life update

[wateroverstone]

I'm glad to be in a new year. 2024 wasn't bad so much as it wasn't good. I was intending to work on how far I can walk and learn how to use my camera properly. The two partner together nicely. I achieved neither as the universe gifted me tendonitis in both ankles which lasted for 4 months or so . It's mostly cleared up now so 2025 goals are the same as 2024. 
I'm hoping to move house in a few weeks. Everything is in the hands of solicitors and is progressing at the usual funeral pace. This time : sale 6 is to a local girl: her parents live opposite and she's currently living around the corner in her grandmothers old house which is much too small for her family I should be moving to a ground floor flat in Whitehaven which is probably big enough to contain all my junk. Certainly  its big enough to let me have a craft room and a a book room - one of the good things about living alone is that I can please myself as to what I keep in rooms. It's also kitty corner to a coffee shop and a very short distance from St Nicholas Gardens  and, the other direction, the harbour  so it should be much easier to go out wandering  with my camera..It's a Georgian town centre, too, so I think I'll be very happy there. I just want to get the move over with.
It's unusually cold here for the time of year with the local mountain rescue teams being kept busy. Although we've been under weather warnings for days, the village has seen very little snow: its right by the sea so the snow dumps a few miles inland where the ground rises to become the fells and mountains of the Lake District.
My sister-in-law has rung to say my mother's car has failed its MOT  resoundingly so she's going to have to give up driving. She was talking about giving up when her current year's insurance ran out so its only a little way ahead of her plan. All her car stuff goes through my brother and his wife as she gets confused with what the garage tells her and she had to find a new insurance company this year but none had phone numbers to ring and she can,t/ won't do it on line. She'll spend less on taxis to her favoured supermarket and coffee shop than she does on insurance, road tax, petrol etc  and she's a spectacularly bad driver, complaining about road hazards  unnoticeable to anyone else so I'm quite pleased with the way its worked out.

Eldest daughter has been repeatedly recommending some strange  lesbian space nun book which I've been avoiding. She therefore sent me a physical copy of it for Christmas, the front cover announcing' lesbian necromancers  explore a haunted gothic palace in space'. Much to my surprise as eldest daughter and I do not share a similar taste in books, I loved Gideon the Ninth so I bought the second in the Locked room trilogy. This was not to my taste at all, although there were odd things I liked within.  I've dutifully read the two short stories in this universe and I'm being threatened with the third for my birthday. Is there any chance I'll enjoy it or should I request something else? Advice please.

Comments

[rosanicus]

Nona the Ninth is a different vibe again from Harrow, so it's possible you'll like it more! Pleased to hear you enjoyed Gideon so much though, it's a personal favourite. Nona is back in third person again - mostly - but it's another book where part of the structure is that you don't know what's going on because the POV character is being talked over and across a lot, and her level of understanding is very low. It does bring back some characters from Gideon though so you might enjoy getting to see them again.

[wateroverstone]

Good news that Nona differs from Harrow. I only made it through Harrow as Reddit told me it made more sense towards the end. They killed off most of my favourite characters in Gideon, although, I suppose that's no bar to their return. Given that I have shelves full of sci fi and fantasy, I'm more surprised that Gideon isn't a book I came across by myself rather than via elder daughter

[sheron]

Heh, I haven't read Gideon the Ninth but it sounds fun. I hope the move goes well and you get to practice you photography more! A harbour is an excellent subject for photography. I also had a goal for 2024 to get back into photography but that didn't happen with all the RL stuff. Maybe this year!

[wateroverstone]

Thanks , I have many years worth of harbour photos already as my usual supermarket was built at its top end. It's a great place to practice with my camera and where I learnt to walk again last time I had weird mobility problems. There's a café which bakes amazing cinnamon rolls, too. Good luck reconnecting with photography this year yourself.

[sholio]

I also enjoyed Gideon and really disliked the next book, enough to make me stop reading the series there.

Fingers crossed your move goes well!

[wateroverstone]

For myself, I'd stop, but I think reading the third one is going to make eldest daughter very happy and in the interest of preserving family ties I need to.
The move has dragged on for so long that all the excitement has gone and I just want it over.Thanks for the good wishes.

[genarti]

I liked Gideon the Ninth fine -- didn't love it, but found it very moreish, much more so than I'd been expecting from the internet telling me all the memes ahead of time (I bounced off the memes somewhat so I was glad for the forewarning). I haven't read the others yet, but I've been told that Nona the Ninth has a very different vibe from either of the other two and that I'm likely to like it best of all, so I've been meaning to push myself through the second book sooner or later (which I think I'll enjoy parts of but mostly find a slog) to get to the third. For whatever that's worth! Which may well be nothing, given how secondhand most of this info is, haha.

[wateroverstone]

I was surprised at how much I liked Gideon the Ninth. I purposely didn't look it up until I finished reading it. I've been told that they all three of the books have different feels. I'm hoping that I'll like Nona the Ninth more than Harrow the Ninth ( won't be difficult). Eldest daughter is excited to talk about books we both like - so far a subset of one: Gideon the Ninth. We have radically different reading tastes.

[debriswoman]

Wishing you well regarding your move :-)
I recall our relief when father in law decided his driving days were done.

[wateroverstone]

I'll be properly relieved when she's got new routines in place and is used to a car free life but she's sounding almost pleased to be spared the worry. I just have to work out how to get down to Lancs to see her at the beginning of Feb for her birthday, now.