pedanther

. I didn't write a full journal entry all week. Fortunately, my habit of making brief notes about my day is solidly ingrained, so I still had something to work from for this blog post. ( Read more... )


. At the board game club, we played Bomb Busters again. We got through three missions, completing two successfully on the first attempt and requiring a second attempt for one after I lost track of one of the conditions and blew everyone up by cutting a wire that I was incorrectly certain was safe.


. This week, I read a couple of the short children's books that have been lurking unread on my shelves for longer than I can remember (though probably not since I was a child myself; I'm pretty sure both are books I picked up from secondhand book sales). ( Read more... ) The Island on Bird Street was my September pick for the Randomize Your TBR reading challenge; Jacob Two-Two didn't fit any of the pending challenges, I just saw it on the shelf and decided it would make a nice break from the kind of thing I'd been reading lately.


. During the time that my immediate precursors were occupying this house, the bathroom was remodelled and new fittings installed. ( Read more... ) There's something about that which feels emblematic of the modern world we live in.


. I nearly managed to finish my latest jigsaw puzzle in under a week - I've been catching up on a lot of podcasts lately - but last night I found myself with three spaces left in the puzzle and three leftover pieces which each seemed to be the right shape and colour for a space but didn't... quite... fit. ( Read more... )


. On Tumblr, there was a poll asking "What is the longest book series you've read?" My first thought was the Liaden series, currently at 27 novels with at least one more on the way. Then I remembered that I've read the entire Discworld series from beginning to end, and that's 40+ novels depending on how you count them. And then I recalled that I've done the same with the Doctor Who New Adventures, which is just over 60 novels. So far I haven't thought of anything else longer than that.


. From the CinemaStix youtube channel, a two-part video essay on the making of the movie Gladiator, with a focus on how much the key through-lines of the story were constructed in production and post-production: part 1 is about the script and part 2 is about the editing. One of the things covered in part 2 is how they rearranged the final act of the movie to cover for the untimely death of one of the actors, something that was achieved so successfully that, although I knew it had happened, it had never occurred to me until I watched this to wonder what his character would have done differently if the actor had survived.

1. Shortly after I moved into this house, I noticed that one of the washing lines (there's a set of five, strung in parallel) was looking significantly frayed at the end and was probably going to give way sooner or later. Then I had a look at the other end and realised that each line is on a reel, so that if it breaks you just have to release the tensioner widget and pull some more line out, so I decided to not worry about it until it happened. Well, last week it happened (while I was in the middle of hanging out laundry -- who would have guessed that the time it snapped would be when it was having weight put on it?), so after the laundry had dried and been put away I set about figuring out how to operate the tensioner widget. It took some figuring out (by my count, I unscrewed at least three things that didn't need to be unscrewed at all), but in the end I had restrung the broken line, as well as a couple of others that were beginning to look frayed, and as a bonus had adjusted the tension on all the lines, and it felt like enough of an achievement that I wanted to record it somewhere.


2. At the Rep Club, our big musical for this year is 9 to 5, the musical of the film of the Dolly Parton song. (If you know the song, I'm playing the man from the line "I swear sometimes that man is out to get me".) It's going to be a lot of fun if it comes together; we're currently at the "four weeks, you rehearse and rehearse; three weeks, and it couldn't be worse" stage.


3. Speaking of musicals, the local high school that does a musical every year or two is currently doing The Wizard of Oz (the version that's adapted from the 1939 film). I'm not sure if it's the first musical production they've done since the lockdown, or if I've ignored some in the intervening time because I felt it was too soon to be sitting in a crowded auditorium for several hours, but anyway it's the first one of theirs I've been to since last time I mentioned I'd been to one. There was the usual range of talents on show for a student production, with Dorothy and Scarecrow being the strongest performers, and the kid who played both the Munchkin Coroner ("not only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead") and the Winkie Captain standing out among the smaller roles. The guy playing the Wizard did pretty good characterisation, but wasn't so good on the vocal projection (and for some reason, even though all the main players were miked, nothing was done to make his voice more impressive when he was doing the Great and Powerful routine). Their version of the disappearing-reappearing ruby slippers wasn't as slick as the version in the last production I saw of this show, about a decade ago, but it was pretty good. I had a good time.

3a. One thing I used to enjoy doing at these shows, that I didn't get to do this time, was spot the cast members I knew from performances at the annual performing arts festival. The performing arts festival hasn't been held since the lockdown, and I suspect there isn't going to be another one any time soon, because the two most load-bearing members of the organising committee have separately become too occupied with other commitments.


