#James liveblogs books

[paradife-loft]

"Parking is access. But it is access of the most superficial sort, one that often papers over deeper inequities we're unwilling to address. Ample parking at the ball fields feels like a requirement because the roads are too dangerous for parents to let kids ride their bikes. Free parking near campus looks good for students who can't imagine living close enough to walk. Easy parking in wealthy neighborhoods is a life-line for workers who will never be allowed to live nearby. And acres of parking downtown feels like a right to commuters and shoppers when the bus comes only once an hour. In each case, parking stands for a primitive kind of access that both overshadows and impedes a more profound and widely held right to the city."

Henry Grabar, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World

[autumnrose11]

Liveblogging on Chapter 7 of Northanger Abbey.

JOHN THORPE SEEMS LIKE A TWAT. I DO NOT CARE FOR HIM.

He talks too much and for too long. He got the gig for fifty guineas and goes on and on about it. How absolutely riveting.

Seems inconsiderate towards his horse. News flash, JT: 23 miles isn’t a short distance.  “Rest! he has only come three-and-twenty miles today; all nonsense; nothing ruins horses so much as rest; nothing knocks them up so soon. No no; I shall exercise mine at the average of four hours every day while I am here.” I feel very sorry for the horse.

He bashes Camilla simply because the authoress married a French emigrant. What an astute book critic. Gave me very bad vibes there.

He pissed me off when he commented on women’s looks.  “Her companion's discourse now sunk from its hitherto animated pitch, to nothing more than a short decisive sentence of praise or condemnation on the face of every woman they met.” He strikes me as the type to objectify/sexualise young women and thinks he is entitled to make derogatory remarks on their physical appearances. Nobody asked for your opinion, dude.

He pissed me off even further when he was of the opinion that  “Novels are all so full of nonsense and stuff” and implied he had better things to do. Boooooo!

Absolutely zero respect for his mother and his sisters (and I think women in general).  “"Ah, mother! how do you do?" said he, giving her a hearty shake of the hand: '"where did you get that quiz of a hat, it makes you look like an old witch.” And also....  “On his two younger sisters he then bestowed an equal portion of his fraternal tenderness, for he asked each of them how they did, and observed that they both looked very ugly.” WHAT. THE. HELL. What is it with him dissing their looks the second he sees them?!? If that’s how he speaks to his mother and sisters, God help the poor girl who has the misfortune of becoming his wife.

Catherine, please DO NOT GO for any carriage rides with this guy. Nope. Stay away.

So those are my thoughts on Chapter 7 :) Still loving NA and Catherine!!!

[storkmuffin]

You have hidden in this place for a lifetime. Hidden from the harsh realities that lie beyond this veil that you have constructed here. But the moment that that shot entered his belly, that veil began to unravel. and sooner or later you are going to have to confront those realities.

James Flint to the Maroon Queen, Black Sails, s3 e5

I'm going to make a recording of this part of the speech to play it for myself whenever I need courage to come out of my shell to do something difficult and brave.

[the-acid-pear]

Gonna liveblog this book idgaf.

First of all, gonna point out it's pretty cool how unlike the movie it straight up tells you what happened to James' parents: they were deadass just eaten by a rabid rhyno. IN FULL DAYLIGHT, MIND YOU, AND IN A CROWDED STREET.

[esevik]

Book review: A Street Cat Named Bob by James Bowen

My liveblog of the book.

Short review: I feel like this book could be read by 13 year olds in school.

Long review:

This is a biography about a man who was living off the streets of London who met a cat which changed his world for the better. The writing is clear and simple making it an easy and fairly quick read. It talks about life on the street, addiction and revovery, but without going into too much detail. Because of this I think the book would fit well into a schools reading curriculum for teenagers. It talks about a side of society I students might not be particularly familiar with but leave enough room for them to learn more about it. It's a biography/based on a real story so that also gives it a certain apeal not to mention it's an overall uplifting story with a happy end. Then there's a cat and everything is better with cats.

