Poor Buffy. Your life resists all things average.

Willow ,'First Date'


Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.

There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."


Calli - Jul 15, 2022 7:37:56 am PDT #27385 of 28067
I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul—Calvin and Hobbs

I finished it last night, and it kept me awake a fair bit afterwards. I get insomnia at the drop of a hat, though, so YIMV.

I also reread Poe's story before I started Kingfisher's book. "Fall of the House of Usher" is shorter than I remembered—it probably didn't take me half an hour to read. And it was nice to see the relationship between the two works.


-t - Jul 22, 2022 12:38:41 pm PDT #27386 of 28067
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

I am listening to Mike Schur’s ethics book, is this where we were talking about it? I don’t remember. But the footnotes are done with a little *boop* and then the footnote and a *bip* to show the footnote is over and you are back to the main text. You don’t have the option to skip the footnotes, I suppose, but it’s working fine for me so far.


DebetEsse - Jul 22, 2022 12:46:31 pm PDT #27387 of 28067
Woe to the fucking wicked.

It's not really a book where skipping the footnotes would occur to me. But interesting approach


-t - Jul 22, 2022 1:14:02 pm PDT #27388 of 28067
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

It's really intuitive as you listen. And I wouldn't want to skip the footnotes, so that aspect doesn't trouble me at all.


-t - Jul 22, 2022 1:41:09 pm PDT #27389 of 28067
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

I've only gotten through the first chapter. I was kind of resistant to starting it because I already feel like I'm much worse of a person than I should be and I didn't want more reason for that, but that was pretty groundless. I have more of an appreciation for Aristotle than I did previously, for sure (my inner historian of math has way more input in my opinions of many things than would seem to be warranted, and Aristotle's math was extremely weak tea, but his approach to ethics is apparently not so bad)


Laura - Jul 22, 2022 1:53:26 pm PDT #27390 of 28067
Our wings are not tired.

I am suffering over this month's book club selection. It is an autobiography written by a local woodswoman environmentalist type. Anyway, it is one page after another of minutia of her daily life, with alternating pages of how great am I blathering. I have adapted to the high school method of reading the first and last paragraphs of the chapter with some skimming of first sentences. It is pure torture. Yes, it is super cool that she builds her own cabin and fights acid rain battles and all that, but it would be much easier to read a 4 page article in National Geographic about her rather than hundreds of pages of self-aggrandizing.

This reminds me of why I so dearly love fiction.


-t - Jul 22, 2022 2:17:30 pm PDT #27391 of 28067
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

Oh, too bad, Laura. It's so hard to tell if that sort of thing is going to be for you or not except by actually reading it.


Laura - Jul 22, 2022 2:24:19 pm PDT #27392 of 28067
Our wings are not tired.

I wouldn't normally pick this sort of thing, but it is a very small community here and I actually was in elementary school with the librarian. It is the local library book club. So I'm kind of hoping I am not alone with my utter boredom. I am able to say nice things about the author to be polite and all that.

Last month was even more bizarre with the pick being #13 in Louise Penny Gamache series. Glass Houses. I had read the previous 12 but none of the other people had so we had a different experience. It was one of my least favorites of a great series too! I told them all they really had to start with Still Life.


-t - Jul 22, 2022 2:40:04 pm PDT #27393 of 28067
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

Oh, that would be weird to read just that one! I had to google to see which one it was (Penny's titles are not generally attached to her plots in my head, alas) and I only vaguely remember it so I think I am with you in not preferring it. I hope the book club has more congenial choices for you coming up!


-t - Jul 22, 2022 2:55:43 pm PDT #27394 of 28067
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

I am currently reading a mystery series that I stumbled across because the first book in a different series by the same author showed up on one of the emails that tells me about deals on books and I was intrigued by the title enough to look into the series and this first book is all there is of it so far but there was this other series that is Regency era and I thought sounded vaguely familiar (but that may only be because Kurland St Mary is slightly reminiscent of St Mary Meade) and the first book of *that* series was available on Kindle Unlimited, so I gave it a try and I quite like it! Kurland St Mary Mysteries by Catherine Lloyd - likable characters with relatable problems, decent mysteries, either well researched or plausibly made up historical detail. The first one is Death Comes to the Village.