4. I was on the fringes of the solar eclipse last month. Around the time when Exmouth was experiencing totality, I went out into the garden with a pinhole viewer and got a good look at the moon covering about half the sun -- but if you didn't know there was an eclipse on, and were just going about your day, you probably wouldn't have noticed anything. It was a bit less bright than you might expect for a cloudless midday, but that was all.


5. I mentioned back when Dracula Daily was finishing up that I was trying to decide whether it would be a good idea to re-read Anno Dracula, Kim Newman's Dracula-meets-Jack-the-Ripper novel, while the details were still fresh, or if that would just lead to me spending a lot of time complaining about things Newman changed or got wrong. In the end, I decided instead to read The Five, Hallie Rubenhold's non-fiction book about what the standard Jack the Ripper myth doesn't tell you about his victims. I have a feeling that this means there are even more parts of Anno Dracula that would make me complain about things Newman changed or got wrong, but I think it was the right choice.

5a. Rapid-fire reading challenge update: November (a book with "ING" in the title) - Ingathering: The Complete People Stories by Zenna Henderson; December (a book with a number in the title) - The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett; January (a book you wanted to read last year and didn't get to) - Deathless Gods by PC Hodgell; February (a book by an author you love) - The Sandman: Overture by Neil Gaiman; March (a historical or epic book) - The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa; April (a book about rain or weather) - Winds of Evil by Arthur Upfield; May (a book about emergencies, panics, or escapes) - the first couple of volumes of Spy x Family by Tatsuya Endo.

Fiction books
Sarah Gailey. River of Teeth (e)
Terry Pratchett. The Fifth Elephant (e) (re-read)
Cat Sebastian. The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (e)

In progress
Alexandre Dumas. The Count of Monte Cristo (e) (re-read)
Robert Louis Stevenson. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (e) (re-read)
CN & AM Williamson. The Lightning Conductor (e)

Picture books
Kathryn Otoshi. Zero
Lynne Truss, Bonnie Timmons. Twenty-Odd Ducks

Non-fiction books
Simon Bucher-Jones. The Black Archive: Image of the Fendahl (e)

In progress
AC Grayling. The Good Book
Hallie Rubenhold. The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (e)

( short, screen, and stage )
( books bought and borrowed )

Top of the to-read pile
William Shakespeare, ed. GR Hibbard. The Oxford Shakespeare Hamlet

Our next production is Ladies in Black, an Australian musical that debuted a few years ago (just before covid came along and limited its prospects for becoming more widely known). I wasn't planning to do two musicals back-to-back, but as usual there was a shortage of men willing and able to sing, so I got roped in. I'm playing the male half of the main romantic subplot, which is a change from my usual (character roles and, in Alan Rickman's phrase, "very interesting people"), and has been taking me into new territory. The rehearsal period has been a bit crunched because of the way the Rock of Ages season was extended, but we had our final dress rehearsal/preview last night and were pleased and relieved to discover that, while there are still some rough patches, we do indeed have a show.

At work, I haven't maintained my focus to the same remarkable level, but it's still pretty good. As I got back into things after the covid isolation, what I've been noticing is the way it's affected by how much else I have on my mind (for instance, it's taken a dip just lately because a lot of my spare time and brainpower has been focussed on preparing for the opening of Ladies in Black). That seems kind of obvious, now that I say it, but it's not something I was really consciously aware of before in the same way.

My complaint about not having anyone to share my The Sandman experience with has had a happy epilogue: I was catching up with my brother on the weekend, and he mentioned that he's also watching The Sandman and, as it turned out, was up to exactly the point I'd been up to when I was most miffed about not having anybody to talk to about what it was like to be up to that point. So we got to have a long conversation about what we thought of it so far.

I was all set to say that I think I might be done with this set of monthly reading challenges, having whiffed June, July and August, but then I checked my reading log and discovered that in fact I've completed the August challenge entirely by accident: the challenge was "a book with an object in the title", and I happened across The Witch's Vacuum Cleaner and other stories at the library and decided to give it a go without remembering about the challenge. The challenge for September is "a book with LIGHT or DARK in the title", so we'll see how this goes.

