just general events

[driftwood_thangs]

"in other news, my friends’ band has their first ever gig tomorrow, which i *might* be able to go to, so that’s cool."

^ from my last post here

well. i WAS able to go, but they ended up having to play earlier than expected and i arrived just after they finished playing </3 oh well. i saw some videos and it looked pretty awesome

also today's the last day of summer holidays...... tragic. i did a ton of work on my art hw yesterday and ive FINALLY decided on a topic for my media thing so that's good -- also it turns out that neither of those projects are due tomorrow like i thought, THANK GOD.

after the cut theres me going on about the book i read yesterday for quite a bit -- if you enjoy reading people's thoughts on icelandic detective novels, you're in luck

yesterday i finished reading The Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indriđason, i read like 300 pages of it all yesterday cos i really wanted to finish at least one book over the holidays so YIPPEE! i really like the inspector erlendur/reykjavik murder mystery series, the books are so compelling and interesting but also quite easy and fun to read lots of in one sitting, unlike the other book i'm reading rn (The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, which is a great book but immensely slow to read because of all the 1700s-era language and footnotes). also i just really love the characters ... depressed divorced middle aged man who solves missing persons cases is basically the ultimate character. and then you've got sigurdur óli, who's probably my personal fav. he's so silly and annoying i love him. except this book revealed he's a conservative (or at least, votes for the icelandic conservative party) and really hates communists (apparently because his dad was a big communist??) so thats a shame. he's also vegan in the movie tho which is kind of funny considering that afaik the average conservative is not a huge vegan fan, and also as the movie points out iceland is not a very vegan-friendly place (i forget if he's vegan in the books tho). ALSO!! EVA LIND!! she's so interesting and i'm glad we got to see her from some other character's perspectives instead of just her dad (erlendur) in this book, even if she didn't appear in it much. she was also revealed to be (gasp) a redhead who dyed her hair black when she was like 12. i like to think she'd be an mcr fan although idk how accurate that is to her actual canon self

ALSOOOO. this book had a lot of communism and socialism talk. i was a little worried it was gonna turn into one of those like. "communism bad the end" type stories but i think in the end it was surprisingly ... not pro-socialist, per se, but certainly more nuanced than some stories. the socialist characters had a range of opinions and sigurdur óli's weird hatred of communism was treated as unusual. one character said something along the lines of "socialism is what makes it bearable to live under capitalism", which i thought was interesting especially since this particular character had become very against the soviet union and how socialism was being enacted in eastern europe (& had previously been a devout socialist), and you'd sort of assume that the story would just have him end up totally denouncing socialism. instead he had much more interesting and realistic opinions, same with the other characters who had been studying at the eastern german university he did in the 50s or 60s (i forget when exactly). that was refreshing

omg and ALSO also. erlendur had a moment where he complained to himself about like. political correctness and stuff and it was honestly quite funny 😭 like part of me was like oh shut up dude. but mainly i was just giggling because he really is such a middle aged man! it's completely in character for him to think that. and i'm fairly certain it wasn't just a case of the author's opinions bleeding into the work. hopefully lol

OKAY THAT'S ALL FOR NOW. book rambling over. hope you're having a good day, whoever's reading this o7