Fuck. Time. It is a thing. Seriously 2022 still looks like the date you’d pick for a 1960s sci fi show about a moon colony. Where’s my fucking moon colony.
V Rising
I do sometimes play video games that aren’t vampire themed, but having talked about Vampire Survivors a few months ago I’ve now picked up V Rising. Confusingly, Vampire Survivors is a game which features neither survival elements nor a particularly strong vampire theme, so while I enjoyed it in all its only-costs-three-quid glory I did feel a little bit let down by the title. V Rising actually is a survival crafting sim where you play a vampire, and it’s great. It’s still early access so it has some teething problems (for a while it was impossible to play offline which was a pisser) but it does a really good job of selling the fantasy of being a full on classic Bela Lugosi-ass swishy-cloak wearing vampire. Where in other survival sims you’d be harvesting wood for lumber and rocks for ore and growing plants for food, keeping busy by day and hiding in your camp by night in case the monsters get you, in V Rising you’re … well, you’re still harvesting wood for lumber and rocks for ore, but you’re also hunting mortals for their blood and you’re mostly staying active at night while you spend the day hiding in the shadows from the terrible rays of the sun.
I will say that while the game is mostly great on the spooky-vampire-fantasy (you can build graves in your garden that spawn skeletons that you can then farm for bones) the core crafting loop does sometimes stretch it ever so slightly. Like I revisited Dracula fairly recently (hot damn Stoker loves the word “voluptuous”) and I’m pretty sure I missed the bit where it goes:
Jonathan Harker’s Journal, 3 May: I looked out of the window tonight and saw a sight that both sickened me and chilled my blood. The Count was standing in the courtyard chopping down trees with an axe, then a wolf came up to him and he circle-strafed around it until it was dead, then he picked up the hides it had dropped and went back to farming mats.
The Spice Girls Being on the Circle
I like reality TV. And of the reality TV that I like I find The Circle one of the easiest to like uncomplicatedly. I think it’s something about the artificiality of the setup—everybody in their own little rooms spending most of their time doing slightly absurd timewasting activities and occasionally having group chats in a highly restricted, clearly controlled format. It makes the whole thing very, very low-stakes. Nobody is looking for a career. Nobody is looking for love. Nobody is looking to become America’s Next Top Anything. It’s a popularity contest that openly states it’s a popularity contest populated by contestants who are so bored out of their minds half the time that they tend not to be able to invest too much in the actual contest part as anything other than a distraction from being locked in what does ultimately boil down to solitary confinement for three weeks.
And somehow, the all-in-good-fun-low-stakesness was improved immeasurably by the introduction of the Spice Girls.
There’s a bit of context to this. Apparently one of the Bs (either Mel or Emma—they both wound up on the show) was a big fan of The Circle and said as much on Whichever Social Media Platform People Are Using These Days, and the creator/director/showrunner reached out and said “hey, do you want to do a thing?”
For those who aren’t familiar with the show, its whole premise is that because all the contestants are isolated nobody knows who anybody else is, and contestants are able to enter as either themselves, or as somebody else they know. So you get people playing their husbands, their sisters, their mothers, and so on. And sometimes, they’re the Spice Girls.
Obviously, millionaire celebrities competing for a cash prize against people who actually need the money is kind of sketchy, so the setup was a bit different. The Spice Girls entered under a profile provided by the production company, with instructions that if they could remain undetected the other contestants would get more money. This could, in theory, have led to the other contestants screwing themselves, since they’d have got nothing if they’d rumbled the Spice Girls too early but, well, reality TV is fake and a huge amount of the series was set up to make it practically impossible for that to happen.
The way it worked was that the Spice Girls acted as completely ordinary players for a couple of episodes, then sent a video message (on the show’s instructions) to the rest of the players saying “hi, one of the players in this game is actually The Spice Girls”, and the other players were then asked to solve the mystery of Which Player Is Secretly The Spice Girls. There is no lower stakes mystery than Who Is Secretly The Spice Girls. In fact, there is no situation which cannot be improved by assuming that somebody is Secretly The Spice Girls. Very occasionally, the secret identity aspect of The Circle can go to some places that are a bit difficult, like if somebody winds up in a flirty relationship with a person who turns out not to be the person they thought they were flirting with, and that can sometimes make people feel slightly betrayed, but it’s pretty much impossible to feel betrayed by somebody being Secretly The Spice Girls.
You might notice I’ve been saying Secretly The Spice Girls a lot. That’s because it gets said a lot in the show and it never stops being funny. Because The Circle is reality TV, there are bits where the players kind of speak their thoughts aloud like they’re doing a soliloquy in a Shakespeare play and the moment the Spice Girls were in play, half those soliloquys were people saying things like “but what if he’s … The Spice Girls” or “I just don’t think Carol would be …The Spice Girls” or in one particularly excellent case “have I just been flirting … with the Spice Girls?”
Everything is funnier when you assume things are The Spice Girls.
My New Website
Umm…you’re looking at it right now? Hi! It’s cool! I hope you like it. It was made by Joelle of Moxie Design Studios.
Rewatching All of Poirot
There is a certain Sunday-afternoon comfort to Agatha Christie’s Poirot (as in the TV series named Agatha Christie’s Poirot with David Suchet as Poirot as opposed to the character of Poirot created by Agatha Christie). It ran for long enough that widescreen became a standard format for TV midway through, and over the course of its twenty-four year run they did every goddamned novel and short story Christie wrote with the exception of a few shorts that were later adapted into full-length novels, the play Black Coffee that wasn’t novelised in Christie’s lifetime, and the technically-non-canon The Regatta Mystery.
