#(and i'm only finishing it now as i'm relistening to the audiobook)

[thesmallersnow]

apparently naven just carries an apple with him all the time to look more teacher-y

[benevolenterrancy]

if you're not reading the last book of SVSSS right now do you mind me asking what you are reading? I'm just curious!

Definitely! (though I warn you, I'm fundamentally incapable of reading only one thing at a time)

For physical books, I'm currently reading The Warden by Daniel M. Ford, the novelization of My Neighbour Totoro, and trying to keep up on Dracula Daily (i am failing this)

For audiobooks, I've been relistening to The Series of Unfortunate Events (because I never actually read them all when they were originally coming out) and I juuust finished This Census-Taker by China Miéville and Ogres by Adrian Tchaikovsky this weekend. I'm about to start A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers.

[shitty-check-please-aus]

Q1 Reading Check-In

This is mostly for myself

So far in 2024 I've finished 11 books, 1 in January and 5 each in February and March (I think I was trying to relisten to gideon the ninth in January and then the library took it back so all my stats are off there).

The books are, in order of completion:

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, Jesse Q. Sutanto

Thornhedge, T. Kingfisher

This is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Everyone on this Train is a Suspect, Benjamin Stevenson

Nettle & Bone, T. Kingfisher

Witch King, Martha Wells

The House in the Cerulean Sea, TJ Klune

Lost in the Moment and Found, Seanan McGuire

Mislaid in Parts Half-Known, Seanan McGuire

What Moves the Dead, T. Kingfisher

One Last Stop, Casey McQuiston

Looking over the list, I think I'd recommend all of the books that I finished. This is How You Lose the Time War was so good that I basically had to lie down for a while after I finished it. There were a few more that I simply did not enjoy that I stopped reading, but I think that's my right as a reader.

I think I've discovered that I, as a reader, really need some humor in my fantasy books. I just can't do the "everything is grim and nobody is funny and there's some magic" style of books; I can certainly enjoy parts of books that are serious, but you can't ask me to spend like 18 hours with nobody being funny at all.

I'm also glad that I discovered some authors that I like- I've currently got two more books from TJ Klune checked out.

There are also a lot of repeat authors here. I've missed Martha Wells' writing since I got to the most recent Murderbot, and I really liked Witch King. A friend of mine was able to send me the dramatis personae so I could learn how things were spelled, and I'd just like to formally ask all audiobook distributors to include a link to a PDF with all the character name spellings or to put it in the description or something. I simply cannot interact with fandoms if I only know how to pronounce something, not spell it. ALSO I discovered that there's now a full-cast version of Murderbot recorded? I'm so loyal to Kevin Free's narration but I'm intrigued so I placed some holds.

Similarly, I'm excitedly waiting for What Feasts at Night to get off my hold list and also for the audiobook version of the newest Saint of Steel version to be published, I'm reaching the end of what my libraries have for T. Kingfisher.

All in all, I think I've been decently consistent with prioritizing reading, and I'm continuing to be glad that I'm back into audiobooks. I might want to try and incorporate print books more again, but it's just so nice to be able to be reading while I'm at the jewelry-making bench sawing at stuff or while I've been deep-cleaning my entire apartment.

[cartograffiti]

November '23 reading diary

In November I finished 9 books, mostly continuing series. I'm also at the caboose end of being very sick with the RSV, to the point that I actually couldn't comfortably read for more than a week, so this is my encouragement to get the vaccine for it if you've been considering it.

Poison or Protect is the next Gail Carriger novella I needed (I'm going in chronological order), and it was very pleasant, but not more than that. It stars Preshea Buss, who was a supporting character in a clique of mean girls in the YA Finishing School series. I can't say I was particularly compelled by her before, but she's been developed interestingly here, now a grown assassin very annoyed to be attracted to a rival spy at a house party. It should technically stand alone, but I wouldn't start here. Preshea's had a hard life, and if I hadn't read any Carriger before, this character's tendency to distrust strangers by grouping them into broad gendered stereotypes could have made me cringe away.

