground that gets bigger and bigger as it swallows things up.
• Unavowed (on sale for $10.49) - I haven't actually finished this yet, but I still think it's great. Honestly, anything by Wadjet Eye Games (see the Blackwell series above) is generally going to be good. Compare this to the Blackwell games, and you can see how far the developer has come in terms of creating engaging stories and puzzles and working replayability into games.
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy (on sale for $19.79) - Uhh, another game I have yet to finish. That said, I've played several episodes of it, and I've found it to be lots of fun. The humor is great, as are the characters. It's stupid, but I always get a little zing of pleasure when I catch one of the characters trying to slip a particularly tricky lie through.
• Animal Lover (on sale for $2.49) - I reviewed this a couple years ago. It's one of my top favorite visual novels. It takes a while to really get going, but I got really attached to several of the characters once I got past all the introductions and story setup.
• Kind Words (lo fi chill beats to write to) (on sale for $4.24) - This isn't really a game. It's more a place where you can anonymously write about your problems and fears and get sympathy, advice, and encouragement back from other players. It does have some issues - sometimes the constant stream of problems is difficult to handle, especially if you're the sort that really wants to help people, and there's no way to make a more lasting connection with anyone, since you're limited to one response and the most the person can do in return is send you an in-game sticker as thanks. Still, the very limited setup seems to have left this game with little-to-no trolls, and the community is incredibly kind and thoughtful. 
• Hashihime of the Old Book Town (on sale for $27.99) - No link to this one, because it's an adults-only game. The truly adult content takes a while to show up but is pretty graphic, FYI. Also, be warned, the first route in particular includes a LOT of suicide. That said, this is a beautiful, weird, and fascinating visual novel. It takes ages to really get going, but keep pushing and you'll be rewarded. This is another one I haven't quite finished yet - I've made it through two of the routes. It's very linear and features almost no choices, which I honestly find relaxing after some visual novels. 
• Obduction (on sale for $10.49) - Another one I haven't finished yet - this is a pattern with me I know - but I highly recommend it if you're a fan of old school adventure games like the original Myst series. Like those games, the world of Obduction feels strangely dead and empty and, at first at least, it comes across as weirdly tiny. As you play, the areas you can travel to gradually increase until the world becomes dauntingly large. I love this game but, as with the Myst games, I don't seem to be smart enough for all of the puzzles. I got stuck on a few and ended up never coming back to the game. That said, I still highly recommend it, especially at this price.
• Fran Bow (on sale for $7.49) - A puzzle game in which you're a little girl whose parents were killed and who is now being kept at an asylum. This game is occasionally extremely disturbing, so approach it with caution. Still, the story and puzzles are very well-done. It includes some mini-games, but if those aren't your thing, then no worries, because they aren't required in order to complete the game.

Back from vacation!

I actually got back about a week ago. This was my annual "visit family, binge read manga, and maybe eat out occasionally" vacation. Last year, my dad wasn't able to make it in time to see me, so I was thrilled that, this year, I got to see my entire immediate family. This, combined with some major anxiety related to the friend who was going to help me out by driving me to the airport cancelling on me less than a day before my flight, plus the cold I caught about halfway through my vacation, resulted in me reading way less than I normally do. But I did get through some stuff.

Manga:

• Black Butler Vol. 27
• Blue Exorcist Vols. 1-2
• Haikyu!! Vols. 1-2
• Maid-sama! Vols. 1-18 (the entire series)
• Skip Beat! Vols. 41-42 

Books:

• How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals by Sy Montgomery

I also watched a lot of TV, some of it at the airport and on the plane, and some of it while my dad was home:

• Aggretsuko (anime TV series) - I saw Season 1 and the Christmas special a while back. I watched episodes 1-4 of Season 2 on the plane and enjoyed it.
• The King's Avatar (live action TV series) - Netflix finally fixed the English subtitles! They now make sense, for the most part. My dad and I made it almost halfway through the series together, and I watched a little more after he left. There's a revelation in episode 18 or 19 that I was not fond of, but I still plan on finishing the series.
• Violet Evergarden (anime TV series) - I originally intended to watch this at the airport and am glad I opted to watch it during my vacation instead. I don't like crying in public, and this series would have done it. I'd love to have this in my DVD/Blu-Ray collection, but it doesn't look like it's available. I'm hoping it doesn't become an Aniplex of America release, because, as much as I enjoyed it, I don't want to pay $140+ to own a 13-episode series.

Back to visual novels, nervously anticipating vacation time

I wish I could look forward to upcoming travel like a normal person. Instead, I'm worrying about stupid stuff (like how my apartment is horrible and will never be clean enough to leave) and all the possible things that could go wrong (setting up backup plans for backup plans, and worrying about the backup plans I haven't worked out yet). If I could just teleport to my location, everything would be fine. Or, if not fine, at least better.

