Reading

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Friday open thread: earliest experiences using the internet

This is my second time taking a December talking meme prompt and using it for a Friday open thread. Today's prompt comes from

thatjustwontbreak and is: talk about your earliest experiences using the internet and how it felt to you.

( They looked towards the sun, and walked into the sky )

I imagine it won't be as ... so much as all that, but what about you? How do you define your first time using the internet, and what did it feel like?

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We were all there in the morning — we were there and we wanted to stay

I don't normally do standalone book reviews these days, but a recent read was so extraordinary, so overwhelming, and just so unbelievably good at what its author was trying to do that I found myself haunted by it even before I'd read its final page. I reread it five times in succession this week, unable to pick up anything else: that's how much it got its claw into me.

( More behind the cut )

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Intention paths

Today's December talking meme prompt is from

edwardianspinsteraunt and it is: places which have had the greatest impact on you as a person, or which you strongly associate with a particular period in your life.

I think it will surprise no one to discover that I'm someone who feels a lot of intense feelings about specific landscapes and places, so when I saw this prompt, I felt a) very enthusiastic and b) a bit daunted, as there are so many places I could talk about here! So I've decided — to keep things manageable — to limit this to one type of place per decade of my life.

( Cities and oceans )

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The sea sighed, and kept its secrets

Today's December talking meme prompt is from

yarnofariadne, and it's a great one: favourite folktale or fairytale, and why.

I like folktales about crossing places, and moving between one state and another, and above all women transformed, and I feel a very intense set of feelings about the sea, so it probably surprises no one that my absolute favourite folktale of all is the story of the Selkie Bride, in all its variants.

It's a hard story, and a cruel story: at its heart it has such a monstrous violation — the selkie woman, trapped on land, in human form, and in marriage by a man who steals and hides her sealskin — and the resolution is cruel, too, since although the woman regains her freedom and her shapeshifting ability, she has to part with her land-born children as a consequence. (The touch in many variants of the story — that the woman's youngest child is the one to discover the hidden sealskin and innocently gives its existence and location away to the trapped mother — is just the final, brutal twist of the knife.)

(It feels gauche to link to my own fic here, but I've tried so many times to write stories that grasp at what it feels like for those children in the aftermath, standing on the shore, and my AO3 account has many variations on this theme, plus stories for other fandoms that are essentially 'woman has emotions triggered by, about, and near body of water.' It's my very, very favourite thing to write.)

What I love about this folktale in particular is how it's all about the relationship between people who live at the water's edge, and the sea that lives beside them, and about the way those watery tideline places have a sense of liminality and blurred boundaries, and that the beings of the sea, and the humans on land can sometimes cross over, in both directions. The sea sustains those coastal communities, but it can also be violent, unpredictable, and dangerous. It gives and takes, but remains fundamentally unknowable.

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Absence, sweet absence

This weekend ended up being a lot less eventful than originally planned, due to the combination of the week-long slow build-up to a cold finally descending with a vengeance upon me, and the relentlessly rainy weather (it's currently pouring). Other than a quick trip out to the market for food truck lunch and mulled wine yesterday, therefore, I've mainly been ensconced in the house, watching a film (The Killer, the absolute definition of style over substance in which a contract killer in Paris baulks at killing an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire of a hired hit job, and things spiral from there), reading, editing Yuletide fic, and watching biathlon.

( This week's reading )

I have another talking meme prompt for today, this one from

vriddy: an anecdote involving an animal or pet.

( This is a very Australian story )

I do also have a bunch of stored up links, but I think I might leave that for a later post. I hope everyone's been having nice weekends!

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Friday open thread: books that changed the way you read

This week's prompt is my sneaky way of getting a two-for-one deal when it comes to Friday open threads plus December talking meme, and was suggested by

morbane: talk about a book that changed the way you read books.

( My answer )

Do any of you have books that changed the way you read, for any reason?

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Weaving the threads of the sky

This was my first full weekend back home after returning from Australia, and it was very much a return to normality in the best possible way. Yesterday rained on and off (the BBC weather website, which always errs on the side of apocalyptic, had been making dire warnings, but in the end there were just a few short bursts of heavy rain), unfortunately coinciding with the times I was walking to the gym, to the library, and home. Today was clear, still, and bitterly cold.

While I was struggling through my first fitness classes in the three weeks (today, my arms and legs ache), Matthias was struggling through the rain to pick up this year's Christmas wreathe, which is now hanging on the front door, bright with happy bursts of red berries. Other than those morning excursions, we spent the remainder of Saturday indoors, with the biathlon on in the background, grazing, and drinking Australian coffee (me) and Australia tea (Matthias).

Saturday night films are back on the agenda with a bang: The Menu, a blackly comedic horror film about a small group of people transported to an isolated island for an exclusive degustation menu with a celebrated chef, who end up getting a lot more than they bargained for. Horror is not my first-choice genre, but this was excellent and very, very clever (if not at all subtle). As well as the constant threat of violence, the true horror of the story is the characters unmoored and bewildered by the excruciating situation of social conventions overturned. ( Possibly spoilerish? )

This morning I walked through the chilly stillness of the morning to the pool, which was uncharacteristically empty for a Sunday morning: I had the fast lane to myself for the entire 1km swim, which has never, ever happened to me. That good start seemed to set me up for the day, which mostly involved working on the first of my planned Yuletide treats, interspersed with yoga, and a walk along the river with Matthias.

The evening promises cosy cooking, and cosy TV: the perfect close to a great couple of days.

I'll finish this post with a couple of fannish events whose sign-up periods are closing soon.

The first is the reccing event that

goodbyebird is running:

Welcome to Rec-Cember, the month long multi-fandom reccing event. Let's recommend some fanworks! Let's appreciate and comment on those fanworks!

rec_cember . intro . sign ups

Sign-ups close today.

Second is

fandomtrees, the multifandom gift fest that runs over the end of this year and the start of the next. The sign-up post is here, and you have until 5 December to sign up.