freddiemercuryfans | Member Posts

Finished since the last reading post
Nothing

Currently reading
Still reading The Sutton Hoo Story, although not making much progress at the moment. Also still reading The Tarot Reader of Versailles.

Reading next
Not sure. Maybe one of the library books, although there's no rush with them. And I seem to be accumulating books in German but not attempting to read them. There was a flurry of conversation in my German class's Whatsapp group today about how people are struggling and what other materials they're using in addition to the textbook. Somebody mentioned a short story book, which reminded me that I have one on my shelves, but I've never really gone past page 2 when I've tried reading it. I just don't like reading short stories, although I do get why it feels like a good idea when you're learning a language.

And speaking of the library, they announced the opening date at the new location as 18 June.

Current Mood: heavy rain showers

queen_ypolita

Last week, work announced they're giving everyone access to more Microsoft 365 AI tools, not just the basic Copilot chat we've had for a while (on the other hand, they're also telling developers they will have to plan their AI use better going forward, because pricing is changing). I didn't really plan it that way, but I've spent the best part of the three working days figuring out if I can set up a Copilot chat agent to do anything useful for me. I don't really spend that much time in Word, Powerpoint, or Excel to benefit the AI tooling inside them, and I'm also not on calls to constantly need AI tooling in Teams. So I started with one of my workflows that currently involves mind-numbing amounts of copy-pasting, but it looks like I'll need to be doing a lot of set-up work to get somewhere useful, but so far it looks like there's promise there.

Then I spent some time on something I hadn't really planned, but that came up as an idea in a meeting on Monday. If we hadn't just got access to these tools, it wouldn't have been something I could have suggested doing, and I'm not sure it'll really work, but it was an idea worth exploring, so I wanted to give it a go. And it was interesting to work on it as well.

scaramouche

Books in the old unread pile: 5

I'd gotten Kathleen Turner's autobiography Send Yourself Roses: My Life, Loves and Leading Roles quite a while ago, but I had trouble getting into it then and put it aside. This time in trying to read it I had no problem and devoured the whole thing, and I couldn't even tell exactly where I'd stopped reading it the last time. I think reading a bunch of other celebrity memoirs in the meantime has gotten me used to some of the style they use.

Her autobiography is so interesting! I didn't know that much about her (beyond her work) before starting the book, and it's a fascinating look at being a white actress who rose to prominence in the 1980s, with her sexualization right off the bat with her first movie, the casual pairing of her with male actors who are significantly older than her, and her determined crawl for power and choice in what way was limited to her as an actress. She has opinions about being a sex icon (what does that even mean, she asks), other opinions about aging and ageism, and even more opinions about her activism and using celebrity for good.

Turner recounts her career experience with pride (at her accomplishments, at her ability to choose roles as she liked, and at her seeking to only play characters with agency), with only some anger here and there at the ways the system fails actresses and women in general through stereotypes and objectification. But you can also read her description of filming Body Heat as a direct argument for intimacy coordinators, even if she herself didn't think of it that way at time of writing. (The book was published in 2008). She is quite blunt about some actors she had bad experiences with, like Burt Reynolds is totally on-brand for that guy, and Nicolas Cage in Peggy Sue though he has repeatedly apologized to her since.

There's a section in there about her experience with rheumatoid arthritis, and the ways she dealt with her disability, both good and bad. She namechecks Michael J. Fox for hiding his Parkinson's for as long as he could, and she did the same for the same reasons, i.e. fear of losing chances to work, especially when she needed to because her then-husband lost his business due to a fire tragedy and she needed to support her family. Turner admits that RA led to her drinking, and the drugs made her very difficult to work with, though I think it's also telling that Turner is open enough to quote from her fellow actors who called her out without being defensive about it. She was difficult and angry for a time there, and this is why, but that doesn't change that she behaved badly.

