#jen reads

[nightspires]

got an ARC of Emily Tesh's next book The Incandescent and it was GREAT. it's an adult fantasy novel set at a magical baording school but the main character is one of the teachers and some crazy magical demonic shit goes down and there's a lesbian demon hunter in it and it's just so.... it was so fun and dramatic. the writing was also great. i would also love to see it adapted for the screen.

anyway it comes out in may 2025 so go put it on your TBRs!

[etoiline]

Ten People I'd Like To Get to Know Better

(but I think everybody I want to tag has already been tagged so feel free to grab this if you want, I just feel like blathering about myself)

I was tagged by @mmuffncakes and @nightingalesighs !

Last Song: "Mercy" by Dave Matthews Band. Feels appropriate for the times. mercy, will we overcome this

Favorite Color: For most of my adult life it's been green. But I really prefer the combo of forest green, navy blue, and maroon.

Last Book: Trying to get as far in the ebook format of Words of Radiance as I can before it expires, since I can't renew it right away and the physical book is 1000+ pages and just a leeetle bit less portable.

Last Movie: Challenge of the Masters, a Shaw Brothers kung fu movie from 1976. Looks like Shaw Brothers liked to use the same actors in their productions!

Last TV show: Last weekend we watched the premiere of Superman and Lois, now that the show is over, lol. Still can't quite get over the werewolf from Teen Wolf playing Superman, but the episode was pretty good, aside from the fact that I predicted a few of the plot points.

Sweet/Spicy/Savory: Savory, usually. I'm a wimp about spice. Sorry, hubby.

Last thing I searched online for: Jane Birkin/the Birken bag, but not because I want to buy something so ridiculously expensive. Jane Birken was in the 1978 Death on the Nile movie that we watched last night, and I wanted to check that she was the one responsible for the bag being created (and hubs had never heard of said bag).

Current Obsession: Surprising no one who's looked at this blog in the last two years, I'm still hung up on Jedi Survivor. It's only taken me a year and a half to start a game on Grandmaster difficulty (the hardest) and I tried to progress today on that save (didn't get too far, lol), and I even wrote a little on a JS fic, too. I still love my doomed rarepair.

Looking forward to: breaking out of this "should be reading/writing but the world sucks" funk that's keeping my reading speed down and my fic writing nearly nonexistent, sigh.

[jenniferstolzer]

I'm currently rereading Redwall

I read it over 20 years ago and felt like revisiting. As a child I loved how sweet and cute the mice were and how astonishingly violent the fights were. As an adult I have two observations;

1, Constance the Badger is still the best girl and star of the day.

2, Cluny sucks.

[etoiline]

This one makes me feel old, friends.

I was not super excited about the Hobbit or the LotR books growing up, mainly because the library copies didn't have blurbs to entice me, or fun covers to make me look (and we're talking the 80s/90s here, so no real way to look up summaries or get recommendations from friends--the friends I had were not readers like me).

So it wasn't until they started releasing info about the movies during my junior year of college (specifically that first promotional picture of Legolas, played by Orlando Bloom, oh my god did I have a crush on him) that I was like, maybe I should give these books a try. The campus bookstore had an omnibus edition of the Lord of the Rings, and I spent pretty much the entire school year working my way through it.

It was okay, but it was a bit of a slog, and while I appreciated the artistry in the dribs and drabs of info we got about the movie I wasn't all that excited to see it. The premiere date of Fellowship of the Ring was the day after the last exam of the fall semester of my senior year (for some reason they always scheduled the math class exams in the final exam slot of the final day, and let me tell you that was brutal), and when I got back to my dorm, furiously trying to get myself ready to move out for winter break, my roommate came in, said they had an extra ticket to the midnight premiere for FotR, and would I want to go?

I'd never been to a midnight premiere before, and I was so busy getting ready to leave the dorm for four weeks (I only had a few hours to get out before the dorms closed for break), but I liked my roommate, and the book was okay, and there were gonna be some handsome people in the movie, so I plucked up my courage and said yes.

I was able to find my roomie in line when I got there (oh the days before online ticket reservations), and I've never had so much fun queuing. Folks were dressed up, all sorts of Middle-Earth philosophizing going on, and when we got into the theater there was a roaming Gandalf and a Ringwraith going up and down the aisles.

And then the movie! Wow. I saw FotR five times in theater and once on a friend of a friend of a friend's ahoy-made DVD. Of course, you remember how I basically ran out of the dorm before that midnight premiere? Well, I left a lot of stuff there, because I didn't think I'd need it over break, and one of the things I left was my omnibus copy of LotR.

After that midnight premiere, I went to the bookstore (in the days when you could still walk into any of a half dozen bookstores nearby), and bought the trilogy, with the movie covers, and read them all again over the break. Because now I had faces to go with the characters, and scenery to imagine, and action sequences to compare, and it was much easier to read these lore-heavy books when armed with that information.

Needless to say, I went to the midnight premieres of The Two Towers and Return of the King as well.

[thelaughingmagician]

Batman (2016) #125

[jenoutof10]

alternate universe where sae never picks up football, lives a normal happy life and has a better personality. k byeee.

