Sunday Coffee – Rerecording Audiobooks

Posted on March 6, 2022 by Thistle

Toward the end of our road-trip last fall, Jason and I began listening to Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. I’d already read the book twice, once in print and once on audio, but it had been awhile and Jason had never read it, so I didn’t mind. We listened to maybe a quarter to a third of it during the last couple days of our trip. When we got home, I didn’t continue the book because again, I’d already read it several times, and I had other books I wanted to read. Jason didn’t continue it because he was already in the middle of listening to a long podcast series.

Six months went by, and then I needed something to listen to in the background while working on a project last month. I wanted something that I’d enjoy, but I wouldn’t have to concentrate to comprehend. Finishing that re-listen of Elantris was perfect, and as I went through the book, I told Jason that I’d love it if he could finish his listen at some point, too, so we could discuss. After he finished his listen-in-progress, he grabbed Elantris from Audible and started over from the beginning.

Here’s where things got weird. Jason bought the tenth anniversary edition of the audiobook, which is not the one I have. We figured they’d be the same, particularly because it was the same narrator, with perhaps some extras added to the re-release as a way of drumming up interest in the new edition. The newer print editions of Elantris have an added Hoid chapter at the end that explores a part of the Cosmere system only mentioned in passing prior to this. Maybe that was added to the audio version, I thought. What I didn’t expect was that the entire audiobook was rerecorded, with the pronunciations of 90% of the names/places changed. Examples:

  • Serene: In the original, this is pronounced like the normal word; the updated version adds an extra “ee” to the end, so it’s like sir-EE-nee.
  • Telrii: Original is tell-RYE-eye. New version is TELL-ree.
  • Jaddeth: Original pronounces the J as a Y, new one pronounces it as a J.
  • Roial: Original says ROW-aisle (with the “row” as in “row your boat”); new version is the word “royal” with normal pronunciation.
  • Ashe: Original is A-she (with the A being a long a, like in “day”); new version is the word “ash” with normal pronunciation.

Like I said, these are just a few examples – nearly all of the names (people, places, concepts, titles, etc) have been changed. I can only think of about a half dozen – out of hundreds – which didn’t change in some way.

Maybe it’s just me, but this bothers the hell out of me!! Why would you do this? Why would you change the entire language structure of an audiobook?? Research tells me that the new versions are apparently closer to what Sanderson envisioned originally, but I don’t care – the originals are what I first heard and learned, so those are the final versions in my head. Especially as a character from this world shows up in Oathbringer. He’s not named in Elantris, so I can’t say how the two versions of his name might differ, but in the audio recording of Oathbringer, his name (Riino) is pronounced rye-EYE-no. That is exactly like the original – the updated would be REE-no. So in my mind, no matter what anyone says, the original versions are correct! Ha.

Every time Jason and I discuss something from the book, we trip over each other’s pronunciations. We keep discovering new ones, too. We’ve also played portions of the same chapters to each other, to see how different they sound with every other word being pronounced differently. And since Jason didn’t really remember the portion of the book we listened to back in autumn, he’s got all the “wrong” versions in his head now! Oh well.

Anyway, I thought the whole situation was so bizarre. I’ve seen authors change things to update a book over time, or fix minor continuity issues, etc. (Rowling did this between hardback and paperback versions for almost every HP book!) This was really extensive, though, and I wonder what others think about “updated” versions of books that change so much of something as essential as how language sounds in a particular world!

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Birthday the 43rd

Posted on March 4, 2022 by Thistle

My birthday was this past Tuesday, and lucky me got a full day of celebration! Jason took off work, and we started the morning with a hike at a park in town that I hadn’t been to in months. (Notably, the last time I went was before I lost my mobility in November, so I wasn’t sure how well my body would handle it. It was…okay. I had to stop to stretch my back several times, and I can tell just how much I’ve lost in both muscle and cardio fitness over the last few months. But since it was just Jason and me, we could take it as slow as I needed, or stop whenever that became necessary.)

We hiked a bit over three miles, then headed into town to have lunch at one of my favorite restaurants, India Oven. Sadly, I have to say that the experience was disappointing. Because it was lunch, we were there for the weekday buffet, and apparently, they’ve changed the buffet from “mild” to “medium” spice. I can barely handle the mild spice level, so in the end, there was very little I could eat. Mostly I ate naan and rice, and I’m not technically supposed to have naan given that I’m meant to be eating gluten-free. So lunch was one of the less satisfactory parts of my birthday.

