#art does reading

[concerningwolves]

Sitting on the bus on my way to my top surgery pre-assessment feeling absolutely devastated because I've just (finally, after many months) finished reading The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings. I am wrecked. I have so much to think about. I spent like five minutes just sitting there with a thousand mile stare trying not to cry because the book finished by talking about the children's toys preserved in the archeological record and I simply cannot cope with this at 8:56 AM on a Thursday morning

[concerningwolves]

I've been basically binge listening to the coldest girl in coldtown for the last couple days and now I've got 37 minutes left on the audiobook I am Afraid. what will I do with myself when this is over. this story is scratching so many of my favourite vampire media sweet spots I'm nit ready to leave it yet

[concerningwolves]

I can't believe that Harrow the Ninth has a "none Pizza left beef" joke in it I??? literally had to pause the audiobook and take a moment to just. process. the line "I'm walled in here to prevent the Nine Houses becoming none houses with left grief." and then had to replay it to make sure I'd heard right. This is ABSURD and I LOVE it

[concerningwolves]

i am never going to be normal again this book is doing something very profound to me.

[concerningwolves]

I've spent the last hour diving through my for the bookshelf tag, and using like three years' worth of book tokens to order some books that I've been eyeing for ages (plus the David Raeburn translation of Metamorphoses!). Considering the books I got for Christmas and the fact that I started Into the Drowning Deep yesterday, I feel like 2023 will be the year for me get back to reading for pleasure again <3

(I've struggled to read fiction for pleasure since college finished, and the only way I could get around this was audiobooks while Doing Something Else. I've really missed just snuggling into bed with a fiction paperback so while I'm not one for New Years Resolutions, I am making a promise to myself to be kinder about how I use my time.)

(Weirdly, I don't have the same block on non-fiction. I guess because I can trick myself into it being "research" in some form or other..)

[concerningwolves]

I've been slowly reading through this book I bought when I was in Norway, and it's full of absolutely FASCINATING information and analysis of Norse myths in the wider context of Northern European heathen religions. a lot of it also makes me so emotional about how we're scraping together everything we think we know about norse mythology from relatively little evidence (and it's simply incredible the variety of sources that evidence comes from!), but then this

THIS

comes absolutely out of the blue and hits me in the face like one of Sleipnir's hooves:

[Heimdall] has been interpreted as a sun god, a moon god, a ram god, and a woodpecker god.

— Gods and Myths of Northern Europe by H. R. Ellis Davidson

Ma'am. You can't just tell me Heimdall could have been a "woodpecker god" and then not say any more about it. MA'AM!!

[concerningwolves]

screaming shaking at this point in The Count of Monte Cristo because the tension has suddenly shot up. this book is so long but the payoff is actually so worth it. all the stuff that you think is superfluous was actually Alexandre Dumas laying the foundations brick by brick, layer of mortar by layer of mortar, and doing it in full view of the audience. therefore as the audience we know almost everything that's gone into the plot but the characters have no idea, so naturally they start making and acting on incorrect assumptions with devestating consequences. and the sublime tragedy of it is the audience has to watch things fall apart knowing exactly why it's happening, but we can't change the narrative! we are powerless! god dramatic irony is sooooo sexy and TCoMC does it in the sexiest way of all.

[concerningwolves]

I've just started the count of monte cristo and I was bit unsure, until Dantes promises to buy his father a house with a garden where he can plant all his favourite flowers. immediate way to hook me in is loving family relationships <3