I thought I was pretty far into the Whyborne & Griffin series, but the massive ebook omnibus I've been repeatedly checking out informed me I was only halfway through as I got into Hoarfrost. I was desperately hoping that wintry title meant they were going to the Yukon Territory, which turned out to be exactly right. This one has a slightly slow-moving classic adventure plot of discovering a lost city, and then Hawk did a breathtaking loop-de-loop to use my genre expectations against me.

A Power Unbound was one of my most anticipated releases of the year, and it delivered. That's it, that's the pitch, go start with A Marvellous Light.

For the Emelan group read I wrapped up the second quartet with Cold Fire, which had an incredible creepy A-plot and a lot of wonderful moments for Daja, but a pretty insubstantial teaching B-plot compared to the rest of the series; and Shatterglass, which has my favorite teaching plot of the quartet, and a solid but kind of impersonal crisis plot. I always think whichever of the four kids I'm reading about at the moment is my favorite, but I really do love Daja and Tris's pov voices, and descriptions of Tris's student glassblowing gave me delightful fever dreams.

The Children of Green Knowe is a very charmingly old-fashioned children's book about a boy sent to live with his great-grandmother, and becomes fascinated with the ghosts that haunt her house. I listened to the audiobook of this and enjoyed the story, which is heartwarming and only a little scary, but I was more struck by how well L.M. Boston integrates storytelling into the action.

System Collapse is the newest Murderbot book. You probably already know whether or not you're interested in this series about a security robot who has hacked itself and has to adapt to living as a free individual. I like it but don't go feral for it, but this one is my favorite so far, and made me want to reread from the beginning. (By which I mean relisten, because I enjoy the audiobooks with Kevin R. Free from WTNV so much I don't want to mix formats.)

Dressing the Part by Hal Rubenstein is the only nonfiction book for the month, a new book about how television shows have influenced off-screen style trends. I found it fascinating, with lots of photos and brief, focused entries for a wide range of shows. I'm not a big television watcher, so the amount of detail was good for me, but it might feel superficial if you're looking for something specific. Unfortunately, I found that it (at least the ebook) has major editing problems, with punctuation errors that confuse the meaning of sentences, and fact-check failures like misidentifying Rita Ora as black.

Masters in this Hall was the only KJ Charles book left on my to-read list, and since it's a Christmas novella, I went ahead and asked a library to buy it for me, and had a wonderful leisurely time reading a chapter or two a night and giggling over the lovers-to-enemies-to-"what do you mean we could have been on the same side all along" plot. Part of a series, but stands alone fine.

My brain is coming back, callooh callay, and I'm hoping I'll be able to finish Storygraph's Read the World challenge this year. I have the last two books picked out, I just need to get through them. Also the new Foz Meadows comes out this week, and I want to inject it directly into my veins.

[cherokeegal1975]

I'm running a fun experiment

It won't benefit me very much, but it might give some benefits to the creators I'm contacting/promoting.

Basically I've been reading the Horsemisstress Saga by Toby Bishop, Freedom's Landing by Anne McCaffery as an audiobook and I was relistening to the Of Cats and Dragons series by Camilla Ochlan and Carol E. Leever.

Now, Anne McCaffery's a popular author, so I do see reviews for her books on YouTube, especially for her Dragonriders of Pern series. However, I haven't come across reviews for The Horsemisstress Series or the Of Cats and Dragons series on YouTube at all. Just reviews for it on the page for Of Cats and Dragons on Facebook, and a lot of nice comments about both The Horsemisstress series and Of Cats and Dragons on Amazon.

So I brought it to the attention of one of the smaller channels for book reviews and she said she thought both series were interesting and would read them and make a review for the Of Cats and Dragons series as soon as she finished reading all eight books. Could take a long time.

Then I got to thinking that the author would like to know I've done this, so I mentioned it and the one still living said she loved the idea, gave me a heart felt thank you and an applause and heart emojis. Then one of the followers of that group mentioned she'd like to see the video as well.

Now I'm starting to have some fun with this when I realize that what I'm doing is having an effect and want to know how far it'll go once people start talking about two of my favorite book series. It'll benefit the authors and the influencers in the process and I get a bit more perspective on what I read by listening to other people's opinions on the books. I like the idea of helping out some, but the starting a trend thing if possible is the fun part.

I contacted one more channel that does reviews for everything fantasy and sci-fi to see if they'd do a review for the books I mentioned.

