This is a collection of various things. My main intention is for this to be a collection of things I've read or seen that I have a small thought on. Here is my rock collection, some of which are shiny. I'll sort it when it gets big enough.
Once-was-Willem by M.R. Carey A book I got for Christmas 25 and read soon after. It's a cool story which does a lot of things well. It's about the people of Cosham, a small English village and the nearby small castle. The feeling of smallness and unknowns and magic and fairytale is captured delightfully. There's some interesting interpretations of Biblical matters, which felt reasonably fresh, but it may be inspired from something else. It's written from the perspective of a character and uses language to try and reflect that. I was surprised how I didn't mind. Normally this trope is frustrating or inconsistently done, but it was generally pretty good here. I don't know exactly what era of English is used, but it's not right (on account of still being intelligible), although it's good enough for the purpose. One instance which frustrated me was the use of the word 'cannonball.' The story is set in 1130-ish about 200 years before the first cannons appeared in Europe. There may be other cases of this that I missed. The topic of being jerked when reading a book is something I've thought about a bunch.
A book I got for Christmas 25 and read soon after. It's odd. The book is a short horror set in what could be the modern or near future age. Nothing is outside the ordinary really or outside the believable to be true. Weirdly, the book has lots of short chapters, which I found strange. The horror in the book is fine? It made me a little scared at points. Partly because some of the deaths in the book are very reasonable things that could occur when robots go out roboting. I didn't see the twist in the book coming, partly because I didn't expect one, it seemed well sign posted enough that if you were looking out for it, you'd catch it. It did the job and was pleasant to read, partly because it ended quickly.
A film that's quite pretty and an adaptation of a book (guess the name challenge). The film was visually very pretty. I felt like there was lots going on with colours etc. and I'm sure there's a ton I missed. The main thing I noticed was how often Viktor was wearing red. It felt like his colour to me. I managed to miss this while watching the film but the amount of milk he drinks is in retrospect a fairly obvious nod to his mummy issues, along with the fact that the actress, Mia Goth, played both his mother and his lover (love interest really, she had standards). There were some lines that made me want to write them down and think about them, but I've forgotten what they are, more evidence that the use of pen and paper has rotted my brain. Would recommend it as a film.
A book about the life and death of a neurosurgeon. I read this on a train which was a mistake since I cried slightly - I think if I'd read it at home I would've cried more (crying is fun!). It deals with death in a very front on manner, which I like. The author of the book dies gracefully, which is an idea that I'm interested in and first learnt of in Utopia (maybe? by Aldus Huxely)
This is a big chunky book that's two of four in a big chunky series, which, while I am reading, is very frustrating to read. The scope of the books is large. It's a big political fantasy spanning a reasonable time length that engages with a number of different themes: one is emergent empire; one is the role of women in society; one is the impact of industrialisation; one is colonialism; there's more too. The trouble with them really is that there's so much going on it's very hard to keep straight. I think there's lots of allusions and references to outside stuff too. Some of these are quite small, calling the sea wine-dark for instance (which was used twice in two different books and annoyed me because even thought that's like 1000 pages apart it's still the same simile), or referencing the person dreaming of a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of a person. It's very strange. It reminds me of a tumblr comment I saw once about how some authors try to put the everything into one book, often their first. It feels like that. Like everything has just been stuffed into it as much as possible. The author is quite highly acclaimed, although mostly for short stories, so there may be something to that. Despite the issues I take with them, I have read half the series, and will likely read more. I do want to know what happens. But I think I'm reading fast partly because there is so much to read, which means a lot of the content of the book is likely to be lost on me. Another gripe I have with them is that the world is so close to ours, yet different. And it feels very strange that it could be so close to ours and yet still different. Sort of like the uncanny valley but for fantasy worlds.
This book was chosen as the first book of a bookclub I'm in, which I'm excited about. It is fairly new and so I couldn't get it second hand. It's also out only in paperback and was £12ish. The story itself is only 100 pages long which feels a little steep, at 12p a page. It's a beautiful book. The cover is pretty and there is art for each chapter and little leaves and plants on each page. The text is formatted around those, which can disrupt the reading experience at times. The story was delightful though, like being told a fairytale by a fire. I don't know if I actually have that many thoughts on the content, although I will be doing a second read before it is discussed.