Anyway, I'm still planning out what manga to read during my vacation. In the meantime, I made the mistake of getting hooked on a longish visual novel that I probably won't be able to finish before I leave and that I won't be able to continue reading at my destination. Ugh.

The visual novel in question is Hashihime of the Old Book Town, an absolutely gorgeous historical SFF time travel story with mystery, horror, and m/m romance elements. If you give it a shot, be warned, it takes several hours to really get going and contains explicit sex scenes (possibly only one per route? which is weird, because that's likely too little for those who like that sort of thing, but too much for those who enjoyed the previous 18 hours of story with zero sex in it). Also, pay attention to those content warnings at the beginning. If you're a gay or trans person who's depressed, experiencing suicidal ideation, etc., I'd recommend staying away from this visual novel. I've only played the first route so far, and it does manage to give the main character and one of his friends, Minakami, a happy ending, but the journey to that point grinds them to bits.

Judging by others' playing time, I have anywhere from 15 to 25 hours to go before I'm done with the whole visual novel. I'm not sure I'll manage it all before going on vacation, so here's hoping I at least figure out a good place to stop. I just started what I think is probably Kawase's route, so I'll see how long that takes.

J-Novel Club update: membership cancelled (for now)

My J-Novel Club reading has slowed down. Also, I'm going to be on vacation during a good chunk of next month. It seemed like a good idea to buy a bunch of J-Novel Club titles and cancel my membership. I figure I'll restart it when I've finished all or most of my final purchases, assuming I've found some good titles I want to continue.

Canceling was really easy - I just clicked a link, and my membership page updated right away to say that it was canceled and would end on the last day of my current membership (tomorrow). I wasn't asked any questions about why I wanted to cancel, and no attempts were made to keep me from canceling. Assuming I don't get charged tomorrow, the whole process was really painless. The only thing I wonder about is whether there's a way to completely remove my current payment method, but I'll worry about that later.

My best finds during my two months as a J-Novel Club member:

• The Ao Oni series: It's disgusting and gruesome, but also oddly fun and not too badly written/translated. I haven't played the games, and yet I've still liked the books. 
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! series: Okay, so these are not well written/translated at all, but they still managed to be fun.
• Outbreak Company, Vol. 1: There was some "otaku who doesn't know how to behave around real girls" stuff that made me cringe, but this still showed signs of being the start of a decent series. I could see myself trying the next volume at some point.

 My final purchases:

• The last (?) Ao Oni volume
• Apparently It's My Fault That My Husband Has the Head of a Beast, Vol. 1: To be honest, this doesn't sound all that great, but I'm doing my best to read as many light novels with female protagonists as possible.
• Ascendance of a Bookworm, Part 1 Volume 1: A "reborn into a fantasy world" series, but starring a sickly girl who really loves books rather than the usual ordinary guy who all the girls inexplicably love. The premise intrigues me, but the execution doesn't seem great, which is why I only bought the first volume.
• Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill, Vol. 1: For when I need a "transported to another world" fluff story with (I think?) no romance.
• Demon King Daimaou, Vol. 1: It looks like it's written in third person POV. I've now read enough Japanese light novels for this, specifically, to be appealing. I hate how many of them are written in first person when they'd be so much better in third.
• JK Haru is a Sex Worker in Another World: Will I be able to handle this? I guess I'll find out. I read some of the free excerpt, and it's very explicit in an emotionally distant and ugly sort of way.
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, Vol. 3: I'd have picked up volume 4, too, but I'd like to know first how the author handles continuing the series past what could have been its natural stopping point. Especially considering the fact that the author doesn't seem to be a very skilled storyteller, at all. Still, I enjoyed the series and wanted to read a bit more.
• Sexiled: My Sexist Party Leader Kicked Me Out, So I Teamed Up with a Mythical Sorceress!, Vol. 1: Reviews indicate that it's very heavy-handed with its messages, which some reviewers liked and some didn't. I guess I'll find out which side I'm on.
• The Combat Baker and Automaton Waitress, Vol. 1: The excerpt seemed rough, but it has an AI as one of its main characters, so I really wanted to read it anyway.

J-Novel Club membership, nearly one month later

It's two days before my next billing date, and I think I'm going to let it go for another month and then reevaluate.

I misunderstood several things about what the membership would mean. It doesn't give you temporary access to J-Novel Club's entire backlist - the only things you can immediately read with your membership are the previews even non-paying members can read, and the pre-pubs (newest volumes, prior to completion, which I assume means they have more typos and awkward writing), which non-paying members don't have access to. And the Premium membership does not automatically give you a credit to buy one of J-Novel Club's e-books. I'm supposed to get my first "free" Premium membership credit today, actually, and I haven't received it yet. According to their forums, the credits are manually applied to Premium membership accounts (seriously? they don't automate this?), so the time when they show up varies. If I don't see mine by sometime tomorrow morning, I'll be contacting them about that, and I'll downgrade next month's membership.