Some people compare the Of Cats and Dragons series to Tolkien's work, but I personally don't see the resemblance and I did read/listen to the Lord of the Rings Trilogy (which in my opinion is just okay. Even the movies based on the books were just okay story wise. The acting and special effects were excellent though) and I find they don't resemble each other at all. Or at least I can't spot the similarities myself.

I'm going to see if I can make the books I like go viral on YouTube just for the fun of it. By starting very small and seeing what happens once people start becoming aware of the books I want them to try. Like ripples in a pond. That's the fun.

I do realize that most likely not much will happen, but if I don't try, nothing will happen at all.

By the way, the book series I mentioned are all good. They're in the sci-fi and fantasy category. I haven't finished the Horsemisstress Saga, I'm currently in the last one third of the second book. Lots of drama and tension between the Winged Horse Academe and the mad Duke that could lay everything to ruin with his obsession with trying to figure out how to ride a winged horse himself, which can't be because winged horses only like women. He does some crazy shit to his body to make it happen, bonded with a little winged filly and is now threatening the very existence of the Academe.

Freedom's Landing has four books to the series and I remember it to be very good. I've forgotten a lot and now I'm listening to the audiobooks and started with the second book because I've already listened to the first one two or three times already. This one is a sci-fi.

[notebookmusical]

Hi Cossette! Happy (belated) Pride Month and I hope you're having a wonderful first half of 2024 💖 This year has been keeping me busy (it was nevertheless eventful in a good way), hence the belated message following up from January.

I feel you! I also need to comb through my favourite albums & books to think about how I'd pair books / albums. After relistening & checking out different music releases I would go with the following:

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: Bewitched by Laufey - this album dazzles just like the magic in the book 🤩 The tracks from Bewitch also radiate this vintage quality that I personally associate with the book's setting!

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon: If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power by Halsey! Just like the book, Halsey's 4th studio album has this expansive quality that features empowering female narratives.

Circe by Madeline Miller: The Loneliest Time by Carly Rae Jepsen & Where the Butterflies Go in the Rain by Raveena. Recurring theme from the book is about loss/grief and self-discovery/healing - something that both music albums also explore!

Sofi and the Bone Song by Adrienne Tooley: OUT OF THE BLUE by Brynn Cartelli & In The End It Always Does by The Japanese House - Brynn's debut album has this wintry feel to me that reminds me of the book's setting. Sofi's character arc is very much "returning to her muse" which is reminiscent of Amber when she was working on her sophomore album!

Heartstopper comic series: a mix of You Signed Up For This by Maisie Peters, Quarter-Life Crisis by Baby Queen, and Sour by Olivia Rodrigo!

Ahh this is a totally valid take regarding fantasy books! I can imagine that listening to someone narrating fantasy books being a more immersive experience. While I prefer reading in silence with a hardcopy I also feel that I sometimes need more time to process fancier writing style - though usually the effort will pay off later on!

P.S. Ahh thank you so much! I really enjoy finding parallels between different media - the realisation that many themes explored in my favourite pieces of media are universal & a shared experience 💖

jennifer!! hi friend! i hope you're well 🤍 happy belated pride month, happy june! i'm glad the first half of the year kept you busy in a good way! what were some highlights? you had your eras show already, right? i think you said you were going to london but i can't remember if it was the june dates or august!! how was it! how was it? 🤍

i am very :/// to say that i have not read a whole lot this year! i finally read lessons in chemistry and that was a new favorite, and finally read s. which i've been putting off for ages, but aside from that i feel like all i've been doing is audiobooking classics (my local library got hacked and took everything offline and somehow i got locked out of libby for like a month so the only audiobooks i could listen to were classics 💔). i'm currently making my way through the hunchback of the notre dame though! i'm hoping to finish that one soon!!

have you been reading anything good lately? i definitely want to get back into reading more soon! i've been very busy (and dealing with some stuff) and i feel like i haven't read a fantasy in a hot minute so i'll take any recs if you have them! i have technically been "annotating the starless sea" for ... over a year now (i stopped at page like, seven and never got back to it — which is a trend i think with some of my "annotation projects" for books i love, i get too overwhelmed and never finish it) but i do want to go back to it soon... maybe that's my "homework" for the rest of the year — to finish the annotation projects i've started (gatsby, normal people, the starless sea).