It’s a good thing that a really huge surprise came that afternoon and totally made up for it! Brandon Sanderson announced a new project – a “Year of Sanderson” subscription box for 2023, including four previously-unannounced novels that he’s apparently been using his pandemic-lockdown time to write. I’ve been looking halfheartedly for a new subscription box after some not-so-great experiences over the last year, and this is one that’ll be 100% perfect!! Yeah, it’s expensive, but honestly there was no chance I was going to back anything lower than the top tier of the kickstarter. I want all four books, plus the audio versions, plus the themed swag boxes. I never buy books like this, not before reading them, except under very particular circumstances. This absolutely qualifies! I’m so excited – this is like the best unintentional birthday gift ever! I spent most of the afternoon watching the various videos and livestreams dedicated to the kickstarter.

Once all the livestreams were over, Jason and I went shopping for sunglasses. Honestly, I’m not a fan of sunglasses and so I never wear them, but I’ve noticed over the last year or two that I’m starting to feel the effects of the sun on my eyes after hiking. I knew that, with getting older and my eyes doing the things eyeballs do (like crystalizing), I needed to start protecting them better. So I got two pairs – one to keep for driving, one to store in my hiking pack. (Can I just say that I’m not a fan of the current sunglasses fashion? What’s up with the giant two-toned lenses that are all yellowy, like they’re straight out of 1989? Or that double bar on top? Those glasses look like they belong on an inept bank robber from an early episode of Unsolved Mysteries. Thankfully, I found some non-80s glasses!)

(images from Unsolved Mysteries – top middle is what 90% of the sunglasses out right now look like, eek!)

In the evening, Jason made Cincinnati chili for me, and we had a double-desert combo of chocolate bavarois and GF chocolate chip cookie cake. I opened a few gifts, including a cat-moon-and-pearl necklace from my dad and some digital editing software from Jason.

It was a nice day, and a good mix of getting out and doing things I wanted to do, with enough downtime that my body didn’t feel completely overrun and inflamed. I hate that this is my life now until the RA is under control – if the RA ever gets under control – but I’m doing my best not to kick against those limitations and land myself sick in bed the next day. And hey – I didn’t get a picture of it, but on our way home from sunglasses shopping, a rainbow popped out between two clouds just out of nowhere. There was no rain or even any threat of rain, bright clear skies with only a couple of clouds, and yet there was a rainbow. Rainbows always give me a little boost, make me feel like I’m where I’m meant to be, so this was a good omen to start a new year. This is what 43 looks like so far.

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February 2022 in Review

Posted on March 2, 2022 by Thistle

It’s hard to believe February’s over, probably because I spent most of the latter half of it in poor mental health. Heh. I’m okay, just feeling the effects of a few health-related issues. Beyond that, not much happening here. To continue last month’s family stuff, Ambrose got his ship date (mid-June), and Laurence finally did get to perform in the musical at school. That’s about it for February!

Reading and Watching
It was another good book month, with seven finished, only two that fell into the “meh” category, and none that I disliked! It wasn’t hard to pick a favorite this month – The Second Blind Son was a book I treasured all the way through. I definitely need to read more by Amy Harmon.

Despite reading the same number of books this month – including more pages and more audio than January – there was actually a big chunk of February where I just didn’t read much at all. Instead, I took to binge-watching various true crime (and related) shows: Catching Killers (okay), Inventing Anna (ugh), and Wild Crime (pretty good). Toward the end of the month, my friend Alia convinced me to watch Love is Blind with her, so I binged my way through that one as well, heh. I can’t deny a bizarre enjoyment of crappy dating reality shows! The one thing I didn’t watch this month? The Olympics! I thought I would, but except for in 2018 (when my grandmother had just passed away and I was grieving), I’ve never been big into the winter Olympics, not like the summer ones. I just never got around to watching them this time. My favorite thing I watched all month, though, was the first episode of Season 15 of Murdoch Mysteries. It only released on the last day of the month, and I’ve been looking forward to it for months!

Goals
I got a few more goals completed this month: mistflower bed planted, our first bug hotel put up in the yard, scratched another five books off my priorities list, and began to learn a bit more about digital editing.

