Chit-Chat and Recommendation Post: March 2022! (Patreon)

Welcome to the first Vanilla Velvet Audio Chit-Chat and Recommendation post! 🎉🎉🎉 This is a nice cozy spot to update each other on what we've been up to, and gush about what we've enjoyed during the month!

Personally, I've been pretty busy during March, what with launching Patreon and planning content for the next couple of months. I was feeling a little run ragged, if I'm being perfectly honest, because I've been putting all my meager free time into making audios basically since October. But this month I scheduled some Mandatory Fun to offset any encroaching burnout! (10/10, would recommend forcing yourself to have fun instead of doing more work.)

Here’s what I’ve been obsessed with this month! (None of these are affiliate links, btw.)

Best Article(s) I Read: There are two very different contenders here. Did HAL 9000 commit murder?, which I mentioned in my recent Q&A, and the absolutely harrowing How an Ivy League School Turned Against a Student. The first is pretty light, fluffy reading, but the second--while stellar journalism--is not for the faint of heart. (Aside: I actually loathe The New Yorker as a publication and its editorial style, almost as a point of pride. But even I can admit this was some solid reporting!)

Nonfiction book(s): Lipstick: A Celebration of the World's Favorite Cosmetic 

Uneven! And a little, uh, "You go, girl!" for me. But interesting! It had a fascinating chapter on the history of cosmetics from Ancient Greece to the present day (well, present as of the late 1990s when it was published anyway) and I have a particular soft spot for ephemeral curiosities and anything that examines the roles women and our various glittery trappings have held throughout history. (See also: Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present, a book about clothes that killed! that I've been lusting after for awhile now. I love that shit.)

I also skimmed through Coal: A Human History and will be giving that a more thorough read soon I hope! Because it is very, very good.

Fiction: I couldn't fit a full novel in this month between real life responsibilities, youtube/patreon stuff, and like, trying to eat and sleep like a reasonable human--but I made up for it with a lot of bite-sized stories! I of course favor speculative fiction (horror, sci-fi and fantasy) here are some of my favorites from this month!

• Paladin of the Lost Hour – Harlan Ellison (free on the author's site.)
• The Scythe – Ray Bradbury (free on kindle unlimited, if you have that! Also available elsewhere, me hearties, if you feel like flying the ol' Jolly Roger.)
• Laura Silver Bell  - J.S. Le Fanu (public domain)
• The Spectre Bride - William Harrison Ainsworth (public domain)

The first two are old favorites, both about unassuming men who wield incredibly powerful items on which the destiny of the world hangs--but that's where the similarity stops. They couldn't be more different as narratives and tones go: Bradbury's is quite dark and angry, and Ellison's is melancholy and sentimental. (Quite a tonal reversal if you're familiar with their respective bodies of work and temperaments!) 

The last two stories are spooky little Victorian-era penny dreadfuls that aren't quite ghost stories, but aren't quite...not, either. I didn't have nightmares, but I definitely regretted reading them under the covers late at night with the lights out without my kitty to protect me from things that go bump in the night.

Bonus: Books added to my to-read list in March that I might get to someday eventually maybe perhaps! The first is a slice-of-life fantasy novel about a retired orc adventurer who opens a coffee shop and gets dragged back into adventuring, Legends and Lattes. The second is a Pokemon-inspired series debut novel called On Lavender Tides. Will these be any good? No idea!

Song in Heavy Rotation: Artificial Intelligence – Tom Cardy

...I just like goofy songs about robot apocalypses okay?

Game(s): Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, a short, cute Zelda clone about mutant vegetables available on steam, gog, the switch, wherever. And I definitely stayed up too late a couple of times playing some of my old standbys Cities: Skylines and Oxygen Not Included. Because sometimes you gotta schedule fun when you should be sleeping, like you're still twelve or something.

WHEW. That concludes my what-I've-been-up-to/recs for the month! How about you? How was your March? And was there anything you got absorbed in this month that you'd like to share with the rest of the class? :3