musing

Happy New Year to all readers here!

Wow. I was just looking at my Amazon profile and found out that I've reviewed 166 items with the majority being artbooks, of course, in 2013. That's quite a number. I did not expect there to be so many artbooks around. Amazing.

Oh well, onwards to 2014! More to come.

I'll write something about notable upcoming artbooks to expect in 2014, but you can get a sneak peek first with the Upcoming Artbooks list that I update constantly.

And subscribe, if you haven't, to ParkaBlog's Facebook, Google+, RSS, Twitter and the newsletter (on the right).

Just crossed the 800 mark for reviews on Amazon. There should be over 1000 reviews on the blog since I don't publish all reviews on Amazon.

Wow.

Can't imagine I've went through so many books over the years. And I can't imagine there are so many artbooks and picture books to review on such regular basis.

Thanks to all readers for following the blog and throwing me Amazon votes, and of course buying stuff through the blog.

Thanks.

In an attempt to make the blog more dangerous to you guys, especially your wallets and credit cards, I'll be featuring some artbook reviews from fellow Amazon reviewer Robin Benson.

He was art director in magazine publishing but has since retired. He reviews mostly books on photography, graphic design and printing. I'll be featuring some of his reviews which are more related to illustrative art. Just like me, he posts many helpful photos of the books.

If you're interested in graphic design and print, do check out his blog Past Print.

Bought a new camera, the Panasonic Lumix GF1. The focusing is really much snappier than my previous Canon G10.

This camera is capable of recording HD videos at 720P. All book videos in the future will be taken by the GF1. You can enjoy the higher resolution whenever you press the fullscreen button. You'll be even able to see pencil grain on the paper.

The videos will be uploaded to my Flickr and Youtube pages. You can subscribe to them there.

I'm not going to review the camera (maybe not soon) but you can check out reviews for this camera on Amazon.

I shall keep this year's shorter and hopefully more achievable.

1. Review more Japanese art books

I hope to do that without breaking the bank, which is going to be very difficult. If you know of any good or upcoming Japanese art books, I'm always interested to know.

2. Learn Japanese

This will be incredibly helpful when I'm reading Japanese books. Now I'm more like looking. It will help with my Japanese animes as well.

3. Draw more

Same as last year.

Looking back at my New Year resolutions from 2009, I'm amazed that I fulfilled 4 out of 5 of them. It helps that they aren't that difficult to start with.

Let me reflect on them one by one.

Do more art book reviews

I'm very pleased to be able to get my hands on so many books to review. Most of the books are bought and borrowed, with a small handful sponsored. I also met a new friend who collects art books. Borrowed lots of books from him and saved lots of money.

I'm now one of the top 100 reviewers on Amazon (under the New Reviewer Rank). It's really hard to imagine that nine months ago, I was still at 1000. Thanks to everyone who threw me a helpful vote there.

It's cool to see that 97% found the reviews helpful, which is really great.

Voting is a really helpful form of support for this blog because I actually get readers from my Amazon profile page. If you haven't voted yet, you can do so on any of the art books I've reviewed on Amazon — they are easy to spot because they come with a video — or even on my Listmania! List.

Hopefully next year, I'll slip into the top 10.

End.

Merry Christmas to everyone, and have a nice day!

Picture source: R. Motti