random updates
I realized I haven't posted much lately. Hard to be encouraging when Voldemort seems so intent on just burning everything down.
Sigh.
Anyway, I went on vacation last week: had some great meals, saw some friends & family, and saw the Chicago production of Hamilton! Which was awesome. Just, really full of energy and its own slightly-varying interpretations of the characters.
I came down with a bad cold over Thanksgiving, fought it back while on vacation, and today it appears to have revived and has taken up residence in my sinuses. So I left work early to go home and sleep in my cold house (it was 50 degrees!), and the Mucinex does not appear to be working. Argh.
Anyway. Life continues on; my Nemesis continues her bullshit, my boss is pessimistically supportive, and the new hire we made an offer to in frigging August is finally starting on Monday. My coworkers and I have a running group-text in which we mourn the election results and mock Voldemort, but it doesn't really help deal with the despair.
Between the election and the Ghost Ship fire, there's not much to be happy about in the real world right now.
*
Fannishly, I did see Moana last week, which was lovely if not earth-shaking.
I'm a few episodes behind on Pitch and Brooklyn 9-9. Really need to binge on Underground soon. Oh, and I watched Stranger Things when I was cocooning after Thanksgiving. That was very fun, although I suspect I would have found it more powerful if they'd showed much less about what was actually going on in the DOE facility.
*
So, on to the Reading Wednesday report.
Just Finished: Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks, for book club. An interesting look at John Brown and his family over the 20 years prior to Harper's Ferry. Seemed oddly relevant, where the main question is how civil resistance to oppression slowly turns to violence -- even when the violence is not directly against the oppressor. I'm not sure Banks answered the question, because he gives the narrator (Brown's son Owen) such a tortured emotional history that the violence seems more to derive from that than from his understanding of the national moral stain of slavery. Unless, I guess, that is the point? Anyway, it was interesting, but hella long, and the women were all barely 1-dimensional, much less 2.
Also just finished Spinster by Kate Bolick, which was more specific about her personal history than I was looking for. But still interesting, and it made me want to read more Millay.
Currently reading: Le Guin's Gifts; I needed a palate cleanser with some hope in it.
Up next: probably Cloudbound by Fran Wilde.
ETA:
OK, I have to finish with this, because it will make you happy. Alan Tudyk records his lines for Moana.
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments; comment here or there.
Sigh.
Anyway, I went on vacation last week: had some great meals, saw some friends & family, and saw the Chicago production of Hamilton! Which was awesome. Just, really full of energy and its own slightly-varying interpretations of the characters.
I came down with a bad cold over Thanksgiving, fought it back while on vacation, and today it appears to have revived and has taken up residence in my sinuses. So I left work early to go home and sleep in my cold house (it was 50 degrees!), and the Mucinex does not appear to be working. Argh.
Anyway. Life continues on; my Nemesis continues her bullshit, my boss is pessimistically supportive, and the new hire we made an offer to in frigging August is finally starting on Monday. My coworkers and I have a running group-text in which we mourn the election results and mock Voldemort, but it doesn't really help deal with the despair.
Between the election and the Ghost Ship fire, there's not much to be happy about in the real world right now.
*
Fannishly, I did see Moana last week, which was lovely if not earth-shaking.
I'm a few episodes behind on Pitch and Brooklyn 9-9. Really need to binge on Underground soon. Oh, and I watched Stranger Things when I was cocooning after Thanksgiving. That was very fun, although I suspect I would have found it more powerful if they'd showed much less about what was actually going on in the DOE facility.
*
So, on to the Reading Wednesday report.
Just Finished: Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks, for book club. An interesting look at John Brown and his family over the 20 years prior to Harper's Ferry. Seemed oddly relevant, where the main question is how civil resistance to oppression slowly turns to violence -- even when the violence is not directly against the oppressor. I'm not sure Banks answered the question, because he gives the narrator (Brown's son Owen) such a tortured emotional history that the violence seems more to derive from that than from his understanding of the national moral stain of slavery. Unless, I guess, that is the point? Anyway, it was interesting, but hella long, and the women were all barely 1-dimensional, much less 2.
Also just finished Spinster by Kate Bolick, which was more specific about her personal history than I was looking for. But still interesting, and it made me want to read more Millay.
Currently reading: Le Guin's Gifts; I needed a palate cleanser with some hope in it.
Up next: probably Cloudbound by Fran Wilde.
ETA:
OK, I have to finish with this, because it will make you happy. Alan Tudyk records his lines for Moana.
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments; comment here or there.