I’m trying to capture, in words, the strange nostalgic feeling of watching Poirot and failing hard (hell I wrote an entire novel that tried to capture that feeling and I’m not sure I managed it). It’s all tied up in my head with a whole lot of place-and-time stuff that, if I’m honest, doesn’t have a huge amount to do with the actual mysteries. In a lot of ways Poirot is an idea as much as anything else and for basically anybody who watched TV in the UK in the 1990s that idea is David Suchet with a funny moustache.
In the original run, the first three series, and series five, were mostly adaptations of specific short stories while series 4 and 6-13 were feature-length adaptations of full novels. They were released fairly infrequently (hence the twenty-plus year run time despite “only” thirteen seasons), and some of the later series only had two episodes total so it was kind of event television, not really designed to be sat down and binged over the course of a couple of weeks on a sofa. But since that’s how I watched it, that’s really coloured my perception of the whole thing. And not in a bad way, necessarily, just in a way that really changes the emphasis of some things.
For example, when you stream multiple series in a row holy crap do you notice how often disguise and mistaken identity appear as major plot points. In the later series there are about five consecutive episodes where the major plot reveals are (spoilers, although not by name, for multiple very old detective stories follow): that the killer disguised herself as the victim in order to attend a family funeral and throw off the time of death/suggest a connection between a murder and unrelated death from natural causes; that the real murder had taken place years earlier and that the mysterious heiress around whom the mystery revolved had been the victim, the woman purporting to be that heiress now being an imposter (both this and the previous episode involve the explicit clue that nobody has seen the character in question for many years previously); that the killer, who was using an assumed name and was really the disguised son of a murderess, impersonated his victim by telephone in order to draw other suspects to the crime scene to create the impression that the killer was a woman; that the killer was an actual undercover spy; that the prime suspect’s father was really a man he had known in South Africa who was impersonating him to steal his inheritance (which, once again he could do because nobody had seen him in many years); and okay they’re not the exact same plot beat but those are consecutive episodes over two seasons and when you watch them all in a row, they add up.
One of the things I observed about the necessity of the changes in the second series of Bridgerton was that genres run on tropes and that some tropes work fine when they recur in books but look really odd when they recur in a visual medium you’re binge-watching. Even on TV, as originally broadcast, the episodes would have been fine—you’re be watching them weeks or years apart and because there’s no ongoing story you wouldn’t really be considering them as a single continuous thing. Plus the “fair play” style of mystery, even more than romance absolutely needs its tropes to work properly. While I was writing this part of this post, I took another glance at The Simple Art of Murder to see if I could find a pithy Chandler quote to explain why solving a cosy mystery is about genre familiarity more than it is familiarity with actual matters of evidence. I was thinking of that line about how the sort of person who knows a lot about Egyptian needlework doesn’t know a lot about the police (I think there’s some unexamined assumptions going on there but that’s a different conversation) but I was amused to find that only a paragraph after the bit I was looking for he launches into a long description of the plot of A. A. Milne’s 1922 novel The Red House Mystery. A novel which hinges (spoilers for a book that turned 100 in April) on the murderer persuading the victim to impersonate his own brother so that when the “brother” is murdered and the victim “disappears” he can be the prime suspect in his own death. This plot works because—wait for it—nobody has seen the victim’s brother in many years.
I admit I only found this funny because I’d chain-watched most of Poirot. But I still found it very funny.
The thing is, Chandler makes a big deal about how implausible this is and, yeah, no duh. But he goes on to conclude that this makes the novel worthless as an “exercise in logic and deduction”, which I think kind of misses the point. A classic detective story is an exercise in logic and deduction in the same way a game of Cluedo is an exercise in logic and deduction. Yes when you think about it it’s weird that you’ve got a murder that’s being investigated only by the suspects, where you have no idea where the killing took place even though several of the possible murder weapons would have caused the victim to bleed copiously, and where apparently the state of the body is such that it could as easily have been killed with a rope as a revolver. But that isn’t the game, and suggesting that the game falls apart because it doesn’t map 1:1 onto what you think real world policing looks like would be immensely silly.
Incidentally, going back and rereading The Simple Art of Murder and, after that, Why Do People Read Detective Stories and its follow-up Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd was a timely reminder for me that pissing on each other’s genres (Edmund Wilson clearly has exactly as much contempt for Chandler as Chandler has for the golden age of detective fiction and sees no real distinction between the two subgenres) is as old as the hills and has always had a strong air of being petty-minded bullshit.
And thinking about it, in a lot of ways I took the wrong lesson away from my season after season of back-to-back Poirot. Because to an extent I absolutely was meant to notice that the recurrence of the “but Messieur Gray, he had not been seen in these parts for many years” trope. And I wasn’t supposed to forget about it so I’d be surprised the next time, I was supposed to remember it so I’d notice the next time because that’s part of the game. Chandler is dead right that you can’t solve a cosy detective story by asking “what would the actual police actually do in this situation?” That’s not the point. What you’re supposed to ask yourself is “what do I know from other novels of this type that I have read?” You’re absolutely supposed to pick up on a casual reference to somebody having been out of the country for years and recognise that it’s a clue.
Also: there are two murders on luxury trains. Agatha, I love ya, but I really feel you only get to play that card once.
Pot Noodles
I have recently rediscovered the Pot Noodle. They are bangin’. This, I should stress, is the only adjective that I think correctly describes the positive qualities of the pot noodle. Like I don’t think they can strictly be described as nice and they certainly aren’t good for you but there are times when you just really want a Pot Noodle and then you have a Pot Noodle and then you say to yourself “ah, that was bangin’.”