House
We had more projects than expected this month. First, the paperwork to get our solar panels done finally came through, so contractors came to install them on the house. We’re still waiting for tree-trimmers and for the local energy company to wire the panels into the grid, but soon we’ll be on green energy! We also put together the mistflower bed a few weeks early. The big unexpected project was replacing the toilet in the main house bathroom. Last Saturday, it very suddenly began to leak sewage from underneath it. EEK! The old connection to the drain had corroded away, so we had to remove the old toilet, clean out and replace the connections, and put on a new toilet (as the old one was too corroded and rusted out to be connected securely). Thankfully, Jason was able to do that so we didn’t have to call someone out and wait until they had time for us!

Health and Fitness
This month was a bit less medical-heavy, mostly because I was waiting on availability from specialists. I did see my dietitian, rheumatologist (PA), and endocrinologist this month. The good news is that my rheumatology labs showed my inflammation is down to a certain degree, and on a scale from 0-100, the progression of my RA is at 25 (the high end of the “low” category). The bad news is that the endocrinologist is still awful – I need to find a new one – and my rheum PA was equally awful. Oh well. I also took a two-day at-home sleep study this month, because either I’ve developed sleep apnea, or I have an obstruction that’s causing issues with my sleep. No results yet, but hopefully soon. I do see an ENT in a week or so (March looks to be a bit more medical-heavy) so he’ll be able to look for obstructions.

(hikes of February, all but one very early in the month)

Unfortunately, as I said at the beginning of this post, my mental health has not been well. There are a lot of factors mixing together to cause depression: trying to reconcile myself to this diagnosis and the lack of mobility; the general pain brought on by the new RA medication as my body adjusts; the lack of exercise on days when my pain and mobility are low; sleep quality and quantity issues; poorer than normal diet stemming from depression and sleep issues…etc. I still haven’t found the energy to call around looking for therapists. Sigh. So I didn’t eat as well as I’d’ve liked, or exercised as much, or been out hiking with my friends as often, etc.

Quarantine Diaries
For the first time, I had a direct covid scare. (Though to be honest, I was never particularly worried.) Some friends and I hiked early in the month, and afterwards, we found out that one friend had tested positive for covid through a routine work screening. She felt terrible that she may have exposed us, but also a little confused because she hadn’t been around anyone (at all). None of us were worried. We were all vaccinated and we’d been outdoors. She took three more covid tests through different facilities and they all came back negative, so we think it was a false positive anyway. The other three of us just wore masks around people for ten days. None of us ever had any symptoms or positive tests, except that first one my friend had through the work screening.

Favorite Photos
As usual with depression-heavy, stay-inside months, I didn’t take nearly as many photos as I’d like in Feb. Here are the few best-ofs.

Top, left to right: Ambrose dressed up for the musical (full story in my highlights below); Atticus training to become my adventure cat; hiker silhouetted on craters at McKinney Falls State Park. Bottom, left to right: McKinney Falls, upper falls; sunset; kitty siblings

Highlights of February
Bright spots in a dark month:

  • Angus and Gherkin simultaneously laying out on their backs, legs spread, with bellies up asking for pets (Gherkin never does this, so she’s learning from her brother, who does this all the time!)
  • After Laurence’s musical, when we were out in the lobby to hang out with the cast, some guy from the audience came up to Ambrose to tell him “great job,” thinking Ambrose was part of the cast because of his outrageous outfit. We got a kick out of that one!
  • discovering (practically, because I already knew intellectually) how much better RAW file format is
  • Headwaters Sanctuary walk/hike with friends, followed by a delicious dinner at Mr Juicy
  • meeting another agender person in real life for the first time
  • everything about Galentine’s Day!
  • the gulf fritillaries returned to my garden! (above pic)
  • training Atticus to be my Adventure Cat
  • the kittens letting Stephanie pet them profusely for the first time; especially Angus, who not only came to investigate her without toy incentive for the first time ever, but offered his belly to rub!
  • exploring a new-to-me nursery in town and getting my first bug hotel, plus some wildflower seed packets, and petting the nursery kitties!
  • this hilarious conversation I had with Jason about Gherkin’s inability to Loaf properly
  • a new Boston fern to hang in our dining room –>
  • prepping our taxes to file in March, with a good refund coming to pay off some debts

Coming up in March
Birthday month! Not only mine, which was yesterday, but eight birthdays in my family take place this month: mine, my stepmom, two brothers-in-law, both mother- and father-in-law, my son’s, and a sister-in-law. Three of those are all on the same day! Three others are all back to back in a row. It’s a fun month, heh. There’s also spring break and a bajillion medical appointments and procedures to look forward to. It’s going to be a busy one! Yay?

