The Library

1. The numbered-post posting, I mean. I like lists. :)

2. My Snarry Swap fic is progressing nicely. Added about 3k today. And a bit of solo smut. I'm at a total of 24k now, and half-way through my outline. The old outline. Today, I added #14 to the outline. But that's a bit of an epilogue, so it doesn't count.

3. Thought about writing a sequel to my hp_yule_balls fic. Probably should wait until it's posted.

4. Talking about the hp_yule_balls fic: it's due tomorrow and still needs a title. *ponders*

5. The other day, I once more came across an old post of jodi_payne on torquere_social. In that post she said that she and chrisowen are working on a fifth Deviations novel. It will be set after the series, will be novel-length, and mostly about Phan. I am full of squee.

6. I won a book! In a contest over on torquere_social I won one of tc_blue's contests. I wished for Matchmen, Ltd. Finished the first story. More squee. I think I've found another TP author to fangirl over. Which is brilliant. I love having authors I can buy blindly. :)

7. I went to the post office just now to mail a bunch of books. The post office was closed. Because it's Friday afternoon. For some reason, I was still on Thursday. Stupid post office.

8. On the way back, while I was waiting at a stoplight, I saw the add for a horse show. There was a bunch of white horses in it, and the pale images of a boy and a girl. My reactions to the add went something like this:
a - Oh, pretty horses!
b - Something is wrong with that add.
c - Hey, that boy looks a bit like the Scorpius from hp_cross_fest!
d - The girl looks like a stupid bint.
e - There ought to be a good-looking, dark-haired older gentleman with glasses next to the boy.
f - Think you're reading too much HP fanfiction?
g - No, bunny, GO AWAY!!!!
h - Oh, it's green.

9. Remember my Assessment Centre report? A week ago, I had another appointment with a Minion and I got to read the Top Sekkrit Report that psycho-man wrote. It said almost exactly the same things that I wrote in that post. And then the Minion offered to xerox it for me. Top Sekkrit. Uh, yeah.

10. I discovered a new writer on fictionpress, too. The name's Qui, or qui_te. Will stalk journal now.

And so I don't get my books. It's really annoying. Each time I try to pay, I get a message about "payment stopped". What? I checked my credit card details; all's fine. I logged off and then on again. Still the same. WTF??

I wonder if the voucher is the problem. But they gave it to me! As an incentive to buy from bol, of course. But whatever, a voucher is a voucher, and I want books. I wouldn't be trying to buy those books without the voucher. It's 5 Euro off. And I can buy one or two ebooks from Torquere for 5 Euro.

I'm not going to try Amazon, because they are more expensive than bol. Perhaps I should look at prices over at booklooker. Only, I don't have a voucher for them. *sighs* It's really, really annoying. I want books. Real books. Stuff I can read while lying in bed. I can't do that with my laptop.

*growls*

But, hey, talking about books and annoying. I'm still - and always - looking for a really good book. Slash, of course. I've got no trouble finding good books that aren't slash, but when it comes to m/m romance ... Well. I could do with some recs. Do you know any really, really good m/m romance novels? And I mean really good. Books with some plot, well-drawn characters, preferrably even character development, some romance, some humour. Something intelligent, and intelligent not only because the author said so.

You see, I'm a picky reader. Very picky. And I can't rely on the majority. I tried that. It's no good. ( For example, Evangeline Anderson, or Books I Do Not Like At All - something of a rant )

Okay. Enough book ranting. ( Now for some books that I enjoy reading )

So, now that I've bored you to tears, I'll go and see whether bol has decided they want my money. And if you have recs for some really, really good m/m novels, please, gimme!!

Thanks to mllesatine's recs, I have been sucked into a new fandom. Shiny! And I've been voraciously reading everything I could get my greedy little paws on. And then I made a list of fav fics. :)


( Some Memorable Jeeves/Wooster fics )

Written exam is only two weeks and two days away. But I Will. Not. Panic.