Other things that were interesting:
- Her father was in the diplomatic corps so she grew up in multiple countries outside the US in a time when even traveling overseas was not common, and that influenced her own perceptions of self-worth, openness to other cultures, sense of adventure, and sexuality.
- Her teeth weren't fixed yet when she filmed Body Heat so she wore... snap-on teeth? Which changed the shape of her mouth.
- The cast of Romancing the Stone stayed at Jamal Palais, which made me double-take because I literally just read an Agatha Christie book where the characters stayed there.
- She did Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with a young(er) David Harbour, and although it was a good project, during one performance he got annoyed at her and bit her hard on the neck, which she smacked him down for after the performance was over.
- The past is another country - Her grandfather fought in WWI; Turner was adult before the pill was normalized; Turner's grandparents divorced so that her grandmother could work because only unmarried women could be teachers, though they were still functionally married and officially remarried later; Turner's mother couldn't get a credit card after her father died because women weren't allowed to.

Reading Turner going through her filmography, I realized I've seen and enjoyed way more of her work than I thought. I've watched Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile, Peggy Sue Got Married, War of the Roses, House of Cards (a little known eerie fave of mine when I recorded it off TV), Undercover Blues, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, that Hallmark Cinderella adaptation that no one seems to remember, her Friends episodes, A Simple Wish, Monster House (if that counts)... It's possible I've also watched V.I. Warshawski because I very distinctly remember watching a movie of hers on TV at night, which had a scene where a man who's out to kidnap her tries grab her from behind and she slams him against the wall matter-of-factly as it's clear she knows what she's doing -- and that scene has stuck in my brain ever since as an iddy depiction of a woman's simple competence in the mundane violence of self-defense (like that scene in T2 where Sarah uses the baton in a quick, ruthless strike). I can't be sure that scene is from this particular movie, but nothing else in her filmography seems to fit.

Current Mood: sad
Current Music: Ok Juhyun - Catch

scaramouche

There's a video essay I watched recently, or maybe it was a book, but I'm a bit more confident it was a video essay, about how effective storytelling uses cause-and-effect in a chain, where [x] happening causes [x+1] to happen which causes [x+1+1] to happen in a series of consequences, instead of relying on independent events to propel the story forward. Not all good stories need or use this, of course, but it can be so, so satisfying to follow that chain and see things play out, often messily. (A lot of crime drama uses this, but my fav comedies do as well.)

Interestingly, late stage Aryana is doing this! Although it's still soap opera flavoured, it's been a chain of consequences all the way down, as kicked off by Neptuna letting herself be seen by human beings, which has upended so many of the human relationships in the show, thrown Stella and Megan into disarray, but also Aryana's family is in disarray as well as Aryana is forced to flee into the ocean for her own safety. It's been a lot of fun and I'm a little sad we're heading towards the ending, though also relieved to finally get here.

( Cut for length. )

Current Mood: rushed
Current Music: Blackpink - ddu-du ddu-du

queen_ypolita

In the end, I decided to go to the central library after work and see if some of the books from my to-read list were on the shelves. The one I probably wanted most was not, but I did borrow two books. The notices about the move have been fairly vague about when the new location will open, just saying "in the summer", but perhaps the due date on the books gives a hint: mine are due back on 2 July. I'll just have to see how it goes, but I expect I'll be finished by then and I'll probably have to return them before that anyway, as I'll be away when 2 July comes along.

After the library, I dumped my bags at home and went out to vote. We're electing a third of the council, and the expectation is that the council will be less Labour-dominated than currently, but the councillor facing re-election in my ward is Green, so I'm not really expecting a change there. No queues at the polling station but seemed to be a steady stream of people going in and out. I and the 2 people just in front of me did end up forming an orderly queue in front of one of the two desks while the other was unoccupied, given how the split into two groups of streets in the ward worked out.

queen_ypolita

Finished since the last reading post
Finished Blanka, Itämeren tytär. It begins in Tallinn, where Blanka's sister is getting married to a merchant from Lübeck, someone with whom their father trades. But the sister dies after the wedding, so the solution to the contracts is to marry Blanka to her sister's widower almost immediately. When she's travelling to her husband's home the following spring, she and her maid are kidnapped by pirates, which leads to something of an adventure up and down the Baltic Sea. Eventually she makes it to Lübeck and starts to grow into her role as a merchant's wife.

