Fight or Flight

Yesterday, I fought a gull for a slice of pizza.

Personally, I think this is an important piece of information about me. It says a lot about my personality and life choices.

I had bought the pizza on an extremely hot day (which is to say, about 25°C but really sunny and near the beach), from a street vendor I had been eyeing up for a while. I hadn't eaten that day; even when approaching sunstroke, nothing in that moment looked better than a rustic home-made pepper, rocket, and olive pizza made fresh before my eyes in a genuine wood oven.
Before me in the queue was a hippie with a rucksack covered with VOTE LABOUR badges, and while this isn't strictly relevant to the gull story, it's something of a small story within itself so it felt important.

It was a damn good pizza. I was with a friend, and we sat on the steps around the fountains in the city centre to eat our respective lunches; there were quite a few people around eating, and there were also a great number of gulls and jackdaws. I regularly go to the park behind the campus to feed the various animals (again, a whole other story for another time) and I have a soft spot for corvids, but with the gulls around this was clearly not the time.

All around, as they will do, gulls were swooping on unsuspecting innocents to snatch food from their hands and scream in their faces. And everyone they dived at screamed and tossed their food away, in some cases going so far as to run shrieking in the opposite direction, leaving their remaining lunches to be devoured.
Here's the thing about gulls: they aren't smart, and they aren't evil. But they do have the same ability to learn a behaviour if it's repeatedly reinforced as most other animals, and they do have an innate lack of fear of humans. So, over generations, we have trained the gulls of Britain (and probably the world) to attack us for our food, because when by chance gulls happen to swoop down on people and snatch at their food, 19/20 times the person screams and throws the food. The gull learns that the swoop and shriek gets food, so it keeps doing it.

I will clarify now, I wasn't sat there thinking about that at the time. We were discussing exams or something. But a gull was walking behind us, eyeing up - I assumed, in my hubris - my friend's chips. We kept an eye on it, and kept talking and eating, when suddenly from the corner of my eye I saw the gull extend its wings and duck its head to attack.

I swung my pizza and opened my mouth to warn my friend - too late. The gull's goal had not been her chips: it had been my slice of pizza.

With an inglorious screech, the gull scrabbled over my friend's head and dived for the pizza.

My reaction was not, exactly, fear. Rather, it was that precursor to fear, that instinctual explosion of awareness that occurs in the "reptile brain" when something big and sharp comes directly for one's face.

And, as anyone who knows enough psychology to have already recognised positive reinforcement will understand, what happens when you get faced with that kind of sudden explosion of threat is an instantaneous, utterly instinctive decision: fight or flight.

And what my instincts said to do was to punch the gull.

One second I was sat watching a gull while talking to a friend, the next it was a screaming mess of feathers and beak in my face, and even before I had time to be afraid of it, my fist was coming out.

What this resulted in was the gull landing a quite significant bite on my thumb, and also managing to snatch the slice of pizza as it scrambled out of the way of my defence - but oh, I was not done.

I had been looking forward to that pizza. I had paid for that pizza. I'm doing an exam on Animal Behaviour in five days, and I understand positive reinforcement. So fuck you, bird, if you think that you are going to get away with my pizza.

I went for that bird. I went hard. I must apologise in retrospect to my friend; she had gone from talking to me, to being left to guard our food while I was on my feet, sprinting after a gull, bellowing for its blood. I should probably apologise to the nearby children as well, as while I can't remember precisely - it's all a red-filled blur of action and instinct, no logical decision-making involved - I'm pretty sure I shouted "BASTARD" at it at least once.

In a fight-or-flight battle in my instinctual brain, when faced with the loss of my pizza to a gull, my instincts chose to fight.

So the upshot of it was, a gull tried to snatch a slice of pizza from a student's hand, and rather than getting free pizza and a scream, it instead received an almost-punch, several attempted kicks, multiple expletives, and a chase around the fountains before, finally, it chose flight.

With another pitiful squawk, the gull dropped my pizza and took off.

Just to be stubborn, I grabbed the pizza and put it back in the box. "I'm not going to eat it," I clarified to the stunned public. "Just didn't want that bastard thinking he can have it."

Then, quite satisfied with my work defending my pizza from errant charadiiformes, I sat back down and continued, happily, to eat my remaining pizza.

It was only the next day that when I told this story, someone pointed out that fighting a gull for a slice of pizza was probably not... The most normal reaction for a person to have.

But that's what I do. My fight response is surprisingly prolific for someone who's 5'4" and has severe anxiety. I'm jumpy as hell, but my reaction is generally to punch the thing or person behind me; I have a distinct memory of being about six years old and told that if I wanted to sit shotgun, I would have to fight my brother (ten years my senior) for the honour, which resulted in six-ish me attempting to actually beat up sixteen-ish him.

So if you wanted to know one odd yet surprisingly revealing fact about me, it would probably be that when faced with letting a slice of pizza go and ducking to protect my face, or attempting to punch the offending bird and then chasing after it kicking and swearing...

Yep. I chose to fight for that pizza.

This is probably why it's not the best idea to attempt to jump-scare me.

Schematic diagram of me fighting a gull for a slice of pizza while calling it a bastard

Why I am Not a Pygmy Owl

Chromosomes

Kidding.

I mean, technically tru but

Anyway.

"But why," asks literally no-one, "Not a Pygmy Owl?"

Actually I have been asked this, by quite a few people. Pleasant surprise, frankly, if a tiring one. Hence the post about it.

