oanja

Went to visit my mom last weekend and we went to the summer cabin. It was really nice (there was the heatwave going, which was a bit too hot for me) and we had some of my relatives visiting and had a small graduation celebration for me (with cake) My cousins also brought their sup board and I finally got to try it. It was super fun and I want to get one next summer (it's like made for a small lake like we have at the cabin, there's hardly ever any waves)

Work starts tomorrow! I have no idea what I'm supposed to do or what time I should get to work, but I'm sure it'll sort itself out. I think school only starts next week, so I'm hoping there's time for planning and figuring out how we're splitting up responsibilities with the other people in our team. (two psychologists and one other school counselor)

I've actually managed to read and listen to books this month, which has been a relief. I've read the first Lord John book by Diana Gabaldon, and two of the short stories about him. I really enjoyed them, but sadly there seems to be no fic really, which sucks. I've also listened to two of the Vorkosigan books about Miles and I started Cetaganda today. I had to pick up another audiobook app to get there, as I didn't want to pay for the paperbacks. I've kind of put myself on ban for buying new books, which has led me to abusing this loophole about audiobooks xD I also listened to a Forgotten Reals book called the God Catcher, which I really enjoyed and I want to read something else by this author Erin M Evans. For some reason she's only written Forgotten Realms books, but if they're as fun as this one was I don't mind.

I've also been doing a lot of game prep for my Waterdeep Dragonheist game, if by prep we mean, watched and read a lot of random lore things. :D There's so much STUFF out there about everything in Forgotten Realms, it can get a bit overwhelming tbh, but at the same time it's fun to learn about.

I think there was something else I wanted to write about but now I've forgotten... Oh the weather, It's back to being super cold again, it was about +13C on tuesday, but it got a but warmer today. I don't miss the +33C weather at all, but this is a bit too cold for July, I hope it goes back to low 20's still in August. I love warm autumns.

( photo of me under the cut )
I bumped into this gif today, while I was trying to find photos of short haired female characters (this is a nightmare, how is this so hard?!) and I had kind of forgotten how hot Cassandra is! The eternal injustice of not being able to romance her with a female Inquisitor, seriously Bioware, shame on you

Welcome to the first chapter of the Goblin Emperor read-along! (I'm very excited about this!)

I’ve been wanting to do one of these for ages and I think my first instinct was to do it about the Wheel of Time, or Harry Potter. (I’m glad I didn’t start there, as those are such long and popular series that so many people have already said everything I would want to say, but a lot more eloquently .) I talked about doing this in a previous post and two people said they would be interested in doing a read-along of the Goblin Emperor so I picked it as my first book to cover.

Disclaimer: I have never studied literature, except for one course I did in University when I was doing my minor in English and we read a few English literature classics like the Great Gatsby and the Scarlet Letter… sooooo that’s my experience with lit crit :D I’ve read and really enjoyed other people’s read-alongs though so I kind of know what’s supposed to go into these. I guess we’ll see how this goes.

A few words about the Goblin Emperor: I read it in January 2015 according to my Goodreads page, so it’s been a while. As I mention in the audio, I can’t really remember a lot of the finer points about the plot, as far as I can recall it has a lot of court intrigues and plots and a lot of difficult to read character names that I kept getting confused about. These posts will have some spoilers for the book, but if there are major spoilers I will mention that at the beginning of the post on that chapter.

About the read-along: I would love for people to comment and read along with me, as book discussions are super interesting! I participated on the gywo book club this year when we were reading the Murderbot novella and I found it super interesting how differently people can view the same material. I am going to try to make both the audio version (where I read the chapter aloud and comment on stuff) as well as the written version. The written version will have a short summary of what happens in the chapter and then some commentary from me.

I am going to try to read this with the view of learning something about the craft of writing a book (as it’s a dream of mine) but like I mentioned I have no qualifications for academic analysis or anything fancy like that, so it might end up being just commentary about how much I adore Maia and how I want to protect him. :D

About the schedule: I'm going to try to make a few of these in advance so that I have a buffer (I'm in chapter three right now) and I'm thinking I will post a few chapters per week. I've had a lot of fun making these so far, so hopefully I can keep this up all the way through in an orderly fashion.