i think that pairing bewitched with the night circus is perfect!! and i really do like the if i can't have love i want power + priory combination! i still haven't read circe (it's been on my tbr cart for about two years now... if not longer... maybe i will get to it soon (unlikely)). and i still haven't read adrienne tooley! i think i meant to read sweet & bitter magic ages ago and never did 😭 definitely agree with heartstopper + baby queen + YSUFT + sour too!!

so lovely to hear from you as always <3333 i hope you're doing well and staying safe!

[wiwinia]

Tag 9 people you’d like to get to know more

Tagged by @celestialspark - Thank you for tagging me ❤️ This came out a little longer than I expected

Last song: According to my YouTube history (I really don’t understand how to use Spotify and I don’t think I ever will at this point), that would be Stranger by The Mechanisms, from Tales To Be Told, Volume II. Idk why, but this song vibrates my brain in exactly the best way. (I feel like that about a lot of songs in this album, especially Lost In The Cosmos, which is honestly weirdly relaxing for a song describing a slow death in painful details, and Pieces, but like, only the chorus)

Show I'm watching: Well, the last show I’ve seen was the newest episode of Helluva Boss, watched it with both of my partners, one of whom knows nothing about this show. It was fun, though, well, don’t want to spoil anything, but I was hoping for something else. Besides that, I intend to watch Stranger Things soon, cause I have read some great fanfics (I wanted to check if any of the authors are on Tumblr, so I could tag them, but for some reason, I can’t open ao3, which is quite concerning considering what happened this month) and decided I might try, even though I am good 7 years late. However, I am not watching it yet, because from what I know so far it feels like the kind of show that will permanently rewire my brain, so I am waiting til I can watch it with my friends, cause I am not going through that alone. If we consider podcasts shows, then I am an active listener of Dracula Daily, the voice acting is great, and I am already swooning and fanning myself like a victorian lady at Quincey P. Morris, which is to be expected, he’s one of my favourite characters. I can’t wait for this year’s holiest love entry tho, I want to see Tumblr go wild for it again. Also, season 2 of Not Quite Dead is coming out in a little more than two weeks (a fair warning to anyone who follows me, I already know I will be insufferable about it ❤️). I binged season 1 in one sitting, I am so excited (there are precisely 0 fanfics for this show on ao3 so far, I am working on changing that, but I’ve been suffering from a serious case of can’t-finish-wips-disease for quite a while now, so we’ll see how it goes)

Book I'm reading: If we’re talking new books, then right now nothing, but the last two I’ve read were: 1 Noce za nocami by Małgorzata Wilk, I loved it, it was exactly what I wanted, and I was so excited to finally get it, I read it on Wattpad back in the day and I preordered it the moment I was able to. It just feels very cozy to me. If you a) know Polish, and b) like gay vampires, I highly recommend it 2 Vampireology from the Ologies book series, cause I’ve never seen it before, I found it at a convention and I may be an adult, but it had vampires and was full of shiny secrets, you can’t possibly expect me to resist that Besides that, I am currently relistening to an audiobook of The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater, because the first time I listened to it, I was in a really bad place mentally, and this in tandem with some incorrect beliefs I had about this book caused me to miss some important things the first time, so now I am doing better I plan to listen to the whole series again, and I am really enjoying it! I know this series goes into some very dark places, but at the point at which I am currently, it is just full of pure joy of exploration and awe-inspiring discovery and listening to it makes me really, really happy right now

Currently obsessed with: Fandom-wise, The Magnus Archives, closely followed by The Mechanisms, a lot of things mentioned above are either basically obsessions, or very close to becoming that, because I can’t just be normal about things Also, vampires are my obsession that has been a constant part of my life practically since I remember, and I doubt it will ever change at this point. If for whatever reason you want to see me ramble, ask me about my opinions on any vampire-related trope or theme, and you will probably get a pretty substantial essay

Tagging: @suaveotter @laceandsteelgirl @kind-ghost @doofus-and-dragons @fall-festival @katenotbishop @wet-snail @rhymingteelookatme @graceful-not

[ghirahimbo]

Do you have anything that you like to read in the free time? Have anything great or fun or enjoyable that you willing to share? (I'm just running around and asking my fav authors for book or fanfic recommendations now. Also thanks for being awesome!

