bookish stuff & fannish stuff

[starfishstar]

Thoughts!

1. sanguinity, if you're around these parts... Thank you again for recommending As My Wimsey Takes Me, the podcast about Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey novels. I'm now here to heartily pass along the recommendation to everyone else! I listened to the introductory "episode 0" a while ago, and wasn't sure whether it was something I would end up getting deeply into or not; it's a great concept, but I have a million things bookmarked already and can't always get to new things fast. But last night I listened to episode 1 (and then immediately to episode 2...) and was absolutely sold on it. The podcast is fantastic, the podcasters are fantastic, and I might have to do a whole series re-read after all. :-) It's an excellent mix of squee over the author and characters, critique of problematic elements, and insights into literature and history. Highly recommended!


2. Also thank you to whoever (almost certainly one of you Holmestice folks) mentioned Sherlock Holmes and the Furtive Festivity! Again, I'm only now getting back to things I'd bookmarked ages ago, so I don't remember where I heard about it. (And probably everyone else already knows it, since it seems to have been crowdfunded by fans!) This is a short film about a Victorian-era Holmes/Watson, as Watson tries to conceal a surprise birthday party from the world's greatest detective. It's fan-made, I think? But highly professional in quality – and utterly, utterly, utterly charming! 12 minutes of Holmesian delightfulness.


3. If you're looking for a reading challenge, or if you just like having a little nudge to read genres and books you might not otherwise have thought of, Book Riot once again has their Read Harder Challenge for 2020. Right now I need to focus on my thesis and can't let myself get distracted by/excited about trying to read even more than I usually do... but I may circle back sometime later in the year to see how many of the challenges I've met already, and if there are a few more I want to make a point of meeting.


4. A friend who has almost-seven-year-old twins asked me for book recs for them; she started reading Harry Potter to them and they LOVED it (my heart!!) but it's still a little too old for them; even the second book was already too scary and gave one of them a nightmare. So I've been having a lot of fun poking around at different resources, putting together a list of suggestions for books that are similarly complex in characters and relationships, strong on adventures and friendships, and immersive as a reading experience – but not too scary for seven-year-olds.


Okay – I'm off to cook dinner and listen to episode 3 of As My Wimsey Takes Me. :-)


ETA:

5. The trailer for the Miss Fisher movie!! It looks like they're making good on their promise to make this like a James Bond film – but this time, a woman gets to be James Bond. Also, I was wondering how they would manage to balance the "Phryne out in the world adventuring" aspect with the Phryne/Jack pairing that fans have gotten so attached to (i.e., be true to Phryne's character and the adventure spirit of the movie but also don't disappoint us sentimental fans) and it seems like they may have actually pulled it off. I am suddenly VERY excited for this movie.

Comments

[sanguinity]

Oh, I'm glad you enjoyed the Wimsey rec! I've been re-reading along with them; I find that their spacing between successive novels is slow enough that I still have plenty of time to read other things between Wimsey novels. It helps that the novels stand up very well to re-reading (as I'm sure you know), and the podcast is detail-oriented enough that it's nice to be able to actually remember the passage or sentence they're discussing. And I do like that they can be critical of the novels, when the novels deserve criticism -- it's much more comfy when we can all agree that something was racist/anti-semitic/queerphobic, and that such moments can't (and shouldn't) be excused.

btw, I've been meaning to tell you (I mentioned this in one of my last posts; I don't think you saw it), but the windows at my new job all have a view of the interstate, so I spend a good chunk of time playing Yellow Car when I'm at work. It's a very agreeable way to spend one's idly-looking-at-the-interstate time, and I thought you'd enjoy knowing that.

[starfishstar]

Ooh, yes, I did miss that – thank you for telling me! Yellow car! (I've definitely been more absent than usual; it's only in the last month or so that I've been getting back to a semblance of normal life, after a couple months on complete hiatus from the world taking care of my parents, and then at least another month recovering from the toll that took. It's been amazing to feel even anything like normal again.)

I know you started a new job, and it must be a huge and exhausting learning curve at the beginning. I hope it's settling in a bit and getting easier!

[sanguinity]

I trust your parents are much improved, if you've been able to take recovery time for yourself? And yay for things feeling normal again!

It was indeed exhausting, and it didn't help that I came down with a cold AND wasn't permitted to take time off to deal with it, but had to keep dragging myself to work while sick. UGH.

But yes, it's settling out! And I'm FINALLY figuring out how to get writing time in despite the demands of work, so hooray!

[starfishstar]

Yes, they're still recovering, but doing a LOT better. Like, mostly able to manage their own lives instead of being 100% helpless and needing me to coordinate everything. I really can't express how amazing it feels just *not* to be in crisis every single second of every day!

YAY, so pleased to hear your new job is settling in – and that you're figuring out how to still get writing time along with work, because that's huge!

[sanguinity]

Oh, hooray, I'm pleased to hear they're so much better. And yes, they're likely to be recovering for a long time, from something as huge as that, but to have gotten to the point where they can take point on their own care and recovery, that's going to make a huge difference in everyone's well-being. (Theirs, too, I assume -- it can't be easy to be 100% helpless!)

And yes, writing time! It's requiring Discipline and also Good Decisions about how I spend my time, but happily I've spent a lot of effort in making writing feel like good, positive, self-care time, so the need to be disciplined and make good decisions isn't feeling to arduous. I still long for the sheer quantity of time and space I used to lavish on it -- of course I do! -- but this will work for now.

[starfishstar]

That's excellent! Balancing obligations and creative time is always hard, so that's fantastic that you're already making it work, even with the job being so new. Hooray for you and your writing time that's also self-care time.