One of my goals for the next twelve months is to do a themed monthly post.  Having given it some thought, I decided to simply post photos taken from my bedroom window.  So each month there will be two or three photos marking the passing of the seasons.  In addition, on the occasions when I'm away for a night, I shall also include a photo from that window.

I played two new games yesterday and also read a whole comic book on the way home.

Potion Explosion:
This is a fun game where there's a display of different coloured marbles in tracks on a cardboard stand and you have to collect marbles of the right colours in the right combinations to brew potions, which then give you abilities that help you collect the right marbles for the next potion, etc...
It was all about visualising how the marbles would change position once you removed some, and then figuring out how to combine the various abilities you'd accumulated to maximise collecting the right combinations.
Definitely a game that played to my strengths - we played it twice and I won both times by quite a big margin. But I had no idea while playing how I was doing compared to anyone else and was very surprised by my victories - so I think I would have enjoyed it just as much, even if I hadn't won.

Jaws:
We also played the Jaws board game, which was fun in aspects but not in others.
Three of us played characters from the film, while one player took on the role of the shark.
In the first part of the game, the crew was trying to save swimmers, close beaches, deploy ways to locate the shark and generally prevent the beast from doing too much damage.
We failed spectacularly and the second part of the game was triggered by the shark eating the maximum number of swimmers, rather than by us successfully locating it twice...
I quite enjoyed this section, though, as there were lots of options for what to do and it was fun trying to figure out where the shark might be at any given time and act accordingly.
In the second half, we were out on a boat in the water and the shark kept surfacing to attack us, while we tried to predict where it would come up and attack it back.
This section was less fun, as it felt like the odds were stacked very highly in the shark's favour and there was little we could do to damage it, even if we could figure out where it was going to be.
We all died...

Stranger Planet by Nathan Pyle:
I was left without a book to read on the way home so I read this comic book on my phone. I know there’s controversy about some of the author's views but I’m not going to talk about that here. I really enjoyed the first volume and the TV show based on the comics, and this was very much more of the same. I love the beings and the way they talk – plus how very relatable some of their situations and attitudes are. I had to interrupt the podcast Dave was listening to multiple times to show him pages of the book that reminded me of him or of us together. Largely very sweet and very funny – a good way to pass a journey when I didn’t have a physical book to read.

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This is what I wrote for the unsent_letters_exchange. :)

Title: my heart is with you
Fandom: DCEU
Pairing/Characters: Diana/Steve
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 1983
Summary: Diana writes letters for Steve, until she no longer has to.

These were the fics I received from the unsent_letters_exchange. :D

Title: Please Mr Postman
Author: Ultra
Fandom: Gilmore Girls
Pairing/Characters: Lane/Dave
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 2855
Summary: When Dave goes off to California for college, he and Lane agree to do the long distance thing, largely through letters... and a lot of pop and rock music references, of course

I was so excited to get Lane/Dave! Loved all the fun music references and the letters were very them. :D

Title: Please Mr Postman - Post Credits Scene
Author: Ultra
Fandom: Gilmore Girls
Pairing/Characters: Rory/Jess
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 1097
Summary: Inspired by Dave & Lane's letter writing, Rory writes to Jess.

The Rory/Jess references in the original fic was already nice but it was a lovely delight to get a followup fic with giving them a chance at a happy ending too!

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The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston:
I was intrigued by the concept of this book - young woman inherits apartment from aunt and discovers it sometimes sends her seven years into the past, where she meets the man who was living there then, but only sees him intermittently.
And the execution was largely well done. I often find I struggle with books that are set in the real world with a fantastical twist, especially if the characters don't respond to the weirdness in the way you'd expect. But here, the stage was set well but the protagonist properly freaked out the first time it happened. And the way the story was woven together mostly worked.
This is a 'proper' romance book, though, where there's no story left if you take the romance aspect out of it - and I'm coming to conclusion that I generally want more from a book than that. It did start to feel repetitive and as if it was being unnecessarily dragged out by the halfway point - and I have to admit I did listen to most of the second half on double speed, just to find out what happened.
I wasn't overly keen on some aspects when the timelines started overlapping. And the death knell for being on board with the relationship was when, after the first time they had sex, the male love interest leaned down and whispered, "Good girl" in the protagonist's ear...
I also felt like the grief aspect of the story didn't have a proper throughline, which meant it lost some of its impact along the way. And, not wanting to spoil anything - I would recommend checking the content warnings.
Still, I slowed the audiobook back down to normal speed again for the very end, which I felt worked pretty well and almost got me in the feels.
So, a bit tricky to rate, as I can't say I was fully invested, but I did want to see it through and was glad I did.


Almost A Crime by Penny Vincenzi:
I've read seven other Penny Vincenzi books in the last ten months and really enjoyed all but two of them. I was hoping this would be on the positive side - and it was! I know what to expect from these books now - hundreds and hundreds of pages of rich, privileged, often despicable people, doing largely terrible things to each other, but in a wildly compelling and highly entertaining way - occasionally with a bit of real emotion thrown in to keep me fully engaged.
And that is absolutely what I got from this book. It's got adultery, betrayal, complex family dynamics, problematic relationships, breakdowns, political shenanigans - you name it!
There's also a lot to do with trauma and motherhood, which is a common theme for this author - and I would definitely check the content warnings before diving in.
It dipped a bit around halfway, when everything I'd expected to happen had already occurred and I was worried the second half would be really dragged out - but then it went in multiple really surprising directions and I was very satisfied with how everything turned out in the end.
One thing I found interesting was that the main 'reveal' was really obvious to me right from the start - but then I realised it wasn't meant to be a mystery for the reader. It was more a case of the tension building around anticipating how the characters would react when they found out the truth - and that was done very effectively.


The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson:
The first page of this book is an extended in-joke about the opening line of Anna Karenina, so the author sets out her stall early...
It's about a very pretentious, very dysfunctional family, made up of largely unlikeable characters - which can go either way for me.
The central figure, Ray Hanrahan, is absolutely appalling and most of the other characters spend all their time bending over backwards to placate and appease him, which I found quite difficult to read. I was initially keen to carry on, to find out whether any of them managed to escape him by the end. But the desperation and unnecessary self-sacrifice got too much - weirdly managing to be both painfully realistic and also ridiculously unrealistic at the same time.
I struggled to reach my prescribed 50 pages (to give a book time to hook me in) and then gave up.

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