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Feb. 11th, 2024 11:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
puddlesharkAnother quiet morning. No wind. The sun glimpsed only as a white disc in the cloud. It's ridiculously mild for February. The forest still very soggy. All walks involve picking a path around the puddles. The Coal-tits are singing full-on, like its spring. And the Stonechats and Dartford Warblers, who have been in hiding all winter, are seeking out perches on the tops of gorse bushes.
***
Work is a grind. I enjoy my job less and less. Except for daily exchanges of sarcasm over Teams with the Data Analyst (who is now expected to do the work of three people, since two of the managers left, and who has reached a state of complete and hilarious disenchantment with the company and all its doings). Sarcasm makes a lot of things bearable.
***
Books read:
Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy. His first book, originally published anonymously. Thomas Hardy writes a Gothic sensation mystery, à la Wilkie Collins! I started it thinking, "This really isn't going to work..." But actually, once it gets going, it is a cracking good read. And there are flashes here and there of the future Hardy, sudden moments of brilliance in the writing that stop you in your tracks.
Apparently poor Hardy was desolate at the reviews it received, including one from The Spectator: "The anonymity is fortunate for the author; too bad the publishers could not conceal their identity..."
Currently working my way through the Bill Slider mysteries by Cynthia Harrod Eagles. Rather witty and literate police procedurals full of amusing banter and word play, in which the detectives quote poetry at each other, Bill Slider's boss is the Mrs Malaprop of the policing world ("Work it out, laddie. It's not rocket salad."), and the chapter headings are full of misquoted sayings and lines of poetry ("Deliver us from Ealing").
I didn't really get on with the first one in the series, but thought the series would probably get better as it went on, so skipped straight ahead to read Old Bones and Body Line. They can all be read as standalones.
I am reading my first ever Japanese Manga, The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter. Even in translation, these are read from the back, right-to-left, which is quite exciting.
***
Television. Still watching:
Korean marriage revenge drama Marry My Husband, but I wish this could have ended at episode 12... I was really enjoying the comedy dance of seduction and deception between the Despicable Fiancé and the Scheming Best Friend. But that seems to be over, and now the writer has suddenly introduced a new character, the Evil Psychopath Ex-Girlfriend, who isn't nearly as entertaining.
Korean cop comedy Flex x Cop. Very silly, but fun. Love the family dynamics.
Korean marriage revenge drama Queen of Divorce. Er. Sometimes you just have to switch your brain off and watch an evil mother-in-law melodrama, right?
Did not finish:
Korean webtoon adaptation A Killer Paradox. Gave up on episode 1. Very Netflixy: glamorised violence, sex scenes. And weird experimental editing that jumps all the time between the storyline and the main character's fantasies in a way that gave me a headache. I am really, really not the audience for this one.
Chinese costume detective drama Judge Dee's Mystery. The horseback scenes were just so utterly laughable, the characters filmed acting on what were obviously fake horses - really badly-made fake horses - that I couldn't take this any more.
I seem to have gone off Chinese dramas completely these past few months. They're either really badly written and produced, or they're high quality 'educational' productions made to please the Communist Party, and the drama plays second fiddle to the message.
***
Work is a grind. I enjoy my job less and less. Except for daily exchanges of sarcasm over Teams with the Data Analyst (who is now expected to do the work of three people, since two of the managers left, and who has reached a state of complete and hilarious disenchantment with the company and all its doings). Sarcasm makes a lot of things bearable.
***
Books read:
Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy. His first book, originally published anonymously. Thomas Hardy writes a Gothic sensation mystery, à la Wilkie Collins! I started it thinking, "This really isn't going to work..." But actually, once it gets going, it is a cracking good read. And there are flashes here and there of the future Hardy, sudden moments of brilliance in the writing that stop you in your tracks.
Apparently poor Hardy was desolate at the reviews it received, including one from The Spectator: "The anonymity is fortunate for the author; too bad the publishers could not conceal their identity..."
Currently working my way through the Bill Slider mysteries by Cynthia Harrod Eagles. Rather witty and literate police procedurals full of amusing banter and word play, in which the detectives quote poetry at each other, Bill Slider's boss is the Mrs Malaprop of the policing world ("Work it out, laddie. It's not rocket salad."), and the chapter headings are full of misquoted sayings and lines of poetry ("Deliver us from Ealing").
I didn't really get on with the first one in the series, but thought the series would probably get better as it went on, so skipped straight ahead to read Old Bones and Body Line. They can all be read as standalones.
I am reading my first ever Japanese Manga, The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter. Even in translation, these are read from the back, right-to-left, which is quite exciting.
***
Television. Still watching:
Korean marriage revenge drama Marry My Husband, but I wish this could have ended at episode 12... I was really enjoying the comedy dance of seduction and deception between the Despicable Fiancé and the Scheming Best Friend. But that seems to be over, and now the writer has suddenly introduced a new character, the Evil Psychopath Ex-Girlfriend, who isn't nearly as entertaining.
Korean cop comedy Flex x Cop. Very silly, but fun. Love the family dynamics.
Korean marriage revenge drama Queen of Divorce. Er. Sometimes you just have to switch your brain off and watch an evil mother-in-law melodrama, right?
Did not finish:
Korean webtoon adaptation A Killer Paradox. Gave up on episode 1. Very Netflixy: glamorised violence, sex scenes. And weird experimental editing that jumps all the time between the storyline and the main character's fantasies in a way that gave me a headache. I am really, really not the audience for this one.
Chinese costume detective drama Judge Dee's Mystery. The horseback scenes were just so utterly laughable, the characters filmed acting on what were obviously fake horses - really badly-made fake horses - that I couldn't take this any more.
I seem to have gone off Chinese dramas completely these past few months. They're either really badly written and produced, or they're high quality 'educational' productions made to please the Communist Party, and the drama plays second fiddle to the message.