So that’s what I’ve Liked this month. As ever, tell me what you Liked in the comments or, y’know, don’t.
Oh, and … err … I’m (virtually) at the Blue Willow bookshop tomorrow night if that’s a thing you’d like to come to! You do have to register via the link but the event itself is free!
As always, a delight 💕
Also, I had the mid-read, derailing linguistic epiphany that my children didn’t know what ‘no duh’ means, and had to immediately rectify that oversight. So, I guess thank you?? for your inadvertent reminder that this language is weird and wonderful.
I feel terribly old to learn that ‘no duh’ requires explain to children.
And thank you so much – I mean, for kind words about the blog. Not for making me feel old 😉
It’s so weird to suddenly realize that an iconic phrase had faded out of my daily use without me noticing. It was a bit of an old-person awakening for me as well—just trying to share the pain 😘
Also TIL—the interjection has been around since at least the 1940s, so it’s not just a product of our generation as I had assumed!
I super enjoyed Only a Monster from your last things what I liked list (or maybe last last). Great narrator too on the audible.
🙂
Things what I’ve loved as of late:
Fanfic by Ariaste (aka Alexandra Rowland), and their books as well.
I have a Rowland book in my NG queue which I am hoping to get to in the next, y’know *eyes NG queue* two or three hundred years?
Oh, I haven’t thought about Only a Monster on audio – I may investigate!
I fell down the Untamed fanfic rabbit hole. Hard. Hey we all do what we need to do to get through Covid. Rowland’s contributions are always my favs. They have a new book coming out and *ack* August is a long ways away.
Just listened to Prosperity again. Happy sigh. Ebullient and witty as the first time I read it.
I just finished Only A Monster and was really into it, too. And speaking of time feeling weird and “how is it 2022”, when they ended up in 1993, it did not register at all that they’d overshot their 20-year target until it was specifically pointed out in the dialogue 😂.
Are you absolutely certain that *you* are not Secretly the Spice Girls? [cocks an eyebrow]
Last month I binge-watched Is It Cake? It’s a reality show where people bake cakes that are hyper-realistic imitations of other objects. They succeed or fail on whether they fool the judges. Only if more than one cake fools the judges do things like how tasty the cake is come into play. I found it quite amusing and also learned a number of things about how that sort of cake is made. There’s an awful lot of fondant, and some of the things used for the details sound like they may not taste all that nice — for example, rice wafer paper sprayed with a substance that makes it drape like cloth, or gelatin that’s been made to look like plastic wrap — but it is all edible.
I’ve also been enjoying Polyordle, a website that lets you play as many Wordle-style boards simultaneously as you like — I like to play 21 or 24 boards at a time.
Finally, I quite liked The Gilded Ones, a modestly disturbing YA fantasy novel by Namina Forna. The gilded ones of the title are girls whose blood runs gold and have special powers that they need to use to defend the nation — or they will be killed. I enjoyed it and it made me think and I’m eager to read the recently-released second volume.
Happy summer one and all!
Lol when I saw that “Is It Cake?” is a show, I was like hang on I saw that on TV a few years ago, which, since I was living in Japan until recently, more specifically means I saw it on Japanese television haha.
A quick Google turned this up:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5aox7z
They did it several times so this isn’t the one I saw, but anyway pretty sure this inspired the American show?? If not that’s kind of a crazy coincidence lol~
I don’t usually like playing into the idea that Japan is ‘so weird’ or ‘crazy/wacky,’ but credit where credit is due?
I can neither confirm or deny if I am Secretly The Spice Girls.
I’ve seen Is It Cake advertised on Netflix but not quite got round to it (also I’m running out of the single month that accidentally rolled into 2 months because I forgot to cancel after I watched Bridgerton).
And thank you for the book rec – I don’t read a huge amount of YA, but ye Gods is that stuff dark these days!
There are some shows, like Poirot and Columbo, that I wish I had watched as a child, because they seem perfectly designed for nostalgia and I enjoy them now but never feel like I’m getting the full comfort-TV effect. Your description of Poirot and its repeating plots reminds me of when I went on a Moonlighting binge and noticed how many plots involve someone setting David and Maddie up to witness what looks like a suicide but is actually a murder (or in one case, what looks like a murder but is actually a suicide.)
I like the comparison to Clue (sorry, American!), and the other thing that comes to mind is cryptic crosswords, where it works perfectly fine as a logic exercise as long as you speak this specific language where some words always mean “anagram” and other words always mean “sounds like,” and it’s got all these very English references to the royal family and so on.
Oh (do we remember all the TV series of the 80s? 😂)! David and Maddie were absolutely crazy from the first second! 🙃
And, since part of my family (we will not name names!) had the same communication, my immersion in the interaction of this couple was (in childhood) complete)))
However, I did not want them to make up, kiss or get married. I wanted them to keep cursing and slamming doors. They did it best..
I feel exactly like that about Dr Who – since I grew up in a Doctorless void and now have none of the necessary nostalgia to enjoy even the reboots.
I think the cryptic crossword example is spot on – I think a lot of genre fiction comes down familiarity with the language (or the grammar, perhaps) of the genre fiction. And a lot of criticism of genre fiction involves kind of refusing to understand that these story elements convey particular meaning in context: essentially like people who complain that people singing in musicals is “unrealistic.” Like, yeah, obviously it is?
