IntenseDebate - threeparts

5 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'Thud!': Pa... · 7 replies · +20 points

The book, The Koom Valley Codex, is almost certainly a reference to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (and possibly his other books), but it's been far too long since I read it for me to point out specific likenesses. Hopefully someone else can expand!

5 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'A Hat Full... · 0 replies · +24 points

I read Miss Level as dealing with a degree of chronic anxiety as well, given the different ways she's described as being nervous or worried, and that can be emotionally exhausting. Even if she wanted to be totally upfront with Tiffany, I can understand wanting a period of rest after a big day to prepare herself to address such a personal subject with a relative stranger.

6 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'The Amazin... · 0 replies · +4 points

mawrEECE for me, at least partly because Morris is my cousins' family name and it feels weird to hear Maurice pronounced that way while being spelled so differently. I'm in Australia, if that helps.

6 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'The Scienc... · 1 reply · +16 points

It's interesting coming back to this book so many years later. I'd always been interested in pop-sci, but as a high school dropout, I long felt I was too bloody stupid or ignorant to understand the really technical bits of physics and chemistry. Now, as a mid-30s woman who is finally finishing school and jumping into BioMed at university (fingers crossed, anyway), my perspective has changed so much. Maybe it was poor teaching, maybe it was my own lack of willingness to try harder, or a lack of more basic background info that would make sense of it all, but now it feels like I have a much firmer grip on the points they're getting across.
It's like... trying vegetables again as an adult that you hated as a kid, you know? Your palate has changed, your understanding of why we eat them has changed, your knowledge of how to cook them better than your parents ever did has grown, and now dang but they're tasty. I like math now! I'm acing my math classes! That was unthinkable when I was a teenager!
I'm just not looking forward to my own 8am classes. :(

7 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'The Last C... · 0 replies · +8 points

I grew up in Big Pineapple country!

The specific town I grew up in, Gympie (named after a native stinging plant, because why not) had another big pineapple of its own, located outside of a servo along the main road. Trying to steal Woombye's thunder, perhaps? The floods at the end of this book are pretty reminiscent of all the times the Mary River burst its banks while I was living there.

7 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'The Last C... · 0 replies · +1 points

You wouldn't happen to have a link to the Tumblr lemonade post, would you? That sort of linguistic confusion always delights me, but all I can find in a search are references to Beyoncé (although I guess it may have started out in one of those posts??).

7 years ago @ http://markspoils.blog... - The Black Market · 0 replies · +1 points

Thank you very much!

7 years ago @ http://markspoils.blog... - The Black Market · 4 replies · +6 points

NGE 19-23: http://markdoesstuff.fetchapp.com/get/a658c142

8 years ago @ http://markspoils.blog... - The Black Market · 1 reply · +3 points

NGE 4-8! http://markdoesstuff.fetchapp.com/get/ebfcc86b

8 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'Soul Music... · 0 replies · +29 points

Yep! I grew up in lower class Australia in the 80s/90s, and it always had the connotations of both 'girly (in a negative way)' and 'cowardly'. 'Wuss' would be the closest alternative I could suggest. You were a sissy if you weren't good at sports, or were scared of the dark, or weren't keen on rule-breaking. It wasn't exclusive to boys, either - my older brother would call me (a cis woman) a sissy if I cried when I got hurt while we played.

I can see the connotations of questioning masculinity (and sexuality/gender) now that I'm older, but back then it seemed like a fairly mild insult that no adult I knew would bat an eye at.

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