Tying the string
Nov. 17th, 2019 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12This has been a week of finishing things off. I wrote like fury this weekend, and the result is that my Yuletide assignment, barring some editing, is finished and ready to post. I probably won't do so yet — I want to let it percolate in my brain a bit longer — but I'm relieved to have finished it without any major issues, given I found the fandom a little bit daunting. I've got a few ideas for treats, and I'll try to get started on them soon.
Books finished this week were all of the creepy, gothic flavour: Melmoth, by Sarah Perry (a pastiche of a nineteenth-century story, the idea of which is that people are haunted by a relentless, demonic figure who forces them to remember all their choices and actions which cause them shame), and The Warlow Experiment by Alix Nathan (a novel based on real events in the late eighteenth century, in which a wealthy landowner sought to confine a man underground without human contact for seven years for the sake of a science experiment; the story also touches on enlightenment philosophy and the revolutionary politics of the era, showing the unexamined hypocrisies at the heart of both, and while I found the novel interesting, I also found its male point-of-view characters' attitudes towards women so repellant that reading the book was a somewhat unpleasant experience). I think next I'll reread The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, one of my favourite books of all time, and one I keep coming back to, wishing that other authors did such a good job telling the story of Briseis from the Iliad.
Matthias and I were watching the latest BBC historical drama, World on Fire. I had been put off by its subject matter (yet another British miniseries about World War II), but was drawn in by its promise to tell a multistranded story, with Polish characters, German characters, and French characters as well. Unfortunately, I wished they had stuck solely in Poland — I found those characters' story vastly more compelling than the rather conventional British war story that dominated the show. There was also some absurd geographical handwaving for the sake of dramatic moments — one of the Polish characters seemed to have somehow walked from eastern Poland (at least I presume that's where he was, given he encountered Russian soldier) to Dunkirk, for example. All in all, I would not recommend it, although I enjoyed some strands of the narrative.
We also found time to see The Aeronauts this week, which was a visually interesting piece of whimsical Victoriana, with the titular aeronauts attempting to surpass a height record for ascent in their balloon. Its writer is the same as the person responsible for the His Dark Materials BBC series, and I can see a kind of common visual language (I'm not watching the HDM series, as I do not watch adaptations of deeply formative books, but I've seen enough promotional material out of the corner of my eye to know what it looks like from a design perspective). The film was fun enough, although I could predict every narrative and character twist and turn, and, as someone who is a) afraid of flying and b) has a horror of stories in which characters are trapped in something they can't get out of, it also really freaked me out, and at points I was unable to watch.
I've got the next two days off (I had a bunch of unclaimed leave which I needed to use by January), and that has helped to make this weekend feel neverending. Usually by Sunday night I'm in work mode again, anticipating the week to come, but tonight I feel blissfully relaxed.
Books finished this week were all of the creepy, gothic flavour: Melmoth, by Sarah Perry (a pastiche of a nineteenth-century story, the idea of which is that people are haunted by a relentless, demonic figure who forces them to remember all their choices and actions which cause them shame), and The Warlow Experiment by Alix Nathan (a novel based on real events in the late eighteenth century, in which a wealthy landowner sought to confine a man underground without human contact for seven years for the sake of a science experiment; the story also touches on enlightenment philosophy and the revolutionary politics of the era, showing the unexamined hypocrisies at the heart of both, and while I found the novel interesting, I also found its male point-of-view characters' attitudes towards women so repellant that reading the book was a somewhat unpleasant experience). I think next I'll reread The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, one of my favourite books of all time, and one I keep coming back to, wishing that other authors did such a good job telling the story of Briseis from the Iliad.
Matthias and I were watching the latest BBC historical drama, World on Fire. I had been put off by its subject matter (yet another British miniseries about World War II), but was drawn in by its promise to tell a multistranded story, with Polish characters, German characters, and French characters as well. Unfortunately, I wished they had stuck solely in Poland — I found those characters' story vastly more compelling than the rather conventional British war story that dominated the show. There was also some absurd geographical handwaving for the sake of dramatic moments — one of the Polish characters seemed to have somehow walked from eastern Poland (at least I presume that's where he was, given he encountered Russian soldier) to Dunkirk, for example. All in all, I would not recommend it, although I enjoyed some strands of the narrative.
We also found time to see The Aeronauts this week, which was a visually interesting piece of whimsical Victoriana, with the titular aeronauts attempting to surpass a height record for ascent in their balloon. Its writer is the same as the person responsible for the His Dark Materials BBC series, and I can see a kind of common visual language (I'm not watching the HDM series, as I do not watch adaptations of deeply formative books, but I've seen enough promotional material out of the corner of my eye to know what it looks like from a design perspective). The film was fun enough, although I could predict every narrative and character twist and turn, and, as someone who is a) afraid of flying and b) has a horror of stories in which characters are trapped in something they can't get out of, it also really freaked me out, and at points I was unable to watch.
I've got the next two days off (I had a bunch of unclaimed leave which I needed to use by January), and that has helped to make this weekend feel neverending. Usually by Sunday night I'm in work mode again, anticipating the week to come, but tonight I feel blissfully relaxed.
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Date: 2019-11-18 09:07 am (UTC)I hope you enjoy your extra long weekend!
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Date: 2019-11-18 04:18 pm (UTC)The long weekend is already going great so far: I finished an entire Yuletide treat today, as well as (re)reading a whole book. It's been really nice and relaxing.
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Date: 2019-11-18 08:59 pm (UTC)And so glad you're taking a few extra days to relax now in November. It's a good month for a break.
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Date: 2019-11-19 09:37 am (UTC)It has been really good to have a bit of a break in November — it's so cold outside, it's nice to spend a bit longer in the warmth of the house, resting.