This book is about virality, not just diseases but a whole host of things. I read this book on and off over a few months. Part of the reason for reading it was because of my dissertation on epidemiological modelling, and it existed in the house. The first part was enjoyable and the second half I found difficult. It felt a lot like a book full of different examples and anecdotes, which can be quite enjoyable, there are two other books which I quite liked in that fashion that I have read in the last year, Factfulness by Hans Rosling and The Hidden Half by Michael Blastland, but in this case it didn't work. Generally I think it was the structure of the book, not aided by my reading taking so long, where I had lost track of what had already been discussed or why this example appeared in this part of the book and not an earlier part where it felt like the same point was being made. I feel quite sad that I don't have a main anecdote from this book. There is no single story that stays stuck in my mind. I could reread it or bits of it to discover that but I do not have the desire or energy.
This was an interesting read, partly because I have recently done a statistics masters. A lot of the content of the book touched on stuff in my masters. In that regard it was a little bit like reading the summary notes of it. I do not know how well it explained the concepts because I am quite familiar with them. The explanations made sense to me, I cannot say if they will make sense to someone who is unfamiliar with statistics. There was still stuff for me to learn from it however, some of the examples were good, although I cannot remember that many. The most memorable part is the distinction between a sample from a population that exists and is real, and a sample from a population that is imaginary. Suppose you are interested in the average height of the UK, you take a million people (a sample) from the actual population and get an answer. It's not the real answer but it will be pretty close. Importantly, there is a margin of error. Suppose you take the height of everyone in the UK: this is the real answer there is no margin of error. But it will change pretty much instantaneously as people die etc. so you may still wish to imagine this as a sample from some imaginary population. Feels sort of weird in this case. It makes more sense with smaller data sets, like the number of terrorist attacks each year or child deaths in hospitals etc. The book explains it better (although I still feel philosophically confused by it).
This is the first of many books that I got from my Grandma that I'll be reading. It's a beautiful book. It has gilded pages, a spine with cords and a really nice textured thick cardboard cover. It's small enough to slip into a coat pocket too, which I like. All of those components make it a delight to read story aside (it was split into two volumes perhaps for the size reason). I also quite liked the story. For the time it was quite shocking (Victorian affairs were not affairs) and it's publishing was delayed posthumously by Anne's sister Charlotte until post(her)humously it was published. Apparently it's also considered an early feminist novel. I really liked it. There's bits in it that are somewhat funny (physiognomy things) and it is quite Christian but all that aside it's interesting and fun and I like the characterisation. Go read it.
This is a film where Samara Weaving screams a lot and kills a lot. It's pretty funny. It's pretty fun. There's a sort of silly premise and maybe like a few odd twists (not really twists but the idea of who is a 'good' guy vs who is a bad). Good fun probably wouldn't watch again but equally wouldn't mind watching again. I can get on board with this kind of horror, primarily because it's so unrelatable.
I sort of ended up watching this twice because my girlfriend fell asleep part way through the first watch and she wanted to watch it again. I really didn't mind that. I was simultaneously reading the book at the same time so lightly spoiled myself on some things. That said, the film is pretty true to the book in a lot of ways, I don't think it fully captures all the characters correctly, nor does it accurately suggest the amount of time that passes or the amount of time people spend together, but it does a pretty damn good job and is very enjoyable. Part of the problem with the timing is that I felt like characters just fell in love with one another after dancing together like once or something, which feels really silly. The only thing I've danced with is death (I nearly got hit by a car once at sort of low speeds) and I didn't love that.
I am part way through watching this, but I've really enjoyed it so far. I like the take on the Bennet family (who are the main guys in P&J [which is what cool people call Pride and preJudice]) I like the story. I think a lot of the actors have done a pretty damn good job. I love the Gardiners I would die for them. It also has a Mr Collins redemption arc that no one asked for, wasn't needed but is still pretty damn enjoyable.
There's some interesting differences to the film. I think the book did it better generally.
A list that's temporary: subnautica, vanity fair, buncha puzzle games in steam