bookish stuff & fannish stuff
Jan. 25th, 2020 02:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Thoughts!
1.
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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.
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Date: 2020-01-26 12:18 am (UTC)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.
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Date: 2020-01-26 08:39 pm (UTC)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!
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Date: 2020-01-26 11:08 pm (UTC)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!
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Date: 2020-01-29 04:24 pm (UTC)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!
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Date: 2020-01-29 04:40 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2020-02-01 06:24 pm (UTC)