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A Twist of Fate, by Kelley Armstrong (audio)

Posted on February 28, 2022 by Thistle

Four years ago, Rosalind accidentally stepped through a time-slip and ended up in the 21st century, leaving behind her husband and infant son. When she finally manages to return to her own time, she doesn’t know what to expect. Does her husband, who already had a history of abandonment by the women in his life, think that she ran off? Will her son hate her for disappearing? Has her husband remarried, giving her son a new mother? Through interference by a con-woman and a spectacular twist of fate, Rosalind – in disguise – is brought into her family’s household, only to discover mysteries, disappearances, and tragedies that she couldn’t have anticipated.

When I read A Stitch in Time, I fell absolutely in love with this series/world. Technically, both of these books are 100% standalone. This is a case of a series stepping sideways to a new character, rather than continuing a story arc. This was a great story, and proves that my first experience with Armstrong wasn’t a fluke. Did I like it as much? Not quite, even though tbh I listened to the audiobook twice in a row because I wanted the double-experience. The enjoyment-difference between the two were slim, though, and I think A Stitch in Time edged this one out purely because I like the narrator more. (The narrator, as in the story’s narrator, Bronwyn, rather than the audio’s narrator, though that’s also true. I’ll get to that later.) There were also slightly fewer paranormal elements to this one, so that it read mostly as historical fiction and mystery, as well as fewer spicy romance parts.

All that added up to me enjoying the first book a bit more, but I still loved this one. I loved seeing how Rosalind’s character evolved through living four years in the modern world, loved seeing August (her husband) again after his role as a side character in the first book, and of course loved the glimpses of Bronwyn’s and William’s lives in the years that followed the first book. It makes me want to go back to read the first one again, to see if I can catch glimpses or hints from this book, as the early portion of the book overlaps to a certain degree.

Anyway, I don’t really have anything in-depth to say about these books. They weave together several genres that I love, with a critical eye toward sexism, racism, and classism. Plus all the cats. I mean, it really doesn’t get better for me.

Performance: This book was read by Gemma Dawson. It’s my first experience with Dawson, and I thought the narration was good within certain parameters. It was slower than I’m used to, so I had to speed the book up. The regular British characters were perfectly fine. I didn’t like Dawson’s child voice, especially for the two-year-old Amelia, and her “Canadian” accent for Bronwyn was frankly atrocious. It’s an accent often given to North Americans by British readers, and it doesn’t sound remotely like any North American accent – I can’t even place what it’s supposed to sound like. So yeah, I cringed every time Bronwyn spoke, the same way I’m sure people from other countries cringe when American audio narrators read non-North-American accents. However, Bronwyn wasn’t in the book often, nor was the two-year-old, so most of the book was well-narrated for me.

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Sunday Coffee – The Mistflower Bed

Posted on February 27, 2022 by Thistle

The next phase of xeriscaping the garden has begun!

Longtime followers will know that Jason and I are slowly converting our boring, scraggly front and back lawns into native, xeriscaped, water-saving landscapes that enhance both the ecosystem and the beauty of our little space. It’s a long process because 1) we’re doing it all ourselves and have to time it for when we have no other projects/appointments (not to mention the weather is okay aka not boiling outside), and 2) it’s expensive, so we have to do it in phases as we save up for it. The current project is the bed that goes along the back of the house from the deck to the a/c unit.

Our house is on a slight slope, and because the yard wasn’t well-cared-for before, a lot of the soil from near the house eroded down the hill. Last year, Jason built a small “fence” made of scrap wood to mark out this bed, and we threw a bunch of junk seeds (non-edible oats, peas, and barley) into the area to grow and hold down the remaining soil. Nothing was growing there before because the house had no rain gutters, so water would smash into this area and rip up any growth. The junk-plants were hardy and meant to be a stop-gap until we could get gutters up, which we did last fall. Now that it’s planting season, we tilled up the old growth; added topsoil, compost, and peat; and made a plan for the bed.