There's a short story and a longer reason.
The short story is this:
Summer 2016, I volunteered for two months at the Hawk Conservancy Trust in Andover. I could talk about that all day, and rave about the place. But a lot of stories and such aren't mine to tell, at least yet, so I shall start with simply this one, because it is relevant and the answer to a genuine question people pretend to be interested in.
One of the many species at the Conservancy are ferruginous pygmy owls. They're tiny. Like literally about two inches tall. They must weigh a couple of ounces. They were fed a mouse and a half a day, between them, and the mice must weigh more than the owls (they were about the same height). Understandably the pygmy owls had the smallest aviary in the Conservancy, but it was hardly a budgie cage - a couple of metres tall and wide, and maybe two metres across. The owls tended to sit in the same top corner all the time, except when they got excited or were feeding and started zooming around twittering (I mean, they probably do still, the past tense is just because I haven't been able to confirm this fact for the past nine months) so impatient or unobservant public could not often spot them.
What they could spot, however, was a 5'4" me, in unassuming volunteer-green, enthusiastically scrubbing the soul out of the feeding shelf. This came to light when one day, going casually about my scrubbing, I heard from behind:
"Why, I don't think that's a pygmy owl!"
Two elderly gentlemen, holding hands and a rainbow umbrella, were looking in and laughing. When I looked, they waved, and I waved back.
Every time I saw them for the rest of the day:
"It's the pygmy owl!"
"Hush, it's not a pygmy owl, dear."
It got a few questioning looks from staff and guests and volunteers, but oddly enough no-one asked.

The slightly longer reason is this:
I've gone by a lot of online handles and a few different names. I didn't want to use any of them for the website slash blog; this is separate. I considered Ember Fell, but I'm not Ember Fell Publications, just a part of it. Not mine to use all by myself. I could, sure, have just used Tatiana AS Webb, but where's the excitement? Where's the story? Tatiana writes the books, Ember Fell publishes them, but someone slightly else runs the website.
So I searched for something new, and I didn't have to search for very long.

And sure - I could've just gone by Pygmy Owl.
But, after all... I'm not a pygmy owl.*

* i like to believe i am a handsome, agile black kite. realistically, i'm probably either a striated caracara (impossible to train, smart but only uses it for mischief, refuses to fly unless forced to), or ironically something like a pygmy owl (constantly on edge, tiny but murderous, very loud in comparison to body size)

Actual representation of my Writer Brain and Editor brain when I get a cool idea

 

A Probably Incomplete List of Books Read in the Last Six-ish Months

Loads of blogs 'n shit do these "Books read in 201x", where they either review everything they've read in December/January, or make a graphic/artwork every time they finish a book, and post them all in December/January.

What I'm saying is that that I know this is neither December nor January, but I wanted to do one anyway. And so I held onto the idea until now, because I figured, see, most people have more free time in their summer than at other times, and make "summer reading lists". À la, this is still useful/relevant/excusable on my behalf at least. Who knows, maybe I'll do another one in like November so that everyone can get their Christmas wishlists ready (which they will all be adding Sylvestus Vol. I to obviously).

It's basically just a list with comments. It's not fancy. But if you're considering books and you've already bought mine... Whelp. You might enjoy. And it means I get to advertise my website like a bookblr. All about expanding that audience 👈😉👈

Okay. This is based on my Kindle history, staring at my bookshelf, and occasionally scrolling through the tags on Tumblr to check if I missed anything.

I definitely did miss stuff but idk what, which is unfortunately the point.

Not a Pygmy Owl's Probably Incomplete List of Books Read in the Last Six-ish Months:

