the friday list ~
this is really covering like a week and a half, because with all the traveling and eclipse adventures, I didn't have much to update last week.
books:
Jawbone - Monica Ojeda: I finally finished this one. I think it went on just a little long for the structure, which was very stream-of-consciousness. There would be like, multiple pages with no paragraph or dialogue breaks. It was interesting, I still liked the vibe, but it ended up being kind of hard to get through.
(in-progress, for book club) This Wretched Valley - Jenny Kiefer: What I like about this book is it's doing a good job showing how annoying both rock climbing people and 'I can't go anywhere without my dog' people are without fully tipping over into completely insufferable. She's walking that line really well. The metaphors are a tiny bit much but I'm enjoying the atmosphere so far. Oh also, I'm struggling a tiny bit with how many dumb decisions they're making. Like, I get that there's something supernatural going on, but outdoor horror stories definitely have a very narrow margin for error between 'understandable mistakes' and 'why the fuck wouldn't you bring a second helmet or rope? why once there's a significant injury does it never occur to you to send one person hiking out to get help? WHY DON'T YOU HAVE ANY PAPER MAPS OR A COMPASS???????' Oh, wah, the GPS is broken, WHY ARE YOU RELYING SOLELY ON GPS IN THE FIRST PLACE? (ok sort of unfair because there's some spooky shit going on so even if they did everything right they wouldn't escape BUT that's even less of an excuse to have them make a bunch of dumb mistakes. Like isn't it MORE horrifying if you do everything right and still can't get out? Idk I just like competent characters and I wish more outdoor horror did the 'super competent characters make understandable mistakes or are caught by forces outside of their control' and less just went for the imo lazy 'idiots bumbling into doom'.)
(in-progress, phone book) Into the Dark - Claudia Gray: I had some bad scrolling moments there for a couple days, but I'm rededicated to not scrolling, catching up on the High Republic series instead. I'm a little over halfway, I forgot this book does one thing I find a little irksome, but it's a can of worms I don't want to open, iykyk kind of deal. Still love Reath though.
(in-progress) The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien: I don't often reread The Hobbit, but once I finished LOTR I thought I'd pick it up. It's always funny to me when Tolkien like, slips into a lore dump in the middle of his children's adventure novel. Like we'll be bopping around and suddenly he'll be like 'and in the days of the kings of old, when the Valar....' and there's just a paragraph with all the cadences of The Silmarillion before he kind of snaps back and remembers what they're doing and it's back to being a romp.
tv:
Severance (AppleTV): Oh my GOD. WHAT. This was so disturbing and so funny and I basically had a 45 minute heart attack during that finale. I can't wait for season 2, that was INSANE. I think my only critique is that I wish some of the twists had been signaled a bit earlier. I think I might rewatch to see if I pick up on any foreshadowing but I really didn't seen the twist about Mark's wife coming at all, like it wasn't even on my radar as a direction they could take. It felt like it was signaled then revealed seemingly within the same episode, and I thought maybe there could have been more hints earlier on. Though I think some worked to come out of nowhere, like who Helly really is.
Anthracite (Netflix): Short little 6 episode cult mystery on Netflix. It's kind of a frenetic pace which I think is partially purposeful style, and partially because they only have 6 episodes. I think I'd like to see the 10 episode version of this show, where they have a little more time to build the characters.
movies:
Train to Busan (2016): I had never actually seen this. It was a truly excellent zombie film. I cried.
Jigoku (1960): I'm back to trying to work through the Letterboxd Top 250 horror list, AND try to watch all the ones on Criterion so I can drop that subscription. Bit of a slow build, but the hell scenes were cool.
Zone of Interest (2023): Do I regret not seeing this in theaters? I don't know. I didn't because it didn't seem like I needed the big screen, but the more I heard about the sound design and now that I've seen it, yeah, I think it deserved the big speaker system and not my TV's kind of tinny speakers. The sound design was for sure the real star. Extremely disturbing and effective. Maybe it would have been TOO much seeing it in theaters.
Speak No Evil (2022): I get what they were trying to do but you can refer to my liveblog to see why it didn't quite work for me.
Monkey Man (2024): Omg I almost forgot to put this one? This was such a good action movie, Dev Patel is fantastic and the soundtrack is 10/10. I really enjoyed it, if you haven't seen it yet you 100% should.
video game update: got through Ilum in my perpetual Fallen Order playthrough. Which means: purple lightsaber time :)
craft update: I have reached the underarm join on my vest! Which is exciting because I'm so close to not needing to purl anymore but I did not think through a significant tool issue so before I actually join it up I have to either 1) find another #7 circular needle among my supplies, 2) buy another one, 3) possibly just buy another set of interchangeable needle tips? We'll see if I can JUST get the needle tips and it's not too expensive.
to do:
I have to do an errand I don't want to on my lunch hour. Boo. It involves paperwork and the DMV. I know it will probably not take as long as I'm imagining but. I don't wanna. I'm watching a video of a youtuber I like also deal with car registration as inspiration. Argh. Let this saga be over, before I can't deal with it anymore and drive my stupid car into the sea (I shouldn't joke about that someone actually did that like 6 months ago).
post office to hopefully finally finish the above saga
clean apartment
finish out the first week of my new running routine with about 2 miles tonight and then around 3ish tomorrow
writing goals: I think I figured out my block on chapter 7, so my goal for the next week is to finish a really rough draft of chapter 8, then retreat back to finishing up chapter 7 and then continuing on with the more polished version of chapter 8. I moved some things around. I don't think I have to kill a darling (a paragraph I really like). I think I found a place for it that doesn't completely break the characterization and logic, like the version I started with.
figure out knitting needle issue and/or finish detangling yarn so I can make progress on other project
I might go to home depot because I have a dresser I'd like to repaint, I've had the swatches picked out for a full year now, I just have to actually get the paint and sandpaper and such.
despair: oh my god my activity page is ruined. that post about fanon has over 10k notes. I'm gradually losing faith in the reading comprehension of this site (gradually?). pray that things lessen up a bit this week LOL But also #grateful no one has called me a bitch yet, small wins, I've just learned a lot about random discourse in other fandoms, no one's actually tried to start discourse with me yet
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