First Post

[hoisinsauce]

A space to chat fandom! Anon!

Got a WIP you're excited about? Want to rave about your fave? Or is your fandom absolutely in love with a character who detracts from every scene they bumble into, and you need somewhere to vent? You're in the right place!

(start a comment thread by replying to this post)

Comments

Books

[(Anonymous)]

Things with pages!

Re: Books - Currently Reading

[(Anonymous)]

Or finished, whatevs.

Re: Books - Currently Reading

[(Anonymous)]

Recently read Irreversible Damage and The Secret Barrister (heh, that sounds like some kind of HP AU...). Both good (found Abigail Shrier's style very funny, so that was nice and unexpected; TSB is a bit wordier and takes time to get going but the raw material is so interesting you end up drawn in anyway; turns out magistrates in the UK have basically no training, frequently get the law wrong and almost anyone can volunteer for the position; if they misinterpret the law then you have to abide by the bullshit until you can appeal, so just WAT. I meant to write a long forum post on it sometime...) I want to read some fiction next, anyway; seeing a lot of the same topics at the moment and I need some variety...

Re: Books - Currently Reading

[(Anonymous)]

Finished up The Bell at Sealey Head by Patricia McKillip. Can someone explain the appeal of this author? She's so well regarded, but anytime I read one of her books, I walk away thinking ... "well that was okay". She's competent, but her characters never come alive to me. Someone enlighten me!

Re: Books - Currently Reading

[(Anonymous)]

I'm still working my way through Worm by Wildbow, the insanely long webnovel about superheroes/villains. I've enjoyed it a lot, but I'm at the point where I'm kind of bored with the main group of characters and want more of whatever weird cosmic shit is going on. Also it's increasingly annoying to me how all the teenagers are acting like grown men with military backgrounds, LOL.

Re: Books - Currently Reading -The Silkworm

[(Anonymous)]

Continuing my thread on reading this here, since it was living under the recommendations thread and that was confusing. Pls don't spoil me if you've read further! :)

Reached the bit where Strike reads Quine's book, where two guys discuss poetry and one squishes his own terribly symbolic balls a lot. Had fun explaining to a friend that this was satirical because nearly all male-written Literature is just like this.

Re: Books - Currently Reading

[(Anonymous)]

Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. It was great! I'd held back on Lovecraft because everybody said his writing was ~dense, but whatevs, I thought it was pretty easy reading. I can't say it did much for me on a cosmic horror level, but luckily I love anything arctic/Antarctic.

Re: Books - Currently Reading

[(Anonymous)]

Mexican Gothic. I'm shallow and had thus far avoided it because it fell into the cliche of having a (half) faceless pretty lady in a fancy dress on the cover. I always dislike those books! Also it was super hyped up and I've been burned by that before. But I liked it! It's a fairly standard haunted house gothic novel, with the big reveal coming at a very odd place, pacing-wise, and I'd hoped it would be scarier than the mild creeps I got. But still fun.

Re: Books - Currently Reading

[(Anonymous)]

Not started it yet, but next on my list is Old Baggage by Lissa Evans. Never read her before but decided to try it since she signed the letter of solidarity with JKR.

Re: Books - Currently Reading

[(Anonymous)]

Now reading Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. Male author, but nonfiction, so I figure it may still be good, plus it's quite short and it started with a great example from Tolstoy to illustrate an idea. So am cautiously optimistic after a run of disappointments by male authors. He's already repeating himself a bit, but I find that happens a lot even with nonfiction I like on the whole.

Re: Books - Currently Reading

[(Anonymous)]

Just started Irreversible Damage. Interesting so far. Not sure why I waited so long to read it.

Re: Books - Currently Reading

[(Anonymous)]

Bought a copy of gideon the ninth a while back because people were piling on the author with "don't read this book!1111"s and I always try to support authors when I see that. Decided to start it now. Expectations rather low; it's YA, the blurb looks like it was the result of that roomful of monkeys with typewriters, plus the recommendation on the front is from a man whom I consider an idiot. The cover doesn't even seem to physically fit the book. So we're off to a good start. But will see! Hopefully it'll be entertaining either way.

Re: Books - Currently Reading

[(Anonymous)]

Starting 'The Motion of the Body Through Space' by Lionel Shriver. According to the blurb, it's a book about a woman in her 60s who used to be very athletic, but whose knees are now failing her, who's married to a sedentary guy who suddenly decides to take up fitness right when she can't do it any more and she's considering knee-surgery. Her husband then gets obsessed with running and becomes a massive narcissist. So it looks like a combination of all the mumsnet vent threads. :P Husbands Who Run seem to be a distinct species of uniquely terrible men. Anyway, I'm looking forward to it.

