forestsofpine

I'm still on my Agatha Christie kick. This month it was Murder in Mesopotamia, which is set on an archaeological dig in Iraq. I'm pretty sure it's one I never read before, nor have I seen the David Suchet episode. Christie was interested in archaeology and participated in digs, so it had some interesting details about the work and day-to-day life of archaeologists in that era. It featured a different narrator than most Poirot books: a woman hired as nurse to the eventual victim about a week before her death. The nurse was both opinionated and unreliable, which was a fun combo in some regards since you could see how her prejudices for or against certain characters were affecting her judgement and blinding her to some of the realities of the case, but unpleasant when her opinions involved racism against the local Arab workers at the dig, which they frequently did.

As for the mystery itself, perhaps the easiest explanation of my feelings is that I enjoyed the setup, but not the solution. One hopes for a satisfying answer to all three of the questions of Who, Why, and How, and the ending was so improbable on one of those counts that it destroyed my suspension of disbelief. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the classic Christie twists and turns and it's a light, fast read, so I wouldn't describe it as wasted time.

And here are some of the fics I enjoyed in July!( MDZS, Beyond Evil, K-pop RPF )

Sorry this is a few days late, I had the draft of my 2024 fic reading stats almost ready to go on Jan 1 and only had to add in a couple final numbers, but I wasn't as prepared with my Dec recs post and in between holiday stuff and spotty internet, I didn't manage to put it together in time.

Anyway, here's some of the fics I enjoyed in December:( MCU and Enchanted Forest Chronicles )

Another slow reading month, alas, but here are some of the fics I enjoyed in July:( MDZS and Word of Honor )

Here are some of the fics I enjoyed in February:( 2 White Collar and 3 SHINee RPF )

I've been fighting a nasty case of writer's block most of the year and the reading slump I've been in the last few months has made it even worse, so I was absolutely determined to read more fic this month than last month, because if I'm not writing AND I'm not reading, what am I even doing with my life? I asked some friends to throw links at me from their fandoms du jour to help out and in consequence I have read more Supernatural fic this month than I have since probably about 2008. 😄

Here are some of the fics I enjoyed in October:( Supernatural, Supernatural/Leverage, Bad Buddy, The Eighth Sense, K-pop RPF )

Here are some of the fics I enjoyed in March:( MDZS/CQL, Beyond Evil, 1000 Stars, Nirvana in Fire, Yuri on Ice, K-pop RPF )

Here are some of the fics I enjoyed this month:( Featuring MDZS, Kinnporsche, K-pop RPF, Until We Meet Again, Love in the Air, Our Flag Means Death, Knives Out!, and Gordon Korman )

Here are some of the fics I enjoyed in July. Vegaspete kind of ate my brain this month, but there's also at least one each for MDZS/CQL, Bad Buddy, Beyond Evil, Semantic Error, and Hawaii Five-0. ( Read more... )

With the news about Elon Musk buying Twitter today, it's hard to tell what might happen to fandom-on-Twitter. Depending on what changes he chooses to make, I could see fandom either continuing there for several more years until something else happens to provoke a migration, or leaving fairly quickly if it becomes (even more of) a hellhole of misogyny, racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, fat-phobia, and conspiracy-mongering, as "free speech" defenders of Musk's particular type tend to encourage.

I haven't been doing fanart recs here because I don't know that much about art and have a hard time talking about what I like about particular pieces, but in the interest of helping myself remember names so I can track people back down if another migration happens, I thought I'd put together a list of some of my favorite fanart that I've found on Twitter in the last year or so.

This is going to be Part 1: Miscellaneous Fandoms, and Part 2 will be MDZS/The Untamed. I'm sure I'm missing lots of beautiful art from both, so there may end up being a part 3. 😰

( Mostly Word of Honor, with some RPF, Beyond Evil, Our Flag Means Death, Cherry Magic, Tolkien, Good Omens, 2ha, and TGCF thrown in for good measure )

Here are some of the fics I enjoyed in November: ( 11 MDZS, 1 Good Omens )