I truly do not know how to start these posts anymore. September is over? October is starting? Hello, welcome, I’ve survived another month, and I’m glad you have too??
I’ve been jumping around between a lot of games lately, most of which have not been good for my head/eye problem, but sometimes I just need a distraction and something to do.
I’ve played a bit of the Sims 3 game with the married couple and their gay lovers that I mentioned last time. It’s fun, and wow, I LOVE the world of Roaring Heights! It’s so beautiful, with its beaches and Art Deco buildings and old-timey style. Even the golden-hued lighting in that world is just perfection.
I also played some Sims 4, since they did a free trial of the Eco Lifestyle pack. I’ve said before I’m not a big fan of The Sims 4, but it makes me sad that this is the first iteration of the game for which I haven’t played all or most of the packs, so I’m not gonna turn down a free trial.
I started a couple other games, but I’ll talk about those once I’ve played more.
I also watched a couple movies, most notably, Dragonheart. Which I’d seen numerous times in my childhood but hadn’t seen since maybe middle school. It was a movie I knew I loved back then, but movies, especially old faves, have been disappointing me lately. This was fantastic though. I genuinely loved it. The tweet below is a thread (which also quotes another thread) about my thoughts.
If you've never seen Dragonheart (1996), you should absolutely watch it. It's truly a great movie, even better than I remembered. And gayer. https://t.co/fveDQZx860
— Kit (Metaphors and Moonlight) (@KitTheNameless) September 27, 2021
Music! I’ve got a few songs that I’ve been listening to a lot lately, all of them quite melancholy. “Heather” by Conan Gray (which has a beautiful music video), “#88” by Lo-Fang, and “Freak Like Me” by Transviolet.
Blog/Bookish Updates:
In case you missed it, I finally switched over to https://metaphorsandmoonlight.com to match my blog name! So be sure to follow the new URL however you follow me. I transferred over my Bloglovin, WordPress, and email followers, so if you follow me any of those ways, you should be good.
Books I Received for Review:
I was lamenting the fact that, despite Netgalley and Edelweiss both letting publishers offer audiobooks, so few do, and then Macmillan Audio put a bunch up, one of which happened to be a book I really wanted (Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo). Turns out he NG app doesn’t work so great, which was frustrating, but oh well. I also got the graphic novel Real Hero Shit by Kendra Wells and Life of Melody by Mari Costa from Edelweiss, and Winterset Hollow by Jonathan Durham and The Awakening by Dusk Peterson from the authors.
Books I Finished:
If you’re considering buying one of the books below from Amazon, I’d really appreciate if you’d use my affiliate link!
What a great reading month I had! Two 4.5-star books (The Darkness Outside Us, Summer Sons)! I might even bump TDOU to 5 stars because…
The Darkness Outside by Eliot Schrefer – THIS BOOK. It was… whew. It was so much more than I thought it would be. Heavy and heartbreaking, but not without some hope. Thought-provoking. An amazing story, and one of those books I will keep thinking about for a long time. If anyone has read this or reads it in the future and wants to chat, DM me on Twitter or something! (Side note, I’ve actually gotten a few people interested in this book with all my tweets about it, so I feel like I accomplished something this year lol.) [My Review]
Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo – Interesting, messy, queer characters and a mysterious story, but it was the fantastic writing style and the buckets of sexual tension that really elevated this one for me! [My Review]
Real Hero Shit (Vol. 1?) by Kendra Wells – A queer fantasy graphic novel that was pretty, hilarious, and fun!
Out of House and Home by Drew Hayes – The latest book in the Fred, the Vampire Accountant series. These books are pretty chill, and I always enjoy them.
In Deeper Waters by F.T. Lukens – Gorgeous cover, and not a bad story, but the characters and relationships didn’t have enough depth for me. So a bit of a disappointment, though I may have enjoyed it as a teen.
The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass – I don’t normally read horror, but this one caught my attention, and thankfully it didn’t end up scaring me. It does deal with a lot of heavy topics though, like mental healthcare, bullying, and bigotry. Another one that didn’t have quite enough depth to the characters and relationships, but I still enjoyed it.
A Complicated Love Story Set in Space by Shaun David Hutchinson – This was thought-provoking and mysterious, but also sweet, and coming up with theories for what was happening was fun.
Life of Melody by Mari Costa – A super cute queer graphic novel about a fairy godfather and a troll beast raising a human child together and falling in love.
In Case You Missed It:
– I matched up three FUN. songs with the Simon Snow trilogy books.