• Look Who's Back - Timur Vermes - Hitler wakes up in 2011 Berlin. Political satire. Enjoyable to read, some tiresome parts and ambiguous ending but I'm pretty sure that was the point. Relevant af with current political climate. Very clever book. Unfortunately, was awkward to read in public because the cover is a minimalist picture of Hitler's face and I didn't want people to think that it was Mein Kampf or something. Overall would def recommend tho if ur not a fascist (if u are a fascist u would probs miss the point and think Hitler was an unironically great guy)
• The Gender Game - Bella Forrest - oh my gooossshhh oh my gosh it was so shit omggg just don't bother seriously it's not worth it I'm sorry
• The Silver Wolf - Alice Borchardt - actually like my third or fourth time reading this. Weird book, to the extent that I definitely missed out on some things before; every time I read it I'm a few years older, and it makes more sense/the symbolism is more recognisable/I know more about the historical context and understand the plot better. A good book if you have the patience for purplish prose, plots where everything goes wrong for the good people constantly, and a fairly unlikeable protagonist. The fact that I've read it 3-4 times should say a lot about how much I still enjoy it, tho
• The Unremarkable Heart - Karin Slaughter - turns out it's a fifty-page short story and it cost about the same as a full novel so feel ripped-off af, otherwise still a fair good story, adult themes. Would provide trigger warnings but the whole point of the story is the build-up to the Big Reveal so check out the warnings if you want to read it and you're worried
• The Body Reader - Anne Frasier - not what I was expecting, very enjoyable. TWs for sexual abuse and abortion, never graphic; a police officer is kidnapped and kept in a basement for several years, and long after giving up hope of escape suddenly sees an opportunity. Walks back into her old office years after going missing severely traumatised and malnourished - does not go down well with police department. Eventually gets back into her old job and attempts to solve multiple murders along with finding out about her own kidnap, but is an extremely different person to who she was before; realistic approach to recovery of a victim of severe trauma, compelling, also extremely thrilling and clever plotting. Overall, def recommendation
• Nevernight - Jay Kristoff - man I recommend this so hard I feel like it shouldn't even come directly after The Body Reader because it's gonna' undermine it. This is the epitome of awesome YA fantasy, too complex to try and summarise but there's some magic and assassins and bisexuality and just the way it's written is incredibly unique. Some clumsy points but they don't take away too much, especially enjoyable because it goes out of its way to subvert a few YA tropes. Recommended to anyone who likes this kind of thing, and who wants to be pissed off because the next one doesn't come out for like six more f*cking months
• This Savage Song - VE Schwab - I am a massive Schwab fan and her other books (on this list) are among my favourites like... Ever - sadly, this one was so-so. If you're obsessed with VE Schwab and have read all the others, it will tide you over - on its own, it's pretty good. The worldbuilding was incredible and intriguing, and I loved the characters and basic plot, but compared to her other books this was a little clumsy almost? Will read the sequel, but wouldn't put it at the top of your to-read list unless the synopsis really intrigues you (it is a super-cool synopsis tbf. Cities and monsters and all kinds of violence)
• I am Not a Serial Killer - Dan Wells - meh. Good idea, interesting character, and as a massive fan of Dexter I was really excited, but... Meh. I guess it's unique and it works well to subvert tropes and create an interesting character, but it just wasn't all that enjoyable to read, the protagonist wasn't likeable even if he's not supposed to be, and... Idk. It dragged
• Nightblade - Ryan Kirk - poop. Sorry Mr. Kirk; parts of it were good and there's definitely, like, room to build a good story, but it just was too long and windy and there were like six people who had PoV chapters but half of them seemed pointless and no-one was particularly likeable and... Hh. Yeah, it's not up there
• Vicious - VE Scwhab - all right hoes listen up these here is one of my FAVOURITE books in the world and here's fuckin' why. Victor and Eli are top students, roommates, and best friends in their ivy league college and they're both damaged people with a little streak of crazy. They become obsessed with the idea of ExtraOrdinaries, people with "super powers", and their investigations for Eli's dissertation go from theoretical - trying to quantify how an EO is made - to... A more applied approach. Things go very wrong, very suddenly, when they manage to succeed in making themselves both EOs. Ten years later, Eli is hunting down other EOs to eliminate their threat - and Victor has just broken out of the max-security prison he's been in since it happened. Okay, so, why I love it. The idea is that both of them are super-villains; where a normal story starts off with equally damaged people and can turn one into a hero, Vicious doesn't try. Even when you realise who you want to win, he is still doing very bad things - the book asks you to let go of black-and-white good-and-bad, and you cringe at what they do even when you know they had to do it. I'm gonna put it out there: I love Victor Vale from the bottom of my broken heart even when you can't deny he's 3/4 of a super-villain. Next, the other characters. Mitch is Victor's prison cell-mate, a cinnamon roll, too good for this world, too pure. Every time something's about to happen to him you want to die. Sydney is the eleven year-old EO they picked up off the side of the road (don't ask), and putting her in makes the story extremely clever because suddenly Victor and Mitch are in charge of an innocent life, and it raises even more questions about being good or bad. The Victor-Sydney and Mitch-Sydney relationships are very unique to this genre. Victor justifying his decisions with "Because you don't think I'm a bad person, and I don't want to prove you wrong"? HEARTBROKEN. Then they pick up Dol, an undead dog, and man it just raises the stakes 'cos who isn't gonna' be scared 100% of the time that the dog's about to (re-)die? Right at the end they also get Dominic, and even though he's barely in it I love him too. Basically Victor's side is made up of this broken disjointed family of three gay dads (sshhh they basically are), their zombie-dog, and an eleven y/o they p much kidnapped. Eli's ally, Serena, is also interesting, and it's one of those things where you can't really hate her for what she does when you put into context what Victor does, kind of thing. And yet?? You do. Conflicted emotions. Okay, yeah, so I talked a lot about it. I just really fucking love this book. It's fairly short so u can get through it easily, very readable, cannot wait for the sequel. VE Schwab advertises this and the Shades of Magic series as adult (compared to This Savage Song, which is YA) and I can see why because like, neither Victor nor Eli is remotely a role model, but a fairly mature kid would enjoy the shit out of this as presumably would an adult. Edge-of-your-seat action, moral questioning, very funny parts - please fam. Just add Vicious to your list
• As the Crow Flies - Damien Boyd - hah, how am I even supposed to follow Vicious... I feel sorry for the next few books. Overshadowed af. Okay tho, this was a reasonable crime fiction. I think after The Body Reader I decided to add more crime fiction to my library, I've enjoyed the obvious ones in the past (Christie, Slaughter, Wingfield). It was fairly good, as they go, but the climax was disappointing and the book was clunky with a lot of topic-relevant jargon. The plot twist was clever but not delivered in the best way
• And I Darken - Kiersten White - fictionalised biography of Vlad the Impaler if Vlad the Impaler was a woman. Fairly enjoyable but not great. Not really any other comments than that. It's just... A pretty good book. Shelf-filler. Not amazing nor terrible
• New Pompeii - Daniel Godfrey - aaaaAAA so this book drove me a LITTLE bit insane with its plot twists and stuff. Essentially a company has discovered how to bring things from the past into the present due to how particle physics works (??), and have brought all of the occupants of Pompeii forward just before they die (excluding those whose bodies remain to make casts - no fucking with the timeline, that's the law). What starts as a fairly standard historical morality and action novel turns into a super-complex mystery thriller... Thing. I got one massive plot twist and was really pleased and like two pages later it was literally completely undone by another one - it's that kind of book. At the end I was still like ??? *squints* but it turns out there's a sequel which probably explains more and I might have to read it just to understand. Clever af
• Crooked Kingdom - Leigh Bardugo - do I even have to... Okay. For those who don't know, this is the much-anticipated sequel to Six of Crows. Given how acclaimed they are, I don't even feel like I need to say shit about it, but... So good. So good. You will love all of your sinful crow children (they're not actually crows). Your mind will be blown by the plot twists. You will laugh, you will definitely cry, you will try to have a favourite and end up gathering them all towards you, sobbing softly. If you're part of the YA fantasy general fandom who's heard loads about it but hasn't read it, please just read Six of Crows, even if you didn't like the Grisha trilogy (most people I know who read SoC and the Grisha novels said they hated the latter and still loved SoC). If you have no interest in YA fantasy, even if it's super-clever and heartbreaking and funny and diverse... Well, don't bother then, I guess. Just read Vicious instead. Or Dying Ember. That's good too
• Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor - this is one of those things I'd seen was a massive trend for a while, and should have been my kind of novel, but I just never got round to reading it. I decided to add it to my library for a bored day, and... Well, I can understand the hype. It's one of those books that about halfway through just flips its own universe on its head - like, you could split the book in half and the plot and genre of the two halves would be completely different. Again, if YA fantasy with really good worldbuilding and characters is your thing, this is definitely for you. If not, well, I don't know what to tell you fam
• An Ember in the Ashes - Sabaa Tahir - not brilliant, quite long, generally just one of those books that sits in the realm of Pretty Good YA Fantasy without standing out as great or terrible
• Hemlock Grove - Brian McGreevy - holey fuck dude. So I had the Netflix series recommended to me, and you know what? Season one, so good. Clever, horrific, fascinating. Season two? What... the fuck? Too weird. 100 to 0 real quick. Have not yet finished season three. Decided to read the book - just as good as season one. Even more horrific and fascinating. Transports all the classic monster villains into one modern-day US town, and is written in the traditional Gothic style, which makes it an interesting read. One major grievance with both book and TV show (TW rape), but overall recommended
• The Tiger and the Wolf - Adrian Tchaikovsky - I mean, in very few books are you ever likely to get shapeshifters, medieval kingdoms, and velociraptors all in one, and somehow it not be a complete shit-show. Genuinely I enjoyed a lot of this book, especially some side characters/plots, and the world-building was great. However, probably won't read the sequel, and not at the top of my recommendations list
• A Conjuring of Light - VE Schwab - I should probably just get VE Scwhab to pay me for this list tbf. It's been a VE Scwhab kind of six months. So, I read the first book in this series, A Darker Shade of Magic, maybe two or three years ago. It was fairly good; I enjoyed it enough to want to read Vicious, but I only read the next book in its series because of Vicious (which is unrelated). However, by book two, I was freakin' hooked. By the time ACoL (book three) came out I was losing my mind in desperation to find out what happened. Pretty much every character, villains included, is unique and faceted and likeable in some way (putting it out there: Holland is my trash child and I will defend him until the day I die), and as the books go on the world-building gets better. If you're not looking for a big commitment this may not be for you because you can't take one of the books on its own - it's the series that's so good. But if you are in the market for a new fantasy series, A Darker Shade of Magic is your pal
• The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists - Gideon Defoe - right. So I'm on Netflix and I see this film, right, and immediately I lose my mind. Like five years ago there was this Aardman film (the Wallace & Gromit people) about incompetent pirates who kidnap Charles Darwin and then help him to win the Scientist of the Year award while avoiding the evil Queen Victoria. Classic kids' comedy. The thing is, it was actually incredibly funny. So I watched it again and laughed a lot, and then I saw "Adapted from the novel..." and I was like WHAT. So I figure it's a kids' book and I Google it and... Yeah, the blurb is pretty much the same. But then I'm scrolling through the Amazon page considering buying it for the memes, and underneath is: The Pirates! in an Adventure with Communists and I'm like W H A T. Further investigation leads me to a review calling it "an adult comedy disguised as a kids' book" and I was like a'ight fam I gotta' read this shit. So I did. And it was actually really funny. It's just... So insane. There's historical facts in footnotes everywhere that I checked and are true? And yet the book also has 16th century pirates visiting Las Vegas casinos and hunting the Moby Dick whale? None of the characters actually have names, they're all called Pirate With a Scarf On and The Pirate Captain and Pirate With Gout?? And the best part was that all the fuckin'... Jokes, and some of the actual lines, had been taken directly into the film. A children's film. Someone looked at this strange adult satire and made it into a kids' film, and yet on literally the first page of the book is the line "Some pirates claim they are married to the sea because they are too lame to get a girlfriend, or because they are gay." I'm just shook. I'm sorry I talked about this for so long but... I'm genuinely shook
• The Pirates! in an Adventure with Moby Dick - Gideon Defoe - sssssshhhhhh I'm working my way up to Communists
• The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents - Terry Pratchett - please don't get me started on this book holey fuck I used to listen to the audiobook when I was about seven and I first read it when I was twelve and I've read it almost once a year since then I've read it so many times and now I've read it again. Every time it hurts me. This book formed my view of literature and the world I swear. Yes I've read all of the Discworld novels and you know what? This is my favourite even more than Monstrous Regiment and even more than Night Watch and even more than Going Postal just leave me alone it's about talking rats and a talking cat and it's so important and weird and UGH
• Across the Formidable Sea - Claire Laminen - oooooh okay so this isn't normally my genre but it was advertised as "Downton Abbey meets Peaky Blinders" and I was like "anything Peaky Blinders is a friend of mine and also Downton Abbey is good" and I read it and oooOOOOOOH. You may notice that this stands out on the list, like this is a varied list from political satire to crime fiction to YA fantasy, but historical romance?? Come on what have you turned into? But hear me out. No other historical romance has ever managed to have the kind of action and edge-of-seat suspense as AtFS. No action book has ever managed to have such genuine painful romance? It's like something for everyone, Downton Abbey meets Peaky Blinders. Normally in a book with two possible love interests you have Safe Option Who is Good for Me but Doesn't Set My Loins on Fire, and Exciting Daredevil Bad Guy My Family Disapproves of but Whom I Must be With. AtFS doesn't even bother with that bullshit. There's two love interests, yes, but they are both exciting and loveable and you genuinely don't know what Laura should or will do. And Laura - aaaahh as a protagonist she's just so... AAH. You don't know what you want her to do but you're there for her every step of the way and you genuinely care about her happiness. And she's so much more faceted than a classic "leading lady". Very rarely have I come out of a book so satisfied with pretty much every part of it. It's not a life-changing book, you won't cry for weeks (I cried because that is who I am as a person), but it will definitely give you emotions and is worth the read
• Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut - have never read Vonnegut before, gave this one a go on recommendation of a friend. Very weird, but genuinely loved it (see reference in an earlier post) - I can understand how someone who isn't a fan of weird books wouldn't enjoy it, but as someone who went through their pretentious literature phase and read all the classics (Lord of the Flies, Treasure Island, Of Mice and Men, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Outsiders, and so on) when they were fourteen, and loved most of them, I really enjoyed it. I highlighted about fifty quotes on my Kindle and it's difficult not to lovingly copy them all out here tbh. So ya, if u want to be cultured n stuff I'd definitely recommend this book; u might enjoy it, u might not, but either way it's somethin to talk about at dinner parties (I have never been at a dinner party where classic literature was actually discussed, much to the disappointment of 14 y/o me, but I feel like I'll be prepared when it one day happens)
• Deathless - Catherynne M Valente - hm. I feel like, as someone who just raved about Slaughterhouse Five, I can't slag off this book for being "too weird". Like Hemlock Grove, it's written in a way that mimics another genre/style - it's about fairy tales that cross over with real life, so it's written with the cyclic repetition of fairy tales but with all the drama of a contemporary YA novel. I think my issue with it came almost completely from the protagonist and her love interests; as someone who hates any implication that love is about obsession or hatred or pain, I found the way love was treated in the book as difficult. But it is supposed to be about fairy tales and demons, not about people, so as long as young girls out there don't actually start to think it's only true love if you take turns chaining each other to the wall and beating each other (not even in the BDSM way, just in the "fuck you I hate you also I love you" way), I guess it works out. Recommended if you're into Russian fairy tales and weird shit. Some quite traumatic parts emotionally and vivid descriptions of genocide
• SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome - Mary Beard - ummm I'm not sure about why anyone else would read this book because if you're interested in Ancient Rome you probably know a lot about it and if you're not then you won't want to read it? I read it because until Sylvestus I had no interest in Ancient Rome so I didn't know anything about it and for draft one I alternately bullshitted and Googled as I went along, and then I figured I should probably do proper research. It took a long time to read and was more of a pre-bedtime ritual thing, a few pages every night, but it was actually interesting and really enjoyable. But, then, as someone who hates learning about history, it might just be because I was fascinated the whole way through about how all of the historical context and such fit into Sylvestus. Undeniably good if you want to read a book about Ancient Rome, though, I guess. Might make Sylvestus more interesting because I'm gonna' end up as one of those people who fills it to the brim with contextual jokes and references probably