That comparison actually makes me feel a little more sympathetic to people who criticize genre fiction, if some of that hostility comes from feeling shut out by a set of conventions that you’re expected to be familiar with. I feel that way about musicals, actually. A lot of my friends are former theater kids, and they’re very into modern musicals. But the things they like are the pastichey, in-jokey kind of musicals, things like Urinetown, where the writers aren’t just using those tropes, they’re relying on you to be so familiar with them that you know immediately what’s being sent up. And since I can’t sing and wasn’t a theater kid and wasn’t exposed to musicals at a formative period of my life, it just makes me feel bored and vaguely grumpy, like I felt when I was in middle school and my friends sat me down and tried to make me play D&D.
Mon amie you have just described my entire relationship with Poirot. Sunday afternoon Poirot (and also Miss Marple) is a THING in my household. It falls under the category of “I might nap through this but I will mostly pay attention” category of our tv viewing. I think I have previously commented how my partner and I watch all the Agatha Christie adaptations – especially David Suchet Poirot. We are less methodical than you and jump around this series a lot because my partner likes the shorter episodes with Hastings and Japp and I’m all about the let’s all go to Egypt full length features. And I love that so many of these murders rely on no one seeing anyone for years or failing to identify someone in a disguise (how good are these disguises?)
I applaud your Pot Noodle rediscovery – the sodium levels make my old body seize but I remember them v. fondly. I think I loved chicken & mushroom but would probably like piri piri chicken now.
May was the month that I realized that at least where I live everyone is pretending we’re back to normal so work has been intensely stressful and frantic. But am looking forward to your Blue Willow event tomorrow and have just completely loved and adored A Lady for a Duke. Thank you <3
Honestly, I regularly fall asleep during Poirot but … which might be why I’ve managed to watch all of it? But the best thing about it is that you can wake up in times for the summation and Poirot helpfully explains the whole plot again 😉
Pot Noodle wise I am kind of digging the Bombay Bad Boy. But you can’t go wrong with ye traditional beef and tomato.
I’m finding the ‘pretending we’re back to normal’ bit of the pandemic really complicated. Because everyone is telling us we’re supposed to be back but normal but, blatantly, we’re not back to normal. Good luck with work though! And thank you for kind words about the event – I think I sounded even more discombobulated than usual!
Secretly the Spice Girls. Love it.
OK, motherforking May!
1) Not to kiss up to teacher, but your new website is soooooooo much better to read on mobile devices. Well done, Joelle!
2) That Aged Well. A podcast that pretty much does what it says on the tin. Two hosts discussing pop culture hits (film and tv) of the 80s and 90s. This has brought joy and sparkles to my life this month, and now I am aggressively pushing it on innocent bystanders at ever opportunity.
First I listened to the Sixteen Candles episode and laughed so hard I actually pig-snorted. Which would have been less embarrassing if I wasn’t on public transport at the time.
And the Dawson’s Creek episode.
And the Top Gun episode, my god, THE TOP GUN EPISODE!!!! Another instance of me embarrassing myself with tear-gasp-laughs in public. Ngl, more than a couple of times this month I was feeling a bit pissy and just jumped straight to the part in the episode where they discuss the volleyball scene (exactly at 40:00, you’re welcome), and it worked a charm.
Anyway. That Aged Well. Highly recommended to any fans of 80s and 90s pop culture, and/or of pig-snorting in public.
3) Re-reading SMU and following along as Becs and Dobbs read it for the first time! Lovelovelove seeing people discover this wonderful series. And talking books, there was also this duke book that came out that I really liked.
4) Non-humble-brag: holding a handstand for a minute on my (x-tieth) birthday while my kids counted down the seconds made me feel a sense of pointless accomplishment, and there’s nothing I enjoy more than a sense of pointless accomplishment!
Oh god Kathleen, I’m gonna need to listen to that podcast since the 80s and 90s were MY TIME. Sounds like it’s super sarcastic? That’s my kind of humor!
Snarky and sarcastic but the love (or hate) also shines through. Hope you like it!!
I mean, I don’t think you’re really kissing up to teacher so much as kissing up to Joelle (which you might have to check with her wife about). But, yes, she’s done an absolutely amazing job and I love it. Even the blog is easier to comment on! Don’t get me wrong, the old website was beautiful but … I had outgrown it so that made navigating it an absolute pig.
Okay but … that podcast sounds amazing. Thank you so much for telling me about it – some of it is not quite my time but the 90s stuff is hitting me right in the confused nostalgia feels.
I’m so glad you’re enjoying your SMU re-visit – I’ve really enjoyed your book-by-book reviews on GR. I know there was a part where I stopped reading that series due to Too Many Feels but I need to finish it off.
Also I don’t think I’ve been able to do a handstand since the late 90s.
Oh, my wife would pop some corn. 😉 hehe!
Thank you! 🙂 🙂
I loved Poirot as a kid. It’s my comfort watch now. They are so beautiful especially the earlier ones. Every shot is perfectly composed and balanced like in old noir films. I definitely fantasized about growing up and living in an Art Deco apartment like Poirot’s complete with a silver boutonnière vase to wear everywhere.
For May, I’ve done a dive into Vera. Not as cozy-mystery as Poirot, but I love a curmudgeon and the setting is spectacular. The landscape and views of the sea and sky are breathtaking. It’s a great escape.
I keep getting recommended Vera but I’ve never watched it – I think I was worried it might be secretly a bit gritty, I mean the sky is VERY grey on the splash art. I am just not in a place to cope with gritty rn. But I might approach it cautiously on the back of your rec.
