Saturday

Mar. 22nd, 2025 10:08 am
lunabee34: (reading by sallymn)
1. Fiona is much improved; she's still coughing some, but the frequency is much, much diminished.

2. After a week of laying around doing nothing, I think Dylan is improved, too. They looked like death warmed over that first day they got here but gradually perked up. Now the trick will be to see if they relapse immediately next week upon having to do things again. We already got their blood work back, and they did test positive for one of the autoimmune disorders, but IDK if it will go anywhere. I've tested positive for several things only to be told my positive result wasn't positive enough. Why they bother having ranges for these results if they're not going to utilize them is beyond me.

3. Pity the Freak by emmy_award
Stranger Things
Steve/Eddie
Full of pining and fear; Eddie is such a delicious jerk in this one.

Pipe Dreams by CaptainHoney
Stranger Things
Steve/Eddie
This is just silly; it made me LOL.

4.
Under Alien StarsUnder Alien Stars by Pamela F. Service

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Well, this does not live up to my childhood memories. I did not recall that the overarching message is imperialism is great actually and all hail our alien overlords.



View all my reviews
lunabee34: (Default)
1. I have developed a new illness. Two days ago, for the first time, I watched two Hallmark Christmas movies and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I laughed. I cried. My heart was warmed. Yesterday I watched two more. Today, Fiona and I are watching a Christmas movie with talking dogs and orphans. Something is very wrong with me. LOL

2. I got my first Christmas card of the season from [personal profile] spikedluv. I also got my first gift of the season from [personal profile] amejisuto. Thank you both!!

3. books I have read lately )

Reading

May. 10th, 2018 01:43 pm
lunabee34: (reading by tabaqui)
I've been doing research for an article which has led me to read two chapbooks published by the Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project about writing marathons. I took part in a Summer Institute at the University of Mississippi Writing Project more than ten year ago (gosh, maybe 15 now), and it was one of the best experiences of my life. It was writing intensive and creative and I really enjoyed being involved in a community of teachers/writers. I am toying with the idea of applying to start a national writing project site at my university, but I know it will be a great deal of work and effort, and I'm not certain I'm willing to put that in. I would need a couple of colleagues who are willing to commit, and I would probably need to try to get involved with one of the existing sites ahead of time (and they're all a couple hours drive from here). IDK It's probably more work than I'm interested in.

Anybody else done anything with the National Writing Project?

(I intended to drop my reviews of these texts from Goodreads here, but DW keeps giving me an error message when I try to upload either; it's very weird.)


reviews of The Penelopiad, On Rhetoric, and Fantastic Voyage )
lunabee34: (Default)
1. I am weirdly optimistic (I know, I know, I know; we watched twenty something primary school kids mowed down by guns and nothing changed; I know) that maybe some gun control laws will go forward in the wake of this latest school shooting. The students and teachers are being vocal in a way that I haven't seen before, particularly on social media. Student after student is saying stuff like, "Screw your thoughts and prayers; you need to protect us." Fox News is the only TV at the gym, and I watched a teacher give an interview in which she went on and on about gun control and President Trump being an idiot and the anchor couldn't even interrupt her or get a word in edgewise because she'd just watched her students die and it'd been less than 24 hours. I saw that happen multiple times. Maybe this time it will be different.

more on gun control )

2. books I've read )

3. Does anyone have any strategies (or recs for books, sites) for working through displaced anger, stress management, etc.?

4. Emma, Fiona and I got our hair cut yesterday. Emma had only gone six weeks since her last haircut, but it had grown a tremendous amount; we're going to have to go 4 weeks between cuts. We got her a dress she really likes (black with pockets) that isn't too feminine and fits her well. We also found a killer pair of dark wash jeans. I'm planning to take her shopping in a few weeks to look for a button down shirt and a blazer.

5. I decided instead of buying more books, I'm going to go through my bookshelves and read the books I've never read before (not too many of these, but Josh has bought some books over the years that I never picked up) and the ones I read years ago and don't remember well. If I haven't read it in the past three or four years, I'm probably going to read it. Currently reading The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (courtesy of an undergrad Brit Lit 1 class).

6. I am actually kinda sad that TV is about to come back. Gotham will be airing again soon and Walking Dead and the new season of Westworld. Right now, the only TV I'm watching is Lucifer and a rewatch of season 1 Westworld, and it's so freeing not to have every night scheduled with TV. Emma is also watching RuPaul's Drag Race All-Stars which I watch a bit of with her, but I can't take much of that show. I find it super cringeworthy a lot of the time (like Chi Chi misspelling Maya Angelou's name this last week and clearly having no idea what she'd written). Ben De La is my favorite, though. If the show was just her + Shangela, I could watch it no prob. LOL
lunabee34: (reading by sallymn)
Brother to Dragons, Companion to OwlsBrother to Dragons, Companion to Owls by Jane Lindskold

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is a weird book. I liked it, some parts of it quite a bit, but it's a weird book. I think I started out with the wrong expectations; I'd just read a YA book, and the cover of this one looks like a YA novel. It's also told from the perspective of someone who believes her plastic dragons can talk to her, so initially I thought I was going to be reading a YA fantasy novel.

Pretty quickly, though, the book veers into adult territory; the protagonist Sarah is actually in her thirties, and there's a fair amount of sexual content, including mentions of child prostitution, although none of it is graphic or detailed, just alluded to.

This is set in some sort of possibly dystopic future, but we don't get a lot of details about the world because everything comes from Sarah's very limited POV. That's actually one of my favorite parts about the book--the way the author lets little details about the world slip through (everybody uses some kind of credit system, hovercars are a thing, etc) without really explaining anything.

Another part I really like is that Sarah can speak to inanimate objects. At the beginning of the story, the reader thinks she's hallucinating and then gradually comes to realize that she truly can hear her plastic dragons and other objects speak. I also like that Sarah falls in with a group of marginalized people who have banded together to protect each other and live together in what sounds to me like an abandoned chemical plant. Their society is based on the Jungle Book, and is very cool if also very disturbing in many ways.

So, pros: very cool world building, very interesting protagonist, very interesting plot.
Cons: mentions of child rape and child prostitution, consent issues, really bizarre (dated?) understanding of autism (the story begins with Sarah in an institution, and she's believed to be autistic because she was mute as a child and now can only communicate in quotations from stories that she's memorized)

Recommend with reservations.



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