teach me the art of war

Snagged from osprey_archer, because who can resist a good book meme?

1. Lust, books I want to read for their cover.

Star Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire has a badass cover. I assume it'll prove to be yet another tedious canon-rehashing moneygrab, but that very Star Wars typical style of unsubtle symbolism always gets me somehow.

2. Pride, challenging books I've finished.

Oh, this one has me stumped! I've read plenty of books that I guess could be considered challenging in terms of length/prose/vocab - Dostoevsky, Joyce (though I've never attempted Finnegan's Wake or Ulysses) and some of the earlier Gothic literature all spring to mind - but I only ever really read for pleasure; if I'm enjoying something then it doesn't feel hard, and if I'm not enjoying it, I just give it up and pick something else. I did read a bunch of untranslated Latin and Greek during undergrad, including the whole first book of the Iliad, which definitely qualified as a challenge. But I didn't read the whole Iliad in Greek, so that feels like a cheat answer.

I also wouldn't call The Lord of the Rings unduly challenging for an adult reader, but it probably counted as a pretty big challenge when I finished it (and memorised big chunks of the poetry, and forced my parents and grandparents to attend tedious recitations thereof) at age eight. I was a weird kid.

3. Gluttony, books I've read more than once.

SO MANY. I go through long, regular phases where new stories feel too hard and I just want to wallow in things I already know I'll enjoy because I've enjoyed them before. Just the other day I finished a reread of Star Wars: Bloodline, and a bit before that I did Pride and Prejudice. I tend to revisit my favourite SFF series a lot in dribs and drabs: Murderbot, the Imperial Radch, Tolkien, Narnia and Harry Potter (the latter not so much these days) are a few I've reread often enough to have largely committed to memory.

I also read Spot Bakes A Cake roughly ten times a day at the moment, but that's not by preference and probably not what the creator of this meme had in mind.

4. Sloth, books on my to-read list the longest.

...also SO MANY. I think the award probably has to go to Madame Bovary, which was assigned reading back in one of my Year Eleven English classes and the only book in my whole educational career for which I ever resorted to Cliffnotes. Fuck, I hated that book. But ever since then I've been meaning to go back and finish it, to wipe the red stain of that youthful defeat (and semi-fraudulent essay) off my ledger.

5. Greed, books I own multiple editions of.

I have three editions of Shakespeare's collected works. My favourite is quite delicate, won as a prize by my mum in school and printed on Bible-thin paper; the second, not too much less nice, belonged to my father-in-law I believe; the third is a rather tatty lump of a book that I picked up cheap at a secondhand store for the sake of owning a Shakespeare I actually feel safe reading. Speaking of Bibles, I also own three of those: my pretty little clothbound NRSV for regular reading, my big chunky NIV Study Bible, and a copy of the New Testament in the original Koine Greek.

I have two collected Blinky Bills floating around, one paperback sized and one larger with bigger pictures for the kids. As a household we also have a few duplicated marital assets: both my husband and I were gifted copies of (the exact same edition of) The Lord of the Rings by our respective fathers, and we both have our childhood copies of Harry Potter. I think husband also has a second copy of The Silmarillion floating around in his office somewhere, though I'm not sure why, because he hasn't read it any wouldn't like it.

6. Wrath, books I despised.

osprey_archer reminded me that I hate His Dark Materials. Not for any handwringing religious reasons - I just found the whole thing about children being severed from their daemons too upsetting, even as a kid without the massive child cruelty squick I nurse today. And I think I've always been a hard sell on multiverses; from memory, the characters were going through some kind of portal into modern England around the time I gave up. It all felt like a disappointing mirror version of C.S. Lewis.

7. Envy, books I want to live in.

I'd love to live in the Tolkienverse, provided I could be incarnated as a Hobbit and stay put in the Shire eating cheese while my biggers and betters did all the adventuring.

Having just finished The Incandescent by Emily Tesh, I kind of wouldn't mind living in her magical reality. I loved how structured and academic the system of magic was, and that anyone could in theory learn it regardless of natural aptitude.

I’m behind on comments and replies because No Brain, but osprey_archer has reliably informed me that we’re all making book lists to compare with each other. So here’s mine. Come tell me how many we have in common! Then make one of your own and tell me so I have more clicky boxes to occupy my brain-free skull cavity!

→ Comment with "Questions, please!"
→ I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can get to know you better.
→ Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
→ Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.

My questions, from dr_zook:

1) Which three Australian things are notoriously underrated by non-Australians?

- Our...uh, forthright style of government messaging, which is so underrated that it caused an actual scandal when we tried to export a little bit of it to England. (The linked post gives the impression that the ads are a relic of the past, but many of them are very much still around today.)

