raven | Reading

Ah, four good things on the docket right now, two of which were recommended to me by other people.

1. Journey, by Joyce Carol Thomas

I was intrigued by

rachelmanija's write up, and when I said so, she said, "You specifically would enjoy it." And I DO. The language is gorgeous, and the story moves along. Rachel quotes the final line of a sermon in her post, but man, that entire sermon! Here's more from it:

"Death dealing is the devil's duty.

"The devil's still swishing his long reptilian tail, hooding his ruby snake eyes, walking up and down seeing who he can devour, strewing banana peels on the steep path of life trying to see who he can trick into slipping. Be aware!

"Carry a light in your heart. Some of you're already shining like neon. Don't even need batteries;** you've got everything you require to keep the light going."

2. The Apothecary Diaries, vol 1, by Natsu Huuga, trans. Kevin Steinbach

My first-ever light novel! I got into it because of reading really intriguing fanfic of it on Mastodon; I loved the intelligent MaoMao in the fanfic, and lo and behold, the actual character is equally intelligent. Pressed into service as a poison taster to an imperial consort, she uses her knowledge of medicine to solve mysteries ... appears to be how it'll go. So far she has correctly diagnosed that it was the lead-containing face paint that was causing mysterious illnesses among some of the consorts and killing off their babies (who weren't wearing the face paint but were exposed to it via their mothers). Apparently there's also an anime.

3. Saint Death's Daughter, by C.S.E. Cooney

Continues to be just a breathtaking tour de force.

The twelfth and most abject of the Quadoni apologies was the truest word Lanie had ever spoken. It could be no louder than a breath; it was that fragile ...

All three sounds hung in the air, and together created a fourth sound, an overtone that hovered so delicately, so tremendously, over them all.

And burst.

And rained down such music that all their voices fell silent.

4. The Book of Questions, by Pablo Neruda, bilingual edition with both the Spanish and translations by William O'Daly

I became interested in this from going to an exhibition on endpaper art at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art that featured endpapers from a picture book version of this featuring only some of the questions.

The questions come in fours that form a poem. Sometimes one question in the poem stands out to me; sometimes the effect of the overall poem is what does it. Here's one where I love the overall poem, but especially the second question:

Do salt and sugar work
to build a white tower?

Is it true that in an anthill
dreams are a duty?

Do you know what the earth
meditates upon in autumn?

(Why not give a medal
to the first golden leaf?)

~ ~ ~

Trabajan la sal y el azúcar
construyendo una torre blanca?

Es verdad que en el hormiguero
los sueños son obligatorios?

Sabes qué meditaciones
rumia la tierra en el otoño?

(Por qué no dar una medalla
a la priemera hoja de oro?)

I haven't read them all but I see repeated words, themes--bees, lemons, yellow, tears, clouds ... I love it. I think creating a concordance could be a meditative thing to do.

**Queue Sia: "Unstoppable" 🎶I'm so powerful, don't need batteries to play🎶

Current Music: Sia: Unstoppable

osprey_archer

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Ruth Goodman is always a good time, and her book How to Behave Badly in Elizabeth England: A Guide for Knaves, Fools, Harlots, Cuckolds, Drunkards, Liars, Thieves, and Braggarts is no exception to the rule. It does what it says on the tin, except for “Elizabethan England” read “England from the time of Elizabeth up to the Civil War (with brief excursions before and after),” but I suspect that the publishers believed, correctly, that their title would sell more books.

A fun fact: quoting Shakespeare would have been seen as proof of boorishness, as it showed that you spend time at the theaters down by the bear-baiting pits and the whorehouses, like a COMMONER. I also very much enjoyed the advice manual for young noblemen in service, which begged them to “try not to murder people.” You might think that goes without saying, but nope!

Jacqueline Woodson is also always a good time, although often in a mild to moderately heart-wrenching kind of way. Peace, Locomotion is an epistolary novel, told as a series of letters from a 12-year-old boy (nickname Locomotion) to his younger sister. They’re both in foster care following the death of their parents in a fire a few years ago. A book with sad moments but not overall a sad book; I particularly enjoyed Locomotion’s journey as a poet and his poetry. (There’s a companion novel-in-verse. Woodson is one of the few authors I trust with a novel-in-verse.)