(weeded bed; new soil dumped but not tilled in yet; the plants)

This is an area that gets morning sun but a lot of afternoon shade. It’s also right outside my bedroom, and I knew I wanted plants that attracted butterflies. Jason and I also have a rule on our permanent beds (aka not just seeds thrown in temporarily) that plants have to be native, non-invasive, self-sowing, and low-water-need. Essentially, they have to thrive on very little care while also doing no damage to the local ecosystem (hopefully improving it!). We’ve been working with native plants since 2018, so I had a good idea of the ones I wanted in that bed: primarily mistflowers, with a mix of salvias, dusty miller, skullcaps, inland sea oats (for greenery), and native milkweed. Sea oats weren’t available, and since they were just for greenery, I ended up going with milky way cast iron plants instead. Jason and I also got a Carolina jessamine to trail up the side of the deck, particularly because we saw just how many native butterflies it was attracting. (Indeed, before these were even planted, I saw three different varieties of butterfly flocking to it!) Mistflowers weren’t available in the quantities I wanted, so I’ll have to go back in a few weeks to get more, but I got a few to start.

(bed-planning; plants in and watered; the next day)

I know it doesn’t look like much, but those will all grow and fill out that bed over time. Mistflowers tend to start their own gardens, which is one reason I chose them. This was, very specifically, my mistflower bed!

This was all done last weekend, and we waited a week to mulch, mostly because there was a lot of rain and some freezing temps all throughout the week. We wanted to prevent mildew/rot, so we waited until this weekend to mulch. Thankfully, all the plants seem to have done fine in the mild freezes, and even the light sheet of ice we had one morning. (The original plan was to plant in mid-March, after all danger of frost had passed. A miscommunication led to planting three weeks earlier than intended.) So this (above photo) is where the mistflower bed currently sits, while it waits a few weeks for the rest of the plants (more mistflowers, Texas milkweed) to be available in the local nurseries. Again, it doesn’t look like much, but I know how quickly this is going to turn into a gorgeous garden bed!

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Any Way the Wind Blows, by Rainbow Rowell

Posted on February 25, 2022 by Thistle

Book 3 of the Simon Snow trilogy, after Carry On and Wayward Son. I’m not going to say more, as that would give away spoilers from earlier in the series.

Quick recap of my experience with the series up until this point. I read Carry On in 2015 and loved it. I described it as a book I wanted to hug (and did hug) multiple times. It made me happy. And I thought it was a standalone. I was surprised when Wayward Son was released, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read on. But I did, in 2019, and honestly, I remembered next to nothing about the book except that it took place mostly in America. According to my review, I enjoyed the book. I didn’t even remember that. So I was wary going into this book. I considered not reading it at all. In fact, when it first arrived from my library last summer, I returned it, saying maybe I’ll get to it again later.

Later finally came, the book is read, and now I’m in two minds. First, the book took me all of two days to read. It was fast and fun and had a lot of the same silly feel of Carry On – for much of the book. That’s where my “second” mind comes from. The ending was…not an ending. The ending was such a non-ending that I actually went looking for other readers’ thoughts to see if I could figure out if this library copy was missing pages. I’m not talking cliffhanger; I’m talking unfinished. There’s literally a “one year later” epilogue that only addresses one of a half-dozen or so important characters. Some people speculate that there will be a fourth book, but it doesn’t feel like that to me. But hey, what do I know? I thought Carry On was a standalone. (A lot of people felt like that, too, and still feel like it should have stayed one. Honestly, I probably agree.)

I don’t know. How do I classify a book that I really enjoyed, but with an ending so unfinished that I feel like I didn’t actually read the entire book? That kinda turns me off the book completely.

Some random thoughts from my read (no spoilers):

  • I don’t buy the Niamh plotline, particularly the conclusion(ish) to it
  • The British have the weirdest sandwiches. Cheese and pickle??
  • Um, after a google search, I realize “pickle” does not mean even remotely the same thing in Britain as it does in the US (British “pickles” 😀  –> )
  • But it did make me crave pickle chips, mmm…
  • I loved Shepard and everything to do with his story
  • Smith Smith-Richards is the stupidest name ever and I love it
  • This book was a lot more Adult than previous volumes, and it feels weird to have it still shelved in the YA section of the library

That’s about all. But you’ll be happy to know that thanks to my pickle-chip-craving via the sandwich research, I did acquire some pickle chips, and I ate some while typing up this review.

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untitled

Posted on February 23, 2022 by Thistle

I feel gross.
I feel dirty.
I don’t want to be seen.

Shame.
Ugly thoughts.
Loathing and disgust.

I hurt.
I am angry.
I am too overwhelmed to be angry.
I sink into depression.

I cannot move.
I cannot act.

I want change.
I am a traitor.
To myself.
To women.
To my beliefs.

