muladhara | (no subject)

It is cooler, YAY. I went outside to read the electricity meter, and it felt almost cold! (it was about 16°C)

I went food shopping yesterday, and it was nice and cool in the morning, too!

I ran into not one friend who I haven't seen IRL for over a year, but TWO. I planned to meet up with both of them at some indefinite point in the near future, so that's good. AND I found out they're putting the bus schedules back to how they used to be - i.e. once every half hour instead of once an hour during week days, so YAAAY.

Of course, to balance this out, I went to the cash machine to check my balance, and somehow managed to forget my PIN, and it got blocked! And it was 8:30 in the morning, so the bank wasn't open, so I had to ring the number on my card to get it unblocked. Luckily, everything is okay now, but sheesh, what an idiot I am! I can't even blame it on forgetting it because I use contactless payments all the time, because I don't. I use my PIN fairly frequently so the card doesn't get blocked!

~

Book update!

I am half-heartedly reading The Last Vampire, by Christopher Pike. I absolutely devoured this series when I was a teenager, because vampires, and this is not the first time I've tried to reread it since. At the moment, I'm thinking I might just read the first book and leave the others for a while, as I have made myself a small to read pile that is not this series of books!

I have: Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones; Deep Secret (also DWJ); and Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett.

I've kept thinking for several years now that I ought to read/reread some Discworld, and I'm starting with this particular one as it was my favourite for ages, and I read and reread it so much as a ween that I actually got sick of it. So I thought since it's so long since I last read it, maybe it would be all right to read it again (if you see what I mean?)

Howl's Moving Castle I was going to reread anyway, and then I picked out Deep Secret because someone I watched on youtube mentioned their favourite DWJ book (Year of the Griffin) which, for some reason I confuse with Deep Secret, although I have no idea why. Also I've stayed in the hotel that is a basis for the one in this book (though I read the book first, didn't know about the hotel till after), so I thought it might be interesting to read with that in mind!

I'm trying not to care that a lot of my reading has been/is going to be stuff I've already read. Doesn't matter, as long as I'm reading, right?

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I thought I had something else to say, but I don't, so I am going to hit post!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh man, I was absolutely obsessed with those Last Vampire books for a couple years in high school. I have not tried to re-read them since, but I can only imagine it would be An Experience. How are you finding it this time around? I had a few other Pike favorites in my teen years as well, mostly Remember Me (about a ghost trying to solve her own murder).

I'm most of the way through the first one which is mostly okay except for: Sita being Indian, but having pale skin and blonde hair doesn't sit well with me AT ALL. This is what put me off last time. I don't know if Indian people who look like that exist or ever did, but it makes me feels uncomfortable, esp because it's coming from a white author.

Other than that, there's a couple of lines that haven't aged well but for the most part it's okay? As long as you can take Sita being all powerful and able to Do All The Things! with no problem because she's 5000 years old (this kind of irks me, but at least she's not angsting her way through the story, I guess?)

I loved Remember Me! I have a copy of it, but I don't think I've read it since I was a teenager. Did you ever read the sequels to it?

I always thought that was so weird. The author clearly wanted to co-opt some bits of Indian culture but absolutely had to have that blonde-haired blue-eyed protagonist. It's pretty distasteful, I agree.

Sita is so overpowered, lol. That's the first thing I thought of when I remembered those books! She's so physically powerful that no mortal is a match for her, she has basically unlimited financial resources, she's irresistibly beautiful and charming to the point that this boy falls in love with her even after he finds out she murdered his father. (And it was in writing that sentence that I remember that Ray is... a high school student. lol.) I think the outrageous power fantasy must have been part of the appeal, honestly.

I vaguely remember that Remember Me had a sequel, and I may have read it or read part of it? I do not remember what happens in it, and I don't remember multiple sequels so I probably never followed it after that.

I think the outrageous power fantasy must have been part of the appeal, honestly.

Agreed.

I don't remember what happened in the second Remember Me book, either, but I have a vague memory of reading it. I don't think I even knew about the third one until years later (and I haven't read it).

I don't know about the blonde/pale part, but I do know one of my Indian coworkers has beautiful blue eyes, which I didn't realize was a thing. But yeah, Biggest Yikes @ Sita's appearance.

I've known Pakistanis with grey or green eyes, so I know that that's a thing. but absolutely Yikes otherwise.