Warning: you will walk out of this book with the song “Locomotion” stuck in your head.

Jane Langton is much more up and down than either Goodman or Woodson, but I’m happy to say Paper Chains is one of the ups. Evelyn has just started college, and the novel alternates between traditional narration and Evelyn’s never-to-be-sent letters to her PHIL 101 professor, on whom she has a swooning freshman crush. A good mix of college hijinks and intellectual discovery. Just kind of stops rather than having a real ending, but it works well for the story, which is very much about beginnings.

What I’m Reading Now

Onward in Gaskell’s Gothic Tales! We just had one of Gaskell’s trademarked “three people of three different faiths get together to deal with a problem, and it’s good for them all!” scenes. (Okay, I’ve only run across this twice in her work, once here and once in North and South, but it’s an unusual recurring theme.)

What I Plan to Read Next

I’ve decided it’s time for another Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I’ve already read A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch and all three volumes of The Gulag Archipelago. What should I read next?

hannah

Reminding myself I want what's on the objects more than I want the objects themselves, I'm in the process of ripping my Fringe complete series box set so I can get around to watching it. I did the same for Friday Night Lights already, and I'm trying to tell myself I shouldn't keep the sets around even if I fall in love with the shows. It was great I was able to snag them so affordably. And I don't need them.

If there were still in-person fandom conventions, I'd bring them to a swap table or offer them up for a raffle, but we don't have such things anymore - at least not anywhere it's practical for me to travel to right now. It's a shame, because that kind of swap table mentality is one of the best for getting rid of stuff. How it's going to be picked up and taken home, and you don't have to believe anything else.

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: nothing now

umadoshi

The other day, my phrasing when I tried to describe what the Glass Heart actors are doing was not at all as clear as it should've been!

So: It's not that the main cast in this show are faking playing the instruments. It's that none of them are musicians at all, and they learned to play the specific material for the show well enough to visually pass not only as being able to play but as being very good (the male lead is explicitly a musical genius), with full shots of them doing bits of it rather than having body doubles or clever cuts or anything, AND doing some pretty heavy-lifting acting at the same time. (What I don't know is whether their performances pass as looking professional to actual professional musicians, but one of the supporting cast is an actual singer and seems pretty impressed with it.)

The making-of feature I linked in my last post is specifically about that aspect of the show/their performances.

Current Mood: embarrassed

dolorosa_12

I've had this Rebecca Solnit essay bookmarked for a few days, because it's such a clear distillation of my own personal and political outlook that rather than write the ten millionth iteration of my own 'behave as if you have agency' rant, I can now just point to Solnit's post and call it a day.

I might quibble with some of her specific illustrative examples, but the overall shape of what she's saying aligns exactly with my thinking. And while I'm on this topic, I'll add (yet again) that constant awareness raising about iniquities and atrocities absent any specific instructions about concrete action to take in response to those iniquities and atrocities provokes exactly the kind of demoralising, despairing-in-advance apathy Solnit deplores in her essay. The only people who should be raising awareness are those whose job it is to do so: people who work in the media, or people who functionally fill a media-like role (paid or unpaid) by virtue of the content they've decided to disseminate via social media, and the large audience they have there. Even in those latter cases, awareness-raising without context does more harm than good.

Hope is an action. This doesn't mean a naive, apathetic confidence in the status quo. It means being clear-eyed about the gravity of the situation and the potential societal and personal risks it causes, and using what agency remains to you as an individual, a community and a society to push back against the tide, without being overwhelmed by the knowledge that it will be a marathon, not a sprint, comprised of lots of tiny little moments of concrete action. (And being able to handle the fact that the greater the atrocities and injustices, the less likely it will be to stop them with one grand action, and to be able to acknowledge the weight of this without being steamrollered into apathetic despair.)

