Hey there, Kazen here. and
welcome back to Always Doing.
[♪♪]
Thank you to everyone who's been
tagging me for all kinds of stuff.
And I have all of them saved in a list,
waiting for the exact right moment, but, um,
this tag wanted to be done today so here we are.
It is the Intimidating TBR Tag.
The original has been erased, apparently,
the original person who did it,
but I saw Cara over at Wilde
Book Garden do it, and yeah.
So today I'm going to be concentrating
on my physical TBR because I'm home
and I CAN concentrate on my physical TBR.
I don't have to lug these things around.
Because you will see, I've got
some hefty books here.
Number one: a book on your
TBR pile that you haven't finished.
I'm going with Dead Center by Shiya Ribowsky.
He was a medical examiner in
New York City during 9/11
and he talks about his experience with the office
in general and during that time in here.
I read the first chapter over the winter,
it feels like it was over New Year's,
and I thought it was great, but at the time this
wasn't what my brain was in the mood for.
So I ended up putting it down and
it ended up back on my TBR shelf,
but I know that once I pick it up and I'm
in the mood for it I'm gonna fly through.
Question number two: a book you
haven't had the time to read.
Which I'm going to have to change
a little bit because of These Times,
but it's a book I haven't had the
bandwidth? mind space? to read.
And I'm going with Working by
Studs Terkel. This is a monster.
It is a oral history of all different kinds of people,
normal people and what they think about their jobs.
And Studs Terkel was an amazing interviewer
and this is supposed to be really good.
I know that when I do read this
I'm going to go through, in order.
I'm going to give myself, like, every
day I want to read so many pages.
And this copy's really beat up. I don't
even think the binding is going to hold.
So I'm going to use this as an opportunity to
annotate and to figure out what I like doing,
how I like writing in books, because
normally I try to avoid or I use post its.
Nah. I'm gonna mark this whole thing up, get a feel.
I even added some ribbon bookmarks.
But yeah. Up until now I haven't had the brain
to take this on. It's been a little intimidating.
So. Eventually?
Number three: a book you haven't
read because it's a sequel.
And I'm very good about buying books in order to make
sure that I have each one, I'm not skipping any.
So I don't have any I think quite
in the way the question means.
But what I do have is the next Fruits Basket manga
that I have to read. This is by Takaya Natsuki.
This is number four so this is next.
But I also have
five six seven eight.
So these are ones I haven't read because
they're sequels. I have to read this one first.
Number four: a book you haven't
read because it's brand new.
And it just hit my ereader,
it's He's Come Undone.
It is a romance anthology full of authors that I know
and love and some that I've been wanting to read.
And each- I think there are, the books, it's
like five and they're almost novellas?
I think the whole thing is
about four hundred pages.
And they all feature heroes who
are kind of stuffy and uptight
but become undone when
they're with the heroine.
Online they're calling it #TeamStarchy
which is just kind of funny.
Looking forward to getting to this one, obviously
too new. It hit my ereader like 24 hours ago, not even.
So, yay~
Number five: a book by an author you
read previously but didn't really like.
And I'm not going to have a physical
book by an author that I'm not sure of
because I have so few physical books and
they're all import because I live here in Japan,
so it just doesn't make much sense.
And even digitally I'm not all that- I have so much
I want to read, that once I am unsure of an author
to the point of "didn't really like",
to me that's like a two star.
And if you have a two star
book that I've read by you
it's gonna be hard to convince me
to pick up another one. It just is.
It has to be everything exactly right.
I couldn't really find anything so
we're just gonna skip this one.
Number six: a book on your TBR pile
that you're just not in the mood to read.
さようら、オレンジ  by Iwaki Kei. The English title
I think is Farewell, Orange or Goodbye, Orange.
It's literary fiction. I think it's a Japanese person
who ends up in Australia and things happen.
And [sigh] just, no.
I'm just not in the mood for this right now.
I need more fantastical, escapist stuff
and I just don't think this will fit the bill.
Number seven: a book on your TBR pile that
you haven't finished because it's enormous.
That would have to be Jefferson's writings.
This is the Library of America edition.
It's how many pages?
It's like 1,500 pages, something like that.
One year I was like, I'm gonna read this in a year!
And I figured out how many pages a day that would be
and I got a decent start, as
you can tell by these post its.
But I got bogged down somewhere
and never really got back to it.
So eventually, at some point in the future,
I would like to go back to this.
He is my most problematic favorite,
I think in general, and as the president
because he did a lot of great stuff,
he also did a lot of crappy stuff.
But I find his writings fascinating and interesting so
someday.
Number eight: a book on your TBR
that you bought because of the cover.
And I'm not a huge cover buy person.
They can draw me in, of course, but I'm not the kind
where I'm like, 'oo, beautiful cover - instant buy.'
But this cover DID draw me in.
It is Unnatural Causes by Richard Shepherd.
He's a forensic pathologist. And all this-
it's even shiny. See the shiny? -the shiny stuff
and the scalpel and all
the medical stuff drew me in.
And I love books by forensic pathologists
and medical examiners
and people who do autopsies, just in general.
Anywhere, anyhow, I am here for it.
So this was a pretty easy buy
once I read the back cover.
And number nine: the book on your
TBR you find most intimidating.
And I'm going back to my ereader for this one. It is
The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt.
I picked up an e copy of this probably
right after the 2016 election.
It was on sale for like two or three
bucks so I snapped that up.
And especially because I saw that one of the editions,
the paperback edition that was *for sale at the time,
and it was incredibly dense, tiny text and
I thought I would do better with the ereader.
And after reading some of it - I haven't even gotten
through all the prefaces yet - but some of it on there,
I'm intimidated. And I'm thinking I
would like to have a physical copy
that I can mark up and
do what I want with.
And subsequently a new paperback
edition has been released
and instead of 500 pages, which is
the one with the tiny print, it's 700.
And it's a trade size. So I'm hoping that I
can get my hands on that and get into it.
But, super intimidated because it's
going to be a lot to think about,
not only in its time but today
and all of those connections.
It's gonna be the kind of thing I'm going
to need to do a lot of extra reading for,
or maybe a buddy read or something to make
sure I'm getting as much as I can out of it.
I'm not going to fool myself and think
I'll get everything out of it the first time
but there seems to be so much here, I'm intimidated.
Those are all the questions so now
it's time to tag some people.
Let's go with Laura over at Book Bubbler
because if you've seen her TBR unboxings
you can see that this is a very fitting tag.
Rachael over at Kalanadi, I know that
you're working down your physical TBR
but this might be another interesting
lens to look at it through.
I also tag Alba at Seriela and Brian at Bookish.
I would love to see your thoughts, as well.
I would love to hear your thoughts on
any of the books I talked about today.
Should any of them be pushed up
my TBR list? Let me know.
And what is the most intimidating
book on your own TBR?
Let's have a gab down in the comments below.
Thank you for watching, subscribe if you're new,
and I'll see you in my next video. Bye!
[♪♪]
Thanks for watching!
Enjoying the beautiful weather
while we have it! 🌞
Apparently rainy season is coming early this year
☔🌧😢🌧☔
