lirazel: Anne Shirley from the 1985 Anne of Green Gables reads while walking ([tv] book drunkard)
lirazel ([personal profile] lirazel) wrote2025-07-09 10:10 am

what i'm reading wednesday 9/7/2025

What I finished:

+ A Lonely Death by Charles Todd, another Ian Rutledge mystery. I don't really have anything to say about this! It's an entry in a mystery series--you know what you're getting!

+ The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This is only the second Tchaikovsky I've read--I've started a few but up till now, the only one I liked enough to finish is Elder Races. I don't read nearly as much scifi as I do fantasy, mostly because most scifi (emphasis on most) seems like it's more focused on the ideas than on any of the other stuff that makes a book for me--characters, emotional resonance, even worldbuilding from a cultural perspective rather than a technological one.

However, I do like to read them now and then, and this was an example of one where the idea was indeed very intriguing--extradimensional cracks between worlds as an excuse to think about what sentient life might have looked like if it had developed at other points on the evolutionary tree. Very cool, actually! I liked the idea, I liked Tchaikovsky's prose well enough, I liked the unconventional way of giving information (via excerpts from a diegetic text--btw, can you use diegetic to talk about things other than sound? I am simply going to do so because I think it's a very useful word).

There's a wide-ranging cast of characters, too, which I enjoyed, varying in race, gender, and sexual orientation though not nationality (all the human characters are British). I could have done with some truly old characters--I am one of those people who thinks that every story can be improved by the inclusion of an old lady--but I won't complain about that since if I complained about that I'd have to complain about 90% of books. The characters were pretty well-developed but for reasons I can't articulate, I didn't emotionally connect very deeply with any of them. It was more like me going, "That's a good character design," than me truly caring about the characters. But I find this is true in a lot of scifi, and it's not a dealbreaker for me when there's other interesting stuff going on.

This is one of those books that ended up being so long that if I'd gotten the physical copy and seen that it was 600 pages, I might not have started it at all, but it was an ebook so I didn't know when I started! And I did read the whole thing over the course of a long weekend, so clearly it was readable enough even at that length. I thought the pacing was good, and the toggling between character perspectives was enough to keep it moving briskly, so it didn't feel as long as it is.

All in all, a book I enjoyed but did not love.

What I started but abandoned:

+ A Fate Inked in Blood, a Norse-inspired fantasy that was a massive bestseller, which I'd heard good things about from someone whose taste usually completely aligns with mine, but...nah, this isn't for me. I was initially intrigued by the fact that our heroine is married to a terrible guy, which is just not something you see a lot. But then in the opening chapter, along comes this super hot guy who is so clearly coded as Our Male Romantic Lead that I found it annoying, and then they started flirting, and I was like, "I am too ace for this," and I peaced out. I also wasn't impressed by the first person perspective/prose style, so I don't think this is any real loss for me.

What I'm reading/what's on pause:

+ On recommendation from [personal profile] chestnut_pod, I started Sofia Samatar's The White Mosque, and I am very enamored of it despite wishing that Samatar's prose style was about 15% more conventional (more on that when I actually write this up), but I have put it on pause. The book is a memoir about half-Mennonite, half-Muslim Samatar tracing the steps of a 19th century group of Mennonites who traveled through and settled in Central Asia for a few decades--one of those unexpected quirks of history that gets me wildly excited. But I got a chapter or so in and she referenced a nonfiction book about the same topic that covers the historical trip in detail, I saw that we have it at the library of the university I work for, and so I decided I would go read it before I read this book. But I am so looking forward to getting back to this. [personal profile] chestnut_pod was correct that this book is Extremely Relevant To My Interests.

+ I also started Godkiller by Hannah Kaner but I am literally a chapter and a half in so I can't possibly speak to whether I'll like it or not.
summerstorm: (Default)
summerstorm ([personal profile] summerstorm) wrote2025-07-08 03:41 pm

(no subject)

Does anybody need someone to copy-edit/proofread a blog post or article or TTRPG notes or something? I'll do like 1k for, I don't know, 10 bucks? I have a really hard time making shit up for portfolio reasons and setting up a Fiverr gig requires samples of your work. Gross.

