HELLO AUTUMN!
Starting with a vengeance, aren't we? It's been squalling all day; not storming, just very gusty, string winds and rain, on and off. Weatherzone says it's about 13C, I think that's a filthy lie, closer to 10C, especially factoring in the wind chill and damp.
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I've been trying to reduce my tabs, reading up on fic that I've had open forever. My goal is to get my laptop down to under 20 tabs; I'll see if I can manage it.
Rec of the day:
If The Ever Put A Bullet In Your Brain (I'll Complain) by
melannen
Bruce Banner doesn't dare stay in one place very long, especially Manhattan. If he'd really wanted to get lost, though, he probably shouldn't have let Tony Stark give him a new phone. It's hard to be lost and alone when Tony keeps telling people to call you.
This is a really interesting Bruce character study, in which he goes his own way after the events of the Avengers movie. You see him living and running away and finding himself, and challenging Tony, specifically, to work out why he needs to, and the answer isn't simple. While he's moving from place to place, he hears about the world in Manhattan keeping on turning through sporadic phone calls from Avengers and others. There's a gentle poly theme running through this, too, but it's sweetly melancholy, and more a story of self-denial and the raw nerves of freshly drawn boundaries than a story of giddiness, sex or perfection. Those wanting actions rather than longing will have to look elsewhere; there's no porn here, and I quite like it, for that. I'm completely all for porn, don't get me wrong, but there's something about the distances between Bruce and the others, and the things they say that make this story shockingly intimate in a completely different way, and I love that the author chose to write it that way.
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My kitchen is a pit again, I have no idea how, it literally feels like I only just finished tidying it, and I haven't done much in there since then, wtf.
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Been reading Susan Coolidge's Katy books. I'd only ever read the first book before, but I've got all three on my phone in Freda+ now, so I've finished the first, was very pleased to discover it was still enjoyable to read as an adult, and I'm a fair chunk through the second, now. I love being able to load my phone up with out-of-copyright books from Gutenberg. It's certainly one of the joys of living in the electronic age. There were so many books I just didn't have access to, or didn't own copies of as a child, and now I've got them all right there.
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Tangentially, I am disappointed that a lot of Australian children's authors are impossible to get, even though they're out of copyright - Mary Grant Bruce, and Ethel Turner, for example. I know there's a lot in the original versions (particularly in the Billabong books) that is really not PC any more, especially to do with Aboriginal people, but there are lots of other books available on Australian Gutenberg that are just as bad if not worse in terms of casual (sometimes outright) racism, so I have no idea why they aren't up there. Golden Fiddles, for example, I am very much keen to reread. My mother has a copy, but it's delicate, very much an antique. I thought I'd go and find it online, but no! And it's just a story of a poor family getting an inheritance, and the way that money changes them, and it's a bit tragic, because they are happy when they're poor, and the money doesn't make them any happier, it just complicates their lives. And I want to read the sequels to Seven Little Australians, because I only own that and A Family at Misrule, and I know that there are at least two more: Judy and Punch and Little Mother Meg, and I've never read either. Don't know if they're available on some paid ebook site, but I kind of resent the idea of paying for them when they're out of copyright. If I'm paying for them, I'll buy actual copies of them, thank you very much.
Sorry, that ended rather curmudgeonly, apparently I'm annoyed.
This entry was originally posted at http://iamshadow.dreamwidth.org/380147.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
*
I've been trying to reduce my tabs, reading up on fic that I've had open forever. My goal is to get my laptop down to under 20 tabs; I'll see if I can manage it.
Rec of the day:
If The Ever Put A Bullet In Your Brain (I'll Complain) by
melannen
Bruce Banner doesn't dare stay in one place very long, especially Manhattan. If he'd really wanted to get lost, though, he probably shouldn't have let Tony Stark give him a new phone. It's hard to be lost and alone when Tony keeps telling people to call you.
This is a really interesting Bruce character study, in which he goes his own way after the events of the Avengers movie. You see him living and running away and finding himself, and challenging Tony, specifically, to work out why he needs to, and the answer isn't simple. While he's moving from place to place, he hears about the world in Manhattan keeping on turning through sporadic phone calls from Avengers and others. There's a gentle poly theme running through this, too, but it's sweetly melancholy, and more a story of self-denial and the raw nerves of freshly drawn boundaries than a story of giddiness, sex or perfection. Those wanting actions rather than longing will have to look elsewhere; there's no porn here, and I quite like it, for that. I'm completely all for porn, don't get me wrong, but there's something about the distances between Bruce and the others, and the things they say that make this story shockingly intimate in a completely different way, and I love that the author chose to write it that way.
*
My kitchen is a pit again, I have no idea how, it literally feels like I only just finished tidying it, and I haven't done much in there since then, wtf.
*
Been reading Susan Coolidge's Katy books. I'd only ever read the first book before, but I've got all three on my phone in Freda+ now, so I've finished the first, was very pleased to discover it was still enjoyable to read as an adult, and I'm a fair chunk through the second, now. I love being able to load my phone up with out-of-copyright books from Gutenberg. It's certainly one of the joys of living in the electronic age. There were so many books I just didn't have access to, or didn't own copies of as a child, and now I've got them all right there.
*
Tangentially, I am disappointed that a lot of Australian children's authors are impossible to get, even though they're out of copyright - Mary Grant Bruce, and Ethel Turner, for example. I know there's a lot in the original versions (particularly in the Billabong books) that is really not PC any more, especially to do with Aboriginal people, but there are lots of other books available on Australian Gutenberg that are just as bad if not worse in terms of casual (sometimes outright) racism, so I have no idea why they aren't up there. Golden Fiddles, for example, I am very much keen to reread. My mother has a copy, but it's delicate, very much an antique. I thought I'd go and find it online, but no! And it's just a story of a poor family getting an inheritance, and the way that money changes them, and it's a bit tragic, because they are happy when they're poor, and the money doesn't make them any happier, it just complicates their lives. And I want to read the sequels to Seven Little Australians, because I only own that and A Family at Misrule, and I know that there are at least two more: Judy and Punch and Little Mother Meg, and I've never read either. Don't know if they're available on some paid ebook site, but I kind of resent the idea of paying for them when they're out of copyright. If I'm paying for them, I'll buy actual copies of them, thank you very much.
Sorry, that ended rather curmudgeonly, apparently I'm annoyed.
This entry was originally posted at http://iamshadow.dreamwidth.org/380147.html. Please comment there using OpenID.