Hi! Sorry for sitting on this for a few days. I've just been a bit embarrassed to admit I don't read much lately ;; I've had a hard time actually reading books since I got depression in college for some reason, and I haven't made it through most of the audiobooks I've checked out lately... but! I usually listen to memoirs? My favorite that I've listened to semi-recently is Water, Wood, and Wild Things by Hannah Kirshner, which is by a woman who travels to rural Japan semi-frequently and writes about her experience working with different artisans there. I also got about halfway through James Acaster's Guide to Quitting Social Media, which as far as I could tell while listening seemed like it could best be classified as a fictional memoir? Even though I didn't finish it, I liked what I got through :)

I also like books about writing, and my favorite one of those is If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland (though, fair warning, it was written in the 1930s and uses some words typical to the time period that would not fly so well today, even though the author seems relatively progressive for the era). It's a short read/listen (only an hour and a half) and is more emotional than technical in its advice, so I like relistening a couple times a year. A longer one that I also enjoyed was Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.

Neil Gaiman and Ursula Le Guin are on my to read list for when I have the mental space for fiction again, and if you check my #fic recs tag, I've recommended a few stories over the years. Hope that helps! Ha ha, and thank you! <3

[blysse-and-blunder]

in lieu of making any progress on the end of the semester

9:30pm, sunday, dec 5, 2021

i swear i spend so much time thinking about what to say in these and i get very excited to spill all my thoughts and secrets, and then completely run out of time every week. i'm doing this instead of other Necessary and More Important things bc i simply cannot skip again, i have to get this stuff off my chest and close the tabs so here we go...!

reading since the last one of these i wrote, i've finished the book of three by lloyd alexander, all systems red by martha wells, and have tried *so* *hard* to finish the sunne in splendour by sharon kay penman. quick thoughts here include how much the book of three reminded me of narnia in that mid-century, post-war jolly uk children's fantasy, though of course i did enjoy the welsh dimension. fascinating to think about alexander's decision to use gwydion as he does, fascinating to know more about the actual stories and some of the names being played on than i would have if i'd read this as a youth--i wonder how hard it would have been to shake my first impressions of some of these characters if i'd come to this first, rather than the actual PKM? e.g. Arawn, who is much spookier in this book than in pwyll.

my murderbot take is going to disappoint the murberbot fans in the audience because i really zoomed through this first novella, listening to the audiobook, which-- i don't know that this novella worked for me as an audio book! the sci-fi terms and jargon, which is so satisfyingly done in general, was hard to parse and a lot of the world-building was hard to keep track of only listening (and i could rewind to relisten to parts when needed, but i was also lazy). but on the other hand, having a real live voice to bring murderbot itself to life was sort of perfect, given its own ruminations on being a sec unit and what that means re: personhood. it shaped my understanding of the character, sure, but in a way that immediately reinforced all of the empathy i already felt building for this narrator. the only things i have to say about the sunne in splendour are that a) this is clearly not shakespeare's richard iii and i can accept that, finally, b) i really want to know how penman's suggestion of the actual culprit behind the princes in the tower mystery stacks up against the other historical theories out there, and c) all the good things i might say about the experience of reading this book pall before how bloody long it's taken me. i would like to be over now.

watching continued with succession by finishing season 1 and watching the first to episodes of season 2. i spend a lot of this show talking back to the characters, telling them "i don't...think that's true?" when they say things to each other, and avoiding watching decisions that lead to inevitable second-hand embarrassment. currently convinced that kendall is dissociating most of the time, shiv and logan are going to turn on each other asap, corporate espionage and verbal abuse are just love languages for these people. greg is going to be the nhs/sleeper mastermind somehow, i say not having avoided spoilers all that well but having mostly avoided spoilers, and tom is manages to combine being so incredibly self-conscious and also so un self-aware? it's mesmerizing but sometimes i can't actually watch.