I'm probably not even going to use that, because I'm pretty sure I can offer that sort of work on Ko-Fi and I hate the shit out of content mills, but all the same.

Today's D20 list (where I write down twenty things and then roll a d20 to see what I do next) is mostly research; so far I've compiled a few examples of printable item and spell cards for D&D, done the above, and found out the reason Inprnt wouldn't accept my files is that I've been saving JPGs in Apple's Display P3 color profile. I thought they weren't big enough, which is probably ridiculous, I have a fucking Canon DSLR.

I don't think I talked about this here, but back in May my mom stopped receiving her minimal basic income, so we're surviving on kindness and savings, and there's not that much in savings. If anyone wants to help out, my Paypal account is battlesinthemorning@gmail.com. Literally every bit helps. But I am also trying to do actual work without driving myself up the wall. It's hard because every time my mom asks my sister for money*, my mental health takes five steps back, but I'm trying.

* venting )
cimorene: Blue text reading "This Old House" over a photo of a small yellow house (knypplinge)
Cimorene ([personal profile] cimorene) wrote2025-07-04 11:03 pm
Entry tags:

Wax's summer vacation, the only time we can do renovation tasks

It's taken five years to caulk the seam between the two pieces of butcher block on our counter, so I had to dig a bunch of breadcrumbs out of it first with a fruit knife (it's right in front of the toaster). We also re-caulked the seam between the butcher block and the stainless part of the counter by the sink. (The sink is only a few cm from the edge of it, which is very bad design, and the edge of the butcher block there has inevitably suffered and swollen, as the caulk was never going to be adequate; there was no easy way to get the whole counter in stainless, but we should have figured it out anyway. Or alternately, just called up the companies that make tiles and fireplaces out of Finnish soapstone until we found one that would sell us a counter, even though none of them make counters.)

We also oiled the hinge of the bathroom door - the one modern, new door in the house - which has been squeaking for years (unlike all the other doors, which are from 1950 and work flawlessly). And then we glued the aluminum threshold down over the tile floor at that door - it was already loose when the contractors left because the initial adhesive they had used wasn't in contact with the front face of the cement under the tiles, because the tile sticks out a few mm proud of the subfloor. I scraped a layer of gummy glue off the back of the threshold (glue which had never stuck to the tile and instead became impregnated with dust and dirt), then applied some construction adhesive. It's extremely stinky upstairs now as it dries, even with the windows open.

But anyway, all that didn't even take all day. We've done a bunch of laundry and sat on the sofa cuddling cats in between. Can't believe it took us five years.
summerstorm: (Default)
summerstorm ([personal profile] summerstorm) wrote2025-07-03 02:34 pm

three things make a post?

Betrayed by fandom osmosis: I thought all the episodes of the last series of Taskmaster were out. Imagine my disappointment when I went looking for episode 10 and realized episode 9 had a timestamp of 5 days ago.

I started watching season 3 of the Australian version, but I kind of don't like anyone in the line-up. Maybe if I give it some time.

*

I haven't seen the last two episodes yet, but I am greatly enjoying Cloudward, Ho on Dropout.

*

Seven months after I stopped playing with my Sunday group (and roughly three after they moved to 7 PM EST and I was fully freed from thinking about rejoining them), I've come to realize how much I dreaded that game, felt judged for my choices, and did not trust the DM with a character I was deeply invested in. I still struggle with my ADHD and general social faux pas (plural) and have moments where I beat myself up or wanna crawl into a hole because I feel I was super annoying/took over too much, but I trust my DMs, I have fun, I look forward to every session. It's much freer.
lirazel: Dami from Dreamcatcher reading ([music] you and i)
lirazel ([personal profile] lirazel) wrote2025-07-02 12:34 pm

what i'm reading wednesday 2/7/2025

Catching up for two weeks! I've read a lot of fanfic lately, so I've been reading fewer books than usual.

What I finished:

+ The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis. My Narnia reread is complete!