Rating: B

[appretiartis]

Finally reading Infinite jest and I was not expecting a thousand pages book, much less a hundred of those being Notes and errata

[bomberqueen17]

well, it goes on

It was my birthday and i celebrated by working. well, i'd had the previous day off, my only day off in the whole two-week stretch, so i spent it lying around and trying to catch up on sleep and also, sort of against my will, writing fanfiction about minor characters from the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin series.

I need more people to talk about this fic with, alas, I've been siloed in Witcher stuff so long that I don't know where to turn. I've been hesitant to browse the tags because the thing is I don't care about writing or reading Aubrey/Maturin fic and also I haven't seen the movie since it came out in '03, I specifically want to geek out about the minor characters and the books, LOL. So anyway if anyone is interested in cheer-reading my attempts at slashing Tom Pullings and James Mowett please drop me a line. I was going to just write a couple of drabbles but well, as these things go, it's now 15k long. (Uh, fair warning, they're super underage for the beginning bit and like not in a fun plausibly-deniable way either.)

No, I have no idea if it's any good or makes any sense, but that's a separate consideration. I just. Listen! They should fuck. But I am me and couldn't just have this be a oneshot. No. They have to have a strange circling complex relationship over the course of ten or twenty years that includes Tom's canonical wife. I can't rest unless I make this happen. No, I'm not done with my Witcher stuff either, but I've been blocked on it a bit and decided my birthday present was to let myself write some of this. So that's what I did.

But. At any rate. I listened to the whole series and now I'm going back through it in a desultory sort of fashion for my own amusement. I might liveblog this reread. I don't have time to do anything more interesting or in line with my long-term goals at this moment. But, snippet.

“I think my virginity’s grown back,” James said glumly, leaning back with his book on his knees. It was a fine day so they were laboring at their mathematics, tucked out of the wind under a grating between two of the midships guns. It was an out of the way spot but they could use the harsh light from the grating to read their figures. “It’s ages since we’ve been into port,” Tom agreed. He was nearly cross-eyed with his sums, and though he’d had the best of intentions about doing extra to practice, he didn’t think he could manage it now. He gave it up and put down his pen, carefully ensuring the inkwell was shut tight. Then he frowned. “It don’t work like that for boys, there’s naught to grow back.” James blinked owlishly at him. “I thought it was universally metaphorical, at any rate,” he said.  “No, I think it’s a real thing, but for girls,” Tom said. The phrase universally metaphorical had so many syllables he hadn’t actually parsed it at all but was operating solely off James’s dubious expression.  “That doesn’t seem right but I don’t know enough about girls to tell otherwise,” James admitted.

[astronicht]

re: Mordor's location

I'm confused! I can understand being annoyed that Mordor is in the east (for me, it's because any new birth/new beginnings symbolism fails. BUT on the other hand, it works great with tolkien's biblical stuff - from study.com, "'East of Eden' is an allusion to the Biblical Book of Genesis. After Cain murders his brother Abel, he is exiled to the land of Nod, 'east of Eden' (Genesis 4:16)". I LOVE Tolkien's biblical symbolism, and smeagol murdering his brother is a direct cain/abel reference, so having the evil be to the east really works for me.

So I guess I'm just wondering if a) the symbolism thing is what irritates you about Mordor's location (or if there's something else I'm missing), and b) how does the evil being in the north resolve this?

Hey cool question!

Caveat that I’m literally just liveblogging my first ever read of LOTR, so while I read Hobbit as a kid and I know the movies and a good portion of the medieval prose and poetry Tolkien is drawing on very well, the only LOTR text I can reference is… from the Shire to Weathertop. Additionally, my perspective is as a medievalist, but I wasn't raised Christian and can’t speak to Tolkien’s personal faith, just to how he might use (and does use) historical Christianity (and a bunch of non-Christian narratives) in his work. At least like. Up to Weathertop.

