☆❀☆

+ Went to physio last night. There seems to be some progress, which is good. I like that this place has evening appointments so I don't need to take time out of my work day. It's not like I do much in the evening anyway.

+ Went to dinner at my brother's place. His wife made some very good burgers.

+ I unfortunately haven't been much for conversation lately.

+ Read Junji Ito's Cat Diary. Found it disappointing. I've already seen the best pages on the internet. But the juxtaposition of his creepy art against the mundane cat stories is still amusing.

+ Wrote a little today. Had trouble getting into the groove, though. The Starbucks I went to isn't a very good environment for writing, not like the other Starbucks that closed down. Maybe on the weekend I will try writing at the library instead.

+ I don't feel very good today. I didn't feel good on the weekend either. Both physically and, like, emotionally. Lately I feel like I hate the entire world.

+ Going to have to go over my insurance. I received the renewal package today. I might need to contact my broker, and I really would rather not.

+ Took today off because I Felt Like It. Plus I had to go to an appointment. (Didn't need the whole day for that, but like, figured I might as well....) Also, treated to myself to lunch, just because I could. Felt nice!

+ Repotted two of my plants. Two others got the boot - the pepperomia and the oyster plant are gonzo. I probably could have saved them, like I did last year when they were struggling, but I didn't feel motivated enough to make the effort. So, now I'm down to a christmas cactus and two snake plants. Not sure what I will replace the other two with. Last year I'd considered picking up one of the hens&chicks that the garden centre was selling, and just keep it as an indoor plant; I might end up actually doing that. It seems that plants that tolerate dryness and cold do well in my apartment.

+ Made lentil burgers. Used this recipe from Occasionally Eggs. Tasted pretty good; would make again. Next time I might mix it up a little - different spices, maybe include some diced bell pepper. Though, I really suck at making patties. Maybe that's something that comes with practice? I've only tried making burgers a few times.

+ Took the book version of Conclave out from the library. Looking forward to it. The movie was pretty good, but the nice thing about books is that you usually get more deeply into at least one character's head.

+ I was surprised to see a lot of people on the Latest Things page posting their first entry in a new journal. Turns out some people are considering making a jump from Tumblr to DW due to some issues going on over there (staff layoffs etc). Well, DW's a very different kind of site, but I hope they enjoy it. I think it would be a good match for people who like textposting.

Stuff I've read and watched lately:

Books:
+ Fearless and Free, Josephine Baker's memoir. This was published in France a long time ago, but it's only very recently that it was translated into English. Super interesting! She had a fascinating life. I'm glad I took the time to read it.

+ Mina's Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa. Set in 1970s Japan, about a girl who goes to live with some wealthy and somewhat strange relatives. I found it meandering and dreamy. Might check out more of this author's work at some point.

+ Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan. Basically a diary of her experience watching the birds in her backyard, with some very neat illustrations. I think someone on my flist recommended it. Anyway, I really liked this a lot; it kind of made me want to get into birdwatching myself (not that I need a new hobby...) It's amazing how many things you notice about the world outside, nearby, right in your backyard, when you stop to look at it.

Movie:
+ The Boy and the Heron (2023). This movie is beautiful and weird, which is to be expected given that it's a Miyazaki film. Kind of not sure what to think of it; the story got very loosey goosey toward the end, I think.

Also I got my wires crossed somewhere, because at some point I heard that this was an adaptation of How Do You Live. I read the translation of that last year, and was curious about how you could possibly adapt it, given that the book is very didactic and basically an exploration of ethics and so on. Turns out it's not an adaptation; it merely references it (in the Japanese title and in one brief scene).

...So the entire time that I was watching it, I was looking for more references back to the novel, which there weren't really. Maybe I should watch it again with my expectations recalibrated.

(Also, Kiriko is awesome. I LOVE HER, she's the best.)

I first watched De dødes tjern | Lake of the Dead (1958) several years ago. There was a brief period where I would put it on every weekend and watch it. I'm weirdly fond of it; there's something strangely comforting about it.

It's a weird little movie, one of Norway's first horror films, though in many ways it's much more a mystery than a horror. The story features a group of people at an isolated cabin out in the wilderness, who go up there because their friend, who was staying at the cabin, has gone missing. The titular lake is said to be haunted by the ghost of a murderer, and those who stay at the cabin are said to be compelled to drown themselves. In the end, the question of whether anything supernatural was involved is up in the air.

Since I've enjoyed the film for so long, I was really looking forward to reading the novel. At one point I had even considered trying to get my hands on a copy of it in Norwegian and trying to read that. Well, Lake of the Dead by Andre Bjerke only received a proper English translation in 2022, and it's just now that I was able to get around to reading it.