I then read the next book in the same series, Seitsemän tornin varjossa, set in Lübeck some years later when a plague epidemic hits the city and disturbs Blanka's steady existence as a rich merchant's wife. This one involved some interesting role reversals, women's friendships, and resilience.

I also read Vaeltajat (Bieguni) by Olga Tokarczuk in Tapani Kärkkäinen's Finnish translation. I read the first half or so on the train to Basel, and the second half on the train back, so it was a bit of a split experience, especially how it's got all sorts of fairly independent strands.

Breaking the Rules by Brigham Vaughn, a romance novel, to complete the series. Not one that engaged me that well.

Currently reading
No progress with The Sutton Hoo Story because I was away. Started reading The Tarot Reader of Versailles by Anya Bergman on the bus this morning. I actually had it with me in Switzerland and I even had it my bag most days when out and about, but I did not get round to starting it there.

Reading next
Not sure. Something already on my shelves, probably. The central library is closing for a move from Monday. I tried to check online if a couple of books I've been thinking about reading and know are held there are on the shelves. I was thinking if they were, I might pop round tomorrow to borrow them. But it seems they've hidden all central library books in the catalogue, so it seems I will not know in advance if it's worthwhile to go or not.

queen_ypolita

My journey home yesterday went really according to plan, all the way to not having to wait long at Paddington for the next train, and emerging from the station in Reading with a couple of minutes to spare to catch a bus, rather than waiting close to 15 minutes for one.

I'd usually have gone to the office on a Tuesday, but this week it actually makes sense to go in on Wednesday and Thursday, so that and coming home past my usual bedtime made it easy to decide to work from home instead. The morning was pretty much just catching up with messages, emails, and other things, then we had a team meeting after lunch, and then I got going with a piece of work I was in the middle of when I finished on Wednesday. Feeling pretty tired and definitely not my sharpest, I still made decent progress on it.

And I fit in some German homework too. We had a writing task for homework and I was not entirely convinced I'd get anything done. But I did some work on it on the Eurostar leg, although it was not very easy, on a phone. I was writing it in Keep for simplicity and ended up with all sorts of mistakes and auto-correct weirdness. I used most of my lunch to get it done and submitted. For all I thought I'd struggle to write more than two sentences, I think I had the opposite problem: I did not have the time and the calmness to keep it short, I kept rambling. But I got it done, and I was not sure I could. What I've tried with some of the recent writing exercises is to write them, and then get Claude to give feedback on the text, which has been helpful for pointing out errors and explaining them. Then I've been able to look at the feedback and decide which corrections I'd like to make and how.

queen_ypolita

On the Eurostar, so for practical purposes in the UK already although the train is still in France. All the new border formalities seem to have made travelling trickier, now that UK requires dual passport holders to use their UK passports on the UK border, and the EU requires entry and exit checks for non-EU passport holders. So it does matter which one you present at which point. I used to think I knew how to do it and which to show when, but queues at St Pancras became a little complicated and I feel a staff member at Paris Gare du Nord pushed me into exiting the EU on the passport I did not use to enter it. And in my experience, neither Eurostar nor airlines make it easy to enter two different, but situationally appropriate Advance Passenger Information, one for each leg of your return journey.

queen_ypolita

This morning, I went to Kunstmuseum Basel. I started with the Neubau and the special exhibition, Helen Frankenthaler. I enjoyed it very much. Afterwards, I visited the collection displays in Neubau, followed by the The First Homosexuals, which was fascinating. And seemed very busy (but it was also effectively free on a first Sunday of the month, which I had not realised it was).

Then I went to the other side of the street and visited the collection displays in Hauptbau, which primarily displays pre-20th century art.