Also oh my God, Poirot’s apartment is exquisite.
I’d say Vera is maybe an extra spoonful of sand more than Midsommer on the gritty scale. But no where near a Wallander. Maybe more like a George Gently.
I totally get needing comfort tv. I think I may like Vera cause I like seeing an older woman who is far from perfect cutting through the bullshit to catch the culprit. I guess that’s a comfort.
Ok, Poirot.
There are things (?) in this adaptation that I like and things I don’t. I mean first impression.
But, during the pandemic (that is, most recently), I also reviewed all the seasons. And for some of the episodes – so be it 🙂 ready to forgive everything. Even “oh my god” moments)
For example, in my opinion, this is the best film adaptation of “Death on the Nile”. The victim-killer-killer triangle of actors was casted perfectly.
But with the comic Poirot, it seems to me, the writers went too far. When you read Agatha, he looks like a peculiar, but in general, rather a tragic character – a person has lived half his life in a foreign country, speaking a foreign language, with the stigma of a foreigner on his forehead, no family, friends have their own lives and sooner or later everyone leaves him .. Work is his only passion .. and for this passion we love him. As well as for the number of deaths in his circle of friends. Honestly. It’s not even funny. As a child, it seemed to me that in England murder is the most common thing, and on he is invited to stare, as if for tea. 😂
Based on the sheer amount of detective shit we produce, TV England is probably the most dangerous country in the world. In fact, I think statistically, the most dangerous place in all fiction is explicitly the English village of Midsommer (from a long-running detective series set in basically 1 tiny village that is STILL RUNNING and has had about a murder a week for the last decade).
In terms of the characterisation of Poirot, it’s a funny one … I think different versions of the Suchet Poirot bring out different aspects of the character. Like, for example, the version of Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express is genuinely conflicted and struggles with, you know, complicated questions about justice. Whereas some of the earlier versions are a bit more lol.
Have you seen the John Malkovich Poirot, from the fairly recent ABC Murders, which very much doubles down on the displaced immigrant aspect of the character.
I have, of course, watched Midsomer Murders (talking about falling asleep while watching a TV series). True, I watched it in Russian translation. Maybe there were sparkling dialogues) but I missed it
By the way, the name of the series was translated as “English Murders”. So yes, peaceful villages populated by bloody killers are the second thing England is famous for after a queen.
And I believe in it) I have to. It is night and the woman in whose house I live in London is watching a horror movie. I can hear the screams of the victims even on the second floor))
On both named things with Poirot – no, I did not look. Yes, I knew about them. But I wasn’t sure if it was worth watching. The list of what I will need to watch and read “once” is getting longer)
I have never had Pot Noodles, but I recently discovered Mike’s Mighty Good Craft Ramen, which as the name clearly implies, is actually pretty good. It comes in a microwaveable sodium filled cup as well, but it’s ORGANIC noodles, so it is not at all bad for you.
For books, per your suggestion (um, not to me PERSONALLY), I read The Romantic Agenda and it keeps occupying this place in my brain since I read it a few weeks ago. One, I had never read a book with an openly asexual protagonist, so that was enlightening (and the author shone a light in such a great way), but perhaps even more was two, the relationship with Fox was just so damn cozy (and funny). I mean, the hammock stuff, come on! It makes me realize I should definitely have more long hugs/snuggling in my life.
And music – I’m kind of obsessed with the song “Imagining My Man” by Aldous Harding, on the Party album. It’s from 2017, but it’s new to me. It’s kind of creepy beautiful, but it’s just the right amount of creepy and very dramatic and emotional and very much an anthem. The whole album is good.
Thanks for the monthly blog party!
Oh people falling in love with The Romantic Agenda makes me so happy – I think I sometimes care about that book more than I care about my own, which is weird. It’s such a deeply romantic and intimate book – and funny too.
I did attempt to try a more virtuous type of pot noodle but it was just unpleasant. I think maybe Pot Noodles are sort of like McDonalds in that they’re kind of gross but gross in just the right kind of way, which means if you try another of a similar level of grossness that is not McDonalds (like Burger King) you fall into an uncanny valley of grossness.
And I’m listening to Imagining My Man now … you are so right, it’s incredible beautiful/creepy. I wish there was a single word to encompass that idea. Creepiful?
I had to comment just to see what colour came up.
sorry/not sorry
It’s super cool isn’t it? 😀
I really wish I could watch British TV here because the Circle with Spice Girls sounds right up my alley. And I adore your website, as I’ve said a bunch of times now! Hope you’re getting a good response!!
My May started with a week in Palm Springs for our anniversary lounging & reading by the pool. It’s a 2 hour drive from Los Angeles and is the hot summery desert and is easy to travel to and relaxing. I read 3 books! But in the shade of course because I burn in about 10 minutes.
For TV I really enjoyed Julia on HBO MAX starring Sarah Lancashire. The cast is fantastic (Bebe Neuwirth plays her bestie) and it shows the origins of her TV show. She was a true pioneer because there were literally no cooking shows on TV before hers, which is amazing to think about! And she’s charming and they show lots of cooking and yummy food. It’s such a great story.
Also, I’m obsessed with Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney+, which started in May and is still going on. It takes place between the prequels and A New Hope and since there is so much Star Wars history you don’t have to learn any new storylines, worlds or characters. It fills in a lot of gaps and shows the origins of the Darth Vadar / Obi-Wan tension. Ewan McGregor and the VFX are fantastic. It’s only 6 episodes, but I could easily watch 20.