SO THERE YOU GO. Six-ish months, 26 books. Moderately disturbing, actually. That's, like, a book every six days. Damn. I did not used to read that much (it's probably all of the uni work and Sylvestus that I'm not doing).

If you (understandably) skimmed that, I'm high-key recommending Vicious, Nevernight, Across the Formidable Sea, The Body Reader, and Six of Crows. Everything else ranges from "pretty good" to "really good but not incredibly amazing", apart from three or four which fall into "so terrible I'm not even going to mention them again do not waste your money or your time".

Enjoy your summer reading, let me know what u read and enjoy/don't. Feel free to hmu with recommendations or comments about items from the above list you've also read (and when you finish Dying Ember, remember to review on Amazon, Lulu, Goodreads, and/or your own blog or bookblr eyyy).

I spent ages looking for a gif to fit on the end because I seem to have started a gif/photo post-finishing tradition and I didn't want to do a terrible importance-of-books quote but I genuinely couldn't find one that fit the mood exactly - then I was going to add one of my favourite reaction gifs that my friends are probably sick of by now but when I was searching I realised they were all just incredibly nihilistic and concerning. So instead, have a reflection of my current mood regarding how to finish this post:

i love and relate to dirk gently far, far too much

The Realm of the Morning People

As previously discussed, I am not a daytime person

Sometimes, however, mornings are forced upon us. Not, in this instance, because of a work commitment or early train or holiday, but because of that old caveat: insomnia.