None of these complaints are directed at anyone on my Dreamwidth reading list, which (to my good fortune) is comprised of sensible, thoughtful people who are better than most at understanding the motivating (and demotivating) power of words and information. But I felt, in the wake of Solnit's post, that it was time to set out my own thoughts on this particular nexus of issues once again, with as much clarity as possible. (And thank you to

muccamukk for giving me the push I needed to set words to screen.)

aurumcalendula

Shetland:

( Read more... )

Kill to Love:

( Read more... )

pauraque

Today is my birthday! Already, somehow!

On my last birthday I treated myself to talking about The Secret of Monkey Island, which is my favorite game of all time. It wasn't my intention to wait an entire year to talk about the sequel, which is also a game I have been passionate about since childhood, but here we are.

stopped by a tough guy at a bridge, the player highlights guybrush's dialogue option: I don't pay for nothin'. I'm a pirate

stopped by a tough guy at a bridge, the player highlights guybrush's dialogue option: I don't pay for nothin'. I'm a pirate

Guybrush's epic defeat of the Ghost Pirate LeChuck in the first game brought him fame and fortune, but what daring feats of swashbuckling has he done lately? To prove that he's not a one-hit wonder, he sets out to find the legendary lost treasure of Big Whoop, which surely must be impressive even though nobody quite knows what it is. But his quest gets more complicated when he realizes that while he may have defeated the ghost of LeChuck, the villain's body is still somewhere out there...

( cut for length )

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (Special Edition) is on Steam and GOG for $9.99 USD.

Will it take me another year to review the third game? Do I even realize that at this rate I won't be replaying Return until 2029? Will there be yet another surprise new entry in the series by then? Stay tuned to find out!

cmcmck

We've travelled through Plymouth many a time and changed trains at the station but we've never actually spent time taking a look at the city.

It was well worth the time to do so.

We explored the old seaport area, the Barbican and also the Hoe.

There is one heck of a lot of history to the place.

The Dolphin hotel is a pub with a very fine frontage:

( More pics: )

Current Mood: photographical
Current Location: 'ome from the market

asakiyume

I went to a show the sea spirit (spouse of the tall one, mother of my little grandson) was in (show was a queer BIPOC group--the sea spirit's piece was about being nonbinary but claiming the title of mother), and before the show, there was music playing, and one piece had this really powerful chorus:

Aquí estamo', siempre estamo'
No nos fuimo', no nos vamo'
Aquí estamo' pa' que te recuerde
Si quiere' mi machete te muerde

(We're here, we're always here
We haven't left, we're not leaving
We're here to remind you:
If you want my machete it'll bite you)

I looked it up when I got home. It's by the Puerto Rican artist Residente and is called "This Is Not America" (at one point in direct conversation with Childish Gambino's "This Is America," with the line "Yes, Gambino my brother, this IS America" and the same point-blank head shot as in his video).

It was pretty overwhelming. Big fat content warning on the video--but also, if you're feeling strong, it's just. Wow, very powerful with its images, and I don't mean the violent ones. ~~A politician~~ Jair Bolsonaro [I didn't know it was him! I see very little visual news] eats a meal and wipes his mouth on the Brazilian flag. Indigenous children in traditional garb reject Amazon-McDonalds-Starbucks.

But the ones that spoke to me the most were a set relating to immigration, detention, deportation ... and families, and love, and physical closeness.

Detainees on one side of a wire fence, including a father with a crying baby in a sling:

many people, including a crying baby, are on one side of a wire fence

many people, including a crying baby, are on one side of a wire fence

The mother, on the other side, approaches and nurses the baby. Through the wire fence.
through a wire fence a woman nurses a baby held by man

The couple lock hands...
two hands hold on to each other through a wire fence

They touch foreheads....
a man and woman lean touch foreheads through a wire fence

The baby holds the mother's breast, looks up, nurses...
a baby nurses through a wire fence

Through a wire fence. As Residente says, Esto sí es America.

Current Music: Residente: This is not America

dolorosa_12

Long weekends in the UK can go two ways: freezing, rainy and miserable, or sun-drenched to perfection. This time around, we got the latter, and everyone seemed to be in a great mood, spilling outside to make the best of the last gasp of summer. Matthias and I were no different: we went to Norfolk, we went to Suffolk, we sat under the trees in our favourite courtyard bar in Ely, and life was good.

