November in a nutshell: Sumayah went out on the same week as the U.S. election, this month sucked ass and I have not been anywhere near my best. I was literally today years old when I realized the mouse toy I hung in my doorway for Circe is on an adjustable string and that I could have made it easier for her to reach at any point, what is wrong with my brain??? (I am also sad that I have no more new episodes of Bake Off to watch. That was a really good season. Might have to watch it again really soon, I’ve already finished off the Netflix backlog.)
The biggest highlight of my month was finally caving and taking myself to the theater to see Wicked part I. Here’s some unhinged initial thoughts, because that was a damn good movie:
- Cried at Ariana’s first notes.
- omg that lion cub is so cute.
- Baby Elphaba is SO CUTE!!!
- Will take Jeff’s singing over Russell Crowe’s any day of the fuckin’ week. At least he didn’t sound like he’d just been to the dentist.
- Chef’s kiss choreography.
- Sobbed during Defying Gravity.
- I went the night before three straight days of BN shifts but needed at least a week to recover, why didn’t I see the movie on Monday T_T
I am aware that there are people out there hating on this movie because there are always people like that, but I do not remotely care. I knew after the first five seconds that this movie was going to become my new personality, this is the best musical film I’ve ever seen in my life, I will die on this fucking hill and I now have the Wicked bookmarks to prove it. An official review is in the planning stages, but first I want to see the movie again, you know, for accuracy purposes.
Aside from depressed vegging and unplanned moviegoing, my off-work activities have been largely confined to TV-bingeing and video game-playing. I have so many games downloaded on my first Switch that I had to get an SD card.
It was the spontaneous purchase of Dreamlight Valley that precipitated the purchase of the SD card, and now I am annoyed because I waited a couple of weeks for the game to arrive only to find that I’d accidentally ordered the full game download instead of the physical cartridge. I mean, it is what it is at this point and I don’t care enough to correct it, but I wish I’d been paying more attention.
November Reading Stats
Books Finished:
- Bruce Coville’s Book of Nightmares: Tales to Make You Scream – Bruce Coville et al.
- Legends & Lattes – Travis Baldree
- The Secret Life of the Universe: An Astrobiologist’s Search for the Origin and Frontiers of Life – Nathalie A. Cabrol
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – J.K. Rowling
Total Pages Read: 964
I have been battling an on-again-off-again reading slump since 2021, and with the world being what it is at the moment it’s been hard to get up the motivation to do anything. This has not been my month, either professionally or personally, and all those goals I set for myself back in September still have yet to materialize. At this point I’m throwing shit at my internal job wall just to see if anything sticks. I want a gig-based lifestyle that will allow me to pursue my actual interests, but I also don’t want a gig-based lifestyle that will force me to actually hustle. I want a full-time job, and I don’t. I want a part-time job, but that brings me back to the hustle problem, as in I have never had any kind of hustle in my life. I am not a hustly person. I want to move out of state, I want to stay right where I am, I don’t know what I want except that I probably want a cran-merry orange lemonade right now because my coworkers got me hooked.
One thing that is going well: selling books is delightful. I’ve also spent a pile of money because that employee discount is REALLY sweet, so I’m not sure I’m actually profiting from this job. Earlier I was hoping it would turn more long-term, but now I’m kind of rethinking that, partly because it doesn’t seem entirely sustainable and partly because I suck at getting up with my alarm and the early-morning shifts are killing me, lol. I’m not looking forward to Christmas week. We’ll see what happens, I guess. I’m on the fence either way. Among the benefits of venturing into book retail: access to the pile of free ARCs in the break room *___*
I am not joking when I say I have been trying to get my hands on a copy of Immortal for months, because I am a Sue Lynn Tan stan even if a cursory glance has already told me that she still says “as” too much. Regardless, I really really really love the Celestial Kingdom series and I am mega excited for this particular ARC, and I grabbed it the minute I noticed it on the counter. I’m also very excited for They Bloom at Night, and for Impossible Creatures, which I have already bought in its final finished form. My intention was to read the free ARC so I could talk to customers about the book, but about five chapters in I knew I was going to buy it, and so I have. u_u
This book is SO CUTE. The language is just wonderful, in a Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone kind of way. I don’t know anything about Rundell as of this writing, but I will be heartbroken if she also turns out to be a FART. I’m 112 pages into the book so far and foresee no difficulty in finishing it. And, speaking of cute, Lori surprised me with the entire Shady Hollow series in its UK edition!!!