I'm not a full-time insomniac - just enough shifts to make life that extra bit difficult. 9am lectures sure are an adventure when you've had about five hours' sleep across the past three days. Normally, however, my insomnia involves laying awake for seven hours before finally drifting off at 6am, an hour before my alarm - in this instance, it was the other way around. After a day in which I literally did nothing but carry out errands in town and then try to write an entire report on bird behaviour, I got home at shortly before midnight vaguely bewildered as to how I had literally done nothing especially enjoyable (although I like to think that I take enough delight in simple things to make everyday activities worth the energy) and now had to go to bed. I did go to bed. I fell straight to sleep, at about half past midnight.

I promptly woke up not long after 2am, sweating and terrified, following a dream of which analysis does frankly not bode well at all for my mental condition.

I got water, I calmed down, I went back to bed.

I laid. I turned. I meditated. At about 5.30am, I gave up and made a fried egg sandwich.

When I mention insomnia, people suggest:

• Meditation;
• This music;
• This tea;
• A boring book;
• Turning off electronics an hour before bed;
• That tea;
• Not eating three hours before bed;
• That medication;
• Podcasts;
• Another tea...

Listen. Listen. I know that blue light activates your brain. I have a blue-filter on my laptop to reduce blue light after 9pm. I have a bedtime ritual which involves well over an hour of cooling down, unwinding, relaxing, letting go of the day's activities, switching off, reading the most boring books I can find...

And anything herbal or medical stronger than chamomile and lavender tea interferes with my other medications and could kill me in what would admittedly be a very restful sleep.

People also ask why I got up at 2am/didn't sleep last night/only got x hours sleep.

"I get insomnia sometimes."

"Why?"

"...? Because my brain thinks I should be awake? Idk, it's not a choice."

"Have you tried--"

"YES. I HAVE TRIED THE TEA. I HAVE TRIED THE MEDITATION. NO I DO NOT USE ELECTRONICS AT NIGHT. YES I TRIED JUST PRETENDING TO SLEEP AND HOPING IT HAPPENED."

"... wow, sorry, just trying to help..."

Frankly, complaining about insomnia could fill a dozen posts, incoherent to the well-rested and all too relatable to those familiar with its stuffy tortures. But, in accordance with the aforementioned habit of seeing small good things in everything, this is actually a post about what happened afterwards.

Realising that my insomnia was reversed to the normal pattern gave me an idea, you see. If you can't sleep until 6am, you become basically nocturnal; to get a healthy amount of sleep you would have to not get up until at least 2pm, and despite that being the same number of hours of sleep as a Morning Person, it's seen as entirely lazy and unacceptable. It gets frustrating because people assume that a student who sleeps until noon was up all night drinking/on the internet/playing video games, or has been sleeping for twelve hours like a horrible teenager. Actually I've done every item on the "better sleep" checklist and still haven't achieved more than two hours' sleep for the past three days consecutively, but ta for the sympathy...

Yes, sorry, not complaining.

So I decided, as I got up at 5.30am - the birds had been singing for an hour and a half; it was already bright as day outside - to make a fried egg sandwich, that I was going to try and take advantage of this unique situation. If the 6am workers are the better people, maybe I can try to be one of them?

I had a shower. A boy ran past and internally I swore at him for being such a stupid positive Morning Person. I got my stuff ready. The library on main campus is 24 hour, but the buses don't start until 7.30am. Unacceptable. Morning People don't wait until 7.30am: I walked. An old lady with a dog smiled at me and told me how lovely it was to be up before 7am, wasn't it dear. I gritted my teeth and tried not to shout at her.

Now, maybe it was the beleaguered look of vague bewilderment and fear. Maybe it was the deeply shadowed yet slightly bulging eyes. Maybe it was the fact that I kept walking into things.

But somehow... Somehow The Morning People knew.

There they were, organic kale smoothies in hand, gym kits on their shoulders, their hair perfectly groomed and their smiles chipmunk-fixed. They laughed shrilly in their little groups, and then their eyes settled on me. And they knew.

I was among them, I was in the library at 7am, but I was not one of them.

The world of The Morning People is a terrifying place. Gulls were having sex everywhere. I've never seen gulls have sex before. They must all do it at 6.30am. Despite the fact that I had already been awake for nearly five hours and it felt in my chest like noon, the air was as bright and cold as to be unmistakably early morning; the two facts couldn't add up properly in my head. The Costa in the library wasn't open. Normally when the Costa isn't open it's because it's after 9pm, which is sometimes when I start studying. But it wasn't after 9pm. It was just before 9am.

People were asleep on the desks in the library. I longed to reach out to them, to beg them to take me back to their world: I belong with you. I am not one of these people.

I only needed to be up for another five and a half hours - finish the report, do some more revision, attend an 11am lecture, get home without passing out - so I decided to risk coffee as the walk down had depleted my energy supplies more than anticipated. The Costa was still shut. It was shut hours ago... No. Only five minutes ago. Is this how slowly time passes in The Morning People's world?

There's a coffee machine in the basement of the library. I made the decision to buy a latte. It gave me a mocha. Everything in the university is broken at all times. I am broken, now. Whose fault was the mocha? Did I press the wrong button, not notice, or did it make the wrong drink? It asked for £1.30. I thought I gave it two £1 coins. It gave me £1.40 in change. This doesn't answer my question.

