Still aten't ded. But I did go two weeks without reading and that did nearly finish me off.
Work. It was worklike, then it was bananas, then it was super-extra bananas with the full split and marshmallow sauce (Me: "That's it, I've had it. I am taking 12 full hours off!" Everyone sane: Um.)
I really did go two weeks without reading anything. I think it was terrifying but honestly I don't remember much other than blind panic and listening to RHCP songs on repeat. (Also I just found a bunch of messages in my Inbox LJ had no intention of ever telling me about, so if one is from you, I AM TOTALLY NOT IGNORING YOU AND WILL WHOMP ON LJ IN YOUR NAME. Kisses! --Odd.)
Oh where is this beautiful beautiful entry going.
Oh! Reading. First of all, misura wrote Sharp Teeth (or: My Island is Not a Petting Zoo) with Doctor Impossible/Feral (from Soon I Will Be Invincible) for the current older_not_dead challenge, with the delicious prompt, "Your sharks have gotten fat." I LOVE IT. Go read it.. It feels like the most obvious pairing in the world now that misura has written it down and made it beautiful. And a fandom is born. Yay!
I can't figure out LJ's new Home screen, which seems to be intent on bleating celebrity gossip at me in a manner that indicates it's entirely unaware of how close to death it is. For reference, I've managed to figure out tumblr and am Oddmonster over there as well.
How is it 1pm already?
Wait, I'm talking about reading. So, yeah. After I got off work, I then slathered myself in all US history I could lay hands on for a week. I finally made it to Sarah Vowell's Unfamiliar Fishes, a look at the US annexation of what became the state of Hawaii. I was underwhelmed, this time out, by her ADD and obsession with religious doctrines of 18th century New England, and I didn't really understand her decision right at the front to do away with some of the apostrophes in the names of Hawaiian royalty, but overall, a good read.
I got hold of the latest in my favorite trashy non-fics with Hospital Babylon, 24 fictional hours in a London ER cobbled together from 2 years of anecdotal research. Read it in one night, which was fitting. Warning: it's not for the squeamish.
I read Nancy Eileen Muleady-Mecham's Park Ranger Sequel: More Stories which did what it said on the tin, namely tell more stories from the author's long career as a park ranger. As I happen to love park ranger stories, this one was like a long, warm bubble-bath for my reading soul. It turns out, there really was at least one dude at the Grand Canyon whose last words were "I can fly!"
I think you can guess what happened next, but what most people don't realize is that someone has to clean up the mess afterwards.
I read Alexandra Robbins' controversial Pledged: Inside the Secret Life of Sororities. I do think it is problematic that Robbins' claim that her stories are true is based "I can't tell you how I found all this out, you're just going to have to trust me that it's true". Did that stop me from enjoying the hell out of her book? Nope! I had been expecting it to be like a long episode of As the Greeks Turn, and to be fair, it was that, but it was also packed with historical information about sororities, a look at how the sorority system deals with race and the problematic LGBT issue. The first intersectional feminist book I've read in a long, long time.
And finally, I read On Her Own Terms: Annie Montague Alexander and the Rise of Science in the New West which was PHENOMENAL, as long as you're okay with defining the New West as UC Berkeley. I was surprised by how fine I was with that. Summary: rich white woman gives two museums to Berkeley, then devotes her life to finding the fossils to fill them. In return, Berkeley ignored how Alexander was fucking the President's daughter for forty years. I'm paraphrasing, but barely.
Cue a spate of fictional doolallies:
Wait...is it basically fall* already???
*You Antipodeans are, as in so many other things, on your own with that lovely springtime. :) I hope it's going well for y'all.
I really did go two weeks without reading anything. I think it was terrifying but honestly I don't remember much other than blind panic and listening to RHCP songs on repeat. (Also I just found a bunch of messages in my Inbox LJ had no intention of ever telling me about, so if one is from you, I AM TOTALLY NOT IGNORING YOU AND WILL WHOMP ON LJ IN YOUR NAME. Kisses! --Odd.)
Oh where is this beautiful beautiful entry going.
Oh! Reading. First of all, misura wrote Sharp Teeth (or: My Island is Not a Petting Zoo) with Doctor Impossible/Feral (from Soon I Will Be Invincible) for the current older_not_dead challenge, with the delicious prompt, "Your sharks have gotten fat." I LOVE IT. Go read it.. It feels like the most obvious pairing in the world now that misura has written it down and made it beautiful. And a fandom is born. Yay!
I can't figure out LJ's new Home screen, which seems to be intent on bleating celebrity gossip at me in a manner that indicates it's entirely unaware of how close to death it is. For reference, I've managed to figure out tumblr and am Oddmonster over there as well.
How is it 1pm already?
Wait, I'm talking about reading. So, yeah. After I got off work, I then slathered myself in all US history I could lay hands on for a week. I finally made it to Sarah Vowell's Unfamiliar Fishes, a look at the US annexation of what became the state of Hawaii. I was underwhelmed, this time out, by her ADD and obsession with religious doctrines of 18th century New England, and I didn't really understand her decision right at the front to do away with some of the apostrophes in the names of Hawaiian royalty, but overall, a good read.
I got hold of the latest in my favorite trashy non-fics with Hospital Babylon, 24 fictional hours in a London ER cobbled together from 2 years of anecdotal research. Read it in one night, which was fitting. Warning: it's not for the squeamish.
I read Nancy Eileen Muleady-Mecham's Park Ranger Sequel: More Stories which did what it said on the tin, namely tell more stories from the author's long career as a park ranger. As I happen to love park ranger stories, this one was like a long, warm bubble-bath for my reading soul. It turns out, there really was at least one dude at the Grand Canyon whose last words were "I can fly!"
I think you can guess what happened next, but what most people don't realize is that someone has to clean up the mess afterwards.
I read Alexandra Robbins' controversial Pledged: Inside the Secret Life of Sororities. I do think it is problematic that Robbins' claim that her stories are true is based "I can't tell you how I found all this out, you're just going to have to trust me that it's true". Did that stop me from enjoying the hell out of her book? Nope! I had been expecting it to be like a long episode of As the Greeks Turn, and to be fair, it was that, but it was also packed with historical information about sororities, a look at how the sorority system deals with race and the problematic LGBT issue. The first intersectional feminist book I've read in a long, long time.
And finally, I read On Her Own Terms: Annie Montague Alexander and the Rise of Science in the New West which was PHENOMENAL, as long as you're okay with defining the New West as UC Berkeley. I was surprised by how fine I was with that. Summary: rich white woman gives two museums to Berkeley, then devotes her life to finding the fossils to fill them. In return, Berkeley ignored how Alexander was fucking the President's daughter for forty years. I'm paraphrasing, but barely.
Cue a spate of fictional doolallies:
- Clammed Up, by Barbara Ross (a murder mystery set on a small island off the coast of Maine that was just like being there);
- Red Velvet Revenge, by Jenn McKinley (a cupcake-flinging murder mystery at a rodeo);
- Fogtown (a gender-bending graphic novel of 1950s San Francisco PI's)
- Manhunter (a very disappointing super-hero in Los Angeles)
- Daisy Kutter: the Last Train (a graphic novel whose art-style and protagonist I loved, but whose ending I didn't)
- Such Wicked Intent, by Kenneth Oppel (an Edwardian retelling of Frankenstein where Victor F is the quintessential teenage boy, which is to say he's a jackass-and-a-half, but everyone punches him with butterflies, so that's okay).
Wait...is it basically fall* already???
*You Antipodeans are, as in so many other things, on your own with that lovely springtime. :) I hope it's going well for y'all.