stonepicnicking_okapi

First and last, a big thank you to kingstoken who provided the card and thus made a fervent wish (to do a book bingo) come true for this reader.



Banned Book: Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire [translator: Richard Howard]. I loved this book, and I bought it, and it's a keeper. But to be fair, this was my process for each poem: read in French, listen to French (on librivox.org), read English. It was the first book in a long, long time that I have actually had to look up words (the English words!) and that makes me very happy. That's a poet translating a poet and making another poet very happy. And Baudelaire was a miserable bastard (and so am I, these days) so I feel a kindred spirit when I read these poems. Also, lesbians and vampires.

Classic: The Brothers Karamazov by Fydor Dostoevsky. 700 pages of ugh. I even read the Cliff Notes along with it so I understood better what I was reading but still, ugh. There was one line that reminded me of Crowley (of Good Omens) and my Season of Kink bingo card.

But he is not Satan: that's a lie. He is an impostor. He is simply a devil — a paltry, trivial devil. He goes to the baths.

I had planned to read Orlando by Virginia Woolf but the opening scene of that book is Orlando playing sword-fighting with shrunken African heads hanging in his family's attic. I couldn't go on after that. The boys' father is African and the decapitated heads of Africans are not toys for children to play with. It makes me rather ill. So I literally googled 'classic literature' and scrolled across the listing to find one that I hadn't read and that I would consider reading. I didn't realize how long The Brothers Karamazov was when I picked it out but I am stubborn and when I did figure it out, I was too stubborn to quit. Also, I am very tired of the 'village idiot girl' gets pregnant trope.

( Other thoughts on reading; tw: cutting )

So here's the full list:


The First Book in a Series: A Death in Vienna by Frank Tallis [ebook]
Diverse Reads: The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey
More than 300 pages: The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides [audiobook]
Humour: Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
Non-fiction: The Interior Castle by Saint Teresa of Avila
Book Mentioned in Another Book: Death Comes to the Archbishop by Willa Cather
Book on Display at the Library: Transcription by Kate Atkinson [audiobook]
Movie/TV tie-in: War Horse by Michael Morpurgo [audiobook]
Banned Book: Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire [translator: Richard Howard]
An Animal on the Cover: Devotions by Mary Oliver
Set in Your Country: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson [audiobook]
Classic: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky [e-book]
FREE SPACE: The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin [audiobook]
Mystery/Crime: This Poison Will Remain by Fred Vargas
Food/Cooking: Tea Cyclopedia by Keith Souter [e-book].
Title has a Name in It: Lord Darcy Investigates by Randall Garrett (e-book)
Children/YA: Clay the Cromer Crab and the Invasion of the Jeellyfish by Salena Dawson
Colour in the Title: Colour Scheme by Ngaio Marsh [ebook]
Award-winning Book: Ancillary Justice by Anne Leckie
Dystopian: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Published in 2020: Slippery Creatures by K. J. Charles [e-book]
Romance: Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
An Author You've Never Read Before: The Raven Tower by Anne Leckie [audiobook]
100 pages or less: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
POC Author: The Frangipani Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu

Word Count: 22,823

Writing:

I signed up as a creator for the Fandom For Oz fundraising auction, so if you want to put some money toward a good cause (Australian wildfire relief) and get a nice fic or poem for your beneficence, there'll be an opportunity in late February.

This month I did:

5 prompts filled for the Inspiring Tables
2 prompts filled for the 51+ Crossover Fandoms challenge
2 decent poems (a ghazal and a roundelay)

I give myself a C for trying to fic better (meaning proofing better and more often before posting, catching more typos before posting). Some effort, but not consistent.

What's ahead

I need to get cracking on my season of kink fic which is due 14 Feb. It will be another 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea tentacle fic. I would also like to do some fic for Valentine's Day.

Reading:

At least 3 for the bingo card (possibly 5 depending on how I count things) which I will post about when I figure out how to fill in the board graphic.

Crafts: Two great new puzzles, the London one and "The Fighting Temeraire." I also re-did another mini-puzzle a detail of Monet's "The Thames Below Westminster." And considerable progress on the mini library.

Personal:

( TW: cutting )

Word count for April: 22, 129

Writing: A good month by the numbers. And lots of good stuff ahead.

( Read more... )