I am OBSESSED omfg look at the way those covers all line up T_T Best surprise ever, these editions are so precious and will never leave the apartment.
Currently Reading
Sherlock Holmes Complete Collection
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Restarted The Sign of Four for the second time during a surprise trip to the critter ER. Making good progress during my lunch breaks at work.
My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-Wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me
Caleb Carr
No progress. :’)
Impossible Creatures
Katherine Rundell
Current rating: 4.75-5 stars omfg I love this book. No coherent thoughts at the moment, though presumably that will change.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Suzanne Collins
This book has gotten a solid three stars every reread, and I see no reason for that to change. The only difference is that this reread is taking place on Kindle.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
J.K. Rowling
Current rating: 5 stars. This is apparently an unpopular opinion, but I actually love CoS, which might just be my favorite HP. (OotP is definitely my least favorite, closely followed by HBP.) I’m not too far in right now, but Harry and Ron are about to pick a fight with the Whomping Willow.
Stuff Your Library Day
Regarding the results of the election, and its inevitable consequences: The only way forward is to keep moving, which is easy to say but hard to accept. On the bright side, there was a post in my Kindle group asking for “female rage books, feminist books, and everything in between,” and I can be summoned by absolutely any of those.
In no particular order:
- When Women Were Dragons – Kelly Barnhill
- Build Your House Around My Body – Violet Kupersmith
- Men Explain Things to Me – Rebecca Solnit
- The Curse of Chalion – Lois McMaster Bujold
- The Woman Warrior – Maxine Hong Kingston
- The Penelopiad – Margaret Atwood
- Catherine, Called Birdy – Karen Cushman
- Circe – Madeline Miller
- The Winternight trilogy – Katherine Arden
- Fierce Fairytales – Nikita Gill
- The Lost Queen series – Signe Pike
- Woman World – Aminder Dhaliwal
- The Girl with the Louding Voice – Abi Daré
The next priority: Collecting as many banned books as I can reasonably buy in hard copy. Off to a good start thanks to one of my local bookstores, which also happens to carry cold drinks with names like Leninade and Kickapoo, lol. (The bottom three books in the second photo are not banned, but were too tempting to pass up.)
And yeah the banned books are great and all but my greatest find was hands down this copy of The Hobbit, which matches my LOTR paperbacks!!! I never thought I’d find this edition after failing to find it anywhere online omg it’s the little things T_T
November Noms
If nothing else, it was a good month for food. The gallery starts with Thanksgiving, proceeds to the curry ramen I made when Heather and Michaella paid me a lovely (and very needed) surprise visit at work, and ends with yet another Don Tigre dinner, because I’m low-key obsessed with that place.
And Heather and I sort of managed to get a selfie with Circe. Well, we tried.
Circe’s Corner
HEAR YE, HEAR YE: My cat is a drama queen, and I am a hypochondriac by proxy. This led to a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Saturday night for both of us, but guess what happens when we nibble our little paws raw? Mommy panics and drugs us and takes us to the ER. That’s what happens. IN MY DEFENSE, I noticed in the late afternoon/early evening that her paws were covered with blood stains. I thought maybe those were mine because she claws me every morning before breakfast, but I don’t bleed that much and her paws have never looked that bad before, and then I noticed she was biting at one of her dew claws like she was trying to pull it out. I’ve seen her do that before, but never to the point of making herself bleed.
Here she is sleeping in the closet after I drugged her. I really just wanted her to stop biting her paws and thought she couldn’t make them bleed any worse if she took a nap.
The doctor’s verdict: Allergies. =___= (No, really, I’m glad it wasn’t something big and nasty and unaffordable.) After an hour and a half in the car outside the ER, all she needed was a couple of shots and a nail trim. At this point I’m assuming she was just trying to give herself a nail trim, because she’s been fine since we got home. I’ve really gotta learn to trim her nails myself. I am not running to the kitty ER every time her claws get a little too long.