So basically, the five J-Novel Club books that I've read in the past month were all books that I paid for, on top of my Premium membership fee. They were DRM-free, unlike the Kobo or Amazon options. Assuming that credit gets applied to my account sometime in the next few hours, the price per e-book this month has been about $6.82, cheaper than other options. (If that credit doesn't get applied the way it should be, it was actually about $8.19 per book.)

I made a list of all the J-Novel Club titles that looked even vaguely appealing, and the final total was about 22. I don't know if I'll make it through the whole list, but I'd for sure like to buy the remaining Ao Oni and My Next Life as a Villainess volumes. Beyond that, I haven't decided.

Edit: The credit has been applied to my account!

Giving a J-Novel Club membership a try

I meant it when I said that My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! was going to make me break down and get a J-Novel Club membership. I started one this weekend.

After looking at the chart detailing the benefits of the two different membership levels, I decided to go all-in and start with a monthly Premium membership rather than a monthly regular membership. The Premium membership includes a free credit (technically, reduced price - if you consider the higher monthly cost, it's about $6 for that credit rather than the usual $7) that can be used for one DRM-free J-Novel Club e-book.

The things I've learned so far:

• Yes, J-Novel Club e-books purchased directly through the J-Novel Club site are indeed DRM-free, even though J-Novel Club e-books sold anywhere else have DRM.
• Due to illustrations and such, the e-book files are fairly large. I've purchased one so far, and it was 16 MB.
• That "free" Premium membership credit is not an immediate thing. I was wondering why I had 0 credits on my account and learned that I'll get my credit on the 15th of next month. Annoying.

I'm not sure whether the credit would be immediate if you upgraded to Premium from a regular membership, rather than starting with a Premium membership the way I did. It's implied on the site that it would be. Here's the message I get if I try to buy an e-book through the site with 0 credits on my account:

At any rate, I didn't want to wait a full month to get volume 1 of My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, so I bought a credit - I can save my "free" credit for a later volume in the series, maybe.

I'm going to try to be good about monitoring my usage of this membership and ending it once it stops being worth my while. I have at least a couple more series I'd like to try, although not necessarily buy. At the moment I'm reading my purchased e-book using my favorite EPUB reader app on my phone. I won't be able to do that with J-Novel Club e-books I don't buy, so I'll be interested to see what the reading experience is like for those. (Edit: The site may not actually work the way I thought it did. I thought members had access to any works on the site for as long as they kept their membership, sort of like Netflix for Japanese light novels. Actually purchasing and downloading specific titles would provide more permanent access. Instead, I think members only have access to the first parts of published works, and the full pre-publication titles as they're still being translated and edited. I suspect I'm going to be spending the next month or two trying out and buying a lot of J-Novel Club books and then cancelling my membership, since I doubt I'll keep up with enough series for the pre-publication access to be worth it.)

Being an anxious introvert sucks

I've been training a new staff member at work, my first new staff member ever. I knew it would be challenging, but I didn't foresee how difficult it would be for my emotional/mental well-being. I tend to prefer written communication over verbal, and I find talking to people I don't know to be draining. This past week, I've spent huge chunks of time talking to someone I don't really know all that well (my new staff member), sometimes training her to do stuff that I'm not great at either since it isn't part of my regular duties, while doing my best to keep on top of my normal work duties as well as due dates for things my new staff member can't currently be expected to do on her own.

It's incredibly draining, to the point that I went to the gym one evening to try to do some exercises to loosen up my hip (I have a little bit of arthritis) and had to leave 15 minutes later because being around all those people, even though I didn't have to talk to any of them, was almost physically painful. Today I'm dealing with what seems to be some kind of delayed anxiety. There's absolutely nothing going on today for me to be anxious about, and yet I'm completely swamped with it.

My new staff member will eventually be fully trained, but in the meantime hopefully I can figure out a better way to deal with my own reaction to training her.

Happy New Year!

For the first time, I still have vacation reading notes to write up at the start of the new year. I really need to get those done, or it'll interfere with my ability to pick up where I left off during my next vacation.

One of the things I realized at the tail end of 2018 is that it has become really hard for me to force myself to write reviews. I'm not sure what's up. I don't want to stop blogging/reviewing, but I think I need to figure out a different way of doing things. Maybe I need to change my reviewing style.

