stonepicnicking_okapi

Sci Fi or Fantasy: Companion to Wolves by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette. [book] I read this to prepare for petra's Lupercalia challenge. I managed to get one chapter of a fic during the challenge dates [BTS, Gen-rated, The Wolves of Bangtan Hall], and I hope to finish it this month and post a Sherlock Holmes (ACD) one as well. The premise is that men are bonded to wolves, and they live in packs, and they fight trolls and wyverns. A blurb from Amazon: the story of a young nobleman, Isolfr, who is chosen to become a wolfcarl -- a warrior who is bonded to a fighting wolf. I highly recommend it. There is some M/M sexytimes when the wolves go into heat, so it read like fic in some places.

Audiobook or E-book: The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman. Narrated by Lesley Manville. [audiobook] I had been on a waiting list at my library for many months for this, and I loved it. I binged it in about 3 days. It's almost 12 hours long. Lesley Manville did a great job with the voices. It is a murder investigation club of members of a retirement community, a follow up to The Thursday Murder Club. I figured out the culprit early on, but not one of the twists, which I was very impressed with, a misdirection worth of Agatha C. It did pair everyone up rather [too] neatly in the end. Isn't anyone allowed to be single anymore?! But that's a very small quibble, a thoroughly engaging tale told very well.

YA or Children's: Amina's Voice by Hena Khan. [book] This book was selected by Minor's school as part of the Diversity Reads Parent-Student Book Club in November. But then the book club meeting was cancelled, which was fine because there were 200+ people on the waiting list at the library. But after it was cancelled that number reduced considerably and I got it and Minor and I read it. I don't like YA or Children's lit, but this was okay. It seemed like issues relevant to Minor's age (10 years old): friendships, boys, culture, assimilation vs. maintaining one's culture. I liked that the conservative uncle from Pakistan wasn't a complete villain, that the parents weren't villains, and that the hate crime against the mosque was left until the end when we were invested in the family. It wasn't All About the Hate Crime. It also shone some light on the fact that Muslims in America aren't a monolith. I don't know that Minor enjoyed it, but he read it readily enough, so, win.

Author You've Not Read Before: The Holladay Case by Burton E. Stevenson. [1902 - audiobook] Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. I had never heard of Stevenson but he was a very prolific author. This is a mediocre story at best: part court room drama, part Sam Spade, PI case, part The Woman in White. It's American, and Stefan Rudnicki does a GREAT job with lackluster material. He has a nice PI, American baritone. My library systems says: Courtroom drama, a kidnapping, and a fraught pursuit overseas follow this shocking crime in an ingenious detective story sure to delight mystery fans. 'Delight' is too strong, but it wasn't bad, and it was only 4 and a half hours, so not a huge investment. And once again, Rudnicki is very easy on the ears.

Book that is Part of a Series: Network Effect by Martha Wells. [audiobook] Narrated by Kevin R. Free. Murderbot Diaries #5! I love Murderbot. I am sorry I am on #6 now. I love Kevin R. Free's voices, too. Top shelf job. As the goodreads tag says: Come for the pew-pew space battles, stay for the most relatable A.I. you’ll read this century. Murderbot is back with his ol' buddy ART, who is a spaceship (transport). It's almost 13 hours, and I went through it twice.

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Word Count for September: 21,116

Word Count for 2020: 250,174 [which means I've met my GYWO goal for the year! Whee! *throws confetti on self* *has to hoover it up*]

Listening to: I've found a Joan Hickson audiobook version of Agatha Christie's Murder at the Vicarage and They Do It With Mirrors. I have also found from the library online system a version of At Bertram's Hotel with Stephanie Cole (of Cabin Pressure) as narrator, who does a great job. All are good. I am also listening to a very long account of the Crusades by Thomas Asbridge.

And music-wise, thanks to jesse_the_k, I'm listening to Dessa, like this 5 to 6. I am also listening to Rough Guides Music of the Mediterranean and Music of the Sahara for The Old Guard mood purposes.

Writing: I managed to pull off a third horizontal row on my Season of Kink bingo (which closes tomorrow). That leaves only one square fill unclaimed in a bingo, which is a level of loss I am willing to accept.

I also managed to get about 10 more fills on my Inspiring Tables bingo with Holmes and Watson being neighbourly in Sussex.

Coming Up: OCTOBER! I am looking for to Kinktober! I have been working on the first set of prompts and will have some The Old Guard, BBC Sherlock, Bertie & Jeeves, as well as my doomed love pair Vera Claythorne/Philip Lombard from Agatha Christie's And then there were none. It is also octobercest, Octobercest so Sherlock and Mycroft will be more than brothers more than once.

And Hallowe'en!! Looking for to The Old Guard (The Undead of Poveglia, a body horror fairy tale) Good Omens, Orchid (There's a lot of evil in a little flower), and something Sherlock Holmes (probably ACD) to do with Evil Toys. Plus whatever Watson's Woes has to offer, which will be (among other things) a Rec Bingo.

It's my favourite month of the year.