I was surprised to find out that it was written in 1942. The film has late '50s setting and I guess I supposed the novel had been written around that time too. The author was originally a poet, but switched to writing thrillers, partially because it was easier to get those published during the Occupation (apparently, according to the introduction).

Unfortunately for me, I didn't enjoy the novel very much. The general premise is very good, but it's soured by the narrator - the first-person narration from the character Bernhard is quite sexist. And like, I honestly don't expect a lot from a novel written in the 1940s, but it kept popping up all the time and messing up the vibe, if you know what I mean.

In addition to that, there were a lot of parts that felt over-explained - the finale where the psychologist Kai Bugge lays out the explanation of all that happened (with possible not-so-scientific things) keeps going on and on for pages and I think by that time I was just sick of it.

I rewatched the film tonight, and I would say that I still enjoy it a lot. A lot of the things that bothered me about the novel are either absent or streamlined in the film. The sexism in the novel is almost entirely in the first-person narrator's internal monologue, and since we don't have that in a movie, it solves the biggest issue I had with the book. (And Bernhard as a character is much more likeable in general in the film than the novel.) And the over-explanation and whatnot, both at the end and in other places, was snipped and streamlined.

There is one scene in the film that I really really like. When Bernhard and Kai Bugge are reading through the diary that their missing friend left behind, the screen shows us what the creepy account is describing. By modern standards, the bit with the ghost isn't scary at all, but I think by 1958 standards it was well-executed.

Too bad about the novel, but the movie really holds up (as far as I expected it to, anyway). There doesn't seem to be an official English release, which I find slightly surprising - but only slightly. My understanding is that in Norway, it isn't obscure at all, and both the book and the movie are part of the foundation of Norway's modern horror tradition. But outside of Scandinavia, it isn't well known. I would speculate that it isn't scary enough, artsy enough, dramatic enough, or unique enough to make much of a splash.

...But I still find myself weirdly fond of it. Well, the movie, at any rate.

List of books read in 2025. :)
( Reading list for 2025 )

The year ain't over yet, but I'm already thinking about next year's reading goals.

+ This year I intended to get through a lot of my unread books so I can finish them and (if not something I'll re-read) get them out of the house. I did manage that - however, every time I go to drop off something at a Little Library, I end up picking up one or two more from there, so I've unfortunately ended up with more than I had at the beginning. Oops.

+ I think I'll try to read more nonfiction by women next year. A lot of the fiction that I read is by women, but with nonfiction I think I'm less likely to find it when browsing at random, so it wouldn't hurt to be deliberate about it for a while. I don't know if I'll set a specific number to aim for tho'. (Recs welcome. I'm open to most subjects, but tend to gravitate toward history, biography/memoirs, and anything LGBT2QA-related.)

+ Might be fun to try reading more fiction in translation, too. (Not including manga in this. :P ) There are a lot of novels by Japanese authors on my to-read list in the library's system, but I'll have to see what else they have available too.

+ I won another reading challenge from the library. I feel kind of weird about winning twice, especially because a lot of the stuff I read was things like comics and audiobooks, which bump up the numbers easily. But at least it wasn't two challenges in a row or anything. And I think they give out more than one prize; maybe it's the top three people or something. Anyway, will have to pick that up on the weekend.

+ Work is going okay. I think. It's moving very slow, but on the other hand, I don't think much is expected of me at this point. I don't have all the access that I need, and some of the people on my team aren't finished with the orientation videos yet (there's like, 12 hours of them that we have to do). But I think I'll talk with my in-office supervisor tomorrow morning to ask if there's any shadowing I can do with her. The thing is, I think there might not be; my job handles stuff at a bunch of locations and our location only deals with this task occasionally (at least that's my understanding).

+ Xmas is coming way too fast. I need to start, like, buying presents. On some occasions, I've been done by now. Going to have to get lists from everybody. I have ideas for dad at least, but mom and SIL are mysteries.

Currently reading: Kenneyism by Jeremy Appel. About said former Alberta premier's rise, fall, and general efforts to make my province worse. Interesting book, but bad for my blood pressure. (While it's on my mind, the chapter on Kenney's pro-oil and anti-environmentalism stance contained absolutely no mention of the 2016 fire and how its effects influenced the industry and general political climate in the province, which seems like a glaring omission to me.)

Reading through this stuff makes me feel pretty depressed about Alberta in general. Like, Kenney and Smith are awful, but it was people of the province that voted them in to begin with, you know? They didn't just magically get into power; my neighbours and family and coworkers and bosses put them there.

...Anyway, I'm probably going to need to read something light after this. I have a lot of books to choose from, 'cause I keep picking up stuff from Little Libraries, as well as whatever the regular library has to offer.

