oh dear. i do NOT need any more headphones. subscribes anyway because headphones.

Another rec for libraries - brilliant places for exploring. And also one for LIBRARIANS. When you go in to sign up for a library card, ask the librarians for suggestions. You will probably make someone’s day to let them help you get into reading. Librarians are really cool like that :)

Also look around for a wee display of curated selections. Those will change every month or so and feature recommended books.

E-books are another possibility and there are many sources of free ones - another low cost way of exploring and experimenting. I read free fluff from the book store app built into my tablet when I’m not up to anything serious, go to Project Gutenberg and Standard E-books for out-of-copyright classics when I am, and sometimes find something on the e-book system I have access to with my library card sign-in. (I rarely buy e-books as I prefer to put my book budget to subscriptions from small presses because they need our support and an unexpected book arriving in the post is a delight.)

Some of the high school curriculum will always be dry, but some of it is just forced on us when we’re still too young to really understand what’s going on and it’s much more interesting when we have enough experience and maturity to get it. So if you come across something you have bad memories of but it sounds interesting, try it again.

For a specific rec, I’m going to suggest Death and the Penguin by Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov. 1996, but shouldn’t be hard to find in translation given the recent western interest in Ukraine. This was my review: “Quietly absurdist, yet feels well grounded in the realities of time and place. Pacing, flow and details are excellent; exceptionally well written and translated. Don’t find out more about it, wondering what is going on is part of its appeal, just read it :)”

I like the idea of this very much and I hope someone has made/does make it.

What’s the book? Who knows, you might find the core of your group just by sparking interest in the book. Good luck :)

yes! words are tricksy wee beasties

sending empathy in whatever form works best for you in this moment

these replies are making me feel less lonely. thanks x

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I tend to set things down if it’s not working for me at the moment, because sometimes later I’ll come back to it and it will. But in this case, where it’s part not the whole you’re struggling with, maybe you just need to know what the point of the bits you find uninteresting is? The writer will have included all of it for a reason.

I’m generally in favour of casting the actor who can best get the non-physical elements right, like the character’s way of thinking and being in the world. So for any single example I’m open to arguments why that person was the right choice.

BUT there’s a larger issue also at play in which roles Jews are cast in. Generally speaking Jews get to play Jews when it’s a negative stereotype - think the loud, shrill, NYC Jewish woman trope, but when it’s a more positive character, those roles generally go to non-Jews. That’s the real problem.

So a protected category for women only, because of social factors rather than inherent physical differences.

This makes some sense to me based on my own experiences in other areas like mathematics and science competitions. The boys in my school who knew me were mostly alright but it was still a very strange environment to be a teenage girl in. I was always keenly aware of being an outsider. And it was so much worse in rooms full of strangers at competitions. Intimidating and overwhelming.

For all that I was consistently at or near the top in our school, I always fell at the outside competitions. Felt horrible too, that I was letting everyone down. I was too young to understand the sexism at play so I just beat myself up about it and stopped participating.

In general, I support protected categories for women. We haven’t come anywhere near far enough in reducing sexism to make them unnecessary. I don’t know if it’s a big enough issue with trans women in competitive chess to make this sort of ruling. It might have the balance wrong. But it would be good if there was more understanding of what these kinds of environments can be like for cis girls and women.

this is their website: https://bluemoosebooks.com/books

“The motion will be heard on March 18, 2005”

Oh look, another one BEFORE the 2007 change in status.

I’m really don’t have the spoons for your lack of understanding on this basic fact. Besides your bizarre instance that authors require the free use of someone else’s characters to express their ideas instead of, oh I don’t know, creating their own characters to express those ideas.

My central and autonomic nervous systems. Mine are shite and have been since I was wee. Even a clean reinstall of the original operating system would likely help a ton, but if the open source community could go through the files and find the all the bugs, who knows what I could make of my life. At the very least I’d be able to work again.

My new hobby is watching Asian drama series over the internet. The cliches and conventions are new to me and I like how the series are longer so they can do more than is typical in shorter UK and European ones. They also tend to cover a much broader range of the emotional spectrum and with greater depth. A lot of drama addicts tend to go racing on to the next one but when I stumble into one which puts me in a better head space, I’ll let it linger. So from that, my second current hobby is learning the words (in Mandarin, Korean or Thai) to some of the theme songs. My different approach leaves me feeling like a bit of an outsider in the fan circles but it’s what’s working best for me.

This has been a gey dreich not-summer for gardening here so that feels like more of a albatross than a hobby right now. I listen to opera, traditional musics from around the world and try to read a fair bit too, but just getting through the day takes up so much of my energy it doesn’t happen as much as I’d like. I used to do a lot more things and be a lot more interesting. I miss that.

Good luck with all of yours :)

Chilling effect? Chilling effect? Seriously?

Because an explicit graphic novel which invented childhood pasts of sexual abuse and exploitation for three famous fairy tale girls was delayed in its UK publication by two years?

Good lord.

From the article you linked to originally:

"As a result, the hospital is still entitled to royalties for uses of Peter Pan in the country. However, these rights have several key limitations: “Royalties Only: The provision only allows the hospital to collect royalties, not to grant permission for uses. This came up in 2007 when the pornographic graphic novel Lost Girls was delayed in the UK until 2008, after the copyright Barrie’s work expired.”

From your “this is not the case” wiki entry: “On 23 June 2006, officials for Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) —which was given the copyright to Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie in 1929—asserted that Moore would need their permission to publish the book in the UK and Europe… [Top Shelf] delayed publication of Lost Girls in the UK until after the copyright lapsed at the end of 2007.”

So two of YOUR sources note the 2007 change in status. Until the end of 2007, GOSH held copyright control in the UK. They no longer do. Barrie died in 1937, 2007 was 70 years after his death. Normal UK copyright law.

Are you saying that ALL royalties for derivative works/use of IP are an abridgement of free speech in your view? I’m not keen on that redefinition of the term.

This is also an inaccurate and misleading framing.

It’s not censorship or a free speech issue. Neither GOSH nor the government control who can create derivative works. It’s just that a percentage of book or ticket sales have to be paid as royalties to GOSH.

That’s it.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

Yes, the rich should pay more, a hell of a lot more. I’ll go further and say that in a perfect world they shouldn’t be allowed to become so wealthy in the first place because the only way to do that is through exploitation of collective resources and other people’s labour.

Yes, Great Ormond Street should be fully funded via the government, as should the rest of the NHS. Yes, it should be stable and not subjected to party politics, disaster capitalism or grift. We’re a very long way from any of that though and we are talking about children’s lives. And even in a perfect world, more money will still be of use.

Children need new stories but they don’t need new Peter Pan stories specifically. Moreover, writers and other creators who want to write new Peter Pan stories can still do so. They just have to pay a percentage of the income from the use of this particular IP in the UK as royalties.

I’m not keen on your framing at all.

Key point - rights to certain royalties were given by the author to the leading children’s hospital in the UK. This makes it very different indeed. Helping fund Great Ormond Street Hospital is the far greater good.

My tablet, in part because I didn’t expect to take to ebooks so well (yay dark mode!) and because I don’t want more devices (cost to the environment + need to keep charged etc). An e-ink I can also listen to podcasts on might be my ideal. I use a laptop for social media and general internetting, which means minimal distraction problem on the tablet.

I would really love to get one or two small press subscriptions again. I had one from Fitzcarraldo for a bit and it was such a delight when a new one, completely unknown to me, arrived in the post.

But I had to be rehoused into pensioner housing last year and it’s a tiny cottage. For every thing which comes in, something has to go.

Books are hope. And we all need more of that.