I'd been dreading this one and kind of putting it off, but on reread it's not actually all that bad? To me anyway--I totally get why other people hate it. I am not saying that it's good, but it's also not unreadable.

The problem is that Lewis has created this story entirely to serve the needs of his theological assertions, which makes for bad storytelling and worse worldbuilding. Preaching through fiction is always a bad idea because a story that exists to moralize is not going to be a good story. When, in previous books, Lewis sprinkled his theology throughout the stories, it was more or less fine--the story of a king who dies for the good of his people is a universal story, etc. You could always read the books literally as well as as analogy. Here, though, the theology takes over the narrative completely--there is no way to read this book on a literal level because just about every choice is made from the perspective not of a storyteller but of a preacher.

Plus, if you disagree with his theology, you're just going to be pissed off. I disagree with some of his theology myself, but I am much less pissed off than most because of my background. His particular brand of Christianity is very different than the white American evangelical kind I was raised in, for all those people have co-opted him. You have to understand how much gentler this view of soteriology is than the one I was surrounded with--Lewis embraces the idea of the virtuous pagan, for one thing, which is NOT a given in evangelical world. And perhaps more important, those who don't make it to heaven just cease to exist instead of being tortured for eternity. I realize this is probably hard for people who didn't grow up like I did to understand, but these ideas are significantly gentler than the evangelical view of hell. So when I encountered them as a kid, they felt freeing in a way I can't articulate. Between Lewis and Madeleine L'Engle, I had two Anglican fiction and nonfiction writers who had a more expansive view of God and life than I had been presented with, and they were lifelines to me.

So yeah, I don't hate this book, I just find it annoying and Not Good. I do like that we get more Eustace and Jill since they are my favorite of the characters from our world. I think it's kind of cool that we get to see Narnia from its first day to its last. Shift is a really good villain--not as good as Uncle Andrew, maybe, but Lewis knows how to write someone who is inherently selfish, and the early chapters with Shift and Puzzle are actually a fantastic depiction of an abusive friend dynamic. Lewis is really good at human foibles, the narratives we use to justify ourselves, etc.

I do not feel the need to ever read this one again but I'm glad I reacquainted myself with it as an adult so that I could decide how I feel about it.

+ Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water by Peter H. Gleick. This book is quite dated in statistics and things--I think it came out in 2010--but the central problem is, of course, still with us. This is a book that confirmed my belief that bottled water is problem: it is, of course, a lifeline for people in areas that don't have potable public water, and I am glad it exists. But it's ubiquity is indefensible in places that do, particularly in the US (places like Flint aside).

You can probably imagine the contents of this book: bottled water in the US is much less regulated than public water, therefore we don't know whether it's safe or not; it is not necessary in places that have clean public water; bottled water companies steal water from communities, destroying ecosystems; they prey on our fears; there's an industry (which I am 1000% confident has grown substantially since the time the book was published) of woo-y health grifters who sell special super waters, and these people are almost never stopped by authorities; and then there's the plastic. It's nice to see it all laid out clearly, though. And I also appreciate a book that is, really, a reminder that regulations are Good Actually.

So yeah, a worthwhile read.

+ Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert.

YIKES!!!!!! Gilbert deep-dives in pop culture depictions of and messages to and about women from, roughly, the late 90s to the mid-2010s, visiting topics like the way the powerful female musical artists of the 1990s were replaced by girls who couldn't stand up for themselves; the way the same thing happened in fashion with the powerful supermodels of the 1980s and early 1990s being replaced by, again, girls who couldn't stand up for themselves; depictions of women and femininity in reality TV; the way movies shifted from romcoms that centered female stories to bro comedies that hated and/or erased women; the era of Us Weekly, TMZ, and Perez Hilton and the way it ate female celebrities alive; and the #girlboss and Lean In eras. She keeps a Susan Faludi "backlash comes in waves" perspective on the whole thing.