Short answer a) not exactly! b) Because I expected evil to be in the north, and it checked that box. So-- your particular interest in Christian symbolism is immediately relevant here, because about 700 years before the King James Bible, in the medieval literature (and medieval Christianity) among which Tolkien has settled his own Middle-Earth, people had very very strong feelings about the cardinal directions, and North was heavily associated with Lucifer — this being stated explicitly in an Old English retelling of Genesis called The Old English Hexameron. Here, Lucifer's fall starts like this:

"with a presumptuous pride (moodiness) he said that he would make his throne above the stars of God, over the height of the clouds, in the north part, and be like unto God." (p. 17; not my translation but my guy Henry Wilkins Norman nailed it)

mid dyrstigre modignysse cwæð ðæt he wolde wyrcan his cynesetl bufan Godes tunglum ofer ðæra wolcna heannysse on ðam norð dæle and beon Gode gelic. (p. 16)

In non-Christian stories (though written down centuries later by Christians), the Gylfaginning in the Prose Edda describes Hel as “down and to the North” (sorry, just a link wiki here). So, same idea, and beyond these texts, North is generally associated with hell, death, or evil in early medieval literature, much more clearly than East usually is (even factoring in Old English and Old Norse stories about Cain, Attila the Hun, and the more exciting fauna of the Indian subcontinent, all of which formed the early medieval idea of East). Thus, finding out that an original Big Bad, of whom Sauron was “but a servant,” had once made his throne in the north made me go “OH! He didn’t forget after all!” in utter frustrated delight. My confusion wasn't exactly with evil in the east; it was the lack of evil in the north.

(this reply is really long, but my main point ends here, for anyone looking to bail out)

Actually, Genesis retellings in Old English are absolutely fascinating; I’m not wedded to Christian-only symbolism, but if it’s what you enjoy a lot, I very much suggest looking into the Hexameron and Genesis A, both great examples and very well known to Tolkien.

Personally I suspect I'll end up reading the symbolism of Mordor in the east as a more complex and varied thing than solely a reference to Cain's banishment. But to be really clear, in saying that I'm definitely not saying that Cain and Nod aren't valid interpretations (especially when they work for you so well!). Just my guess and my perspective. Old evil in the north and Mordor in the east is really interesting! So was the story of how Hobbits etc wandered out of the east to colonize the Shire, in another early medieval echo. And with Aragorn's throwaway "In those days the Great Enemy, of whom Sauron of Mordor was but a servant, dwelt in Angband in the North" I got an extra point on the map, from which the story immediately unspooled into an even wider and richer thing. Which is so neat, I love everyone in this bar, etc.

Just a quick further note on Smeagol, because I happen to have just gone past this bit and it's fresh! As far as I know at uhhh this very early point in LOTR (maybe it's changed later), Deagol was not his brother but simply his friend: “He had a friend called Deagol, of a similar sort, sharper-eyed but not so quick and strong” (though if you like the Cain and Abel imagery, this doesn't change that much tbh! I can see how it hits that note regardless). They are under the same matriarch (perhaps implying family ties) who eventually throws Smeagol out years after Deagol's murder; I liked that bit, bc I have no idea where Tolkien's pulling proto-hobbit matriarchs from yet, and Smeagol later lied and said the matriarch had given him the One Ring, implying that she was a ring-giver like an Old English/Norse thane or king. Smeagol and Deagol (and Frodo) are also wrapped up in lots of different tropes and symbols; Cain and Abel, yes, but also Beowulf and Grendel, and probably some other stuff I'll notice in like 10 years and yell at the ghost of Tolkien about. I think these stories work so well because they’re layers upon layers. It’s stories all the way down, you know!

Much like this reply, which is endless, so sorry about that.

[no-side-us]

Letters From Watson Liveblog - Aug. 14

The Bruce-Partington Plans, Part 1 of 3

That's two stories in a row now beginning with Holmes all grumpy because of the lack of interesting cases, just one of the downsides of being too good at his job. I can see why in his later years he would turn to something like beekeeping, which would presumably take up more of his time no matter how well he does it.