- The huntsman spider. Listen: these little brothers are the guys you actually WANT in your house. They’re harmless to humans and pay their rent by munching on other pests. They’re also, by spider standards, incredibly cute. I get that the size can be a little alarming, and I know Australian spiders get a bad rap overseas, but really!! These ones are fine!!!

- I know this is such a cliche but I HAVE to say it: Vegemite. Youse just don’t know how to eat it, is the problem. I’ve seen so many videos of foreigners eating Vegemite right off the spoon and then calling it disgusting, which, like, no shit! That’s not what it’s for! Vegemite doesn’t disclose its virtues until you spread it thinly on hot toast with plenty of butter. It’s savoury and salty with a deep, rich flavour that simply can’t be imitated, even by self-professed Vegemite alternatives. It’s also amazing stirred into soups and stews for added punch.

2) What's your favourite thing to put on your bun/slice of bread?

Other than Vegemite? Cheese. So much cheese. Right now my favourite snack is a slice of rye bread, lightly toasted, with Camembert spread over it like thick butter and drizzled with honey.

3) What's the musical overlap between and your kids?

Quite a bit, at the moment! We listen to a lot of heavy metal and goth rock together: Iron Maiden, Unto Others, Sonja, Sisters of Mercy, Fields of the Nephilim and Rope Sect are all on regular rotation. I usually try them on whatever I’m currently into (within certain limits: I don’t play them extreme metal, or anything I feel is too graphic or explicitly dark) and they pretty quickly let me know if they like it or not.

And I’m not going to lie to you, the taste exchange does occasionally go both ways. Some of those Wiggles songs are real bangers.

4) Do you have a Star Wars crossover fic you'd like to recommend?

A few years back, LearnedFoot gifted me a Star Wars/Doctor Who crossover that to this day remains one of my favourite things ever. Ever wondered how differently the sequels might have ended if they’d only set the Doctor loose on Kylo Ren? Wonder no longer! It is gorgeous and makes me cry a lot.

5) Who was your last fictional/literary crush?

I had to scroll back through my own blog to remember who the last one was: Qimir, from Star Wars: The Acolyte. But it was a fleeting passion; Kylo Ren still reigns supreme in my heart.

 Copying my answers to this tagging meme on tumblr. Please steal at will, I'd love to hear all your answers! <3

Jumping on the bandwagon because this meme has been all over my reading page!

Three Ships

Reylo (Star Wars Sequels): Actual cosmic soulmates kept apart by fate duty Kylo’s shitty, shitty life choices. Came for the heartache, stayed for the heartache.

Din/Bo-Katan (The Mandalorian): I shipped this from the moment Bo-Katan swaggered onto the screen, and then season three came and piled on the loyalty kink so thick I nearly died.

Byakuya/Renji (Bleach): What if loyalty kink and lovers kept apart by fate/duty/shitty life choices? This is one of those ships that is probably going to simmer in the back of my mind for the rest of eternity, even though I’ve pretty much 100% moved on from the rest of the canon.

First ever ship: James/Lily (Harry Potter). The day I found Mugglenet and learnt that other people shared my obsession with what happened between Lily’s rejection of James at age fifteen and their marriage several years later - that they were publishing their fantasies about it for everyone else to read - was the day transformative fandom sank its claws into me too deep to ever let go.

Last song: Demonon Vrosis - Rotting Christ

Last film: A documentary about a tragedy to which I am tangentially connected enough that watching it was a bad idea. I can’t really blog about it without halfway doxxing myself, but I don’t want to anyway because seeing the fan community discuss it all over social media like an ep of their favourite show is a not insignificant part of what’s fucking me up.

Currently reading: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. Not far enough in yet to know if I like it, but the aesthetic is gorgeous.

Currently watching: Nothing, really. I still have one episode left of OFMD season two but I’m so turned off by the spoilers that I probably won’t bother.

Currently consuming: A spoonful of bolognaise sauce, to check the seasoning. It’s nearly ready.

Currently craving: An uninterrupted night’s sleep but that’s not going to happen lmao.

pauraque gave me these five questions to answer! I'll come up with five questions for the first five people who ask, so please comment if you want to play.

1) If you could visit a fictional world, where would you go? Would you want to live there or just vacation?

After years spent poring greedily over feast scene after feast scene in Harry Potter, I recently decided to try making treacle tart! Turns out treacle is just golden syrup, which can be had on any supermarket shelf - in Australia, at least. A lot of the recipes I came across were from American food bloggers who had to courageously make their own.

Anyway, it took two tries to make, because I dropped the first pie crust fresh out of the oven and had to make a whole new batch of pastry from scratch. But the results were more than worth the extra effort. It wasn't sickly-sweet, like I feared it might be from the ingredients list. The lemon in the filling gave it a beautiful, rounded citrus flavour, and it was almost as delicious reheated as it was fresh. I've always found pastry too much of a faff for the everyday, but I'll just have to get over that, because I need more of this tart in my life.