After all that art, my plan for the afternoon was a 75-minute Rhine cruise. It was good to see the city from another angle. The cruise first went up the river before turning in front of the Birsfelden hydro power station. Then it went down river to the port, which is by the point where the Swiss, German and French borders meet. It was interesting to see the port with all the containers, cranes and buildings, even if it seemed rather empty of any activity on a Sunday afternoon.

Today was not quite as warm as yesterday and also cloudier. From the river it looked like it might rain any minute, but it did not. It may rain in the night though, and tomorrow's forecast has also featured the chance of rain. I hope it stays dry until I'm on the train towards Paris.

scaramouche

Books in the old unread pile: 6

I got Isma Ismail's Mistika Legenda at the same time as that Asian Folk Tales book I posted about recently, I guess cos I was on a local folktales kick at the time. This book's a retelling of Mahsuri's story, interspersed with brief retellings of other legends such as the Merong Mahawangsa battles Garuda story, the fae princesses of the seven wells (a Hagoromo legend variant), and Sang Gedembai, as told within the story by Mahsuri, her father, or her husband Wan Darus.

The legend of Mahsuri summed up is basically: Mahsuri was a beautiful and pious woman who lived on Langkawi island, who was accused of adultery by jealous parties when her husband was away at war, and when she was stabbed to death for her "crime", she cursed Langkawi to seven generations of misfortune, and her blood flowed white as evidence of her innocence.

Obviously there's more detail than that, but that's the gist of it. The seven generations have since passed, and the legend is very well-known here and is such a part of Langkawi's identity, and elements of the legend are familiar in other regional folktales. I remember reading in the news of Mahsuri's descendants visiting Langkawi in modern times, for example.

( Cut for length. )

Current Mood: okay

queen_ypolita

This morning, I set out to make an excursion on the other side of the border in Germany by taking the tram to Weil am Rhein. Approaching the border, the tram stopped and German police came on board to check everyone's IDs. I had not properly checked if it was something that might happen, but I had decided it was a possibility and I've been carrying my Finnish passport for that reason while I've been here. So it was fine.

In Weil am Rhein, I walked to the Vitra campus, housing furniture manufacturing, exhibition spaces and a museum of design. It was a fun place to visit. I climbed up to a viewing platform, but also took the stairs down rather take the slide option for descending that was also an option.

After Vitra, I returned to Basel and had a late lunch. Then I took the local train out of the Basel city to visit the ruins of the Roman town of Augusta Raurica. They were a bit spread out, so I did not see quite everything, but you certainly got a sense of the scale of things. And it was wonderful to be outside and out of the town enough to get better views.

Both of the places I visited today offered a discount with the Basel card, but because they were out of Basel city, you needed to pay for the public transport, which is also covered by the card in the city. So that's why I did both the out of city things today.

queen_ypolita

Gorgeous sunshine today too. The forecast for the morning had fairly low temperatures so I was not quite sure how many layers to wear when I was going out, but ended up choosing just one long-sleeved top over a t-shirt and I was fine.

Because it's 1 May, most shops and some touristy things were closed today. So I decided to head out to the Zoo. It was really green and lush there, with trees providing useful shade on the paths. No wonder the advertising talks about the oasis in the city. It was wonderful just to walk around there. And the animals were interesting, of course. The elephant house and area were currently empty of occupants, who had been moved to other zoos and new ones had not yet arrived, but the house had really beautifully done information boards. And I saw a great one-horned rhinoceros looking like it was enjoying itself by submersing most of its body in its little river very close to the path. Not something I've seen before. And they had a viewing platform from where you could have a really nice view of some storks' nests full of chicks. That said, I was not very impressed by some of the animal enclosures, which seemed smallish and did not seem to have that much vegetation in otherwise very lush park.

There was an exhibition about what the future of the Zoo will look like, Zolli in 2049, with more space and reconfiguration of the existing space, including making better use of what's currently used for parking cars. And as far as I understood, some of the current animal species will be going as part of the transformation, and at least some of those were ones I thought needed better spaces.