I guess you could say this is a retcon of sorts, expanding Mycroft's "audits the books in some of the government departments" job from The Greek Interpreter into this essential tool of the country.

On one hand, Mycroft's initial role definitely seems more in line with who he is as a person, a simple job that provides the means for him to live his simple life. On the other hand, like Holmes he seems to want his brain to be running at all times, and what better way to do that than helping run all of Britain? Though I like to think that Mycroft probably did start out as a simple auditor of books, cause all the best lies have a kernel of truth and whatnot.

The Bruce-Partington submarine isn't real, but judging by its name I assume it was made by two people named Bruce and Partington. And a quick search shows this story was published in 1908, the Royal Navy first launched a submarine in 1902, so I guess there could be plans for one in 1895, not to mention the many submarines before then.

Mycroft says this to Sherlock in a sort of demeaning way, and while Sherlock doesn't really react I have to wonder what Lestrade thinks of this comment, cause he's been there the whole time and has said nothing so far.

The two with the key to the safe are a well-decorated government expert: James Walter, and a senior clerk: Sidney Johnson. Both of them seemingly have alibis for the time of the crime, but they were provided by Walter's brother and Johnson's wife respectively, hardly objective sources of information. I could see Cadogan West tricked into being the fall guy for either one of these officials.

Mycroft's so animated here. I guess this is how you can tell the case is a very serious one.

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

[jessicas-pi]

ok i made up my mind, i'm gonna do a book liveblog of Framed! by James Ponti

[thegeminisage]

WRATH OF KHAN breakdown

i watched this movie with catherine maulthots six days ago and liveblogged it incoherently on a notepad file on my phone because No Way was i opening this devils website when spock could die any moment. i am recording my experiences here for posterity

firstly i did know going in that he was going to die. this made me wracked with anxiety. more on that later. actually when kirk walked up and was like ha ha arent you supposed to be dead i almost lost it .5 seconds into the movie

absolute first thing was that we werent sure whether or not the thing in the beginning was a test. absolutely LOST MY MIND when i realized it was the kobayashi maru. every ten seconds during this movie i went "omg an aos reference" even though i knew it was really the other way around. somehow i thought mister perfect tos jim wouldn't cheat on the test so when they sort of hinted at what he did but didn't say it i was FROTHING to know more

bones's gay little posture. that's it that's the whole bullet

bones coming to jim's place at night was like the opening of some retro gay porno. DELIGHTED to find out that jim's allergies were not in fact an aos fanon but based in both aos and tos canon (re his little old man glasses)

mad that all of the movies seem to flirt with whether or not james t kirk should retire or captain a starship and then never resolve that question ever. it's like will shatner's insecurity about aging was leeching into the very script. girl we ALL KNOW what he should be doing so either shit or get off the pot

birthday gifts cute though. oh my fucking god. a book and glasses and he shows up with both repeatedly throughout the film

khan's tits were amazing. even as an asexual, even queer as a two dollar bill, i am full of admiration for what he had going on. he was rockin it

when they put the little worms into chekov and terrel cathy was like "omg THATS why they called them khan worms" and then i got to say "omg spn reference" instead of "omg aos reference" and we were so excited she wasn't even mad about it. also, they were so gross, oh my god, i couldn't look, she had to tell me when it was safe to unhide my eyes

meanwhile we're also mercilessly mocking the oversight that allowed khan and chekov to know one another. how did that plothole make it into production

EYE personally was very shocked at the amount of non-annoying women in the movie (two??). i liked both saavik and carol though i had to google to see if saavik was a human or vulcan. VERY cute that spock gave her the wheel to fuck with kirk specifically even though anyone but kirk being captain is so WEIRD. spock can be acting captain but not actual captain!!!