Suddenly I'm at my favourite desk. It's in front of a window. Normally the window shows the grey dusk and then the dark night. It's bright. It's an east-facing window. There's bright light shining in. I can't see my laptop. It's not the same desk I sit at normally. It can't be.

I open the report. The words are familiar. Too familiar. I wrote them today. No... Yesterday. No... Tomorrow? I didn't stop yesterday, go home, sleep, and start again in the morning; I just took a six-hour break in one long writing session, with a brief 90-minute nap in the middle.

I need textbooks. The shelves are dark. The shelves are always dark but now the darkness is wrong. It is bright outside. Why are the shelves still dark?

The textbook I want is on a bottom shelf. I bend down to reach for it. My backpack overbalances me. I thought I left my backpack at the desk? I topple backwards. I am a tortoise, stranded between ornithology and parasitology, a textbook weighing down my chest and my boots kicking uselessly on the tile. Perhaps I will die here, an intrusive night-walker in the realm of The Morning People.

I'm back at my desk. I don't remember how. Is this Groundhog Day? I need textbooks. I have them. They're not the ones I reached down for. I sip my mocha. I hate mochas. I got paid 10p to drink a mocha I don't want. It tastes like bewilderment. I write a report about barnacle goose behaviour.

I'm hungry. It's 7.40am. Breakfast-time. No... I already ate breakfast. That was over two hours ago. Two hours after breakfast means lunch. It can't be lunch. It's 7.40am.

At 9.30am, I finish the report. A Gander With Geese: Observing and Predicting Captive Waterfowl Behaviour. It's a pun. A friend helped me make it. We get marks for puns in our titles. I can't remember what's funny any more. It's over 2000 words and twelve pages long. I wrote it in eighteen hours, with one six hour break including a two hour nap.

I revise. Bilateria. Animal kingdom. It's 10.30am. I'm hungry. I've already eaten. This must be lunchtime. No... This must be dinner-time. No... It's 10.30am. Sometimes 10.30am is breakfast-time.

A friend is poking me. I'm sat outside the cafeteria. I have my phone out. I'm making a Facebook post about asking a machine for a latte and being given a mocha. It's going to be funny. Is it funny? A Gander with Geese. I want to tell my friend the pun. She's talking.

"Tatiana didn't sleep last night," she explains to another.

"Tatiana! Why didn't you sleep last night?"

I am trapped in Hell. Why did I not sleep. I don't know the answer any more. I've never known. Maybe I have? Did I know the answer and forget?

We're in a lecture. It's 11am. I'm making notes. Why do I make notes? I know this.

I have a toy duckling named Gull in my hand. So many notes. The lecturer goes onto a tangent. I stop making notes. Someone asks to borrow Gull and I let them take him. The world slips out of focus.

Notes. I must make notes. Only notes and Gull ground me into this universe.

Leaving lecture. "Get some sleep, get some sleep, get some sleep." I promise them I will. I'm not sure who's telling me any more. I finished the report. A Gander With Geese. Is the With capitalised? Is it funny?

I wanted a latte and I got a mocha and I don't know if it was me or the machine. That's funny. It's a metaphor for something, I'm sure.

I'm sure of nothing any more.

The rocking of the bus. Music. Any music. All music.

Student village. The birds. The birds. The gulls sit on the rooftops and stare down.

They know. And now I know, too.

I know what the gulls do at 6.30am that they don't do at any other time. And the gulls... The gulls know... Organic kale smoothies... Gym kits and geese... An old woman walking a dog with a mocha... Something...

I wake up.

It's 4pm.

I am in my pyjamas, I am in bed, I have Gull under one arm and a toy cat called Toffee under the other. And I feel like I imagine The Morning People feel like as they walk down to campus at 6.30am and watch the gulls have sex on top of the dustbins: I feel awake.

My sojourn into the world of The Morning People was brief and it was terrifying. As a student, as someone who works better at night, as someone prone to gradually worsening insomnia, perhaps I will have to grow used to it. Perhaps I will improve my Morning Person disguise until I can slide seamlessly among them.

Perhaps some of those - the old woman with the dog, the running boy, the organic kale smoothie gym kit girls - are simply night-time people with a flawless Morning Person disguise. Perhaps they, unlike me, have perfected the art of slipping into this realm and coming out unscathed.

May God be with me if I ever have to return.

Bernard from Black Books, displaying my characteristic expression throughout the whole of the morning, and also acting as a generally relatable non-Morning Person protagonist

Some Days Are Dancing Days

After publishing the last post, about determinedly sticking to my deadline for Sylvestus, I promptly finished the very first stage nearly two full days ahead of schedule and felt Very Good About It. Then I had a bit of a setback with exam revision, and then I caught up with that exam revision at 11pm in the library. Rollercoasters.

Most of my uni work is done, honestly, between 7-11pm in the library. I've gotten there at 9am before and not left until 3pm, and in that time procrastinated and dawdled and gone for lunch and sat on my phone and wandered the shelves picking out books at random and wondering why I didn't pick an Ancient History degree if I'm finding this book on Roman military equipment so fascinating (and then wondering why I didn't pick Psychology because I know I just find it interesting because it's not what I'm supposed to be studying, and so on). And then I've been exhausted and had too much coffee and gone home and been sad for the rest of the day.

