Aurora's Sundry Notes

The world is being scary in lots of ways, and I'm not the right person or in the right state of mind to talk about it, I'm just going to talk about the recent culture I've consumed/enjoyed/whatever is the right word. Look, I'm actually managing this on a Reading Wednesday! I don't manage that often.

Books

I am reading, even if not as much as I used to, back in the old days. But since my last post like this, I've finished the Finnish space book I was reading, and I read the first book of K.J. Charles's A Charm of Magpies series, The Magpie Lord. I found it mostly a delightful gay historical fantasy romp with interesting characters and lots of sex in various English settings; though at times a touch too violent for my liking, and the relationship & sex dynamics in this one aren't the kind I often go for. But it was good and interesting, and a light enough read to manage with my quarantine brain in a reasonable amount of time, and I do want to continue reading the series.

I also finished a volume of translated Chinese poetry from more than a millennium ago, which I much loved, and which I've been reading for a long time.

I continue to read and enjoy The Priory of the Orange Tree; I'm nearly 90 % through it, so it shouldn't take terribly long, it's just the quarantine brain that makes it slow. I'm also rereading This is How You Lose the Time War, because I want to, and rereads of a favourite and hopeful and beautiful f/f book are probably one of the best things for quarantine brain and anxiety brain.

I'm planning to DNF and return to library a bunch of books that, let's face it, I don't want to read enough to actually finish them. I don't know why I've had weird guilt about not-finishing books lately, I'm usually pretty merciless at that - life is too short to waste on books you don't like. Seriously this is not a time to feel obligated to read anything that isn't working for me, regardless of how many prizes it won or how much I liked the author's previous book or how many months I've already had it from the library or even how I really should read more from non-English-speaking parts of the world. Also, a lot of these books were started/borrowed/placed on hold before the pandemic, and we all know that was about 72 years ago at least, so ugh, who cares. I've got books around I actually want to read.

(I do wish people from my country were slightly better at writing books I want to finish, though. Non-fiction still seems to go all right, though, and sometimes poetry works.)

Podcasts

I've somehow calmed down in my "only consume podcasts" frenzy of the early isolation days. But I finished my re-listen of The Strange Case of the Starship Iris, and aaah I love it so much, even more the second time around, and I have so many feelings and thoughts about the characters, and especially this time around I was hit by Massive McCabe Feels. And generally Agent Feels but especially McCabe feels. I want to write fanfic about this show. (Let me know if you're a native English speaker who'd like to beta such fanfic, if I get it written. Though I generally need to do a beta call for "hey who can help me with all these tiny fandoms I seem to have picked up".)

In other podcast-listening news, on the Penumbra Podcast I finished Juno Steel and the Monster's Reflection, which was not an easy story, but damn it was significant and damn it was good. I also cried my eyes out after finishing it because just so many feelings, how dare they, it was good.

I finished re-listening to Midnight Radio, and I've continued re-listening to S2 of The Far Meridian. It's got a few recent bonus minisodes released, but I figure I'll finish my re-listen first and then listen to them so it goes in sequence. Mind you, it's trying my patience a bit to keep seeing them on my podcast feed!

I've been trying to slowly check out some new shows, but it's really hard to focus on anything new, anything that isn't either continuing an existing favourite or re-listening to something I've already heard. I also might need to stop my subscriptions to short-story podcasts because I can't seem to listen to any of those. Except for Toasted Cake, it's apparently short enough (it's delightful SFF flash fiction, for those who don't know it).

Other

Hmm, I really shouldn't subscribe to streaming TV because I'm still making my way through Gentleman Jack though I really like it. I'm, uh, almost halfway through (for reference, it's 8 episodes long), but then it turned out I wasn't in the right mindset for working conditions of 19th century English coal mines. Hmm, I also managed to somewhat make use of all the free arts and entertainment online, by watching the first act of Swan Lake by English National Ballet, but then I failed to continue to the rest of the ballet before it went offline. Still, it was beautiful! Maybe I'll manage to catch some other ballet and actually watch all of it. It could be relaxing!

Some things are opening up in my country, so there exists a chance I might go to visit an actual physical museum at some point.

I thought I'd try a thing where, in place of the standard Reading Wednesday that goes around, I'd have a general What Culture I Have Been Consuming Lately feature. That'd also get me to handily talk about the podcasts and TV episodes and things like that which I've been into, without needing to have the energy to do a Proper Post about them otherwise. We'll see how this turns out! And I know it's not Wednesday now, hush.

Books

It feels like in the early weeks of the year, I've been reading but not progressing. But recently I got properly back on the reading track again. I've started the year with a couple of f/f romances - Melissa Brayden's Back to September, a contemporary romance, and Olivia Waite's The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics, a historical romance with science women. I enjoyed both of them very much. I had some writing-related issues with the latter, but on the other hand it was full of stuff I'm crazy about - f/f, early 19th century history, history of science, women doing science, women supporting one another, and women's crafts. And the writing-related issues didn't keep me from enjoying the story, it's just that it could have been even better if some of those had been fixed. Stuff like pacing - the romance develops a bit too fast for my liking - and some POV issues and overuse of epitheths.

Now I'm just planning to get back to Tasha Suri's Realm of Ash, which I've neglected too long when trying to finish other books, because it's amazing and I want to focus on reading it properly.

Though I feel like I haven't read a lot of books, I have been reading an awful lot of fanfic lately. Especially in the podcast fandoms! Should maybe get into the habit of rec posts.


Podcasts

I've been listening to so many things! I finished The Bright Sessions early this year (other than the post-series specials, which I haven't yet started listening to because I need a breather) and that definitely still needs its own proper post. I love it deeply, though.

