Dark? what ideal conditions for night!
It's definitely the apocalypse, I was in the supermarket yesterday and they hit me amidships with the first Christmas carol of the year, "Silent Night" sung in what appeared, for some reason, to be Dutch. This was cruel and unusual in itself, since normally the Geneva convention requires that it be November before Christmas carols are permitted to enter the arena of war. It was rendered additionally and unnecessarily hideous by the fact that the supermarket was playing syrupy "Silent Night" in Dutch at one end, and an entirely different Supermarket Radio Experience was inexplicably churning out the Proclaimers at the other. Standing exactly in the middle, circa the ice-cream aisle, with one in each ear was completely indescribable. I emerged, shaken, and tottered across to the mall to acquire (1) soothing new towels in an attempt to recover, and (2) books for Da Niece, whose esteemed birthday it was yesterday.
Time is weird this year. Da Niece retains her excellent literary taste - Song of Achilles by request, and receiving with joy Naomi Novik (not the dark school one) and the second Spider-Gwen - but also vouchsafed the information that she turned 15 yesterday. I have genuinely spent the last two years thinking she's 13, by my mathematically-challenged calculations she should have been turning 14 at the absolute most. Apparently it's been 2018 since 2018. Or I'm in a serious kind of denial. I had been vaguely assuming, with auntly pride, that she's a particularly mature 13-year-old. She's a delightful and particularly mature 15-year-old, anyway.
Also on the Dark front: I have just re-read, with much enjoyment, Tamsyn Muir's Harrow the Ninth, which retains, beyond its unabashedly Gothy vibe, its status as an excellent LARP/escape room puzzler, now with added bones, blood and despair. I cannot, alas, get into the sequel at all, it appears to be submerging itself in excessive literary device, including fragmented time-flow and inexplicable descents into the second person. The worldbuilding remains amazing and fascinating, and there are satisfying revelations, but even with the first-book twist as a starting point, it's losing me. Phooey.
Possibly by way of slightly more satisfying excursions into blood and death, I am currently re-playing Fallout 4 on survival mode, which means dying approximatly four times a combat, and needing to eat, hydrate and sleep to a somewhat realistic schedule. In this, if nothing else, will we exert some control over the apocalpyse. This entry has been crossposted from my Dreamwidth blog at https://freckles-and-doubt.dreamwidth.org/. The comment action is all over there, and supports OpenID.
Time is weird this year. Da Niece retains her excellent literary taste - Song of Achilles by request, and receiving with joy Naomi Novik (not the dark school one) and the second Spider-Gwen - but also vouchsafed the information that she turned 15 yesterday. I have genuinely spent the last two years thinking she's 13, by my mathematically-challenged calculations she should have been turning 14 at the absolute most. Apparently it's been 2018 since 2018. Or I'm in a serious kind of denial. I had been vaguely assuming, with auntly pride, that she's a particularly mature 13-year-old. She's a delightful and particularly mature 15-year-old, anyway.
Also on the Dark front: I have just re-read, with much enjoyment, Tamsyn Muir's Harrow the Ninth, which retains, beyond its unabashedly Gothy vibe, its status as an excellent LARP/escape room puzzler, now with added bones, blood and despair. I cannot, alas, get into the sequel at all, it appears to be submerging itself in excessive literary device, including fragmented time-flow and inexplicable descents into the second person. The worldbuilding remains amazing and fascinating, and there are satisfying revelations, but even with the first-book twist as a starting point, it's losing me. Phooey.
Possibly by way of slightly more satisfying excursions into blood and death, I am currently re-playing Fallout 4 on survival mode, which means dying approximatly four times a combat, and needing to eat, hydrate and sleep to a somewhat realistic schedule. In this, if nothing else, will we exert some control over the apocalpyse. This entry has been crossposted from my Dreamwidth blog at https://freckles-and-doubt.dreamwidth.org/. The comment action is all over there, and supports OpenID.