I wrestle.
Two directions, both clenched.
Paralyzed into silence.

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Love & Other Disasters, by Anita Kelly

Posted on February 21, 2022 by Thistle

Dahlia has quit her job to participate in an amateur cooking competition called Chef’s Special. Along the way, she hopes to find herself. What she doesn’t expect to find is love. London agreed to be on Chef’s Special in hopes of bringing visibility to nonbinary people, and to raise money for an LGBTQ+ non-profit. They’re also not looking for love, but Dahlia accidentally face-plants into their chest the first day on set, and there’s no question romance has just found both of them.

This was a really cute and spicy romance, complete with misunderstandings, hesitations, and some start-stop buildups. The background of the cooking show was fun too – made me look forward to the next season of GBBO! The book had a few issues – a bit more optimistic than real world when it comes to queer acceptance, a couple sections where the pacing seemed to jump through time too fast, etc – but for the most part it was a lovely and sweet read. I was happy to finally read a book with a nonbinary narrator, as I’ve been unable to find one before now. Hopefully more books will follow in the future! We need more representation out there!

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Sunday Coffee – TT Travel Destinations

Posted on February 20, 2022 by Thistle

I have a whole bucket list of places that I want to travel to. Most are long-time wishes based on random bits from my childhood. Like Indonesia, for instance. In fourth grade, we had a guest come in to teach my classroom a few phrases of Indonesian, and I’ve wanted to go to Indonesia ever since. But as you can see, that’s a very abstract way to make a travel bucket list!

Then about a year ago, my list grew less abstract. It expanded first to state parks – both parks that friends of mine had been to and raved about, and others around the state purely due to a desire to explore with my parks pass – and national parks after reading Leave Only Footprints. And more recently, I finally managed to get onto hiking- and exploring-TikTok, and I’ve started to discover the most amazing places to visit! In no particular order:

The Hoh Rainforest, PNW – Inside this temperate rainforest, there is a spot called “One Square Inch of Silence,” marked with a red stone. Very few places of absolute silence can be found in the US – I believe fewer than a dozen? – and this area of the rainforest is one.

Black sand beaches of Iceland – Or really, I suppose any black sand beaches would work, but I love that these consist of larger pebbles. The sound the waves make on the rocks as they roll in and out with the waves is just incredible.

The Ice Castles – Not a natural formation, but a business, but essentially there are five spots where this company creates winter castles out of icicles for people to walk through and they look so cool! I used to live only two hours from one of these but never knew they existed until a few weeks ago.

Desert Botanical Gardens, AZ – I’m not normally the hugest cactus fan, but this place looks awesome, combining succulents and glass-blown artwork, and it just seems like a really cool place to learn more about desert environments.

Granite Falls Fish Ladder, PNW – Again, any fish ladders would work, it doesn’t have to be these, but I’d just love to see them in the right time of year!

Lake Champlain (Vermont) when the ice has broken up and there are crusty ice waves!

Belly of the Dragon, UT – A drainage tunnel carved into rock under highways that continue on until eventually reaching a slot canyon. !!! Looks amazing…unless there’s rain, heh.

Iceland basalt columns – Really, I just need to go to Iceland, yeah? These look so amazing. I’d love to hike along them.

Old Zoo Nature Trails, TX – These ruins of a former zoo in north TX are supposedly haunted.

Willamette National Forest, OR – In particular, Tamolitch Falls (the Blue Hole) and Clear Lake, both of which are stunning turquoise waters and seem like an entirely different world!

Natural Tunnel State Park, VA – Naturally carved gigantic tunnel with an active railroad going through it and tons of wilderness to hike through. A fascinating intersection of nature and humanity.

Glass beaches near Fort Bragg, CA – I guess I shouldn’t say that it’s sad these are slowly disappearing, considering they only existed in the first place due to dumped garbage, but they look so beautiful, and like the black sand beach above, the sound of the smooth glass pebbles in the waves is just divine!

Moraine Lake, Alberta – A glacier-fed extremely blue lake bordering (possibly inside) Canada’s Banff National Park. Surrounded by mountains and just gorgeous!

Bonus: Jules Undersea Lodge, FL – This is not on my bucket list, because it sounds frankly terrifying, but it’s too cool not to mention. You literally scuba dive down to an underwater hotel room, which somehow doesn’t fill with water despite you actually swimming into it, and then after your stay, you have to reacclimatize to the decreasing water pressure slowly as you go back up to the surface. Not for me, thank you, but how cool is that??

