Reading Meme for Dec 7 2022

What I've Read
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance by Dorothy Johnson - this short story was interestingly complicated - there's a fundamental ambiguity to the relationship between the male leads that doesn't seem really present in the movie. The scenes of Jimmy Stewart talking to excited crowds were, as I suspected, invented for the film - I think they profoundly change the way that the Ransom Foster character relates to the town and overwhelmingly act to legitimize him as a good person and community leader, in a way that the short story is much less clear about. Also, wow, Westerns are just 10000% about the era they are written in, not the era they are set in, and that's really kind of fun.

I've actually read a fair amount of fanfic that is too short to log for this project, so, well, here we are.

What I'm Reading: Still reading (holdovers)
A soul that's born in cold and Rain knows sunlight by KillBothTwins
Carry On by Tamryn Eradani
Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey
Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film by Lee Clark Mitchell
Moby Dick by Herman Melville - Whale Weekly

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson - I'm really enjoying this much more now that there is no deadline - there's a lot of episodic messiness for these characters. Swan running with the wolves and getting stuck in a pit is just, so deeply not part of the scifi genre of problems, that I'm adoring the weirdness of the book.


What I'll Read Next:


Library books in the house:
Tiger's Daughter - K Arsenault Rivera
Riot Baby - Rochi Onyeuchi
The Silence of the Wilting Skin - Tlotlo Tsamaase
Whispers Underground - Ben Aaronovitch
Penric's Demon - LM Bujold
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife - Meg Elison
The Uncle's Story - Witi Ihimaera


Owned and need to read: NK Jemisin's The World We Make, Frey Marske's A Restless Truth, California Bones, the Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, Kraken's Sacrifice by Katee Robert, Even Though I Know the End by CL Polk, True Colors by Karen Traviss, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Like Real People Do by EL Massey, Rescued by the Married Monster Hunters by Ennis Rook Bashe

December Daily 12-7-2022 - Top five things you would tell your 25-year-old self

norah - Top five things you would tell your 25-year-old self

5. "You'll get better at this." Fundamentally, a lot of the worries I had at age 25 were about being bad at being around other people. The short version is that I got better at it - I figured out how to make conversation and chat and also when it wasn't worth it. Overall, I hate the implication that older=wiser, as we have all fallen into company with an old fool at least once. But for the most part, yeah, I got better at all the things I was worried about, compared to myself at 25.

4. "You're allowed to quit." I have quit so many things! So many things I did not want to be doing are now out of my life! It's amazing.

3. "You're allowed to start and restart things." I have spent so much stupid wasting time trying to figure out how to start doing something without looking stupid, and now I am so happy to look stupid and admit that I don't know what I'm doing. It's great. Starting things is so hard, give yourself time to be a bit shit at things. You're always going to hate something because it's new - keep going.

2. "You don't have to earn help. You can just ask for it." I am still working on this. I would not have been able to hear it at age 25, but I would have needed it, and I still need the reminder.

1. "Take lots of pictures of yourself naked. Lots." Look. I really enjoy my body, it's a good body, I am taking care of it. But I'm a ways out from 25 and I truly deeply did not know how hot I was because I was comparing myself to other people, and now I am comparing myself to past me, and I would like to have some proof. I would like some souvenirs of how the terrain used to look!