There's also a lot about the pornification of culture--I really appreciated the nuance with which Gilbert handled this topic because I agree with her. Pornography, in the sense of art that exists to titillate and turn-on, is not a bad thing in itself and there are plenty of people who are out there creating and enjoying it in completely unobjectionable ways. But they're a minority: porn culture is hugely misogynistic, and the vast majority of porn that exists (often free of charge and disturbingly easy for children to stumble on) is hateful, violent, cruel, and racist. Gilbert worries, as do I, about how boys (and some girls) are getting their entire sexual education from these sources; porn provides a narrative of how to relate to sex and to women that is frankly terrifying. I think this is a huge problem that is very difficult to talk about, because most people who are talking about porn in negative ways are doing it from an anti-sex pov, often religious, and I think their criticisms are wrong. Again, I really appreciated how Gilbert talked all of this.

Overall, Gilbert is insightful, compassionate, clear-eyed, and accessible. This is a very well-written book by a very good writer, and I recommend it, whether as a book or, as I read it, an audiobook read by the author. It depressed the hell out of me, but it also reminded me of how resilient and strong and creative women are.

What I'm reading now:

A Lonely Death, the next Ian Rutledge mystery by Charles Todd.
lirazel: Anya from the animated film Anastasia in her fantasy ([film] dancing bears painted wings)
lirazel ([personal profile] lirazel) wrote2025-07-01 11:14 am

(no subject)

I am once again asking for audiobook recs! I'm looking for nonfiction, read by the author, preferably not too dense. Audiobooks are not my normal medium, so I'm picky. As for what kind of nonfiction, I like history, cultural criticism, psychology, etc.

Audiobooks I've actually enjoyed listening to:

The Anthropocene Reviewed and Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green
Girl On Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert
How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur
Unruly by David Mitchell
Roctogenarians: Late in Life Debuts, Comebacks, and Triumphs by Mo Rocca



I think all of these people except Gilbert have experience on TV/podcasts, which probably contributes to them being good at reading their own stuff.
lirazel: Peacock-colored butterflies ([misc] fly like a)
lirazel ([personal profile] lirazel) wrote2025-07-01 09:46 am
Entry tags:

fic: please don't bury my soul

Y'all! I finally finished my Sinners fic! Now I can write my other Sinners fic!

Thank you to [personal profile] dollsome for looking it over for me!

Title: please don't bury my soul (4646 words) by Lirazel
Fandom: Sinners (2025)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Lisa Chow & Sammie Moore, Bo Chow & Lisa Chow, Grace Chow & Lisa Chow
Characters: Lisa Chow, Sammie Moore
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, the blues as emotional articulation, warnings for references to period- and canon-typical racial violence against black people, Grief/Mourning, started having a lot of 'who's going to tell lisa what happened to her parents???' feelings
Summary:

On a street in Oakland in 1956, Lisa Chow hears the sound of the Delta.

cimorene: Cartoon of 80s She-Ra on her winged unicorn flying against cloudy blue sky (where are we going?)
Cimorene ([personal profile] cimorene) wrote2025-07-01 12:40 pm

the extroverts were right

I was making smalltalk with the bus driver along with the other guy at the bus stop and he asked if I was a student, lol. (Wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses took twenty years off I guess.) I said, No, but I'm going to driving school!

And he said close enough and gave me the student ticket rate.
alierak: (Default)
alierak ([personal profile] alierak) wrote in [site community profile] dw_maintenance2025-06-30 03:18 pm

Rebuilding journal search again

We're having to rebuild the search server again (previously, previously). It will take a few days to reindex all the content.

Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.
cimorene: cartoony drawing of a woman's head in profile giving dubious side-eye (Default)
Cimorene ([personal profile] cimorene) wrote2025-06-27 02:47 pm

motor vehicle here I come

Driver's license learner permit acquired! Total cost:

Application fee: 25€
Driving lessons: 875€
ADHD tax: 152€

I'm going through the obligatory little quizzes and informational videos about traffic safety and they've been machine translated without proofreading and then dubbed into English with an AI that speeds up or slows down its talking speed sometimes multiple times per sentence to ensure that it takes exactly the same amount of time in English as in Finnish (which means a lot of surreally slow talking that sounds like a tape got stuck in the player and might catch fire soon).