Test post plus

I'm trying to work out if what I heard once about replacing icons so that they don't vanish is true, and I was going to make this a private test post, but actually... hello! I was going back through my posts to find one where I'd used this icon (made by Norfolkdumpling), so that I could see whether it vanished and was replaced by my default icon or whether it could be replaced by a different icon with the same keywords (ETA - It worked! It worked! It's now showing my icon, not the one that I originally posted here!), and I realised a few things.
- I'm definitely not using all my 160+ icons when I make posts!
- It's been a very poor year for posting, even worse than other years which I thought were poor
- I've not made a photo post for ages, let alone a series of them
- The last couple of years (2017-2018) sucked for various reasons, but the sucking turned into some pretty fab things
= If I don't start posting again, I'm going to regret it when I look back over my lj next time! And because of course it's hard to chat to people when they're not posting, and I miss that!

For now - have some icons I made yesterday, and posted elsewhere to macklingirl's Icon Challenge:

They're not brilliant, but they were fun to make. *g*

And I will save anything else I'm going to say for the next post, which will find out if the icon-thing worked. *g*

How're you doing? Melting like me, in this incredibly bright late August day? Or...?

Books 2019 - behind again

The last time we saw our intrepid reader, it was the start of June and she'd read 43 books so far this year. It's now nearly the end of August, and I've read 57, though it might be a few more cos I'm pretty sure I've forgotten a few night-rereads...

I'm afraid my Mount TBR hasn't advanced at all. I was on 10/24 when I posted last, and I still am. I'd really better get on with that - I'm not halfway, and we're rather more than halfway through the year now! I keep getting distracted... *g* Lj Book Bingo is going a bit better, though!


I'm invoking a Category Substitution, because I'm never going to read a cookbook or food memoir (just, why...?!), and I'm using A book set in the future, which is Emma Newman's Planetfall (and in fact the three sequels, After Atlas, Before Mars and Atlas Alone). As you can tell from the fact that I then read the three sequels, I thoroughly enjoyed this book! It's original science fiction! It's not blokes (or women written to be blokes) going around the universe killing other beings, it's thoughtful and its interesting, and I can completely see the future that Newman imagines not too far away! Will we one day be printing all our food (or willing to spend above the odds to eat actual real, fresh food)? Will our houses be built like that (I wish!)? Will....? Well no, you should go and read it! *g*

So I've got another line too - Bingo! *g*

I also realise that another book I read fits a square - not one that I'd ever have imagined for this book though - apparently there are some places (guess which country...) where this is a banned book, because it includes "discussion of alcohol, poverty, bullying, violence, sexuality, profanity and slurs related to homosexuality and mental disability" (the main character has hydrocephalus, and is both teased about it and has learned to joke about it himself). It's not an easy read, because the harsher details read as very true, but it's an ultimately uplifting read, I thought. I've always liked Sherman Lexie's books, and this is his first Young Adult book. Totally worth reading - especially when people want to stop us being able to!


Another square substitution - this one I'm going to use my first Wildcard on! I tried to read a graphic novel/comic - I actually took a bunch out of the library, ages ago, but I ended up taking them back unread, because if I'm faced with a pile of fiction and a pile of graphic novels, I'm afraid I'm always going to read the fiction. And I have piles and piles to read, so... *g*

Oh and wheeee, that's another Bingo! too! *g* Remarkable Creatures was a book group book, and although I didn't make it to that book group, what with being in Switzerland at the time and all, I really enjoyed the book. It wasn't what I expected actually, with a healthy dollop of speculative romance in the middle, and also from the pov of Elizabeth Philpot (who I now see was another palaeontologist of the time), but good and readable and interesting!

So - five book bingo squares left (and two are almost certainly going to be my other allowed category substitution, and my other wildcard) and fourteen Mount TBR books to read.

As soon as I've finished the ones I'm reading at the moment... *vbg*