also started watching prime's wheel of time, which is a good time since i've read the first three +/- books, ages ago, but don't remember much at all, and so am really well-positioned to have vaguely fond reminiscences stirred up while simultaneously not giving much of a shit at whatever they've changed. i'd like to take this magic system apart with a really fine-toothed comb and rewrite/reinvent everything about it that smacks of gender essentialism, i'd like to queer and/or trans the one power's genders, but mainly as i watch right now i like seeing the pretty people in the pretty landscapes. this show's aesthetic is the opposite of grim-dark, they've turned up the color-saturation and it's just...fun. lan and moiraine are very attractive and their whole Thing is very attractive; it's the intimacy and devotion for me. haven't seen episode 5 yet but excited to keep up.

i finally finished word of honor but this is a long-ass post already so the hot-takes are: my interest in this ended up being solely based on the charisma of individual actors' performances, and in that, i really enjoyed it. shout-out to gong jun and everything he brought to this. put your leading men in eye-shadow, say i! let them be a little feral!

listening bouncing around through lots of different musical tones and styles lately, but the noteworthy stuff of the last week or so was me introducing myself to sunday in the park with george, in order to better appreciate sondheim, and also dipping my toe into patti smith's oeuvre. it's been a time.

playing (and also a bit more listening here) i don't know what level of stress and/or burn-out leads you to getting completely distracted by once-beloved classical music, but i hit it on thursday this week. i stumbled, delighted, onto the fact that the new york philharmonic has scanned and uploaded a bunch of scores to their digital archives, and it was a sudden rush to realize that i had the house to myself and could use the scan of the flute I/II-piccolo parts to play along with a recording of aaron copland's appalachian spring. the recording i was listening to, aurora orchestra, helpfully split it up into the separate dances, which made it easier to follow along in the score--and it turns out, the piece was scored for a 13-piece ballet pit orchestra at first anyway. while i personally do like it from a full orchestra, lush and shimmery, and prefer to treat it as a tone poem without a definite narrative (landscapes/abstract imagery a la fantasia is what i've always heard in it, rather than specific characters), it does dance. those time signature changes are a nightmare, but i feel mostly fond and satisfied by their quirks and misdirections after having just listened to the piece for years, and it was a rush to see them in print for the first time.

https://archives.nyphil.org/index.php/artifact/294a07e6-51fe-41e7-9543-5160b7443296-0.1/fullview#page/1/mode/2up

to my absolute delight, the music librarians apparently do not erase previous musicians' marks in this archive-- breaths, counting, the proof of other hands on these pages. on the last few lines of the flute ii part, there are a series of notes from previous players, the first one mostly scribbled out but still recognizable as some form of 'god help us all', with subsequent notes from the 1970s and 80s with later players agreeing or disagreeing (because of the counting? lol), and...god. loved to stumble on that. between that and getting to try my hand at the solo bits, and experience even this distantly the way those chords come together, sweet never saccharine, occasionally ecstatic but always sincere-- it really salvaged that afternoon.

making yardwork, mostly. is that generative, or just maintenance? it was cathartic, anyway. began to snow just as i was finishing.

working on i'm going to have to submit this diss proposal without written feedback from a couple of these clowns, won't i. fuck.

[celinamarniss]

2022 Reading List

thank you @virusq and @jedimordsith for tagging me in a 2022 reading list meme! My reading list is a constantly changing and expanding thing; this is the current iteration, but I could give you a completely different list in 3 months.

I got halfway through Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson before the audiobook had to be returned. The queue is long so I'm probably going to order the physical book to finish it.

Same situation with my Redwall relisten—my hold expired and I'm waiting for the audiobook to become available again. Same for Never Have I Ever by Isabel Yap, but with a physical book (only one copy in the library system!).

I started Gingerbread because I love Helen Oyeyemi, but I'm not sure I'm in the mood to read it right now.

Am I in the mood to read Georgette Heyer? I adored The Talisman Ring, so I've pulled out Devil's Cub and I might give it a go next.

The current audiobook is Mary Roach's Gulp. On the audiobook hold queue: Invisible Kingdom: reimagining chronic illnesses by Meghan O'Rourke, A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine, Finder by Suzanne Palmer, Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, Terciel and Elinor by Garth Nix, Rebecca by Daphne Du Marier, and The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins.