beer_good_foamy

Archive Of Our Own has been nominated for a Hugo. This is a pretty fantastic thing; acknowledging both the site as an archive - ie a searchable, indexable, tagable archive of fannish creations - and as a collection of those fannish creations.

There are a lot of other good things nominated this year. Personally I'm rooting for Brooke Bolander's The Tale Of The Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters And The Prince Who Was Made Of Meat and Janelle Monáe's Dirty Computer (the movie). But still, AO3 at the Hugos. We all deserve a fraction of a pat on the back for that.

And while I'm posting on that kind of stuff, why not do the Wednesday Reading meme, it's been a while.

What I just read: Marlon James' Black Leopard, Red Wolf which is... yikes. Ultra-dense African/Afro-Caribbean fantasy tale that drops you head-first into a world and a mythology where you simply have to find your own way, guided by a very unreliable and messed-up narrator looking for revenge on the world. Shape-shifters, vampires, witches, swordsmasters, true heirs to the throne, impending apocalypse, none of it from an angle you're used to, and pretty damn queer as well. Not a quick read, but damn.

What I'm reading now: Just finishing up Kameron Hurley's The Light Brigade, which is what I've come to expect of Hurley's novels: clever, fast-paced, gooey, and fueled by righteous anger. Like a mash-up of Starship Troopers (the movie) and Slaughterhouse-Five with some body horror thrown in. Very much recommended.

What I'm reading next: Honestly don't know. I recently stumbled onto an old Biggles novel at a yard sale, I'm thinking of reading that just to see if it'll help me understand Brexit.

I got tagged by shadowkat for this:

Rules (if you've been tagged, you can actually play or not play!): list 10 books that have stayed with you in some way. Don't take more than a few minutes and don't think too hard - they don't have to be the "right" or "great" works, just the ones that have touched you. Tag ten people or just a few people including me - so can see list. [You don't have to tag anyone of course.]

I’m not tagging anyone since a lot of my flist have already been tagged, but if you want to do it, I dare you by all means, go ahead!

The Brothers Lionheart, Astrid Lindgren
Ask any Swede about their favourite Astrid Lindgren book, and they'll talk your ear off for hours. Brothers Lionheart was not only the (probably) first fantasy novel I read, but also remains one of the most honest ones. It's a children's book, but it never shies away from darkness; hell, it starts with the title characters dying horribly, and goes on from there to become one of the most heartwarming stories I know even as things get very dark indeed.

Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
Arguably Slaughterhouse-Five is the most important Vonnegut novel, but this is the one I love so much I've had it tattooed on me. A very dark comedy about humanity killing itself off because finding ways to not do it is simply too hard. Puts the calypso in apocalypse. See the cat? See the cradle?

Crime and Punishment Feodor Dostoevsky (or however you choose to spell it in Latin script)
I keep coming back to this one every 10-12 years since I was 15. Every time I find something new in it. I don't necessarily agree with Dostoevsky half the time, but few other authors are as interesting to argue with. And I have the BtVS crossover fic to prove it.

The Stand, Stephen King
Not the first King I read - I think that was Christine - but the one I've read the most times, and the one I can probably quote in my sleep even though it's 1200-odd pages. Everything that ever made King great (and pathetic, and funny, and flawed, and heartfelt, and horrific, and) is in here somewhere.

Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco
Eco builds the conspiracy novel to end all conspiracy novels, peppering the text with so many references and ideas and "alternative facts" that I'm sure I've only discovered a fraction of it so far. Three publishers who get tired of having conspiracy nuts send them manuscripts decide to combine ALL conspiracies into one meta-conspiracy and sell it back to the nutcases… and it works just a little too well. I'm afraid to re-read this in the current climate, which probably means I should.

Moominpappa At Sea, Tove Jansson
The novel where the idyllic Moomin valley starts falling apart, where everyone has to grow up and find themselves, where the world becomes bigger than any of them and the wacky adventures turn out to have real consequences. I love the whole series, but this is where I can still really connect to it.

Little Man, What Now?, Hans Fallada
The story of the years leading up to Hitler's takeover... written, published and read by millions in 1932, before it happened. Fallada focuses on a young couple trying to make it in a society where all the doors are closing one by one, where violence and fascism are increasingly looking like the only possible outcome, who keep trying to do the right thing and keep finding out that it doesn't matter what they do. Both a brilliant relationship drama and a reminder that seeing it coming matters not one jot if you choose to ignore it or you're unable to act on it.