Ever since we moved to Ely five years ago, I kept suggesting that we go on a day trip to Kings Lynn (at the far northern end of the train line on which we sit; the southern end is London), and every long weekend when we had a spare day, it would end up pouring with rain and we'd elect to stay home. This time, however, the weather did what we wanted, and we took the train half an hour north, for day of pottering around. We ate a lot of seafood, we discovered a fabulous gin distillery and bar, a fabulous rum bar, and a pretty decent gastropub, we wandered through the historic city centre, and realised far too late that there was also a pretty little walkway along the riverfront, with a foot ferry — something for a future trip, perhaps.

That was Saturday. On Sunday, we caught the train half an hour in the other direction to Bury St Edmund's, which was holding a beer festival in its massive cathedral grounds. (It felt somewhat medieval, especially with all the church officials wandering around in ecclesiastical dress, as if we'd stepped back in time before the Reformation, as guests of a beer-brewing monastery.) We stayed for about five hours, people watching and chatting, before returning to Ely in the early evening. Miraculously, everything worked flawlessly with the trains for both day trips, which is not always a given!

My preference on long weekends is to do the travel on the earlier days, staying progressively closer and closer to home each day, so today we did just that — I haven't gone further than the swimming pool, although we did have lunch at the market, before wandering home, eating gelato. This afternoon will involve the usual weekend wind-down activities: yoga, cooking, a bit of catching up on Dreamwidth.

( Two books )

It still feels like summer here, but if I look closely, there are changes: some of the cherry trees' leaves are yellow, the lavender plants in the front garden are all dried out, the feel of the air is slightly different. My nod to the slide towards autumn is to start bottling some of the summer abundance — fridge pickles, three litres of fermented tomatoes. I picked some of the dahlias and marigolds and put them in the living room. Our front windowsill has a line of pears and giant tomatoes in varying stages (and hues) of ripeness. If nothing else, the colours of summer are alive and vivid in my house, even as time marches on.

princessofgeeks

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Current Mood: annoyed

osprey_archer

As the Newbery Project draws to a close, I’ve been preparing some posts about my reading, and I thought I’d start out by answering a few… well, I can’t exactly call them “frequently asked” questions, as the only one people have actually asked is the one about dead dogs. But, anyway, these are questions with important background information.

What is the Newbery Award, anyway?

Every year since 1922, a committee of librarians has selected “the most distinguished contributions to American literature for children” to receive the Newbery Award. The first prize winner gets the Newbery Medal, while the runner-ups have since the 1970s been called Newbery Honor books. It’s the most prestigious writing award for American children’s literature. (The counterpart award for illustration is the Caldecott.)

What’s the Newbery Project?

The Newbery Project started when I was about eleven and decided to read all the books that had won the Newbery Medal. (The Newbery is the highest award in American children’s literature. It was first awarded in 1922 and has been going strong ever since.) The project eventually fizzled out, as children’s projects do, but in my mid-twenties I resurrected it and completed it.

Then it occurred to me that I could extend the project to include all the Newbery Honor books, which is the name given to the books that are the runners-up to the big medal. A few years, there were no runners-up, and some years there were as many as eight. Most years there are three to five runners-up. I had read a pretty good number of them as a child, so I had about 240 Newbery Honors books left to read.

Two hundred and forty books! Who wants to read two hundred and forty books about dead dogs?

(For my non-American readers, the Newbery award is famous in America as the dead dog award, because there have been a few very famous winners featuring the tragic death of pets and/or best friends. Bridge to Terabithia may have been partially responsible for the fizzling of the first go-round of my Newbery project.)

Actually, the dead dogs are fairly recent. The first dead dog in a Newbery winner appeared in Fred Gipson’s Old Yeller in 1957, but that was an outlier. Until 1970, pretty much everyone lives, both dogs and relatives. After 1970 it’s open season on friendly animals and sickly grandparents until the 2000s, at which point the Newbery awards focused more intently on dead relatives.