I think you like Star Wars? Or at least Ardy does, so I recommend it! 😉
An American friend was telling me about the Circle and Secretly the Spice Girls so I believe we have access!
Oh! I probably should have checked first before saying that. Look at that global entertainment. 😉 Thanks!
Aye, it’s on Netflix! Hehehe.
Happy Anniversary – there’s nothing more satisfying than a good lounge/reading binge. I’ve seen Julia pop up on various streaming services, but I confess with the general … everythingness of the universe haven’t ever quite got round to it.
I’m kind of broadly okay with Star Wars? Like, I’m not a massive fan, but I don’t super hate it either. I’ve kind of lost of track now it’s gone Disneyified just because it got really designed by committee – I did watch the first season of the Mandalorian and I enjoyed seeing sides of the Star Wars that weren’t all Jedis and Sith but I’m not sure how committed I am to watching multiple Stars Wars themed TV shows.
Thanks! And Totally fair. I guess I’m kind of a big fan and know way too much about it, although I do not enjoy the bros fandom. 😖
I just listened to your Blue Willow interview with great enjoyment. What you said about being able to sell books on spec now—”instead of writing a book and then trying to sell it, you sell a book and then try to write it”—sounds slightly terrifying! Has it changed the experience of writing for you? I’m reminded a bit of what George said to Ardy about how the thing you fall in love with doing can end up being very different from what attracted you to it in the first place.
Oh gosh, tbh I’ve been selling books on pitch for a while – I moved to that model as soon as I could. I know it doesn’t work for some authors, and that’s totally fine and reasonable. For me, though, I find it a lot less terrifying than writing an ENTIRE BOOK that I then can’t sell and goes nowhere. I do have a couple of those on my hard-drive and they made me intensely sad, especially since one of them is one of my favourite things that I’ve written.
The thing is, I usually have a decent notion where the market is, especially in romance, but sometimes I like to see how far I can push it … I think I’d take fewer risks if I had to write a whole book before I could see if anyone wanted it. But this way, I can write 10-20k of some arrant weirdness and try my luck.
Thank you for the kind words about Blue Willow – I love doing those events, and Cathy is the loveliest, but I find them kind of nerve-wracking.
Had a brief crisis as I couldn’t think of anything I’d enjoyed (‘what have I liked? Can I even feel joy? AM I REAL?’ that kinda thing) but I have thought of a couple…
1. Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake (a love story about 2 people dealing with different mental conditions, on the literary side of things which usually I’m meh about but I loved this book!). I also finally jumped on the Atlas Six bandwagon and enjoyed it a lot (a dark academia Kingsman, basically).
2. The fact I have managed to work my annual leave around the bank holidays in such a way I didn’t work any full weeks this month. Huzzah!
3. Chocolate hobnobs. I go in biscuit phases, now is the time of the hobnobs. Man those things can hold a dunk.
Really clutching at straws here. There’ll be more joy in June…hopefully.
Ack, I’m so sorry you’ve had a slightly joy-denuded. I think part of the reason I’ve kept doing this posts is that it can be weirdly reassuring to think back over the month and remember what made me happy. But it can also feel a bit grim if nothing springs to mind.
I am a huge fan of Olivie Blake: I mean, I know she already has a massive following and I’m late to the party but I adored The Atlas Six and I just finished My Mechanical Romance, which I found deeply endearing (and very sound on physics and robotics). Clearly I need to also read Alone With You in the Ether.
Plus you can’t go wrong with a hobnob. Hobnobs make everything better. Especially tea.
I just freaking love how she basically hacked the publishing game. So proud even though I do not know her at all 😂. She has a great interview she did at the Edinburgh Caves up on YouTube actually where she explains how agents didn’t want Ether at first because it was a ‘mental illness book’ oh publishing. (Publishing = the most toxic relationship any of us will ever be in 🤣.)
Ahh I love survival games! Thanks for the rec 🙂 Adding V Rising to my Steam wishlist, and will be buying it when it goes on sale~~ (I assume this one has no romance as well??)
Tho there is something hilariously incongruous about a vampire stooping to cutting down trees, etc. Kind of dampens the aesthetic😂😂😂
Ok and I love The Circle!
The stakes of The Circle being fairly low is such a good point. Like I struggle with, for example, Love is Blind because the stakes (getting engaged/married in such a short period) are so ridiculously high…for no reason?? Like they could just be dating and get engaged at the end and idk that it would change the format of the show??? The crazy high stakes can make it like…nerve-wracking rather than entertaining for me :p
Anyway, you’ve reminded me that I need to catch up with the current season – I got to where the Spice Girls show up and then got side tracked. Sounds absolutely hilarious~
Have you watched the Circle France? As someone who spoke French in a former lifetime, watching French people being idiosyncratically French and learning current slang was supremely entertaining.
Michelle Buteau who hosts the American iteration is also one of my favorite comedians and I got to see her in NYC this fall, which was amazing! Def recommend her stand up, if stand up is of general interest to you~
Speaking of reality TV, I kind of fell into watching Geordie shore recently.
😅🙃It was spurred on by a stay at my sister’s and a lot of difficulty on agreeing what to watch, but then I went on to kind of binge the first three seasons on my own…hmm this happened to me last winter with TOWIE as well. Geordie Shore is even more chaotic and has even more overt/rampant misogyny…and is in general just so…batsh*t?
I suppose it’s like when you can’t look away from a car crash??? But I still like…sincerely love Charlotte….