Case in point, on Monday I went to the library at 11am and revised two and a half lectures in four hours before deciding that throwing myself out of a window would be a better option than trying to carry on. Sadly I was in the basement, so I just went home instead. At home, I watched some Dexter and some Star trek and made Mexican bean pot and thought about how fucked my revision schedule was already... On day one.

On Tuesday, I went to the library at 7pm, after watching some Dexter and some Star Trek and making pasta. I stayed until nearly 11pm. I did six lectures' worth of revision. I finished the entire topic, actually. And then I went home, and slept like an animal who through both innate characteristics and learning processes has selected an ideal territory in which it has formed a by-product mutualism relationship with its neighbours for assured protection (the topic was animal behaviour).

People who are Daytime People or Morning People find this idea horrific. They think of evenings as the time to chill, to see friends, to watch TV and read a book; mornings and afternoons are for revision and work. If I'm working in the evening I must be stressed and unproductive; if I chill all day I'm obviously wasting time.

For me, it doesn't work like that. And I think Daytime People genuinely don't understand it. They tell me to "keep trying" to adjust my schedule, as if I'll somehow be more productive if I keep wasting eight hours a day feeling frustrated and bored for long enough.

I also know my attention span. When I'm in the library, even when I'm super-motivated and working really hard (see Tuesday), I have to take a lot of breaks. I know that I can't work for more than three hours without a break that lasts a few more hours, but I also can't work for more than about twenty minutes without some kind of break. I have to take my earphones out, stand up, go for a wander around the shelves or go to the toilet or fill up my water bottle. Other people around me work for three hours solid, and I wonder if they find my constant breaks distracting, whether I should be able to work as solidly as they do and if there's something wrong with me.

No; it's taken me a while to realise, but I'm pretty sure it's just how my brain works.

Maybe it's how your brain works, too.

We're made to think that people who can wake up at 6.30am are The Most Productive, that if you haven't done everything you need to by 3pm there's no point even trying, that successful people are the ones who put in A Solid Eight Hours during the day, and then know how to relax from 6pm onwards.

If I try to do that, I feel like an intermediate-brightness male lazuli bunting, rejected by both my dullest and brightest competitors as they ally their forces against me (see? 7-11pm revision, man. Does the trick). And most importantly, nothing gets done. Actually, no, that's not most important. That's just a fact. The important part is that I also feel shit about it.

After my success with the literal first stage of the many-layered Sylvestus deadline, I took a two-day break. Focus on revision, no need to rush yet when you're still ahead of schedule.

This morning, I decided to start work again. Sure, I could've gone to the library, skipped lunch, slogged through for a few hours with coffee and agony in the overheated basement study room. But experience has told me how that will work out, and from my experience, 10am to 1pm can be peak writing time. In fact, my day could work perfectly: write morning to early afternoon, chill for a bit, chores mid-afternoon, revision evening.

The headphones were put on and the cherry juice was poured. Sta.sh, MyNoise, and Spotify were opened. The Sylvestus inspiration playlist was selected.

And then, apparent disaster: first track, a new addition inspired by a friend's suggestion, Sweet Dreams.

Oh, man...

I had to dance.

Out of the chair, volume up, and within three seconds of that first beat I was 80s slow-dancing to that sweet, sweet jam.

"Why is Sweet Dreams such a #jam honestly you're in so much trouble for this" I texted to the culprit once it had finished. And I was pretty sure that was that: most of the playlist is much less danceable-to, tending to be more of the Halsey and Hozier variety, and I could settle down now with a playlist I have literally been listening to when I write for over a year with no problems.

Then, though, that drumbeat and trumpet combo of Which Witch (Florence + the Machine) - and I was a gonner. Sure, it's a fair banger, and I have been known to pause a paragraph to victoriously beat out that final chorus on the desk - but scarcely has it affected me like this before. Today, though, with deadlines and revision and productivity in my head and sunshine in the window, those wild, defiant lyrics just caught me.

There's only one song that has always had me dancing in the past, and that's Lone Digger, by - of all things - a French synth/electro/pop/jazz/?? band, Caravan Palace. At first I used it sparingly, afraid that one day I would be in the wrong mood and wouldn't dance, and then the whole thing would be ruined. Eventually, I realised that as long as I wanted to dance when I heard it, I would. Alone in the kitchen or taking over the playlist at a party or on a crowded bus, carefully deaf to the muffled giggles of strangers as I sway it out in my seat, eyes closed, grinning maniacally.

So, on the advice of the wise (if musically-dangerous) friend and my own desperate heart, I just danced that shit out. Even songs that shouldn't possibly produce the kind of rhythmless, enthusiastic shoulder-swinging, hip-circling, arm-beating monstrosity that I call dancing managed to bring about that reaction.

And why fight it? Very rarely do I want to dance so bad. Very rarely are the conditions just right. I've always been like that, though: foul moods, numbness, can be so pervasive, that I'll take a good feeling when it comes.

Who knows; maybe tonight I'll have burned through all my serotonin and end up wrapped under three blankets on my bed not even able to enjoy the mild flirtation of Spock and Kirk. But I figure that might happen whether I dance now or not.

So yes, I stopped trying to write and I listened through most of the playlist just dancing with headphones on in my room, in front of the window which faces the road most of the students walk up and down and can look into, and I enjoyed every second. And when I felt it fade - when I was tired and thirsty and a little embarrassed - I put on Lone Digger.

"Because some stories end, but old stories go on, and you gotta' dance to the music if you want to stay ahead."

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, Terry Pratchett