After the Zoo, I walked to town and did some more aimless walking. I also visited the Naturhistorisches Museum. I did not know in advance they had an exhibition of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year photos, so I saw that. And also had a look of the ordinary exhibition featuring geology, fossils, extinct animals and so on. They had a really nice section on evolution of human species, and I was pleased I understood it fairly well given it was all in German. And they also had a very nicely done exhibition on animals of Switzerland.

queen_ypolita

It was an early start today: I got up at about ten to four and was heading out about five past. But early morning trains do not run very frequently and take longer with more stops, so I did really have a choice if I wanted to allow some time for delays. But today everything went to plan and it seemed I managed to time myself perfectly for the tube, as a train just pulled when I got to the platform.

So I was at St. Pancras in good time for the Eurostar and the Eurostar terminal was its usual busy self. The journey to Paris was uneventful—this was the first time I took it to Paris—and we even arrived at Paris Gare du Nord a few minutes early. I was nervous about the cross-Paris change of trains, even after reading the Man in Seat 64 guidance and watching the handy video he's done, but the journey went smoothly, just like in the video. I bought the RER ticket on my phone and it was fine. Everything going to plan meant some idle time at Gare de Lyon for getting something for lunch for later and walking around both Halls 1 and 2.

The journey from Gare de Lyon to Basel was also uneventful. My seat was upstairs, there were some nice views but also some rather boring countryside.

One thing that I'd forgotten to check was roaming for Switzerland. My phone contract is with Lebara precisely because you can get a plan where European roaming is included as standard, but it turns out Switzerland is not included. So after I'd checked in to my hotel and had access to wi-fi, I bought an add-on, so I'm sorted now.

I didn't have any specific plans for today beyond some aimless walking, so I did some of that. Gorgeous sunshine today, and warm, around 23 degrees in the afternoon.

scaramouche

I watched Breaking Bad for the first time two years ago, and luckily I made a post mentioning it so I know that I did it because I was watching a not-so-good CN show at the time and wanted a palate cleanser of sorts. I remember going into BB wondering if it would hold up and if the loud response to Walter White was because its handling of the character was more subtle than mainstream audiences could process and realizing, no, the show is pretty damn clear from the start that WW is the architect of his own destruction.

Anyways, I have now read Bryan Cranston's autobiography A Life in Parts! It's a quick read, though I feel like that for all his age and experiences he could have written something much longer and substantial, but this was a fun romp through Cranston's adventures growing up with a troubled family, studying to be police officer but getting derailed by acting, and then LOVING acting. He loves acting so much, and it comes through so warmly through all his stories, even the ones that don't end well (like when he doesn't get the job, or gets fired) or when there are situations where his dedication to the work/character has him clashing with other creatives.

Although all the autobiographies by creative celebrities I've read involve a level of obsession with their craft, and although I've read better celebrity storytellers, the thing about Cranston is that he has so much joy for his work that he's so dang excited to share what he's learned. Though he's also careful to explain even finding that joy is work in itself, and the delight of fleshing out characters and stories that are barely anything on paper, and putting himself through all sorts of situations in service of the characters and story (undressing to tighty-whiteys and being covered with bees among them). He talks about BB and Malcolm in the Middle, of course, but particularly highlights his early soap role on Loving, and the various guest starring parts he had over the years including Seinfeld and The X-Files. It's like one big :D, is this book.

I looked up a bunch of things he mentions having done, among them this superbowl ad, which did make me laugh, he really does give his all, and you can see he's made a whole little backstory in his head of why/how WW is there:

Watch on YouTube

Current Mood: hot
Current Music: Murray Gold - I Am the Doctor

Profile

Freddie Mercury Fans

September 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30

Page Summary

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Freddie Mercury Fans

Member Posts

Wednesday reading

Agent building

Book Log: Send Yourself Roses

Aryana (90.5% completed)

Did my civic duty

Wednesday reading

Catching up Tuesday

Crossing borders

Art and views from the river

Book Log: Mistika Legenda

Design and ruins

Spent most of the day outside

Travel day

Book Log: A Life in Parts

Profile

September 2025

Links

Page Summary

Expand Cut Tags