Yeah. I’m not gonna get into my thoughts on Geordie Shore because I’m sure I’m not going to say anything new about a show from 2012, but I’m more just like, bemused that that was my life for a couple of weeks……
Lastly, I mentioned this on Goodreads, but need to gush a bit more about Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses, which was the central text to my sort-of-not-really-master’s-thesis. It’s framed as creative writing pedagogy, but I just think it’s also so illuminating for how we read as well and I strongly encourage anyone interested to pick it up!! I like…feel kind of like I’ve seen the Matrix and I keep wanting to be like, hey..everyone…you know we’re in the (literary) Matrix, right? And I’m not sure everyone in my courses is appreciating that lol😅
Basically, the point is kind of that craft ie the rules of writing/what makes ‘good’ writing is cultural. In particular Americans really only learn one literary tradition and problematically learn it either as the *only* literary tradition or superior to other traditions. Even when reading in translation, etc., texts are still held to this monolithic/single standard (or like one idea of narrative structure). And in teaching writing, with the traditional (Iowa/American) workshop model we sort of demand everyone write to a single (white, cis, straight, non-disabled, often male) audience. As Salesses poignantly puts it: “You own your story but not how you get to tell it or whom you get to tell it to. Your story must be framed so that the majority can read via their own lens.”
Many of us who write have probably heard the adage, “You have to learn the rules to break them,” but Salesses points out, *who’s* rules do we mean when we say this?
Idk I’m trying not to go on and on (and failing miserably), but just like finding something that bridged my two fields/passion for cultural studies and writing/lit meant so much to me. For anyone who wants a taste, these Notes on Craft are an excerpt from the book:
https://lithub.com/25-essential-notes-on-craft-from-matthew-salesses/
It was so lovely to get to hear you speak on Saturday~
(Don’t tell my professor that’s the ‘meeting’ I had to leave class early for🤫😂)
Looking forward to hopefully getting to do so again in August😊
Ah, thank you so much for your kind words about the Blue Willow event – I get pretty nervous but Cathy is the loveliest.
Sadly no romance in V Rising, unless you count the multiplayer elements which means you’re shouting at your partner to, you know, get out the sun or chop more wood or help you with a fucking bear, goddamn it.
I did better with the first season of Love is Blind than the second, perhaps because of novelty, but also because there were at least two couples that didn’t seem to be, uh, literally destroying each other? I missed the Cameron/Lauren effect in S2 and found it a lot more stressful, especially because I was seriously worried for Deepti (kind of telling her HEA was, uh, herself?). But I totally agree with you The Circle feels a lot … well. Just easier to deal with. I think it helps that everyone knows the deal before they go in? I mean, people get hurt sometimes, but mostly they’re good sports about everything.
I haven’t seen the French version but I have watched a bit of the UK incarnation: although having said it was generally a nice show, the first season of the UK is genuinely unpleasant. Like people play super mean and there’s a very real sense of betrayal (although I do think the winner deserved to win, and didn’t actually cross any lines). S2 is a lot softer and has some sweethearts in it.
I confess I was super into TOWIE back in the day: those kind of staged reality (is that even a thing) TV shows are super compelling to me. There’s like a posh version of the formula, too, called Made in Chelsea which contrives to be even more obnoxious (as you can probably imagination). I only watched a bit of Geordie Shore, despite having every reason to be into it, but slightly bounced off because of the slightly more … err … troubling gender dynamics.
And thank you again for mentioning the Salesses book: I grabbed it after your comments on GR 🙂
I love your love of murder mysteries. You may have already read and loved these, but have you read Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodies?
They are transcendent. I haven’t watched the tv series, so I can’t comment on theirs, but the books are remarkably smart and kind. I wept at the end of Big Sky—for the end of the series, for the power of the words, for the way the books and Brodie circled back on themselves.
Oh wow, thank you for the rec. I haven’t read them. I … I’m kind of embarrassed to admit, I actually watch more murder than TV than I read murder books, but it’s more about time/opportunity than a real choice.
Those are so good! I’m guessing you already know about Tana French?
Also, I just read Cat Sebastian’s two Page books, Hither Page and The Missing Page, and I was very surprised and impressed by how well she does the postwar village mystery novel thing. I was expecting them to feel like romance novels with a vaguely mystery-ish plot, but instead they felt like classic mysteries that I had somehow overlooked until now.
So the last couple of months have been especially… interesting… in America (cue manic laughter), so the things I liked have been more like coping mechanisms or self-soothing, but whatever works I guess.
It’s also effectively Summer here, which means heat, humidity, and mosquitos. Possibly the only redeeming thing about this time of year for me is baseball, which I can watch from home, in the air conditioning.
In my bid to avoid reality, I’ve been swinging between binging rom-coms and other lighter romances (and one particularly lovely hist-rom 😉) and bonkers fantasy. And there have been some awesome fantasy releases this Spring: Book of Night, Fevered Star, SIREN QUEEN (!), Nettle & Bone, Seasonal Fears.
Murder mysteries have become the go-to diplomatic viewing choice when I’m with my family and we’re currently working on Death in Paradise (not my favorite, but fairly fun). I’ve only seen a bit of Poirot, but I’m sure we’ll get there eventually since we’ve been through most of the big ones. Yeah, certain things can get repetitive, but that can be fun in a comforting way. And then occasionally you get one of those where you’re sure you’ve spotted the solution or the hole in the story and they throw you a curveball, which can be fun in its own way.