Re: Books - Currently Reading - A Dangerous Education

[(Anonymous)]

By Naomi Novik. Just started it!

I don't have much to say, yet. The narrator is supposedly Welsh but she sounds American. xD I was reading her as American, then she used the word "bum"; 'oh lol is this narrator supposed to be English???'; then turned out to be Welsh. Most of the terminology is still American (narrator handwaves it as Americans having a lot of power over the infra at her magic school, so they have a highschool graduation and "freshmen, seniors, sophomores", though apparently some Mancunians founded and built the school so I'm extra confused)... so I don't know why she wasn't just American. Maybe she'll turn out to be some figure from Welsh legend, idk the rules for this universe yet. But I found it funny. I can't even explain why she reads as so American; it's just the rhythm of her sentences or something.

Re: Books - Currently Reading -The Mist In the Mirror

[(Anonymous)]

By Susan Hill. Decided to scare myself. Plus the font was big. Maybe I can read it in an evening.

Re: Books - Currently Reading - Pale Fire

[(Anonymous)]

Nabokov. A male author for a change, because unusually for a male author, I'm sure to enjoy his prose. Speaking of which:

"Beginning a salad was to him like stepping into sea water on a chilly day, and he always had to brace himself to attack the fortress of an apple."

It me.

Also am enjoying the conceit of having the narrator being constantly annoyed and distracted by amusement park music while writing, so that all the imagery is influenced by it and sentences trail off into rants about carousels. If it were anyone else, I'd assume the author himself was writing with an annoying fairground outside the door, but I think making this up in minute detail is Nabokov's brand of weird.

Re: Books - Recommendations?

[(Anonymous)]

Argh I bought loads of books a while back and then got frozen trying to choose which to read next and so haven't read anything in months (well, managed a few New Scientist issues and The Radical Notion... but neither is a book). Please recommend things and if it's in my house I'll read it. :P

Re: Books - watching fandom tie itself in knots

[(Anonymous)]

Lol, just saw a FFA thread where a bunch of anons were trying to criticise that book by a man who really wants to not be a man and thinks stealing things for women will help him get there. They were indulging him (of course) so had to dance around the obvious 'the author writes like a man'. There's a class of people who can't write dialogue and believable characters for shit. It's men. Remember that 2 minute window when you could criticise them?

I don't get how people who claim to love language can be fine with censoring themselves and tying themselves in knots like this. Once you can't express yourself honestly, you can't write at all.

Re: Books - Detransition, Baby

[(Anonymous)]

You guys told me to, so I'm reading it! Don't count on a detailed liveblog, though, because TBH it ain't worth the effort. I also don't really want to pass judgment on it until I'm finished, since...maybe? some of my complaints will be addressed. It's competently and sometimes wittily written, but the dialogue truly is bad - it's basically flowery 3rd person narration repurposed with quotation marks. And honestly, it's just a really trashy book so far. Both misogynist and ~transmisogynist, punctuated with a lot of uncomfortable sex scenes and navel-gazing about gender. I'm not sure if the author set out to write the Great Trans Novel and accidentally wrote trashy chick-with-a-dick-lit, or if he knew he was writing something trashy and the critics thought it was Deep. (But I'm not finished, so maybe it turns out to be Deep later!)

Re: Books - Books that made you wtf

[(Anonymous)]

Books where the writing or the plot or whatever else made you go "what in the fuck?". Tell the story!

Re: Books - The Windup Girl (Paolo Bacigalupi)

[(Anonymous)]

A great option for when you want to scream "whyyyyy" to yourself for ten hours straight.

Re: Books - Is House of Leaves good?

[(Anonymous)]

House of Leaves is on my to-read pile, because it was recommended loads. But thinking about it, everyone who recommended it to me was a dick and/or couldn't write. So now I'm wondering. Is it any good?

Re: Books

[(Anonymous)]

Trying to decide if I should read another Cormoran Strike, or try something else in between. I don't want to rush through them all too quickly, and I have a lot of things on my to-read list. Maybe time for another Naomi Novik or something like that. :P

Re: Books

[(Anonymous)]

At some point this week, I want to start a post in Ovarit about Jasper Fforde, and especially his most recent book The Constant Rabbit, but I’m worried I will be met with silence. Can some of you assure me that you are familiar with at least some of his work, and maybe go read The Constant Rabbit? It’s not very good, but my central thesis is that I think he’s read the Scum Manifesto and taken it to heart.

Re: Books

[(Anonymous)]

Wait what

Apparently James Patterson and Bill Clinton write thriller novels together now???

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_President_Is_Missing_(novel)