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As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. Even more impenetrable stream of consciousness style than Mrs. Dalloway but eventually I started to grasp what was going on and all the narrators and their unreliability. Like, Cora, your impressions are laughably off base. Darl, you committed arson and your POV chapter doesn't even indicate it except mildly in retrospect. Addie, your only POV chapter is literally after you are dead. Put this book on the Weird But Interesting shelf.

In RL, I continue my organization spree. I can see my craft space again so maybe I will re-start one of the projects I've been stalling on.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. Slow paced since it's literally just about a day in the life of a woman planning a party but I liked the writing. It flows through a lot of perspectives and shows how differently everyone sees each other and themselves and their shared past and it's not afraid to be kind of confusingly figurative. Would read more Virginia Woolf.

In other news, I have been on a huge organization spree. On the one hand, I am intellectually aware that my sudden encompassing desire to organize my entire living space is probably due to the fact that things are really unstable and weird at work and I want to control things in a sphere of my life that I can control. On the other hand, I have purged so much old junk, particularly paper--my nemesis--and like motivation is motivation. I might clean the garage next. I might wash the windows for the first time since I moved here. The sky's the limit.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Intense depiction of the failures of a group project (survival on deserted island). Shocked to discover this does not actually have cannibalism, although there is the strong implication that there would have been cannibalism if the events of the last chapter went differently.

White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky. A Russian man meets a woman waiting for her fiance to return after a year. I wanted to like this more but I just found it so rambling and repetitive.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. A man raised on Mars returns to Earth and tries to understand it. I found the disconnects between Mike and humanity compelling and this did have some things to say about religion and society but it is really obviously written by a dude in the 60s and it's very sexist and explicitly homophobic.

I need to go read some more books written by women now.

I forgot to post this here in addition to on tumblr: my first fanbind! This took me like a year and a half but that was mostly because I had to gather materials and learn all the processes for the first time. Also because I decided I wanted to learn to use a Cricut for the cover and because I psyched myself out of casing in for like 3 months and somewhere in the middle I had guests for a week so I moved all my craft stuff into a closet and forgot it for 6 months. But, eventually, I did it!!

A lot of beginner mistakes like not great corner folds and I used too much glue so pages are wrinkled. I would also re-typset so the text isn't so huge and spaced if I had it in me. When I was first doing the typeset I was like '12 point text and no spacing, who can read this??' but now, looking at literally every book I own, apparently I can and I was just having a moment. Anyway, it is a book! An Eye for Quality by Linelen is my favorite Hobbit fic and I'm very excited to be able to read it outside in the sun (no screen glare!) and have it sit on my bookshelf. I have several other fics I'd like to bind pending author permission and hope to improve my skills. It's nice to have a crafting hobby again.

Upcoming things I'm excited for and their sometimes weird schedules that I want to keep track of.

~ Leverage Redemption season 3: April 17th (3 episode drop, then weekly on Thursdays - 10 episodes total)
~ Andor season 2: April 22nd (3 episode drop, then 3 episode drops on April 29th, May 6th, and May 13th - 12 episodes total)
~ The Accountant 2: April 25th
~ Murderbot season 1: May 16th (2 episode drop, then weekly on Fridays - 10 episodes total)
~ VidUKon: May 30th - June 1st
~ The Old Guard 2: July 2nd

Already have my Murderbot icon cued up courtesy of lylith_st icon post :)

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain. Dude helps a woman murder her husband and the aftermath. So much of this was untagged dialogue and yet it wasn't difficult to follow and it made the prose bits pop out even more. Noted as the inspiration for The Stranger so next I read...

The Stranger by Albert Camus. A lot of this book is very boring and jerky to read but it's also kind of essential to understanding Meursault, possibly the most detached main character in the literary canon. The way he's eventually condemned more by people's perception of him than for his actual crime is compelling.

I'm reading a lot of books off this 50 Great Classic Novels Under 200 Pages list and I keep losing the link so I'm just going to put it here for myself for inevitable future reference. Love a book under 200 pages.

Nautical revenge novel time.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Why did no one tell me this starts off with the There's Only One Bed trope? I checked AO3 and there are 101 Ishmael/Queequeg fics. Fandom is out there doing the work. Anyway, yeah, this is the pursuing a white whale novel and Captain Ahab is very extra about it. There is way more knowledge drop about whales and whaling than I expected but it has it's shining literary moments. I should probably not have tried to read this while on vacation because good God does it require focus to attempt to understand the language.

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. I found a really nice used copy of this at the library book sale for $3! It's flexible light blue on dark blue leather bound with a cool typeset and a cover style I've never seen. It's like they did a word cloud so it has 'revenge', 'Nautilus', 'I am not what you call a civilized man', etc. etched parallel and perpendicular around the title. Why are no design artists credited in the front matter? I want to send them a fan letter. Regarding the story, for some reason I always assumed 20,000 leagues under the sea referred to depth but what it really is is distance! They go see all kinds of cool things in a submarine while you try to figure out wtf Captain Nemo's deal is. ( Spoilers I guess )

And I finally got to watch the new French film adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo! The ultimate revenge story in my opinion. The cinematography was fantastic and I haven't read the book in a long time but I think it was a pretty faithful adaptation. I started watching it with the English dubbing but after like 2 minutes I switched to the French with English subtitles and it was vastly better. Recommended!

Title: say again your last
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Rating: G
Characters: Rodney McKay, John Sheppard, Ensemble
Pairings: John/Rodney
Word Count: ~1,800
Warnings: None
Tags: Established Relationship, Fluff and Humor, Just Married, Name Changes

Summary: John is sewing one of Rodney’s MCKAY nameplates onto the sleeve of his uniform jacket before he thinks, okay, maybe this has gone too far.

For romancingmcshep

I can't believe I finally finished this!! I know it's less than 2k but this fic has plagued my brain and my WIP folder for probably at least 2 years.

Passing by Nella Larsen. I need to stop saying 'this was interesting' about every book I read, but it was interesting! A stark look at the impact of appearance and culture. The main thrust of the ending is purposefully telegraphed through the whole novel (novella?) and yet the way it ends is shocking (to me at least). Would reward re-reading I think. There are definitely sections that hit differently afterward.

This week I finished watching Queer Eye (season 9) and, regrettably, Gladiator II. Strongly recommend that anyone considering watching Gladiator II just, do something else. Save yourself the two and a half hours. Rewatch the original.

The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery. Woman is given one year to live and proceeds to make choices that horrify her stuffy society family! This was fun and cleverly written and I feel a strong need to write a Star Wars fic inspired by it which is maybe mildly insane of me--the vibes are very different--but also is just life in fandom. Will see if the muse holds.

Speaking of Star Wars, I watched Skeleton Crew and it was very cute! I feel like I heard almost nothing about it and I wasn't going to watch it but I'm glad I decided to. Space kids accidentally going off on space pirate adventures! I'd be interested to see a season 2 because they left several things half open but the season also worked as a good stand-alone.