Once on a donkey in Tunbridge Wells

I've been trying something new lately: for the foreseeable future, I will only read fiction books by female authors.

I decided to do this because I noticed that a lot of the authors I read are male, and as good as most of them are, there is a distinct lack of strong female characters and quite frankly I'm tired of it.

( Cut for book babble. )

Edit: I really shouldn't look at Amazon. I want to buy the PS1 original versions of FF7 and FF8 now. (I have PC adaptations, which I have managed to get to work with Vista, but it's only a matter of time before Vista borks them in some way.) ::bites nails:: Have no money. Must not purchase.

My mother is in the rather bad habit of volunteering me to babysit for two young boys on our road without asking me first if I'm free to do so. Most of the time I am, purely because the boys' parents ask far enough in advance that I don't have anything planned.

This time, however, they organised it with my mother and my mother then a) forgot to tell me and b) forgot when it was. So I went over to their house today and discovered that they wanted me to babysit today.

There went my evening.

As much as I detest children in general, I have to admit that these two boys are lovely. Really sweet, really polite. The younger one has clearly been well-trained by his parents - he hasn't quite worked out yet that I watch TV after sending them to bed, so when they go up to bed he switches off the TV and makes sure it's turned off at the wall as well. He did it again today - it's so cute I've not enlightened him yet. :D

I've been distracted somewhat recently by the Rurouni Kenshin manga, though - I took it with me today. I watched a lot of the fansubbed anime back, oooh, some six of seven years now, but never finished it - and I have a preference for manga over anime anyway. I picked up the Vizbig vol 1 of Rurouni Kenshin (vols 1-3 of the manga in the one volume) at the London Film and Comic Con last weekend out of sheer nostalgia, and then pretty much fell in love with the series all over again. Kenshin's "Oro?" is just as funny in print as it is in motion, thankfully - and the Vizbig edition has some sections in colour in every edition so far.

I'm now halfway through Vizbig vol 3 (so roughly halfway through vol 8 of the manga, I think?), just after Kenshin's left for Kyoto. I didn't get further than this in the anime, so it's new territory. Liking Kaoru much more this time round, too - although she does need to actually remember that she can use a katana when it's useful, though. Fingers crossed the Kyoto arc will fix that.