I also realized that I need to actively work at offloading (donating, recycling, or selling) more of my collection, more regularly. In the past couple years, I haven't offloaded more than 30 items a year, whereas I've definitely purchased more than that. I just bought a new bookcase that's taller than me, and that's certainly helped a lot, but I can't keep adding and upgrading bookcases. So, one of the things I'm trying in 2019 is sticker rewards, since Booklikes Bingo has taught me that I apparently have an inner small child that still loves stickers. I have a sheet of paper with a blank table with 56 spots on it. For every item I offload in some way, I get to put one sticker on the sheet. Ideally, I should have the whole sheet filled up in a year. It's not much, but it'd be an improvement over previous years, if it works.

Beyond that, I don't have a whole lot of reading/reviewing goals. As far as goals not related to books go, I'd like to continue to go to the gym regularly and get back to my pre-Hep C medication weight. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but in the past few months I was diagnosed with mild arthritis in my right hip. After being referred to multiple doctors, each of whom thought surgery might be a good idea, I was finally reluctantly given a prescription for physical therapy, which I'm very happy to report worked wonders. Since then, I've been going to the gym regularly and doing my physical therapy exercises and stretches semi-regularly (yeah, I need to work on that). I've also made it a quarter of the way to my weight goal. My hip's still occasionally a bit stiff, and flexibility is still an issue, but things are so much better. I'd like my progress to continue into 2019.

Long weekend plans

I got what I think might have been mild food poisoning a couple days ago, which miraculously wrapped up in time for me to enjoy turkey and pie. I don't go out for Black Friday shopping and only do a little checking for online deals because finding too many good things overwhelms me, so my plans for the next few days include playing games (at the moment, Cattails, Backstage Pass, and Memoranda), watching more Love 020, and writing a few of my post-vacation review posts. Let's see how much I can get through...

Studio Ghibli Fest 2018 ends with a whimper

I was going to attend the last movie in Studio Ghibli Fest today, Castle in the Sky, but it's been mysteriously canceled without warning at my local movie theater, so I guess that's the end of my Studio Ghibli Fest 2018 adventure.

That makes the second cancellation in this Fathom Events series, which isn't a good look for the theater. The last time this happened, it was due to them having agreed to another showing of a different movie and having to find space for it. I suppose I can understand that, but it's still annoying that they decided to cancel a movie that literally only had three showings scheduled. I was told this wasn't going to happen again, which makes me wonder what happened with Castle in the Sky. If they try to claim it was cancelled due to low attendance at the other Studio Ghibli Fest showings, they only have themselves to blame, since they made zero effort to market it. They didn't even have movie posters or signage at the theater announcing the showings - you had to have checked the Advanced Tickets section of the Cinemark website to know they were happening.

Back from vacation

I don't think I announced it here, but I went on vacation for a couple weeks. I visited my family and read a lot, although not as much as I did in previous years. If I recorded everything correctly, I managed to finish 37 manga and graphic novel volumes and 1 novel. I also watched three movies (the new Fahrenheit 451, Netflix's Death Note, and Khoobsurat) and way too many episodes of Seasons 1-2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I don't recall disliking Xander when I first watched the series, but I loathed him this time around) and a Chinese drama called Love 020.

The graphic novels and manga I got through included:

• Assassination Classroom (remember all those inspiring teacher/delinquent students movies in the '80s and '90s? this is a bit like that, only the teacher is an alien planning on destroying the Earth in a year and the students are trying to kill him)
• Black Butler (which took a shocking and not altogether welcome turn, although maybe this means the series is finally inching towards its endgame)
• Delicious in Dungeon
• Fence 
• The Girl from the Other Side
• Guardians of the Louvre
• Hikaru no Go (I realized I'd never actually finished the manga, although I've seen the anime and remember matching up the dialogue bubbles in Japanese editions of the manga to terrible fan translations)
• Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun
• Natsume's Book of Friends
• Skip Beat!
• The Tea Dragon Society

I purposely concentrated on things I was pretty sure I'd enjoy, so there wasn't anything I hated, although my least favorite of the volumes I read was probably Guardians of the Louvre. It was very pretty, and there were certain sections I liked more than others, but it wasn't really to my taste. I don't know that I can pick a favorite out of everything I read, but the artwork for The Tea Dragon Society was lovely, Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun made me laugh, and I could easily have read 10+ more volumes of Natsume's Book of Friends. Fence was a bit rough around the edges but appealing all the same - although it isn't Japanese manga, it could be a great series for fans of sports manga/anime.

The one novel I read was Christina Dodd's Because I'm Watching, which I didn't realize was the third book in a series. My mom signed both of us up for a reader conference called Book Bonanza, and Christina Dodd is one of the authors who's planning to attend. Over the next few months, I'd like to read more books by other authors going to this event.

You can expect my usual spoiler-filled short takes on everything I read in the coming weeks. I can't spoiler tag things here, but I'll be making use of spoiler tags when I cross-post to Booklikes, LibraryThing, and Goodreads, if you're interested. I'd also like to post a bit about the movies I watched, although those will only be cross-posted to LibraryThing.