[elephantlovemedleys]

After the initial hugs and greetings from the lathered-up welcoming committee, including yours truly, putting on my most convincing friendly face, the hunky actor asked if he and I could step outside so he could have a moment alone with me. He [Patrick] took my hand and led me down the hall a little ways. Once out of earshot, we turned to face each other, Patrick scanned me in my cut-off black tights, dance briefs rolled down, a sports bra and vintage blue satin high heels, and said, “Whoa. You clean up good, girl.” “This is a great part for you. Congratulations.” “I know, right? It’s crazy.” This was softening me up. It felt good to be able to share my news with someone I knew. “I know, you’re probably thinkin’, ‘Aw, no, not this idiot again.’ ” Then his eyes started to well up. Real tears. And with the most earnest delivery imaginable, said, “You know I’ve always loved you.” He stared into my eyes. “And I’ve been really workin’ on gettin’ my shit together. So, if I get the chance, I swear I’m gonna make it up to you. You will not be sorry.” I said, “Uh-huh.” He smiled and was working hard on getting me to smile back. “C’mon, you know if we did this together, we’d kill it.” There was no question that our bodies liked each other, in spite of what my head was saying. There has never been anyone with Patrick’s combination of grace, brawn, sensitivity, and fearless, reckless gusto. - From Out of the Corner: A Memoir by Jennifer Grey (2022) PATRICK SWAYZE and JENNIFER GREY in DIRTY DANCING (1987) dir. EMILE ARDOLINO

[etoiline]

I have a special place at home for these books. Just about anything Carol Berg (but especially Restoration and Breath and Bone). Jim Butcher's Changes. Pat Rothfuss' Name of the Wind. Gael Baudino's Strands of Starlight. Brent Week's The Burning White. Robin Hobb's Assassin's Quest. The Forever King by Molly Cochran and Warren Murphy. Destiny by Elizabeth Haydon.

Every so often I pick up my favorites and find the line that makes my stomach swoop or my breath catch.

y’all ever read a book that’s so good you just have to close it and b r e a t h e for a moment?

yeah that’s the stuff

[silkentine]

I’ve been obsessed with the ♠️ Pirate Sabo AU by @otaku553 Their artwork is total inspiration fodder. I DROOL over their line quality, story telling, and how they can implement so much symbolism with the colors alone. (So I wanted to try my hand at drawing him too 😊)

I’ve been wanting to draw Tage for weeks now; his design is just SO solid (have I mentioned I love men with long hair?). Imagine my surprise when I found this in my inbox today:

So obviously it was finally time to draw Tage. Actual squee. Thank you for creating such beautiful comics! I hope you enjoy being mutuals with me ☺️🩵

[codgod]

something wicked this way comes

[this is a redraw, here’s the original :p]

[nightspires]

i'm reading funny story by emily henry and dfkngdfgb god it's making me feel like my nerves are standing on end bc a) the angst is just SO GOOD, and b) i can RELATE to a lot of it TOO MUCH

[etoiline]

It is *super* rare for me to cry over anything I read, let alone fic. So when I tell you that @voidcat-senket's "Plant Your Roots Inside Of Me" made me cry, please know that it was because it whumped me so good. I will admit that I got to follow this fic as it was written, and there's also probably a lot of falling back into fandom and the obsession that goes with it coloring my view, but that doesn't change the fact that this story grabbed me by the throat and didn't let go until it was over. Still has me, really. It made me (try to) start drawing again. @iwishtocountthestars pointed out that this fic deserves so much more praise than it has because it's so dependent on a very specific condition: that you've played (and completed) the video game Jedi Survivor--and that you're open to the spyscrapper ship. So if that's true of you, and you're willing to get your heart stomped on, please, please give this fic a read. It has my love forever, and I hope it will find a place in your heart too.

Plant Your Roots Inside Of Me (53319 words) by Senket

I'm curious about everyone's "this fic hit me in the id so hard it changed my brain chemistry" fic. Whether it made you cry so hard it gave you a headache or scratched an itch so hard it gave you a new kink or made you laugh so hard you thought you were going to throw up, reblog and tell me the fic that rewired your brain!

[etoiline]

TBR 2025

Tagged by @wrencatte !

Nine books you want to read in 2025

[jenniferstolzer]

Currently rereading Dark Days (Skulduggery #4)

It's so interesting to hear them all talk about Vile and Darquesse knowing where the story goes from here. Also, oddly, I remember very little of this book.

[borgialucrezia]

RODRIGO BORGIA & JUAN BORGIA ↴ abraham and isaac parallels

"If you take my honour, you must take my life. Mine to give, yours to take." — THE BORGIAS (2011-2013) by neil jordan

"Bind me as a sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar." — ABRAHAM AND ISAAC (the lotus magazine. vol. 2, no. 6)

The Paintings: — Carvaggio, The Sacrifice of Isaac (1602) — Otto Adolph Stemler, Abraham embraces his son Isaac after receiving him back from God (1927)

[books-in-a-storm]

Currently Reading 💛

The Prince And The Dressmaker & First Test