i ALSO knew from spoilers that carol had had kirk's fucking child which i may have accidentally also ruined for catherine so when a woman with an adult son mentioned james kirk onscreen we both became a little. unwell.

khan's "i shall have him" this sort of sexual tension is one of many things missing from into darkness. NOT that i want to see b*nedict c*mberbatch have that with anyone bc he is quite literally so ugly i have to cover his face with my hand when i watch into darkness but they should have cast a better person as khan and then made him have sexual tension with kirk.

cathy on the khan worms coming out of chekov's ears: wow, i love that! me on the same thing: i hate it

khan's "i wish to go on hurting you" no comment

khan yell REALLY GOOD. glad to see some things never change. william shatner was like i have been and will ever be a huge fucking ham

when carol marcus went "can i cook or can't i" i decided to go ahead and start liking women again. nature is healing, etc

if i had seen kirk pop that apple in his mouth while talking about how he didn't like to lose before i wrote gambler's knife. well. the fic probably wouldn't have changed much but my brain chemistry has certainly changed now. i can't explain w human words. AAAAAAUGH

spock's line about "sauce for the goose" was so out of character we had to check the transcript and make sure that was him speaking and not kirk. "sauce for the goose"??? sir, you're a vegetarian

the cgi was surprisingly good in whatever version we watched. it really holds up, which is ironic considering we had 20-minute vistas of it in the previous movie, where it was just okay

spock's death. i cried all the way through. don't text.

i did have a vague idea of what was going on when he melded with bones bc you literally cant avoid spoilers but i didn't have Details so i was very shocked for a second until i remembered

SPOCK'S FUNERAL. oh he would have been insulted to hear jim call him human!!!!! but he WAS

kirk trying to run away from his kid was really good. if i hadn't been blinded with tears i would have really enjoyed it. didn't like the "you've never faced death" bit though bc OBVIOUSLYYY he was on tarsus iv.

anyway then they panned to the coffin and i was like SURELY HES GONNA POP OUT AND SAY SIKE but he didn't. he didn't and i just had to live with that. and we had planned to watch search for spock immediately the next day but fate intervened and i had to skip it TWO DAYS in a row and nearly died. the end.

also, i didn't realize the book spock had given kirk was the one he quoted at the end!!!!!!! really horrible.

[paradife-loft]

"Could superposters alter not just what showed up in people's feeds, but their very sense of right and wrong? I put the question to Betsy Levy Paluck, who had won a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" for her work exploring how social norms influence behavior.

(...) Schoolkids bully or don't, she found in a long investigation, based largely not on whether they expect punishment or think the target deserves it, but on whether it feels moral to them. Either bullying felt permissible, even righteous, or it felt wrong, and that internal barometer was what mattered most. But how does our moral barometer become set? We like to think of ourselves as following an innate moral code, derived from lofty principles, lived experience, the advice of a trusted elder. In truth, studies find over and over, our sense of right or wrong is heavily, if unconsciously, influenced by what we believe our peers think: morality by tribal consensus, guided not by some better angel or higher power but by self-preserving deference to the tyranny of cousins.

In an experiment in rural Mexico, researchers produced an audio soap opera whose story discouraged domestic violence against women. In some areas, people had the soap played for them privately in their homes. In others, it was broadcast on village loudspeakers or at community meetings. Men who listened at home were just as prone to domestic violence as they had been before. But men who listened in group settings became significantly less likely to commit abuse. And not out of perceived pressure. Their internal beliefs had shifted, growing morally opposed to domestic violence and supportive of gender equality. The difference was in seeing their peers absorb the soap opera. The conformity impulse - the same one that had led Facebook's first users to trick themselves into fuming over the news feed - can soak all the way to the moral marrow of your innermost self."

- The Chaos Machine, Max Fisher

This book so far has been talking most centrally about Facebook, and to a lesser extent algorithm-sorted social media in general (YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) - and from my experience of this site in particular if not those others, I think there are some meaningful differences in how Tumblr functions compared to those bigger sites, that make its effects on group behavior distinct if still broadly related and relevant.