Two hundred and forty books is still nuts. Why did you do this to yourself?

Because I love children’s books and history, and it turns out that reading the Newbery books are a fantastic way to explore both. The Newbery committee has consistently selected a lot of historical fiction and historical nonfiction (especially biographies) since the beginning, and of course the earlier books are fascinating historical artifacts in their own right at this point.

Are there any overarching themes among the Newbery books?

Beyond history in general, the Newbery awards are particularly interested in American history and more generally the construction of American identity. There’s also an ongoing interest in the history of liberty, the latter of which means, for instance, that two separate William Tell retellings have won Newbery Honors.

There’s also a strong and ongoing interest throughout the history of the award in tales of children from around the world. This reflects both children’s tastes (before children’s literature became its own category, travel narratives were a recognized favorite reading material for children), but also a reflection of the ideal of the “Republic of Childhood,” popularized in American literature by Mary Mapes Dodge in St. Nicholas Magazine, which argues that children in all times and all places are similar to and interested in each other, purely by virtue of their shared childhood.

cmcmck

The River Lynher (pronounced liner) in north Cornwall runs through Stara woods.

It's an attractive spot.

As we set out we were amused by the new sign on Farmer Walters' farm next door to Kathy's cottage. Their grandchildren are now at the getting about stage and there are pastures on both sides of the road. Kathy thinks he should add 'cats'.

( See more: )

Current Mood: photographical
Current Location: ici

hunningham

Today it's going to be hot & sunny. Next week will be thundery showers, and then we're back to our regular broadcast of light rain & drizzle.

So it feels like the end of summer. The horse chestnuts are turning brown & shedding leaves, rowans & hawthorns are red with fruit and parents are shopping for back-to-school.

I had planned to work this weekend and catch-up with hours missed when father-in-law was here, & when I up in Edinburgh. But I haven't. I've had a couple of quiet days; I've caught up with a myriad of small tasks, I've posted on dreamwidth and I've slept well for the first time in what feels like a month.

This morning I was looking at BestofRedditorUpdates again and I was all NO! Who are all these people and why am I reading about family fights about weddings & fights about infidelity & fights about money?

I'm going to take a book and head to the park for a couple of hours. Not a hike - just go & sit in the grass and pretend to be a calm & relaxed person who can enjoy being without doing. It does not come naturally. work-in-progress.

hunningham

Yesterday I had my hair cut. I'd put this off because family visits, and it was getting very long, very shaggy. Now been cut and buzzed up the sides & back. I keep on running my hands up the of my back of head to enjoy the texture. It's like teddy-bear fur. And today I hennaed it - so I'm back to auburn again. I'm planning to stay this colour until my hair turns grey, and then I will dye it an attractive teal colour.

I have been to the park. The weather was warm, the children's paddling pool is open, people were playing bowls and the gelato place was running out of ice-cream. I had a scoop of chocolate, sat in shade & enjoyed.

Crossfit this morning - no class but the gym was open for people to come in & do their own thing. I'm (very slowly) working towards pull-ups, but I want to get there without injuring myself. Last year I ended up with golfer's elbow because I had spent too long hanging from a bar and clenching my hands very very tightly just to stay on. This year - exercises to improve grip strength and exercises to strengthen my back muscles.

pushkin666

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Current Mood: awake
Current Location: on my Chandler/Joey chair
Current Music: Catching up on Dr Who

skygiants

Once upon a time, I read Exiled from Camelot, the novel-length Sir Kay angstfic by Cherith Baldry that Phyllis Ann Kar politely called 'one of the half-best Arthurian novels that I have yet read,' and then launched it off to Be Experienced by

osprey_archer and

troisoiseaux.

Now my sins have come back upon me sevenfold, or perhaps even fifteenfold:

troisoiseaux has discovered that, not content with the amount of hurt and comfort that she inflicted upon Kay in exiled from Camelot, Cherith Baldry has written No Less than Fifteen Sad Kay Fanfics and collected them in a volume called The Last Knight of Camelot: The Chronicles of Sir Kay.