– I reviewed Summer Suns by Lee Mandelo, a sort-of paranormal mystery with gorgeous writing, messy characters, and buckets of sexual tension.
– I reviewed The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer, a heart-wrenching, heavy but hopeful, thought-provoking love story about two boys in space.
– I reviewed Tomai, a fairly short but cute visual novel with lots of pretty art!
I know I saw Dragonheart way back when but for the life of me I can’t remember it. I don’t remember hating it so that’s something. I haven’t tried the audios on NetGalley because I wasn’t sure about them. I’ve recently found overdrive at my library and I’m loving it. I also have audible as well.
You should watch it again! The audio itself was fine, it’s just the NG app that gave me issues, constantly stopping for no reason. My library uses Overdrive/Libby too! Also Hoopla. It’s great being able to get stuff online!
‘A Complicated Love Story Set in Space’ is a great title for a book! Lol <3
Also accurate 😆
I have been reading the Narnia book series by C.S. Lewis. I reading right now The Horse and His Boy. I supposedly had Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman on hold on Overdrive because it became available a few days ago. So I guess I will be reading it next. And then continue on with the Narnia books.
For movies, I had “taped” movies when I had Direct TV. They would have movie channels as free previews so I would go on taping sprees. When I moved I wrote down all the movies I “taped” and I have been watching them once a week. I watched Bohemian Rhapsody for this week’s movie. It was really good.
For songs, I have a music app on my phone and I discovered t.A.T.u. Also for Halloween, I used to listen to old-time radio shows through Live 365 via my computer. I found out yesterday that Live 365 has an app so I’m going to listen to them again.
I’m pretty sure I read the first Narnia book a long time but don’t remember it. I’ve heard of Tess of the Road, I hope it’s good!
Taping sprees while movies are available, that’s the smart way to do things! That’s like me watching as much as possible with free trials for streaming services. Bohemian Rhapsody seems good. The old time radio shows sound interesting!
Sounds like you’ve read a lot of great books lately! I hope that continues for you! I don’t think I’ve ever seen Dragonheart, but my husband is a big fan of watching older movies.
You should watch Dragonheart together!
“Hello, welcome, I’ve survived another month, and I’m glad you have too??”
Why not? LOL. I mean, what with the state the world is in lately, we’re mostly surviving anyway…
“I was lamenting the fact that, despite Netgalley and Edelweiss both letting publishers offer audiobooks, so few do […] Turns out he NG app doesn’t work so great”
That’s a bummer. What’s the problem?
I’m glad you had such a successful reading month and even convinced a few people to read TDOU. That’s a great feeling!
I suppose it is fitting for the state of the world right now.
The problem was that the audiobook kept randomly stopping. So I couldn’t listen while making food or using the sink or anything where I couldn’t touch the phone.
Thanks!
Oh my gosh same. Sometimes I do a Sunday Post and I’m like- what? What do I even talk about lol? Which, lately, has shown haha as my intros are fairly short. 🙂 Oh well… anyways surviving is something! These days that’s like noteworthy in itself right?
I like the Transviolet song a lot. The video start out kinda freaky and I was like ooh this might make a good Netflix show lol. I like it when videos tell a story…
Repetitive kinda posts are the hardest to keep making intros for! But sadly surviving *is* something nowadays…
That’s the one I’ve been listening to most! I especially that sound right at the beginning, the violin or whatever it is.
I’ve always like Dragonheart. It’s such a good movie.
It is! It’s so good!
I am sad you don’t like Sims 4 more but at the same time I really understand why, it’s the most flawed of the Sims games so far. I only move don from Sims 2 because getting it to work on my laptop was a mission in itself but it will always be my favourite. Sims 3 did a lot of good things for the series and I respect it for that, but I cannot deal with the graphics, I am not a big fan of hwo sims look and the textures. I’ve also weirdly been listening to Heather by Conan Grey a lot, it’s just such a good song, so chilled.
It makes me sad too lol. I had heard earlier this year that there were strong rumors of them bringing back TS2 to Origin, and I really want them to so I can try it and maybe get it to work on this computer. I barely remember TS2 for some reason. But I still have so much I want to do in TS3 anyway. I find it so strange that everyone dislikes the graphics in TS3 because I prefer them to TS4’s graphics! Especially the worlds. It definitely helps to have some cc skins in TS3 for the sims, but even with cc skins in TS4, I have issues.
That’s so funny that we’ve been listening to the same song! I thought I just stumbled upon him recently on YouTube. Did I actually find him on your blog or something and forget? Lol.