There has been more podcast-finishing and podcast-catching up recently. I finished S1 of The Strange Case of the Starship Iris and S2 of Moonbase Theta Out slightly before Christmas, and I think I finished S2 of The Far Meridian in early January. Just recently I finished Midnight Radio, which is a beautiful one-season, ten-episode complete story in 1950s radio show format, with queer women, and I love it so much and find it unfair there's hardly any fic. I should probably write some. And I need to do a proper mini-review or rec post on it so I can get other people to listen to it and talk about it with someone. I already started listening to it again because it's just so lovely.

Recently I started listening to The 12:37, which is a new show involving a time-travelling train and lots of queer folks including an f/f ship, and honest treatment of mental illness. So yeah, lots of things I'm so there for. There's one season out and I already finished it. In probably less than a week? So, so much recommended! Also, it's British, which is a nice change, as most shows are US-made with US actors, and my ears are a bit more comfortable with British accents.

I also started listening to The Pilgrimage Saga, which is a small-cast spacefaring show about a spaceship on a mission to return humanity to the Earth after humans had to flee to another planet when Earth became uninhabitable, and this new planet is already inhabited by aliens. I've listened to five episodes so far, and I find the characters and their interactions delightful, and there seems to be some kind of a plot cooking up and I'm curious about what it'll be. Also, it has gorgeous music.

I've started on S2 of The Penumbra Podcast. Though I'm taking it a bit slow because the Juno Steel stories nearly always find a way to break me a bit. There are more Second Citadel stories in this season, and they're starting to find their voice and are getting delightful. I've recently encountered Sir Damien, Rilla, and Lord Arum, and if anyone who listens to the show is reading, I'm sure they know just how delightful that is. I hope I get around to doing a proper spoiler-cut Penumbra post where I can just ramble and rave about the episodes I've heard lately.

Also, I kind of got going with EOS 10 after all. It turned out that after the first couple of episodes, the alcoholism/addiction content dropped to a level I was okay with (I'm fine with people being messes and having bad ways of dealing with stuff, I just don't like plots being focused on addiction/alcohol). By "I kind of got going" I mean that I've already made it through the first two seasons. In about two weeks. Oops. I think I'm taking a break now before going on to S3. Anyway, I find the characters' relationships delightful, and the quirky humour is mostly starting to find its mark for me. I love the bickering relationship that's grown between Ryan and Dr. Urvidian, and I just love Jane. Jane is fabulous. I also rather love that her name is Jane, because Janes of fiction aren't often badass powerhouses.

Most recently I started listening to Ars Paradoxica. I'd had the first episode saved for a while, and after getting through The 12:37 far too quickly, I decided I needed more time travel shows. I've only listened to one episode, but I really enjoyed it.

I continue listening to S1 of Tides, which is a show about a scientist who lands on an alien planet and explores the life there while trying to get in touch with her spaceship crew again. It feels like a podcast version of Becky Chambers's To Be Taught, If Fortunate; it has that same degree of "OMG isn't life and xenobiology amazing, let's just talk about how weird and fascinating life could be and how weird and fascinating it is even on Earth" and I love it. It's not really something to binge the way some of these other shows, but I listen to roughly one episode per week or thereabouts.

Also, I've already started to re-listen to Kaleidotrope, and am through the first four episodes again. It works excellently as a comfort feel-good listen the second time around, too.

Okay, I went on for so long about the podcast dramas that I'm not even going to mention non-fiction stuff. Maybe I'll do those on occasion, too, if I get around to doing this regularly enough that I don't have a million things to update at once!


TV and films

Most weeks I won't include films in this part, because I'm not a big film watcher, but this time I actually have one! I recently watched Ocean's 8 - had borrowed it on DVD from the library. I'm really bad at watching films, so I hadn't got around to this one either. But it was lots of fun! Loved the characters and the hijinks. Such a breezy fun heist story.

As for TV, I've mostly been watching the newest Doctor Who season, as you maybe can tell. But I also have started a little on S2 of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. That show is so pretty and fun, and usually has the perfect-for-comfort-viewing ratio of gorgeous 1920s outfits, and flirty banter to sleuthing and mysteries. But the end of S1 got kind of dark - the second-last episode creeped me out so much I couldn't continue for months, and when I tried watching the last one, it was too violent for me, so I just read the summary to know where the overarching plot was going. But I seem to do all right with the second season.

Other

I can't often afford going to the theatre these days, and also I don't always have the spoons for it. But last night I got the opportunity to see some theatre for free, so I took it. It was a preview of a new production of Wuthering Heights. It was… very good, in that it was extremely intense and powerful, and it did not romanticise the story. Ever since I actually read the book, I've not been able to understand people who think Wuthering Heights is some kind of great tragic romance. But this one treated it as it should, that is, a story about terrible people being terrible and making each other more terrible in the process. It was extremely powerful as such. On the other hand, it made for really uncomfortable watching seeing as I was recovering from a couple of not-so-great mental health days. The director's style is very powerful, visceral and weird, and I think it's a good match for the story but it was too much for me. I had to look away from the stage sometimes, and it still left me feeling quite dire.

On the other hand, I really enjoyed how they used music in the play, though it was no musical. Also, the actors and visual design were great. But when I got home, I had to spend quite a lot of time eating cheap chocolate and reading fluffy/comforting fanfics before I trusted myself to feel calm and balanced enough to go to sleep. Well, I'm all right now, after sleeping the night. But I think I want to see something fluffier the next time I go to theatre!

ETA: I'm a bit behind on comments once again, sorry about that, and I haven't commented on other people's posts much. My brain hasn't been helpful with that kind of stuff lately - it took me long enough to get this written. But it's still easier to just babble about media I've enjoyed that it is to respond to other people in a way that makes actual sense. I'll try to get there!