The Witch's Vacuum Cleaner and other stories is one of a series of collections reprinting the short stories Terry Pratchett wrote very early in his career for the children's section of his local newspaper. They're trifles, but they're amusing and they have their clever moments. It was also fun spotting the first appearance of ideas that he revisited later on: there's a story in this collection that uses a version of the premise of Johnny and the Dead, and another which is unmistakeably a complete miniature version of the plot of Truckers (and even has some of the same jokes).

Stats

List of Completed Fic

Like falling off a log, only perpendicular (Good Omens, G, 136 words) for believerindaydreams in a five-sentence prompting meme

You'd Swear The Dice Were Doing It On Purpose (Marvel Cinematic Universe, G, 62 words) for WingedFlight in the Three Sentence Ficathon

The Limericks of the Ancient Mariner (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, G, 271 words) for leecetheartist

Total number: 3

Total word count: 469

( Read more... )

Fiction books
Bernard Cornwell. Sharpe's Company
Bernard Cornwell. Sharpe's Eagle
Bernard Cornwell. Sharpe's Gold

In progress
(anthology). Batman Black and White, volume 2 (re-read)
Terry Pratchett. The Shepherd's Crown
Caroline Stevermer. The Glass Magician (e)

Non-fiction books
Harley Granville-Barker. Prefaces to Shakespeare: King Lear
Christopher Lascelles. Pontifex Maximus (e)

( short, screen, and stage )
( books bought and borrowed )

Top of the to-read pile
Lois McMaster Bujold. Penric's Travels

Fiction books
Ben Aaronovitch. False Value (e)
Peter O'Donnell. I, Lucifer
Peter O'Donnell. The Night of Morningstar (re-read)
Tim Powers. Alternate Routes (e)
Tim Powers. Forced Perspectives (e)

In progress
(anthology). Batman Black and White, volume 2 (re-read)
Terry Pratchett. Raising Steam (e) (re-read)

Non-fiction books in progress
Christopher Lascelles. Pontifex Maximus (e)

( short, screen, and stage )
( books bought and borrowed )

Top of the to-read pile
Mikhail Bulgakov, tr. Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky. The Master and Margarita

Fiction books
Sharon Lee, Steve Miller. Accepting the Lance (e)
Sharon Lee, Steve Miller. Agent of Change (e) (re-read)
Sharon Lee, Steve Miller. Carpe Diem (e) (re-read)
Sharon Lee, Steve Miller. Dragon Ship (e) (re-read)
Sharon Lee, Steve Miller. Fledgling (e) (re-read)
Sharon Lee, Steve Miller. Ghost Ship (e) (re-read)
Sharon Lee, Steve Miller. I Dare (e) (re-read)
Sharon Lee, Steve Miller. Plan B (e) (re-read)
Terry Pratchett. Snuff (e) (re-read)

In hiatus
Grant Allen. An African Millionaire: Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay (e)

Non-fiction books in progress
Christopher Lascelles. Pontifex Maximus (e)

( short, screen, and stage )
( books bought and borrowed )

Top of the to-read pile
Tim Powers. Medusa's Web

Fiction books
Tina Jones. The Thing About Weddings
Sharon Lee, Steve Miller. Conflict of Honors (e) (re-read)
Sharon Lee, Steve Miller. Local Custom (e) (re-read)
Sharon Lee, Steve Miller. Mouse and Dragon (e) (re-read)
Sharon Lee, Steve Miller. Scout's Progress (e) (re-read)
Tim Powers. Hide Me Among the Graves (e)
David Whitaker. Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks (audio book) (re-read)

In progress
Grant Allen. An African Millionaire: Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay (e)
Sharon Lee, Steve Miller. Fledgling (e) (re-read)
Terry Pratchett. Snuff (e) (re-read)

Non-fiction books in progress
Christopher Lascelles. Pontifex Maximus (e)

( short, screen, and stage )
( books bought and borrowed )

Top of the to-read pile
Sharon Lee, Steve Miller. Agent of Change

Fiction books
Kim Newman. The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School (e)
Kim Newman. Jago (re-read)
Kim Newman. The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School (e) (re-read)
Terry Pratchett. I Shall Wear Midnight (e) (re-read)

In progress
PC Hodgell. By Demons Possessed (e)
Kim Newman. An English Ghost Story

Non-fiction books in progress
Bob Altemeyer. The Authoritarians (e)

( short, screen, and stage )
( books bought and borrowed )

Top of the to-read pile
Terry Pratchett. Snuff