Personal: I survived my wedding anniversary without harming myself. Minor's soccer coach is (for some reason) being nicer to me, so that's less stress. Virtual school (kindergarten and 4th grade) are going fairly well. After much pressure from me, the boys' father agreed to do something about Minor wetting the bed which involves a very loud alarm and underwear with a moisture sensor. So my nights are full of fire drills! And progress is one step forward two steps back, but Minisculus is already trained at 5 and Minor, well, bless his heart. I dropped my computer and cracked the screen and now it's limping along but it has fits of possession which mean it's probably not long for this world.

Today the second book in KJ Charles' Will Darling series, The Sugared Game, comes out. I don't know how long I'm going to withstand the temptation of getting it, but I thought I would recommend the audiobook version of Book 1 [Slippery Creatures] by Cornell Collins. I really liked Collins' voice on another KJ Charles' book Band Sinister. He is able to say 'How's the debauching going?' and not only not sound like a total prat but sound very good, indeed. He also narrated the whole of the Charm of Magpies series but I don't have access to that.

I also managed to listen to Vikas Adam narrate KJ Charles' Unfit to Print and enjoyed it immensely. Indian voices for Indian characters, yes.

I did not finish a couple of audiobooks, though. Mexican Gothic by Frankie Corzo. [rich socialite protagonist put me off] and The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart, narrated by Rebecca Burns [American female voices are hard for me to swallow sometimes].

I just finished the audiobook version of Anthony Horowitz's The Word is Murder, read by Rory Kinnear. The narrator does a great job. He's a solid voice, especially for that of Hawthorne.

I enjoyed the story. I was hesitant because last year I had noped out of The Magpie Murders by the same author after about 1 minute of listening.

I did have to grit my teeth and bear with the author's megalomania (he's the main character of the story). It is a phenomena I see a lot in famous clever people (Stephen Fry and Mark Gatiss come to mind), they are clever, very clever, and do brilliant things, but damn if they don't want you to know their Cleverness at every step. I mean, I know he did Foyle's War and I loved the first three seasons of it. I've never heard of Alex Rider, though.

The plot hook, however, a woman plans her own funeral and then is murdered 6 hours later, is so hook-y that I just had to know who did it. And it is brilliant. All the clues are there. Red herrings. The lot.

But the other thing is after reading a lot of fic, I have a different perspective. It's fic. Brilliant, long, self-insert, cleverly-craft fic, but at the end of the day, it's just fic (I thought that about "A Study in Emerald", too; if that wins a Hugo then AO3 definitely deserves a Hugo) and there are plenty of lovely people on the internet who crank that stuff out for free every day. And they don't have agents or meetings with Steven Spielberg that they feel the compelling urge to name-drop over and over and over. It's like if there was a guy with a great story and an equally great ego that needs public stroking by strangers.

Still, it's a great story told in a great voice.

I finished listening to Martin Jarvis narrating Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, so now I know what all the gifs are about. But Crowley and Aziraphale are much less of the plot than the internet lead me to believe. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it. I liked Crowley best, especially Crowley and his house plants. And I did enjoy the drunken conversation he and Aziraphale have at toward the beginning of the book. Martin Jarvis is a first-rate narrator (he did some of the Jeeves stories and while not my fave, he is still no slouch). I did like his Aziraphale voice. So at some point (next month), I will be doing a fic or ficlet as part of 100 fandoms. I don't know if I'll ever be tempted to watch the TV show, I've seen enough of the gifs to satisfy me about the slash part, but I'm glad I read the book.

Prompt #3 is Share your Squee

I like audiobooks, and I listen mostly to mysteries and classics of Western literature. Here are some voices I’m listening to.

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I loved The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne. It reads like Holmes/Watson fanfic. It does not take itself too seriously, which is lovely, and the two protagonists (who called each other Holmes and Watson) are loveable and shippable (I mean, they bed-share in a country inn!). And there are so many fun tongue-in-cheek lines for people (like me) who love Golden Age of Crime Writing mysteries about policemen loving to drag ponds and never expecting a shot in an English country house (which, of course, I totally expect!). And it's dedicated to the author's father who 'like all really nice people' has a 'weakness for detective stories,' which is nice. So I wrote a little triple drabble about Antony/Bill.

I've also been reading (and listening to) Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man and The Maltese Falcon, and wrote two one-shots. In French Etchings, Asta the Schnauzer makes a keen discovery, and in One Can Never Tell, I explore more my fascination with Barker from the Sherlock Holmes story "The Retired Colourman." I have cast Hammett's Sam Spade as Barker and was trying my hand at some hard-boiled detective/noir 'verse.

I tried to listen to Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil de Grasse Tyson. I liked listening to an author read his own work, and I liked listening to an African American voice, but I couldn't get past the first thirty minutes. I took astronomy in undergraduate to fulfill my science requirement because I didn't want to be in any kind of laboratory, but that was light years ago and it might be for 'people in a hurry' but it isn't for the simple-minded on a treadmill.

The best thing I've listened to recently is Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith, read by Bronson Pinchot. Now to someone of my generation Pinchot is known as Balki from a sitcom called Perfect Strangers where he played the wacky foreign cousin. But forget that. He's a great narrator and he did a spell-binding job with the voices. He gets my 'Oh, another dinner burnt because I wasn't paying attention' award.

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