*takes deep breath*

To relax my poor, abused, literarified brain, me wants fic. Rec me something, please? Something happy or romantic, heck, anything is fine as long as the end is happy. Can be original or fanfic. Would prefer slash, though.

In case of HP fanfic, I want something with Harry in it.

Oh, and I have a weird craving for some pining (meaning one character has been in love with the other for some time but never acted on it before, for whatever reasons).

Or, you know, just something funny and light. I can't take anymore tragedy.

'In articulating the aesthetic of the sublime the implicitly male subject traditionally posited by Western culture vicariously experiences the "female" subject position. He knows what it is to be "filled" by a great, hardly known, and threatening power, an experience that echoes through every dimension of this "speaking subject".'

Anne Williams, The Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic

You know you have read too much slash when the idea of a male subject being "filled" makes you think of cocks and dildos.

Very distracting.

Although, now I'm pondering on the significance and the implications of using the term '"female" subject position'. Doesn't this imply that only a female can be filled? I get what she's saying - traditionally (in Western culture) is is the female that is filled, and the book very nicely plays with traditional notions - but it still makes me ponder.

Which is also very distracting. Not much studying getting done here.

As my book points out, these lines have become almost a cliché. But did you know they are from the poem In Memoriam A.H.H by Alfred Lord Tennyson? Well, I didn't. That's why I like reading books. I always learn something new. Even though the Victorians are a bit dull on occasion.

Although they're growing on me. Seriously. I mean, probably everyone knows how the Victorians are said to be all prude and repressed. Yep, some of them were. But not all. And sex played a bigger role in Victorian life than ever before. You don't have up to 80,000 prostitues in London for nothing. Or a flourishing trade in pornography.

And hey, the Victorian poets weren't exactly prudes, either. I don't think I have to make a case for Oscar Wilde. But he is definitely not the only one. Ever read Christina Rossetti?

She cried, "Laura," up the garden.
"Did you miss me?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me;

That's from The Goblin Market (1862). The person speaking is Lizzie, Laura's sister. The poem was well received and actually considered fit for children.

I may have read too much porn, but 20th century criticism agrees with me that this hints at lesbianism. And incest. Prude? Not in my book!

And it gets better! (Oh, yes)

Algernon Charles Swinburne, Anactoria (1866). FYI, Anactoria was one of the lovers of Sappho of Lesbos:

I would find grievous ways to have thee slain,
Intense device, and superflux of pain;
Vex thee with amorous agonies, and shake
Life at thy lips, and leave it there to ache;
Strain out thy soul with pangs too soft to kill
[...]
And flower-sweet fingers, good to bruise or bite
As honeycomb of the inmost honey-cells,
With almod-shaped and roseleaf coloured shells,
And blood like purple blossom at the tips
Quivering; and pain made perfect in thy lips
For my sake when I hurt thee
[...]
Would I not hurt thee perfectly? not touch
Thy pores of sense with torture, and make bright,
Thine eyes with bloodlike tears and grievous light
Strike pang from pang as note is struck from note,
Catch the sob's middle music in thy throat,
Take thy limbs living, and new-mould with these
A lyre of many faultless agonies?

As the teacher informed the class of Victorian Poetry and Poetics: "This, um, poem includes some, um, aspects of, uhhh, SM. Yeah."

Good old Algie. That lesson was one of the very few occasions when I was actually awake in class. :)

( coooold!! )


I did a Writerly Review of 2008, listing the things I wrote (minus the thesis). Given that I read a lot more than I write (and have been doing reading statistics for years) I thought I'd do another Review of 2008 with the things I read.

A short one. Promise.

Read in 2008
Books (fiction, non-fiction, ebooks & other o-fic online): 51
Manga: 16
Essays (both for thesis and not): 84
Fanfics shorter than 20k words: 1,723
Fanfics longer than 20k words: 156

Also: the re-reads, since I read fiction that I really like at least twice:
Books: 26
Manga: 14
Essays: 48
Fanfics shorter than 20k: 267
Fanfics longer than 20k: 44


Conclusion: Cira reads too much and has, apparently, a lot of time to spare for a) reading and b) making lists.