Okay, I've been meaning to manage these "culture consumed" posts for a while. Seriously, I'm probably just going to have to go back to trying to do a Reading Wednesday and then pick other days for doing other forms of culture because I apparently find it too much work to list them all at once. And then I delay for weeks and then it especially is too much work. But I just want to chatter about culture things so now I'm doing it.
BooksThis is going to be fast, because I'm not managing to read much now. Pretty much ever since the whole global-pandemic-with-lockdowns-and-social-distancing thing started, my concentration has been really bad for reading. I don't know why. Normally reading is my way of escaping from bad stuff, of comforting myself when things are hard, but now I mostly can't. It's not like I can't focus on anything at all, either, but somehow reading isn't working, or only works for small amounts of time. When I try to read for a long time, or when I'm too anxious, I can't focus, or I just get so tense it's awful. I'm really envious of everyone who can keep reading through this because I miss that.
This is to say that since I last posted about books, the only books I've managed to finish are T. Kingfisher's
The Raven and the Reindeer and a re-read of Martha Wells's second Murderbot novella, the latter because I figured rereads might work better. The evidence about that is inconclusive, because it's a 150-page novella, and I took at least a week to read it. Pretty sure that the first time around I read through it in a day, and I had high fever then. But I did generally enjoy it, in the small bits I managed to read it in. However, there was maybe a bit too much, uh, murdering going on for my current state of mind. Maybe the next reread should be a Becky Chambers or
Red, White, and Royal Blue. But now I've started reading a Finnish YA fantasy novel by one of the only current Finnish authors that I love just as much as my favourite foreign ones (Siiri Enoranta). I really like it, and it's in my own language, so I'm hoping that makes it easier to read.
To go back to
The Raven and the Reindeer for a bit, it's a feminist f/f retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's
The Snow Queen, and I enjoyed a lot. I mean, it's a feminist f/f retelling of
The Snow Queen, so we're doing pretty well already, and it had awesome animals, like a proper smart-ass raven and reindeer some magical flying otters. But I got inordinately distracted by the fact that there were a lot of hints she was setting it in the Finnish culture, or a Finnish-based one - references to uniquely Finnish folklore and myths, especially - but wasn't aware that in Finnish, we don't have gendered third-person pronouns. Whether someone is "he" or "she" is not a conversation you can have in Finnish. (Of course you can otherwise have conversations about whether someone or something is male or female, but they wouldn't rise out of conversations that the he-or-she question would rise out of. Also, it seems weird, if we assume they're speaking/thinking in Finnish, that a raven would not like being called "it" because "it" is a totally proper pronoun to use of animals even if we think of them as intelligent and personable, for example with pets, and it wouldn't feel particularly demeaning/objectifying. In fact, in colloquial speech we use that pronoun for humans as well, because, huh, I don't know, we just do. I tend to always feel I'm being particularly official or excessively "proper" if I even use our word for he/she about a person in conversation. But I don't know if this was the case in the sort of time the story seems set in.)
Sorry, that's a long aside, and probably would literally only bother Finnish readers like me, but it just made me really confused about where I was supposed to locate this mentally, because every now and then it was telling me to locate it in my country, but then it also was clear Gerda was thinking in a language that doesn't match with the culture. Also Gerda isn't a Finnish name, but we do have plenty of Swedish names in use so that's not as much of a problem. As for Kay, though, that's not how we spell that name. But the names probably just come from the English renditions of the original tale.
Uh, I've been waiting to get that off my chest for a couple of weeks, thank you for reading this chapter and we'll move on now.
PodcastsWhile I can't focus on books, you know what I can focus on? Podcasts! So many podcasts! In a time when I can't really meet anyone in person other than the occasional grocery store worker or a neighbour I pass by at the yard from a proper distance, it feels comforting to have some voices accompanying me, I guess. I've especially dived maybe even deeper into my podcast drama obsession, so I seriously need to trim this to just the main things. So I'll do those.
So, uh, maybe a month ago I started listening to Wolf 359.
( Rambling for a few paragraphs, mostly not spoilery but a bit. I've listened until the mid-season Three. )So anyway, I've got a new fannish obsession there and it's... quite something.
Out of my pre-existing podcast obsessions, I've been slowly going through Season Two of The Penumbra Podcast, and it seems like I finally got through one really rough phase of the Juno Steel storyline (I'm sure there are still other rough things to come, but at least one arc arrived to a conclusion) and I was rewarded by a more hopeful, and truly excellent tale in
Juno Steel and the Time Gone By. While there still was dark stuff in it, too, there also were some lovely things, and let's just say that I've now got a new f/f ship that I adore madly already. I might have to really write a separate entry about this, because I have lots of feelings and maybe even thinky thoughts. We'll see if I managed that!
And still with The Penumbra, today I listened to the Second Citadel story
The Moonlit Hermit, both parts, because it was just so good and I couldn't stop. I love Rilla
so damn much. I could honestly just listen to Rilla's research logs for ten hours, I wouldn't even need a plot, though I also enjoyed the plot and the character interactions immensely. But Rilla is brilliant.
You know, I'd rather love for all these scientist ladies from different podcasts to get together and solve some sort of a problem. I could just imagine Rilla, Violet Liu from
The Strange Case of the Starship Iris, Dr. Eurys from
Tides and Nora from
The 12:37 getting together and being really amazing at sciencing at a problem. (Though Nora would probably be pretty unsettled since she doesn't do so great without her normal circumstances. But Rilla's good at dealing with Damien's anxiety, so she'd probably be help there, too.)
In terms of re-listening to old favorites, I've recently listened to S1 of We Fix Space Junk for the second time, and had even more fun than the first time. I've moved to re-listening to S2 of The Far Meridian, though I'm still in the early episodes - this part is a bit heavy listening, so it isn't the best time in the world for it, and I'm taking it slowly. And... I finally started re-listening to The Strange Case of the Starship Iris, and oh my goodness it's so good it's so good. I'm loving it even more this time around, maybe because now I already know everyone and I know what's generally going on and can just get more into it. I remember the first time I took a while to warm up to Arkady, but well, now I know how much I adore her, so I don't mind her being, oh, well, her general Arkady-ness. *waves* I've already listened to the first two episodes today, and I have a feeling I'll be going through it pretty fast this time around.
As I said, I've listened to plenty more podcasts, but I guess this covers the main things that I'm the most obsessed with.
TV ShowsRecently I got an HBO subscription for a bit - I'm still in the free trial period, but since I'm not a very fast watcher, it probably won't be enough. I'd been wanting to watch His Dark Materials and Gentleman Jack, and I've now watched the first episodes of both.
His Dark Materials is really excellently made and exciting and beautiful and seems to be superbly cast so far. But I remember the books pretty well, especially the first one because I read it many times while waiting for the sequels as a wee geeky girl-child, and well, now I'm watching it with this dreadful sense of foreboding because
I know what's coming up, and it's especially bad with all the child characters because I know some bad things are coming and... I'm not sure if I can actually watch something like this at this time period. But at the same time it's so beautiful and well-made and it has
beautiful music.
Gentleman Jack, though, is a delight, and doesn't give me the same difficult feelings. I have a feeling it won't take me long to watch it, the first episode was already so, so good. Of course there's complicated stuff that doesn't feel good, because history is history and the English class system is the English class system and yeah, that would be a whole essay. But it's more usual stuff that is easier to deal with than more epic danger. I'm going to have to write more about it when I've watched more of it. But it's really, really good.
And now I really have to stop and get on with other stuff before it's midnight in my time zone again.
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