Finally, I’ve kind of been having fun doing some online courses to (hopefully) prep for a masters program in the near future. I’m mainly working on refreshing old math skills and acquiring a few new ones. I did genuinely enjoy a lot of this subject matter back in the day and it’s interesting to find some of it still there, just buried, but my mid-30’s-after-a-pandemic brain also kind of feels like mashed potato a lot of the time and I don’t remember it taking this much effort the first time around. Fingers crossed those creaky wheels start moving again, lol.
I feel like coping and self-soothing has been my modus operandi for at least the last two years. Part of the reason I read so much is … actual escapism. All of those fantasy books are on my own tbr, apart from the two I’ve read obviously, being Book of Night and SIREN QUEEN, which I want … like … everyone in the world to fall obsessively in love with.
It’s weird isn’t it? The way shows about, uh, murder of all things can feel so comforting/neutral. I think it might come back to that old adage about traditional English detective stories (as opposed to the American hardboiled tradition) essentially offering a microcosm of an ordered, rational universe, where problems occur and are resolved by a slightly abstract figure of social righteousness.
Best of luck with the courses (and future masters applications!!) – I’m sure it’s just a question of, err, unmashing your brain which will happen naturally over time as it remembers how to be used that way.
I love hearing what everyone has enjoyed!
Starting with what I enjoyed in April (yes, I’m late, it’s my perpetual condition)…
1) Finally got to see the Ukrainian band DakhaBrakha live, in Chicago. It was wonderful! There is no full tape of that particular concert, but there is an excellent video of another concert in the same tour series on Youtube. Link is https://youtu.be/o88sTCmJlb4 – I’m not sure the comments section will allow links (with good reason) so if that does not come through, please go to Youtube and search for DakhaBrakha – Full Performance (Live on KEXP) 2022.
This band is unique. They describe their genre as “ethnic chaos.” It’s based on Ukrainian folk songs but … it’s not exactly like anything I’ve ever heard. And I love it!
My sweetie and I have been wanting to see them live for years, but COVID got in the way. Our trip down to Chicago was our first major outing since COVID — in fact, since longer than that. I must say that planning a three-hour drive to Chicago (and a two-day stopover) began to feel like an expedition to Antarctica! Gah, we’re getting old. Speaking of which, is anyone else old enough to remember when the way you paid on a toll road was to drive through and through a bunch of coins into a sort of “basket?” When did they change that anyway?!? Now it’s all done electronically and you pay on-line. Future shock!
2) I read Rachel Hartman’s In the Serpent’s Wake, the second book in her Tess of the Road series. First, though, I had to go back and read the first book, Tess of the Road. I have enjoyed her books a lot. But lest this be like one of Ducky’s book reviews (“Ducky liked this book!), here’s some more detail.
After I read both books, I looked at the reviews on Amazon and found that a number of folks didn’t like them at all. A lot of those reviews seemed to be, “It wasn’t what I was expecting.” (Apparently they were expecting a light-hearted girl-centric fantasy adventure, with a big sky dragon like on the cover of the first book.)
Both of these books are very much “about an issue” books, and the first one is not at all light-hearted in the first part. In fact it was really hard reading. It’s about the oppression of women and our protagonist starts out utterly miserable, angry, self-hating and even suicidal. I have never been as unhappy as she is, and it’s been years since I even came close, but I found it hard to get through that part of the book. However, the next parts definitely are about how “it gets better,” and those I enjoyed very much. Although it did occur to me that while running away from home to find herself works wonderfully for Tess, it might not be such a good idea for many modern-day kids.
Also, there is no big sky dragon like on the cover. There are several other kinds of dragon, though.
The second book I liked a lot. Its big themes are … hm… colonialism, racism (in the context of a very different world), and the difficulties of learning to be an ally. Basically, in book 1, Tess sets out to become the hero of her own story, and in Book 2, she learns how problematical it can be to try to be the hero of someone else’s story. This book has more of an ensemble cast. The moral appears to be “let’s learn how to be each other’s sidekicks instead of always being heroes.” I liked this idea!
Oh wow, thank you for the mini music and book reviews, although Ducky would very much defend “Ducky likes this book” as a both a quantitative and qualitative metric of value. I confess Tess of the Road might be a bit too much for me in my current post-pandemic-oh-fuck-the-world-is-on-fire state. But I very much appreciate your take on the books!
No disrespect meant to Ducky! It’s just that as a reviewer much less, erm, *stellar* than Ducky, it behooves me to explain a bit about why I liked the books.
You might enjoy the earlier series by Rachel Hartman, “Seraphina” & “Shadow Scale.” They’re set in the same (quite interesting) fantasy world & follow Tess’s older half-sister Seraphina. And they have lots of dragons (and half-dragons). It’s been a while since I read them; I recall them as less difficult. Also, all her books are queer-friendly (mostly in the minor characters). The world itself is not so friendly – yes in some ways, no in others, much like our own – but interestingly different.
Hey! I like your website, too! 🙂 Seriously, though, I’m thrilled you like it. It’s one of my favorites in a long while and you are a dream to work with. Drop me a line if you ever need me. Or just because!
I mean, I’d be super worried if you didn’t like your own work 😉 I know I’ve told you this so often you’re probably bored of hearing it now, but you did an absolutely wonderful job – and as you can see the website is working WONDERFULLY. I mean, people are commenting just to see what colour they show up as 🙂
You too were a dream to work with – seriously, you were so responsive, supportive and communicative as well as providing all this *waves arms around* wonder. I mean, my last website lasted about a decade, which was probably a couple of years too long after … so y’know I’ll be in touch when the next evolution of the internet occurs. Or when something breaks. Or, as you said, just because 😉