(no subject)

why is it so difficult to find actual bookshelves meant for actual books?
I'm seriously planning to go to the furniture shop that says We Make Anything and spend a few hundred pounds on shelves that will not go ) shaped and will continue to function properly for as long as possible.
Buying things from the shops is all display cases with the wrong shelves at the wrong intervals, and shelves that are only as tall as I am. Come on, there's feet between me and the ceiling, why wimp out early?

Also, I'm hoping to get a DVD cabinet which has shelves in the doors and is a reasonable height, but I imagine there's some structural reason nobody is selling those so probably not. I can see how tipping would be a problem but I have a wall and can happily fix things to it. If I could find said things to fix them.

(no subject)

I picked up a book from the inherited collection today, just at random
and I don't think I'm going to keep it
because the copyright page says it's from 1975, collecting stories up to 20 years old
and the 'twists' are, like, the single most obvious thing you could possibly
because ooooooold.
And in some ways that's unfair, because for all I know it was astonishing and original at the time it was written
but
I could see every beat coming a mile away
so
nope.

Also thus far the only female character is a parrot.

It is a source of utter bafflement to me that a genre that prided itself on imagining the most extraordinary things
couldn't imagine women.

Indeed, characters stop to mention how baffling women are. Or females in general. Since he was thinking about the parrot.

This is, broadly, why the inherited books have spent 20 years not being read. Because I start trying things, and I find they're like this, and then I get bored and go back to books that actually have something to offer.

Books I buy for myself are by women and about women, and I still have more books that are the other sort.
I mean, often they have women characters in them as well, but I'm fed up today, so I'm remembering the other sort.



I'm fed up most of the time lately. Just a sort of mobile grumpy. I hope that wears off at some point.



In other news I'm somewhat impressed with the single shelf I paid someone to put up back when I first moved in. That is some solidly placed shelf, right there. I can't even see how to start trying to take it down, there's no screws showing, I can see how the clever plastic thing slotted in in such a way it won't come out.
on the other hand I was in fact trying to get it to come out, since I want to take that shelf down, now.
So.

I keep reminding myself that progress is progress even if it creeps, but it do get wearying, especially on the tasks where I've already tried the things I could think of.

If I won a whole bunch of money then the first thing I'd do is hire someone who could think of how to do the other things. That would be super helpful.