This book has now made its way from

troisoiseaux via

osprey_archer on to me, along with numerous annotations --

osprey_archer has suggested 'drink!' every time Baldry mentions Kay's 'hawk's face,' which I have not done, as I think this would kill me -- to which I have duly added in my turn. I am proud to tell you that I was taking notes and Kay only experiences agonized manly tears nine times in the volume. That means that there are at least six whole stories where Kay manages not to burst into tears at all! And we're very proud of him for that!

The thesis of The Last Knight of Camelot seems to be that Kay is in unrequited love with Arthur; Gawain and Gareth are both in unrequited love with Kay; and everyone else is mean to Kay, all the time, for no reason.

troisoiseaux and

osprey_archer in their posts have both pulled out this quote which I also feel I am duty-bound to do:

"Lord of my heart, my mind, my life. All that I'll ever be. All I'll ever want.”

He had never revealed so much before.

Arthur leant towards him; there was love in his face, and wonder and compassion too, and Kay knew, his knowledge piercing like an arrow into his inmost spirit, that his love, this single-minded devotion that could fill his life and be poured out and yet never exhausted, was not returned. Arthur loved him, but not like that.

He could not help shrinking back a little.

However, I also must provide the additional context that this tender moment is immediately interrupted by the ARRIVAL OF MORGAUSE, TO SEDUCE ARTHUR, TO MAKE MORDRED, leading me to believe that Baldry is suggesting that if Kay had instead seized the chance to confidently make out with Arthur at this time, the entire doom of Camelot might have been averted. Alas! instead, Arthur dismisses Kay to go hang out with Morgause, it all goes south, Arthur blames Kay for Some Reason, and Kay spends a week on his knees in the courtyard going on hunger strike for Arthur's forgiveness until he collapses on the cobblestones and wakes up to a repentant Arthur tenderly feeding him warm milk.

If the stories in this volume are any judge, this is a pretty normal week for Kay. I also want to shout out

- the one where Lancelot and Gaheris set up a Fake Adventure for Kay to prove his courage, which destroys Kay emotionally, and kitchen-boy-squire Gareth runs after him and tries to swear loyalty to him and ask Kay to knight him, but Kay is like "you cannot AFFORD to have Kay as a friend >:(( for your knightly reputation >:(((" and Gareth shouts "you can't make me your enemy!!" and then Lancelot finds them arguing and is like 'wow, Kay is abusing this poor kitchen boy' and sweeps the lovelorn Gareth away, leaving Kay's reputation worse than before
- the one where Arthur gets kidnapped by an evil sorcerer who demands Excalibur as Arthur's ransom, and then Kay decides to try and trick the evil sorcerer with a Fake Excalibur even though Lancelot is like 'FAKE Excalibur? that's a LIE and DISHONORABLE,' and then Kay rescues Arthur from being magic-brainwashed by pure power of [brotherly?] love, and as soon as their tender embrace is over Arthur is like 'wait! you brought a FAKE Excalibur? that's a LIE and DISHONORABLE'
- the one where Kay is accused of rape as a Ploy to Discredit Arthur and has to go through a trial by ordeal where he walks over hot coals while on the verge of death from other injuries and Gawain flings himself into the fire to rescue him but it turns out it's fine because Kay is So Extremely Innocent of the Crime that they both end up clinging together bathed in golden light that heals their injuries

Again: FIFTEEN of these. Baldry is truly living her bliss and I honestly cannot but respect it. The book is going to make its way back from here whence it came, but if anyone else is really feeling a shortage of Kay Agonies in their life, let me know; I'm sure an additional stop would be welcomed as long as whoever gets it pays the annotation tax.

lamentables

This year, our local coffee roastery of choice made itself even more local by moving to the next village. We use their beans all the time in our own coffee machine and we love treating ourselves to a coffee at their place, because they are amazingly good at making coffee as well as roasting it. Their new combined roastery and coffeeshop (it's a roastery, it's a coffeeshop, it's a combination roastery and coffeeshop) is in a huge, high-ceiling building at the Royal Ordnance Depot at Weedon, a place that is becoming increasingly populated by small, interesting businesses (yarn dyers, risograph printer, record shop, micro brewery, car restorers, and more).