**Pictures are from my recent hikes, not from these places. I wish I could include pictures of the locations themselves, but I don’t want to take anyone’s copyrighted work even with photo credit, and I wasn’t finding public domain photos. The links out include photos or video!

PS – This list started a week ago with half a dozen places. It has more than doubled in the last week and I expect it to continue to grow even longer very quickly…

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How to Take Awesome Photos of Cats, by Andrew Marttila

Posted on February 17, 2022 by Thistle

This is a layman’s how-to book for cat photography, including 1) working with cats, 2) photo photography, 3) dedicated cameras, and 4) editing. Everything is simplified down to non-technical terms for easy understanding even if you’re an amateur photographer. Plus there’s the bonus of many amazing cat photos along the way.

I first checked this book out from the library over a year ago. At the time, I was just starting to learn about photography from a technical point of view, and I’m not sure I even had my camera yet. It was around the same time period as learning about Understanding Exposure and trying to read that book, which is far more technical and less intuitive than this one, but also about a broader range of focus. When I tried to read this the first time, I got to the second chapter – photography 101 – where it began to discuss things I didn’t yet understand because I was very, very new to anything more than just “point my phone at subject and shoot.” I quickly got bogged down trying to understand details – not necessary, but just the way I tend to read nonfiction – then skipped ahead to the phone section. That section was great, I learned what I could, and then I spent some time enjoying all the cat photos before returning the book to the library.

Now, a year-ish later, I’ve had a dedicated camera since Feb 2021 and I’ve learned tons in that year. Some of it was technical learning through books or youtube videos or instructional articles. Much of it was practical learning through trial and error. There were a lot of things I understood intuitively without knowing the “whys,” even after reading something as in-depth as Understanding Exposure. When I saw this book sitting on a display shelf at my local library, I decided to give it a second try with a bit more experience under my belt. That turned out to be a very good decision.

Marttila also describes his entry into photography as a lot of learning-as-you-go, and strives to then turn the knowledge gained over a decade into something approachable by novices like me. Obviously, my experience of “no knowledge whatsoever” didn’t help me much on my first attempt to read this, but I’m the sort of reader that dives very deep into nonfiction and gets held up by anything they don’t understand. Now, with my very young understanding of photography, this was exactly the caliber of explanation that I needed. Some very basic points – that were technical and convoluted in other sources – were explained simply so that I could finally understand what I was just trusting before. Additionally, I learned things that those other sources never discussed (like the difference between prime and zoom lenses, when I didn’t even know there were two different kinds despite owning both), probably because they are so basic that they expect you to already know before coming to their sources. This was a true beginner’s resource, regardless of whether or not you want to take photos of cats, and I loved that.

(This is the photo I took for my book journal, using the methods learned in this book. Normally, the book is the focus of these photos, but I enjoyed switching it up here to let Nimi’s beautiful face take center stage!)

Ironically, I’ll probably need to check the book out again in the future. There was a whole section about flash that mostly went over my head because I don’t have an external flash and I never use flash at all. It would certainly help, especially when I’m trying to take indoor photos in low light (when I tend to have to use my phone), but it’s an area of photography I have yet to explore. Ditto anything more than very basic editing (mostly cropping). Learning how to edit photos properly is on my list of goals for the year, and this book actually inspired me to do something I had yet to do. I’ve been shooting in RAW format** for most of the last year, but because I don’t have any editing software, I’ve just worked with the jpg files that import into my phone. Only in reading this book did I experiment and discover that I could import and edit RAW files on my phone the same way I do the jpg versions, and holy cats the amount of extra data those files contain is incredible! So yeah, while I’ll need to reread the flash and editing sections one day when I have more experience with them, this was already worth it!

Plus, the cat photos were great even on second read.

PS. I didn’t realize Marttila was married to the Kitten Lady when I first read this book. I didn’t know who the Kitten Lady was this time last year. I discovered her through my favorite kitten rescue on Tiktok, and ended up buying my Vewy Scawy pin for my hiking bag through her site last summer. Ha!

**Technically, I shoot in RAW+jpg, so that the jpg files are quite large and contain the most data as I can get from them. I tried shooting in just RAW, and the files that would upload to my phone in jpg were these horrible low-data versions. But now that I know how to transfer RAW files, I can just shoot in straight RAW. Might save me some room, ha!

Posted in 2022, Adult, Prose | Tagged , | 1 Comment