Tsundoku pile:
+ Summer in Orcus by Ursula Vernon. Some flavour of fantasy novel with a young protagonist. Just realized that this one is signed; I'll have to be gentle with it.
+ Combined edition A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I've read and enjoyed ATOTC; GE is new to me.
+ With Love from London by Sarah Jio. About a librarian who inherits her mother's bookshop. Not a romance novel.
+ Fire Strike by Clive Cussler. I have never claimed to have good taste in literature.
+ An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield. Memoir/what it says on the tin, maybe.
+ The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol - Translated by Pevear & Volokhonsky. Been casually meaning to look into this author for a while.
+ Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman. Probably needs no introduction. I tried to start this at one point, but wasn't in the mood.
+ The Village of Small Houses by Ian Ferguson. A memoir about growing up in Fort Vermillion.
+ Into the Jungle by Erica Ferencik. Some kind of romantic drama/adventure set in Bolivia.
+ The Ghost Ships of Archangel by William Geroux. WWII nonfiction about ships from doomed convoy PQ-17 carrying supplies to Arkhangelsk.
+ Lake of the Dead by Andre Bjerke. A classic Norwegian horror/thriller; it has a film adaptation that I was very into for a while.
+ And All Between by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. This has been on my bookshelf since I was in elementary school and I have no idea what it's about.
+ Dust on the Sea by Douglas Reeman. Pulpy marine adventure set during WWII.
+ Assault in Norway by Thomas Gallagher. Small pulpy paperback about the Norwegian heavy water sabotage during WWII. Looks like it's a novelization of events rather than an actual history book.
+ Sixty-seven Ontological Studies by Jan Zwicky & Robert V. Moody. Poetry and photography.
+ Olav H. Hauges vakraste dikt. Sent to me by a friend. Compilation of my favourite poet's works. Norwegian only, not facing translation.

Today was weird.

Scheduled for judo in the afternoon, so I was running around in the morning trying to get a bunch of errands done.

Then an hour before class was supposed to start, I got a call from my dad saying that his facebook account had been hacked and he needed me to fix it. Ughhhh.

Judo ended up cancelled; T-sensei just... told everyone else and forgot to tell me. Which doesn't really surprise me that much, but doesn't feel great. Upside, I was able to go back to my parents' place and work on getting dad's account restored.

He should have called me earlier than he did; apparently he'd held off on it because I was going to judo. But... IDK man, I don't know why he didn't understand that getting this fixed was more important. Someone was stealing his identity so they could scam people out of a lot of money! That's really bad!!! So I told him that the next time anything like this happens, to please call me immediately, no matter what I'm doing.

Mom gave me some gourmet ice cream as thanks, and I've already gone halfway through the container, today was so stressful. I was supposed to clean my apartment this afternoon (after judo... or rather, after tech support) but I ended up just sitting around eating ice cream and finishing Kevin Kwan's Sex and Vanity. That was a pretty decent novel, though not as good as the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy. I really liked Lucie and George, though, and Lucie's mom and brother were also great. I kind of want to re-read the CRA series, 'cause I remember that Rosemary Zhao is in it, but I don't remember what her role was in the story. She's a hoot, though. I wonder if Sex and Vanity will get adapted into a movie; I bet it would go well. I took out Kwan's latest novel from the library too, and I'm glad I did, 'cause I need it. Ugh.

Man, I feel like such a mess.

The Story That Cannot Be Told by J. Kasper Kramer. Finished this one this evening.

It's set in Romania during the dictatorship, shortly before the revolution. The protagonist is Iliana, a girl who loves stories. But she discovers that stories can also be dangerous. After one of her relatives is taken away for writing something criticizing the dictatorship, Iliana is sent to live with her grandparents in the countryside, under the assumption that it might be safer for her there. This assumption is not entirely correct.

This is a book for kids - the intended audience is 8-12 or so. I don't read a lot of kidlit, but I do enjoy it when it's good, and I think this one was pretty good. It handles the mature subject in a way that's sensitive and careful but doesn't talk down to its audience or over-explain things. And the story itself was very enjoyable; Iliana's story alternates with interludes of "her own" stories that she "wrote", folklore-inspired stuff with an action-adventure twist and (of course) herself as the heroine. The characters were pretty great, too, and I really liked Iliana's developing friendships with the people she meets in her grandparents' village.

It's also fanciful - this is not a book that is 100% realism, and a lot of things in it are far-fetched, especially toward the end. But the direction the story takes is roughly what I would expect of kidlit with a young hero, so there is that.

This is the second book I've read for young audiences set in Romania before/during the revolution; the other was I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys, which I also enjoyed quite a bit. But that one is much more grounded in reality, and it's also meant for older audiences - teenagers, I guess you could say it's YA - while The Story That Cannot Be Told is very solidly kidlit.

Anyway, I'm glad I got around to this one. I've been slowly trying to work my way through every work that the library has about/set in Romania, but I wasn't sure how this one would be, since it's slightly outside my usual fare.