Here's a slightly scattered entry!

A couple of years ago, I wandered into a charity shop and picked up If We Were Villains by ML Rio. This book actually does have a little fandom, I discovered later, which is relatively unusual for novels! But I didn't know that at the time; I just bought it because it looked interesting ( Read more... )

THE BOOKENING TITLE #20: The Talented Mr Ripley, Patricia Highsmith.

'Do you think Richard might have killed him?' McCarron asked quietly.
'No, I don't.'
'Why?'
'Because there was no reason for him to kill him - at least, no reason that I happen to know of.'
'People usually say, because so-and-so wasn't the type to kill anybody,' McCarron said.My ( Read more... )

(My crosspost from Dreamwidth failed, so I'm manually posting; sorry if the crosspost eventually goes through and you end up seeing this twice!)

I've been vaguely wondering whether to do a reflection on some of the media that most stuck with me in the 2010s, and then made an entry along those lines, which finally nudged me into actually getting ( Read more... )

THE BOOKENING TITLE #19: Because Internet: Understanding how language is changing, Gretchen McCulloch.

Let's look at the closest thing lolcat has to a peer-reviewed text: a translation of the Bible into lolspeak.

I love linguistics and I've enjoyed Gretchen McCulloch's Lingthusiasm podcast with Lauren Gawne, so I was excited to dive into this ( Read more... )

THE BOOKENING TITLE #18: Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman ( Read more... )

THE BOOKENING TITLE #17: Record of a Spaceborn Few, Becky Chambers.

Here is what I wrote in 2017, in a never-posted entry draft, when I learnt this book was coming out:

I hadn't realised a third book in the Wayfarers series had been announced! It's coming out next year. Aaaaand it's about a new cast of characters again. BECKY CHAMBERS, YOU'RE ( Read more... )

THE BOOKENING TITLE #16: Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn.

I'm not a big fan of films, on the whole. I feel they're exactly the wrong length: too long to consume in one sitting, too short to develop their characters and relationships satisfyingly. But a handful of films have made an impact on me.

I watched Gone Girl back in 2014, and in many ways, on ( Read more... )

THE BOOKENING TITLE #15: The Secret History, Donna Tartt.

I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.

A little before Christmas, I visited th_esaurus, who mentioned that she'd requested The Secret History for Yuletide.

Riona: Oh, yes, that's the ( Read more... )

On Saturday, I attended a party at someone's house. There were some guests I knew, many I didn't; everyone was around the kitchen area. At one point I had to go up to the bathroom to change my sanitary towel, and then I realised there was no bin in the bathroom.

Who doesn't have a bin in their bathroom?So I had to wrap up my used sanitary towel, ( Read more... )

I've been watching an inexperienced gamer play Heavy Rain, and it's one of the funniest things I've seen in my life. Everything's so needlessly complicated! Ethan constantly fails at simple tasks like sitting down, opening the fridge or pushing his kid on the swing. The actual story is distressing stuff (it's a crime thriller about a murderer who ( Read more... )