( News Comes to Edonomee )

I really hope that if fandom, or at least parts of fandom, come back to DW for a while we could get back fests, where there would be a theme or prompts for fanfic and then people would have time to write and then everyone would post their fic. I really don't like the exchange versions that have completely replaced fests, as I feel it's too much pressure to write a fic for a specific person according to their wishes. It also makes it so much easier to have multi fandom participation if the parameters are more trope or prompt specific instead of trying to match participants by their pairings/fandoms *sigh*

Then a real life update. I'm sick and at home, I went to see a nurse yesterday after leaving work in the middle of the day and she wrote me a sick leave note for wednesday-friday. So on the one hand, yay free time from work, but at the same time, urgh having the flu is not fun. I'm also really sick and tired of my boss, who is a terrible personal manager and seems to have no skill in dealing with her employees in a way that's not demeaning/mean/rude or just inconsiderate. Also I still don't have my new contract for January and I have a feeling she's not even that keen on giving me a new contract. So that sucks and I'm thinking that if they give me the new contract I'll stay until autumn (so I can use my holiday days and have an actual vacation for once) and then quit, unless something changes for the better. This really sucks, because I've actually pretty much liked the work itself and it's really disheartening how much effect a bad boss and a bad relationship with your boss can effect me personally.

I binged the whole Castlevania netflix show yesterday/this morning and it was very good (hello ot3!), but very very gory and violent.

I've also started listening to "everybody hates Rand" podcast about the Wheel of Time books and because they are super critical about Rand and to some extent of the other characters it's made me think about them and why I like or dislike some characters. I don't think they'll convince me not to like Rand (he's my favourite) but they make good points about how his views of women and how he treats women are really messed up and sexist. I think some of it is understandable and due to circumstance, but some of it is just bad writing from Jordan/Sanderson.

I've been thinking that I want to do one of those 'let's read' series about a book or a series for a while, but I'm torn about if I should pick something I've never read or do a reread. (if I did a reread I could pick something like the Goblin emperor, or one of the Dragon Age books, but I think it would be a good idea to start with a standalone, so I could maybe actually finish it) I think picking something is the hardest part... but it might also turn out to be a LOT of work and very time consuming, so I'm not sure I have the time. I think it might also be fun to do it like Mark reads does, and do a youtube video too, except that English is not my native language and I have an accent, not to mention that I doubt anyone would watch the videos anyway. :D haha~ I used to make voice posts on LJ sometimes, so I guess I could just do a recording instead. Does someone have ideas? Or recs to good read-along blogs they follow? I used to follow a lot of them on tor.com when they did wheel of time and Malazan, but they idiotically stopped those like half way through.

I thought I'd write a quick note on my goodreads, but then it kind of got long. :D But the short version 3 stars for good writing, it really wasn't my cup of tea and I disliked some of the things in it immensely


( Read more... )

I went to Tampere this past weekend for the UN student meeting thing about sustainable development. It was pretty cool. Also hung out with arilyn9 and sherg I'm kind of super jealous you get to live in one of my favourite cities. *pout*

Yesh, managed to finish one assignment for school. Two to go. Sadly the one I finished was the easiest... bummer. Still I have two days for the small thesis one and then two more days before the essay is due. Totally doable, hopefully *fingers crossed*

This wouldn't be such a problem if I didn't have the strongest urge to start a new fic. I want to write about how Phil and Amanda Kessel swap bodies and how that makes them evaluate their lives. Mostly I just want Amanda to get to play in the NHL and for Phil to pine after Tyler and wonder if it wouldn't be easier to just stay swapped so they could be together. And demand they send Stella to wherever Amanda is training for the Olympics and accidentally start rumors about Amanda and Tyler dating, which would not amuse Amanda, who would end up seeming like the over protective big brother. And for both of them to have body dysmorphia issues because they are cis people.

About real hockey... the Wild have been playing pretty well lately, yay! They have won the last 7 out of 8 games. They have a four game road trip that starts tonight though, so I'm a bit worried. They haven't been great on the road this season. Still let's enjoy the fact that they are second in the Central division right now, only two points behind the Hawks. (and let's ignore how the Avs and Blues have played two games less)

Also there are 8 teams in the West who have as many or more points than the first team in the East. Wow, just wow.