The Master And Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
So Satan and his minions turn up in Stalinist Russia and start wreaking havoc with the Perfect (by party order) Society. Oh, and they're the good guys, sort of. M&M is hilariously anarchic, but at its heart, and in that meta-story it weaves in about a lone man trying to explain to Pilate that he's NOT who everyone says he is, it tells a story about ideas turned into uncontrollable monsters that never loses its point. Manuscripts don't burn.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Douglas Adams
I've read this (the first four books) more times than I can count. The sheer explosion of ideas, the way he gleefully ducks and weaves around SF clichés, all the worldbuilding asides, all the satirical jabs that never lose relevance ... and that beautiful ending of the fourth novel. Sleep tight, Marvin.

Just Kids, Patti Smith
Autobiographies tend to bore me. Just Kids works not just because I love Patti Smith beyond measure, but in the way she taps back into that creative energy she had early on, trying to give both the reader and herself a proper answer to that age-old question "Where do your ideas come from", the description of her life with Robert Mapplethorpe, and the way it’s all reflected 40 years later when almost everyone else is gone in that heartbreaking Why can't I write something that would awake the dead?

“Despite rumor, Death isn't cruel--merely terribly, terribly good at his job.”
- Sourcery

“No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.”
- Reaper Man

Farewell, Sir Pterry. Thank you. We will miss you.

OK, this is purely for my own sake, so I'm hoping there's at least someone out there who thinks this is a good idea. I don't know if anyone else has ever thought there should be a Buffy/Dostoevsky crossover, or that Faith/Raskolnikov is a logical pairing, but...

Anyway, Chapter 2 of Shelf Life, in which our heroes get sent into Giles' bookshelf, this time finding themselves in 1860s S:t Petersburg. Written for still_grrr's Classic Literature month.

Title: Shelf Life
Author: Beer Good (beer_good_foamy)
Prompt: 153: Crime And Punishment
Fandom: Buffy s5-ish, w/crossovers
Characters: Ensemble
Word Count: 1764
Summary: You take one Magic Box, one brand-new shelf of fiction, one spell gone slightly wonky, and suddenly our heroes find themselves fully booked. Geddit? Booked? Well, you will.

Book The First: In Which There Are No Giants

Book The Second: In Which Nobody Gets Murdered

( On an exceptionally hot evening early in July... )

Hey, this is nifty:


Banner by xlivvielockex

And on that note, this month is Classic Literature month at still_grrr, so let's see if I can create a sort of multi-chapter multi-crossover fic type thingy. The first challenge is "Ancient Greece to Renaissance", so let's step back to 1605...

Title: Shelf Life
Author: Beer Good (beer_good_foamy)
Fandom: Buffy (s5-ish)/Don Quixote of La Mancha
Characters: Ensemble
Word Count: 1605 (of course)
Summary: You take one Magic Box, one brand-new shelf of fiction, one spell gone slightly wonky, and suddenly our heroes find themselves fully booked. Geddit? Booked? Well, you will.

Book The First: In Which There Are No Giants

( Unhand me, villain! )

Having seen Tennant in Hamlet and read Bill Bryson's Shakespeare (both of which were excellent) lately, I just thought I'd write down some thoughts on the use of Shakespeare in the Buffyverse. Quite a few thoughts. This gets long, and covers spoilers for all of the Jossverse and Shakespeareverse (as if anyone doesn't know how his plays end).

Joss likes Shakespeare. This would be obvious even if we didn't know that he, for instance, used to hold Shakespeare readings at his house for the Buffy cast; there's quite a lot of allusions to Shakespeare in his stories, both explicit and implicit ones. This obviously won't be a complete list of all parallels between Shakespeare and Whedon, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone points out that Joss references a bunch of plays I don't even mention here. ( Lay on, Macduff! And damn'd be he who first cries 'Hold! Enough!' )

And yet again I win at life. If life is fic. And only 3rd place. But still, pretty.



still_grrr and xlivvielockex rock in equal amounts.

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Also, here's a meme i stole from zandra_x because if I could figure out a way to inject books directly into my bloodstream, I would. Feel free to pick up on it, anyone who wants.

( My reading habits in a few short questions )

Good and bad and none of it particularly ficcy.

The good: look at this lovely banner the wonderful xlivvielockex made for me for completing Minor Character March over at still_grrr:

Cluffyness!

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The bad: this is supposed to be a writing journal only, but this really hit me and I'd just like to join xlivvielockex, blueanddollsome and others, here's some rambling: ( Kurt Vonnegut is dead )