But damn if this portion didn't come for my entire understanding of how fandom and related subcultures around here develop self-reinforcing behavioral norms, and how those social norms have changed in tone over the past couple decades.

[francesderwent]

Lockwood & Co Quote x Screencap Posts:

“What Resembles The Grave But Isn’t” x the Portland Row trio

“Hello My Old Heart” x Anthony Lockwood

“Chinese Satellite” x Anthony Lockwood

“Let’s Get Married” x the Portland Row trio

“The Cold” x Anthony Lockwood

“Electric Touch” x Lucy

Lockwood & Co Meta Posts

Lockwood, Courage, Chesterton, & Death

Lucy and Self-Sacrifice

Lucy, The Room, and Fairy-Tales

Creeping Shadow, Unconditional Love, and Selflessness with @magpie-trove  

Lockwood & Co Crossover Posts:

B99 x Lockwood & George

Parks & Rec x Lockwood & Flo

John Mulaney x Lucy

The Good Place x Lockwood

The Bear x Lockwood & Flo

Tan France x Lucy

New Girl x Lockwood & Co series

Miraculous Ladybug x Lockwood & Co

James Acaster x Lockwood

BTVS x Kipps

ATS x Locklyle

Lockwood & Co fanfiction:

“harmonies for the left behind” a Mary and Lucy Carlyle story

Other Tags:

Lockwood & Co liveblogging tags: the show and the books

general show tag for reblogs

songs and lyrics for Lockwood & Co

[philcoulsonismyhero]

You know what, fuck it, Revenge of the Sith liveblogging time.

The version of the Force Theme that opens the movie has got to be one of my favourite bits of Star Wars music, it's so good. I'm always so mad that the drums at the beginning aren't on the soundtrack version

Also the colours?? All the shots with Coruscant in the background are so pretty to look at, I should get some screencaps and steal some colour palettes

Man, I still know the dialogue from this whole sequence off by heart, I used to rewatch it so often. Best spaceships, best space battle, there's a reason the Eta-2 is my all-time favourite spaceship and it's this sequence in particular

I love how squeaky Obi-Wan gets when he's agitated, poor guy is Not having a good time

"I sense Count Dooku." "I sense a trap." "Next move?" "Spring the trap." Love these goobers and their grins and their banter. Also James Luceno's 'Labyrinth of Evil' is still my favourite immediate prequel to this movie and the fact that this is like the third time in a couple of months that these dweebs have encountered a Dooku trap makes it so much more fun. I should re-read that book...

[montanamp3]

a consolidation of chain of thorns liveblogging

me, trying to retain a semblance of my blog theme: uhhh this is like the opium war but except instead of opium crippling china it's chapter 25 the hero's journey crippling my brain

the parents club goes crazy hard

like when tessa went "don't touch my son" i CHEERED

james and lucie can your dad fight

lightwright gang we win...

i don't care if this is "cheesy" or "historically inaccurate" or "fanservice". i care about kissing

JEM IS HERE!!!

Okay i stopped liveblogging for a moment in which I mean that I was too busy sprinting through the book with my mouth wide open

WHAT DO YOU MEAN ANNA.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN MATH.

HELP

Oh my god the baby...

oh my god... the runes...

okay done

I genuinely cannot give like proper criticism of this book it went right through my skull and out the other side I do not know if it was good or bad or what

BUT i had a lot of fun reading it i screamed and cried a lot and i got closure so that's all that matters

this book made me a Matthew stan i understand the Matthew stans now his arc is everything to me

quotespam

[esevik]

Chapter 21

James finds out that people have filmed Bob and put it up on youtube. This video then went viral and he became a kind of celebrity which eventually resulted with this book.

The book ends with a reflection from James of how much his life changed for the better thanks to Bob. It's a sweet ending.