Comments | hamsterwoman: Reading roundup, memes, and Yuletide tagset browsing

hamsterwoman

Reading roundup, memes, and Yuletide tagset browsing

Oct 16, 2020 07:53

25. Zen Cho, The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo (freebie novella) -- a story set in 1920s London and told in diary entries. This was very cute and funny, if a bit too fluffy in the resolution for me, and I didn't miss the speculative elements at all -- in fact, I feel like in the Zen Cho stories I've ready, the foibles of daily life and people being ( Read more... )

yuletide, translation, ponedelnik, a: zen cho, book meme, reading, strugatsky, a: strugatsky

Comments 29

meathiel October 16 2020, 16:37:39 UTC

Haha ... yes ... I get easily distracted as well ... seems to get worse.
I should ban the tablet in the evening. I keep scrolling through my FB feed even though nothing changes on there. Gah!

hamsterwoman October 16 2020, 16:48:13 UTC

The one major downside of reading primarily on my phone these days is that all the distractions are RIGHT THERE in my hand... :P

jaelle_n_gilla October 16 2020, 18:21:00 UTC

I notice that too. My attention span has been reduced the same way social media get shorter. That's one reason I like LJ over FB. Longer attention span. Mine and that of others :)

hamsterwoman October 16 2020, 19:27:21 UTC

That's one reason I like LJ over FB. Longer attention span. Mine and that of others :)

Heh, yes (well, and LJ over Tumblr and Twitter and whatever else).

I am annoyed by my own distractibility in this... but not enough to actually do any of the things that would lessen its impact, like start reading on an actual Kindle device again, or read more of the hard copy books.

bearshorty October 16 2020, 17:43:25 UTC

I just finished Battle Ground last night - it had plot twist upon plot twist. I think spoiling myself actually really helped. I really enjoyed this book, but he really should have just kept the last two books as one book instead of two. Looking forward to your thoughts when you are done with it.

3 books for the meme: Storm Front, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Charmed Life. (But I don't like idea of burning books so maybe just hide it deep in the library instead :) )

hamsterwoman October 16 2020, 19:07:43 UTC

but he really should have just kept the last two books as one book instead of two

That opinion seems to be universal from what I've seen!

(But I don't like idea of burning books so maybe just hide it deep in the library instead :) )I like this addition! (as I also don't like the idea of burning books, even hypothetically) OK, with that rider, hmmmm ( ... )

bearshorty October 16 2020, 19:35:23 UTC

Love your answers because your logic is very sound on all of it. And while I liked Books 1 to 3 of Dresden Files, I fell in love with the series with Book 4 where he really started building the mythology - I was also reading on the trip to Chicago and in Chicago itself which helped the atmosphere.

hamsterwoman October 17 2020, 00:59:49 UTC

It all worked out very handily once I started pondering things :D

And while I liked Books 1 to 3 of Dresden Files, I fell in love with the series with Book 4 where he really started building the mythology - I was also reading on the trip to Chicago and in Chicago itself which helped the atmosphere.Aww, that's a cool bit of synergy! (I've never been to Chicago so far, but it would be cool to visit Harry's city ( ... )

jaelle_n_gilla October 16 2020, 18:19:58 UTC

Why am I not surprised you sometimes pet your favourite books? :-D

hamsterwoman October 16 2020, 18:53:17 UTC

Hehe :D (I don't actually own a ton of paper books -- I very rarely buy books unless I know I'm going to reread them (which is very much an exception for me) or foist them on lend them to other people, so the ones I own are either special in this way or gifts from friends and special for that reason, or both :)

jaelle_n_gilla October 16 2020, 20:37:50 UTC

I get that! I'm the same :)

itsnotmymind October 16 2020, 21:35:56 UTC

I'm impressed by how many adult classics you read growing up - I read a lot as a kid but didn't really even try adult classic novels until I was a teenager.

hamsterwoman October 17 2020, 01:02:12 UTC

It's a bit of a double-edges sword, actually, because I'm sure a LOT of, say, War and Peace went right over my head at 11. Now, I don't think that I would've enjoyed it to a significantly greater degree if I'd read it as an adult, but I'm sure I would've picked up on things that 11-year-old!me just didn't. And since I don't reread books, mostly, it's unlikely that I'll ever experience War and Peace fully (I'm just OK with that :)

aletheiafelinea October 17 2020, 17:55:49 UTC

Agreed very much about the whatever of darkness - it gives that haughty-ominous vibe that nevidimka doesn't have at all. Aspen thing seems to be some confusion on the line of picking the right one of the close related species, I guess? Is a x-wood stake for vamps a thing in English, or is it always just a wooden stake and that's it? In Polish "osinowy kołek" is basically a fixed phrase (like "cisowy łuk" - yew bow) so much that this itself is enough to convey "for vampires", while unspecified kołek might be for anything.

I really hate the spelling "Vitka" and dropping the soft sign from a couple of other names (e.g. "Valka"). I get that there is not elegant way to show it in English
Yeah, it's annoying how English spelling feels so rigid and off with Slavic transliterations... :/ Shoving in an apostrophe here and there would in this context just look like another case of cliche fantasy names while not really working right either.

a world on the back of elephants and a tortoise, which of course is not an original idea to Discworld, ( ... )

hamsterwoman October 17 2020, 23:59:57 UTC

So I take it you gave up on the Music Meme 2.0 after all?

Not at all! It's just that my notes for it are on the other computer which I need to migrate over to this one, plus it kind of took a backseat to Yuletide stuff. IIRC, I do have most of the songs picked out, and the ones I meant to add to Music Meme 1.0, so it's going to happen at some point.

it gives that haughty-ominous vibe that nevidimka doesn't have at all

Yep! I hadn't gone on to think about the different effect it had vs the original, just that it was an unnecessary change, but you're 100% correct that that is the difference in effect.

Is a x-wood stake for vamps a thing in English, or is it always just a wooden stake and that's it? In Polish "osinowy kołek" is basically a fixed phrase (like "cisowy łuk" - yew bow) so much that this itself is enough to convey "for vampires", while unspecified kołek might be for anything.Same as Polish with osina in Russian, and in fact the original just has "[~some] aspen" and doesn't mention a stake at all -- just the wood itself ( ... )

aletheiafelinea October 18 2020, 17:27:23 UTC

it's going to happen at some point.
Great! I already thought it's my usual meme killing gene saying "Hi!" again. XD

continued... hamsterwoman October 18 2020, 00:00:36 UTC

I like nice bookmarks, but I don't have any, I just have no use for them, which my inner magpie regrets a little.

I actually do have quite a few nice bookmarks, mostly gifts, but I just display them as objets d'art without ever actually using them in books. That way my inner magpie is pacified :))

(*cough* and that one silk endband I ate when I was ten or so)

Hee! which book bears this badge of honor? :P

It's an adult book kids can enjoy, much like Pixar is kids movies adults can enjoy, I think.I'm actually not sure if it is an adult book kids can enjoy or a kids book adults can enjoy... It was definitely marketed as a kids book in the Old Country -- it had cartoony illustrations (which I love), and my edition says "povest'-skazka dlya nauchnyh rabotnikov mladshego vozrasta" -- something like "fairytale-novel for junior scientists". The English edition is for sure aimed at adults, but I think in part that's an artefact of it being a translated work and so requiring more effort to get into (unfamiliar setting, etc ( ... )

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