Inside it's all old bricks and shiny flues, vintage furniture, epic sound system (with monthly 'miserable Monday' listening sessions), and mostly gluten-free cakes. We have a loyalty card. For the last few weeks they've had some little round cheesy bread things on the counter. Pão de queijo. The sign said 'gluten free' so I tried one, bought three more to take home (three miles away), and ate them in the car. Oops.

More research required. Oh! They are always gf! I read a variety of recipes, chose one, converted it to metric weights and tried it. So good. So very good. I just made it again and I'm struggling not to eat ALL the cheesy goodness in one afternoon.

Here's my version of the recipe:

1 large egg
170g tapioca flour
50g grated cheddar
20g grate parmesan
1 teaspoon salt
70g olive oil
160g milk

Weigh everything straight into the blender jug, zuzz, pour into silicone bun cases (in a bun tin). Bake for 15-20mins at 200C. Makes 18. (I made 12 the first time and they were too big, so the centres were not fully cooked.)

umadoshi

Reading and watching:

scruloose and I have made some more progress on listening to Rogue Protocol, albeit not a huge amount; this is not helped by the fact that for some reason this book is a bit glitchy on Hoopla (every now and then a few [?] words just get skipped).

I'm lumping all of my media intake together this week because I seem to be in/have been in an "only really focusing on a show or a book" phase, so I didn't start reading anything new until I'd finished watching Glass Heart. I really liked it! No fannish feelings at this time, but it was a lot of fun.

And then I watched this behind-the-scenes video, which has left me absolutely agog over the fact that none of the TENBLANK actors knew how to play their characters' instruments at all. My brain is shattered by this information. I've never been all that close to Being A Musician (and the only way in which I came at all close was as a singer), so I'm not looking at what they're doing with a professional eye and I realize that it may look rather less convincing to people who actually do play those instruments, but.

[ETA for badly-needed clarification: It's not that the main cast in this show are faking playing the instruments. It's that none of them are musicians at all, and they learned to play the specific material for the show well enough to visually pass not only as being able to play but as being very good (the male lead is explicitly a musical genius), with full shots of them doing bits of it rather than having body doubles or clever cuts or anything, AND doing some pretty heavy-lifting acting at the same time. (What I don't know is whether their performances pass as looking professional to actual professional musicians, but one of the supporting cast is an actual singer and seems pretty impressed with it.)]

(I've now showed

scruloose and Ginny and Kas the opening of episode 8, which is a flashback to two of the characters meeting after one sees the other playing. If you have Netflix and want a quick non-spoilery look at what this looks like, check that bit out. The guy in the hoodie is the male lead, played by Satoh Takeru, who also executive produced this show. Having seen him pull off playing Himura Kenshin plausibly, I should perhaps not be this dumbfounded by watching him play a musician, but here we are.)

Anyway! Since finishing that drama, I've read KJ Charles' Any Old Diamonds and Jordan L. Hawk's The Forgotten Dead and am now reading These Burning Stars (Bethany Jacobs). I also currently have a non-fiction read on the go: Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World (Daniel Sherrell).

And cutting back to watching things, I've also now seen a few episodes (three?) of K-foodie meets J-foodie on Netflix, in which two passionate foodies, one from Japan and one from Korea, eat a lot of delicious things together. The bit I've seen has been entirely in Japan, but I assume some episodes (or possibly the second season?) will be in Korea.

musesfool

I tried making mozzarella sticks again for dinner tonight and I don't know if the oil wasn't hot enough or what, but they stuck to the bottom of the pot. They stuck to the spatula when I finally scraped them off the bottom of the pot. They stuck to the PAPER TOWELS.

I have fried a lot of things in my time and then put them on paper towels to absorb the excess oil and NEVER BEFORE has anything stuck to them. What the actual fuck. I still ate whatever I was able to salvage, but wow, what a mess.

*

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March 2025

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