I was a bookworm, as a kid and young adult, in the full, teenage-Rory-Gilmore sense of the term. I always had some kind of non-textbook in my tote or purse, and cumulatively, during that time, I think I probably read more books than many people read in their entire lives.

But I had fallen out of the habit during the last few years. I’d continued to read books for research and work purposes. However, other than manga and comics — a volume of which I can usually devour within forty-five minutes at a swipe — I haven’t done much recreational reading. It’s something that’s bothered me for a little while. So when my mom insisted I had to read J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, I took her up on it.

The first two installments were good but definitely children’s books. Prisoner of Azkaban was better, but I expected it. (Three movies in, I fell in love with the film franchise.) And I fell in step with Rowling while reading The Goblet of Fire. That still didn’t prepare me entirely for what was to come.

I just finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix last night, and I can’t get over how well-written it is and how much I loved the story and characters. Like I told my mom, it’s as if Rowling had settled into an excellent working relationship with an editor that gave her the freedom to take some chances with her storytelling and its execution.

A lot of people underestimate the importance of an experienced editor. I’m a relatively strong writer, but nothing was more fun and maddening than working with teachers and professors in college to took the task more seriously than a simple proofread. I could feel myself becoming a better writer as they challenged me: What was I really attempting to say? Why did I make this or that choice? Did it accomplish what I was trying to convey?

It’s a challenge I miss, and I’ll have to go out of my way to find it again.

I gave Heroes a chance to win me back… and it failed miserably.

The “Speedster” is annoying. (I didn’t like her when she was the nerdy girl trying to date Landry on Friday Night Lights, either.) One Peter is enough. I don’t need a second one from the future. I never cared about Claire. Nothing can make me care about Sylar. It was neat to see Francis Capra, who costarred with Kristen Bell on Veronica Mars, pop up as an inmate in Section 5. But that didn’t make up for not seeing enough of HRG or Mama Petrelli. Or isolating Matt. (Didn’t they learn from last year’s “Hiro goes to the past” fiasco?) I’m sick of Maya. (Can’t she die already?) Suresh crawling the walls isn’t any fun. And Hiro believing that Ando would betray him — without seriously attempting to examine why — was the last straw. Halfway into the second hour, I ditched it to call one of my pals down in Florida.

This bums me out because I LOVED Heroes‘ first season.

Maybe I’ll follow it on Hulu. Maybe. But for now, I’m ditching it entirely for the soap-opera-ish goodness of One Tree Hill. I actually give a darn about most of the characters on that show.

Lest I sound like a total crank, I’m majorly digging House this season. (That may make me sound more crotchety, on second thought.) The detective guy they brought in is a great foil for Dr. House, and it’s only natural there would be some lasting ramifications to work through from last season’s final episodes.

I’m also in love with Supernatural, again. In addition to the cute guys — I’d be lying if I didn’t admit this was at least part of the attraction — I really like the direction they’re taking this year. It will be very interesting to see how everything plays out.

Not quite sure how I feel about this season of Bones, yet.  First, I need to catch up on about a season and a half.

I’ve rambled enough for this entry. :-)

Another Gator win, but overall, while I’m O.K. with how we played — especially at this point in the season — I was disappointed in the game itself.

When we play Tennessee, I want to see the Volunteers as tough as I know they can be. They weren’t today, and it was kind of a downer, no matter how happy I am to see another “W” on the schedule calendar.

Then, there’s the whole thing with fans leaving en masse before the end of the game. This isn’t a Tennessee thing, but more of a “college and pro sports in general” thing. That really Ts me off, especially when I know how hard (and potentially expensive) it is to get tickets as an alum or a member of the general public.

So, what did I do today beyond watching the game? Cleaning and laundry. Because I just found out this week I may have a visitor next month, and I know in my heart it will take a long time to clean up my mess. ;-)

I just finished some work for the STUF and some work for the band. Now, I’m thoroughly exhausted.

In a couple weeks, I’ll reveal the mysterious reason for all of the scurrying around, but right at this moment, I’m terrifically, horribly jealous of the peeps who made the trek to Anime Weekend Atlanta this weekend.

It’s one of shows I regularly attended before landing my current gig, and it’s one place where I always had a blast.

Point of trivia: Two years ago, on the Friday night of the convention, I got the call with the job offer while I was hanging out in the lounge with JC — who very wisely didn’t let me have second thoughts about moving halfway across the country in the span of three weeks.

Good times. ^_^

Another super-busy Saturday, and I need to remember to take a picture of today’s haircut for my mom sometime tomorrow. The cable TV might as well be out. It keeps glitching up and has been doing so all day. (And they wonder why there are people non-plussed about the push toward digital? This is “Example A.”)

I just read on my newsfeed about the death of a fairly prominent, younger writer, apparently by suicide. My reading of his works was limited primarily to his commentary and non-fiction pieces — considering my tastes, smaller doses were preferable at the time — and for my money, his collection of those works (A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again) is one of the best book titles ever. So much so, I still have it on my bookshelf eleven years later.

Every time I come across some bit of news like this, I can’t help but wonder how much of an effect the individual’s early success had on the circumstances that led to such a tragic outcome. How hard must it have been to live up to the promise and potential of early acclaim? And what if the person hadn’t had the opportunity to weather more knocks along the way and toughen up against critics and the occasional (or not-so-occasional) speed bumps life throws in everyone’s path?

We all get kicked in the teeth sometimes, but at this stage of my life, I’ve reached a point where I know the better measure of one’s worth is how you deal with those challenges and disappointments. And I wonder where that leaves those individuals who haven’t learned — or will never learn — this.