I got new books while I was visiting arilyn9. I just love that one used book store there... This time I got 7 new (to me) books. I'm super excited about my expanding collection of the Culture novels. I don't think I'm missing many anymore. Then, when I got back home I found the books I ordered from bookdepository had finally arrived. Those are the Patrick O'Brian books. The covers are so pretty!
( photo of my books )

Wild 5 - 3 Hawks


Backs totally stole that one for us, but I'll take it! (also Pommer & Granny looks great. Now let's just keep Heatley far far away from them)


Oh and I finally got the newest Temeraire book on Friday and I'm more than halfway through. It's pretty great so far. I keep wondering how the series will end though, as there doesn't seem to be a clear cut ending to it. I mean maybe it will just end when they beat Napoleon, but for some reason that doesn't seem like a satisfying end to me right now. idk, I'm sure when the last book comes out I'll change my mind, but yeah. Also I'm a bit of a Napoleon fangirl, so I don't like thinking about him losing. :(

Now that I know I'm getting some money at the end of the week I've been looking at gaming consoles again. >_> Oops? But I could get a really basic (very small memory) xbox360 with 130€ That's cheap! Especially now that I'm paying for viaplay anyway, it would be cool to be able to watch all the movies and shows on my tv instead of my computer screen, which is a lot smaller (obviously). I'm just really annoyed that you have to get the gold membership to activate and use the viaplay app (or whatever it's called) and the same would apply if I got a PS3 (only the xbox thing is a bit cheaper)

I've read books this week! I'm super proud of myself. :D I just finished Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones and it was pretty great. I really like her style. This was an older book by her, but you can tell in a lot of her books that she's really into the idea of parallel universes and a lot of her characters universe hop (I think Howl's Moving Castle is the most famous)

omg look at the cover photo though. I was pretty sure this book had been written in the 80's or something, but nope 1997... was the fashion really that bad back then?
( cut because the photo was rather big )

Then I read this Stat Trek book called the IDIC epidemic, and wow I googled it so I could post the cover page, which is kind of ridiculous and it seems you can read it for free on google books, or whatever it's supposed to be called. Anyway the point was that it was a really well written and thought out book, I was really positively surprised. Also it had a Klingon original character, who was central to the plot and I really enjoyed reading about him (especially because I don't really know that much about the Klingons, as they aren't really fleshed out in TOS, and nevermind the reboot universe)

(I don't know why Spock is so central in the cover, when he's not even the main character. [can you guess though why I originally bought it?] Heh I have two other books about Spock that I got from the same second hand bookstore while I was in the States, I'm going to read those next)


I think I had almost forgotten how much I like actual books, because let's be honest I mostly just read fic these days. Maybe I can keep this up this summer and read all the books I have that I haven't even started, or that are lying about half-finished.

I started reading the Wheel of Time series when I was 13 and now it's over. I've had these books with me for the past 13 years! I'm really glad that the last book was mostly great. I don't know how it could have lived up to my expectations tbh, the bar had been set too high in my mind.

I mostly blame this on my weird book plot thing, where I think books that have serious themes should have serious/sad endings with like a glimmer of happiness/hope. Instead books tend to end like Harry Potter did, with lots of fluff and maybe a smidge of seriousness/sad parts. I also thought the Hunger Games had a too happy ending... So yeah. xD

It seems that most people on the internet liked the ending so *shrug*

I might change my mind on a reread though... After reading 908 pages in about 24 hours might warp ones perspective. ^_^;

"The wind blew southward, through knotted forests, over shimmering plains and toward lands unexplored. This wind, it was not the ending. There are no endings, and never will be endings, to the turning of the Wheel of Time.

But it was an ending.

He came like the wind, like the wind touched everything, and like the wind was gone.

—from The Dragon Reborn.

By Loial, son of Arent son of Halan, the Fourth Age."

Just finished reading A Dance With Dragons. Now who knows when I will get to read the next book. >_> Arya continues to be the only character that hasn't pissed me off at some point. It's a really weird feeling finishing a book series (I know there will be more at some point but right now there isn't anything more to read)

If nothing surprising happens I will be moving, yay! Next moth I'll have my own flat and no more sharing with anyone. \0/ I never enjoyed living with strangers and now finally I won't have to. I think it's worth the money, even though the rent is pretty steep. 

I found out yesterday that Tor had released the first chapter of A Memory of Light for free on their website (and evilly had the prologue for sale) so of course I needed to read them. So I did and now everything is terrible and I can't believe I have to wait until January to finally get the actual book. This is the last book and I don't know how to feel about it. I read the first one when I was fourteen (twelve freaking years ago!) I'm pretty sure I'll be a mess once I finish reading the last chapter. This will be way worse than reading the last Potter book (for various reasons, for one I don't think this will be as much of a let down...) Waah~ I'm already making no sense and I only read two chapters.