Enough deep thoughts. I’m off to continue my laundry.

What a screwy week. >_<

I can't believe it's only been seven years. And I'm going to keep the rest of my thoughts on the matter to myself, since I really don't feel like discussing politics on this blog. EVER.

Also, my thoughts are with all the peeps down in Texas. I lived the drama of hurricane season during my 20-plus years in Florida, and it's not fun.

It's never as easy to evacuate as the average person who doesn't live in a hurricane area thinks it is. These happen multiple times a year. Even if you can get time off from work and afford the gas -- and the motel rooms at your destination -- good luck with the traffic jam caused by more than a million people all trying to evacuate at the same time.

My younger brother can vouch: It's never fun to have a hurricane pass right over you when you're stuck in a traffic jam on the highway.
Good luck, y'all.

*Title ganked from “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory” by Oasis.

Like the last couple of weeks, this work week kicked my butt for reasons I’ll go into at a future date. I mean, wow. It’s bad when I go home right after work on a Friday, right?

The weekend should be pretty great though: My entire Saturday is planned around the Gators game. Yay for ESPN!

I’m a little bummed about the weather, though. Intellectually, I know September is part of “fall,” and it’s going to get cooler, but does it have to start getting cool the first week? I’d love it to not be in the sixties until at least the end of September. ;-)

There’s one good side effect to this: I won’t wait until it’s too late to get fall clothes like I did last year.

I need a least one new pair of jeans (my smallest ones are loose!), a few new separates for work, and the really awesome Gators hoodie I saw on the University’s web site. That sounds like a lot, but all of my “fun” cash during the last year or so has gone either toward moving or the house, so I’m playing catch up… but not until next weekend. As for the next few days, we’ll see…

The “Best of What’s Next” issue…

1. Janelle Monae | Violet Stars Hapy Hunting!
2. Jamie Lidell | Another Day
3. The Bridges | Pieces
4. Bon Iver | Flume
5. Luke Doucet | Blood’s Too Rich
6. Greg Laswell | How the Day Sounds
7. Mugison | To the Bone
8. Johnny Flynn | The Box
9. Seabird | Let Me Go On
10. Esperanza Spaulding | I Adore You
11. The Duhks | Might Storm
12. Joshua James | The New Love Song
13. Dearestazazel | Lovely, Lovely
14. Lucy Wainwright Roche | Chicago
15. Slow Runner | Long Division
16. Jim Boggia | On Your Birthday
17. Pictures and Sound | It’s You
18. The Riders | Coalinga
19. Kristoffer Ragnstam | Swing That Tambourine
20. Phil Roy | The Willow

I thought I had purged a decent amount of my stuff when I moved from Florida to the Midwest. Guess what: I was wrong, wrong, WRONG! I spent most of yesterday and a good part of today reassembling my library/study. At least Miss Kitty was a happy camper: She had me as a captive audience the entire time. ;-)

Very tired, but there’s officially an hour and change until my TV junk food (One Tree Hill) has its season premiere, so it’s all good.

Work, the pulling apart of my library and plowing through Harry Potter had a cumulative effect on my manga reading habits this past month, but I did consume two series that each struck me in fairly personal ways.

- VS. (Versus), Vols. 1-7 (Complete) by Keiko YAMADA [CMX Manga] | Vs. is an entertaining variation on a well-tread theme: Reiji is a technically brilliant — yet emotionally stunted — violinist, who chokes during the all-important competitions. Beautiful Mitsuko is a wounded violin-prodigy-turned-teacher, who takes on this problem child of a student. Together, they vow to win the national violin competition — which will save his music scholarship — and in the process, he falls for her. But their shared path to fame and acclaim has speed bumps in the form of jealous students (and teachers!), pasts filled with personal tragedies, and the unwelcome attentions of Mitsuko’s former love, a calculating and world-renowned conductor with a past and secrets of his own.

Elements of this sound familiar, right?

What sets Vs. apart is Yamada’s grasp of the “X factor” great musicians bring to the pieces they perform. This is often hard to communicate without a soundtrack and one area where music and dance manga often stumble. While her technical details may or may not be factually correct, she intuitively gets the communal “a-ha” moment the performer and audience share when a musician’s emotions and history merge with the notes on the page to create a very personal version of a given composition.

It’s magic, and once you’ve experienced it, you could spend your life trying to recapture that feeling. But what happens when — for whatever reason — an artist is unable to pursue that feeling and dream? At that point, will the love of the art lead him or her to ruin or to salvation?

In real life and in this manga, it’s a heartbreaking question that rarely has an easy answer. And this flipside of the equation is where Vs. really sings.

- Suppli, Vols. 1-3 by Mari OKAZAKI [TOKYOPOP] | When I read the first volume way back in December, I noted this series was one where readers’ reactions to it — which tend to be either strongly positive or strongly negative — were going to very much be tempered by their life experiences. This initial impression holds true halfway through the series.

Where other manga, such as Tramps Like Us (Kimi wa Pet), use the day-to-day experiences of single, female professionals as a backdrop for romantic comedy, drama and/or wish fulfillment, Suppli digs in and captures the 360-degree reality of this existence — from work-related trials and triumphs to the not-so-unspoken weight of social expectations. The art is gorgeous, the story is wonderfully messy, and the manga, as whole, is addictive. (I’m not surprised to find out this one was adapted into a live-action drama.)

Suppli has at least three more volumes to go, but it is also one of the titles affected by TOKYOPOP’s summer restructuring. If you’re a fan of mature storytelling, you owe it to yourself to pick up the volumes that are out — and send a message to publishers that there is a growing market for titles, such as Suppli, that transcend the “chick lit” stereotypes.