Places to Chat
@Lupine Hi!
Chatterbox: Down to Earth
@Lupine Hi!
@Lupine
Hi! We were paired together on Periwinkle's MaF thread :) I decided to make the thread in DtE so you would have more chance of seeing it? I hope that's okay :)
Anyway (gosh I'm bad at starting things like this lol) I guess I'll start with some questions? Are you reading anything interesting at the moment? I'm reading Agatha Christie's autobiography and 100% enjoying it~ it's just so entertaining and descriptive and Victorian. Apparently she traveled through the Middle East several times and it all sounds amazing. What kinds of places do you want to travel to?
I'm really excited to get to know you better! :)
submitted by Poinsettia, age ?, a sea of crystal waters
(December 13, 2023 - 10:23 pm)
(December 13, 2023 - 10:23 pm)
(December 21, 2023 - 4:12 pm)
(December 21, 2023 - 6:56 pm)
(December 22, 2023 - 8:52 pm)
(December 25, 2023 - 7:41 pm)
Hi Poinsettia! I'm so sorry that I didn't see this. I'm excited to get to know you too!
I haven't read any Agatha Christie books, but I know a lot of people really like her. If you've read any of her books, what's your favorite?
I'm reading a book called Like a Charm right now, about a girl who discovers she can see magical creatures. I'm having a bit of a hard time getting into it but it does seem pretty good. If you look it up, it has a really nice cover (always a temptation for me).
As for traveling, I've always wanted to go to Japan and Scandanavia. My family actually is going to Japan next year, which I'm really excited about. I'm part Japanese and I'm learning the language right now so it should be really interesting. Scandinavia also seems really cool--I love the scenery there and the oldness and wildness of it. What about you?
(December 27, 2023 - 11:54 pm)
Hi! That's totally okay, don't worry about it! I'm glad we can start chatting now, though :))
My favorite Agatha Christie book is definitely her autobiography, but of her ~mysteries~, maybe What Mrs. McGillicudy Saw is my favorite. I think it was actually the first one I read, and I remember really liking the characters and subplots (one of the subplots was that practically every male character went and proposed to the protagonist, which was kind of hilarious) Do you have a favorite book or author(s)? Ooh, I looked up Like a Charm and you're right, the cover is really artistically done! I agree with you that a pretty cover definitely makes the book seem more appealing. One of my favorite book covers is the cover for Love and Gelato, it's just so whimsical and cute... Going deeper into the topic, what artists do you like?
Oh, Japan and Scandinavia sound so nice! I know next to nothing about Japan, but from what I've seen, the scenery there is lovely. As for me, I've always wanted to go to Spain and France (Paris.... *sigh*), plus revisit Portugal, which isn't a typical spectacular tourist destination but is still... really interesting and beautiful in a modest way? And I really want to travel more around Mexico, because it's so gorgeous and vibrant (hence my location; jacarandas and bougainvilleas are two of my favorite Mexican flowers). I mean, Mexico is my home (well, one of) so I'm probably biased :P BuT sTiLl~
How were your holidays? Mine were pretty good; it's been great to have a break from school and spend more time with my family. I hope you had a good Christmas/ Hanukkah/celebration/winter break! :)
(December 30, 2023 - 6:44 pm)
The cover of Love and Gelato is really cute. I like a good simplistic cover. Is it a good book? I've heard of it but never read it.
Some of my favorite book cover artists are Yuta Onoda (he did the cover for The Girl Who Drank the Moon), James Firnhaber, and Dung Ho. Outside of that genre, I really like Heikala, Johanna Springer, and Bao Pham (you should look up all of their art, it's amazing). Yes I am a nerd about this and everything. What are some of your favorite artists, though? (I could talk about this forever)
Spain would be so cool! I've been wanting to travel to a Spanish-speaking country to get better at Spanish (I took 4 years at school but I feel like you can't really be fluent unless you speak it in a real-world setting). Do you speak/are you learning any other languages? Since you said you live partly in Mexico I figured you spoke Spanish.
My holidays were pretty fun! We had a Japanese New Year celebration with some friends and made an exorbitant amount of rice (we still have a bunch in the freezer).
(January 10, 2024 - 5:18 pm)
(January 10, 2024 - 5:19 pm)
(January 10, 2024 - 5:19 pm)
Hi! I have to get off the computer soon so I'll reply tomorrow, but I just wanted to get this topped :))
(January 10, 2024 - 10:22 pm)
Yay, I finally got some time to sit down and reply properly! :)
Oh yes, Love and Gelato is really enjoyable. I have to admit it's not at the "oh my holy tomato sauce this is the best book I have ever read" level, but it's really sweet and heartwarming, and a pretty good choice when you want to curl up in bed and read something enjoyable. Plus, it's set in Italy, so. >:D
I looked up the artists you mentioned and you're right, they have lovely styles! I especially like Johanna Springer's work, I think. I'd never heard of any of them before. It's so cool that you know about them! Most of the artists I know of are more "mainstream" :P And I'm totally a nerd about art and illustration too :) I grew up visiting a lot of museums, so it's kind of a part of me. My favorite artist would 100% be Jim LaMarche, especially the drawings he did for A Single Pearl, which you may have heard me rambling about already. The cover isn't super-beautiful, in my opinon, but the illustrations inside. are. amazing. I love the way he portrays the characters, especially the queen and her daughter - they look so so much the way I imagine my own characters, and you get a really good feeling for what they're like, as if you had actually met them. And the beach and the ocean and the sunsets - oh my gosh they're just so beautiful. If you can find it anywhere, you should definitely have a look at it. (The story is VERY simplistic, I'll admit [it's a picture book, after all] but the illustrations are worth it.) Other than LaMarche, I really like Claude Monet and Winslow Homer, because their styles are artistic enough to be appealing, but not so vague that you can't get a good feeling for what they show, if that makes sense?
I'm learning French currently, and kind of enjoying it - I like the way it sounds :) While by now I can semi-understand simple texts written in French, I'm still having a hard time deciphering it when I hear it spoken, but it's getting easier with practice. And yes, I speak Spanish! I don't live in Mexico anymore (though I still consider it my "home") so I don't get to practice it much, with the result that I don't speak it perfectly. Especially as I grew up speaking English, I sometimes struggle a little with speaking it - not with understanding it, though, for some reason. I've been practicing it more this year, though, which has helped a lot, and I'm also reading more in Spanish. I think you mentioned somewhere that you've read some of the Mafalda comic strips by Quino? I love love love those XD What's learning Japanese like? I know nothing about most Asian languages, sadly, so I'm a bit curious.
Ooh, celebrating a Japanese New Year sounds fun :) Does it involve any special traditions aside from rIcE? My New Year's Eve was quiet, but fun - I got to go with my family to see some friends, and we played Uno and Battleships until eight-thirty in the evening!
Time for new questions... do you have any favorite movies or TV shows, if you're into that sort of thing? Oh, and have you been able to watch the first episode of the All Creatures Great & Small fourth season? I'm so excited for it :)
(January 11, 2024 - 10:15 pm)
I have heard you and quite a lot of other CBers recommend Love and Gelato, so I might have to check it out! I don't read a lot of romance, but one of my favorites is Hani and Ishu's Guide to Fake Dating.
I looked up the artists you recommended, and they're cool! I definitely love Monet. I agree that art is nice if it's stylized enough to be unique, but also recognizably realistic. I think that style is called impressionist.
Learning Japanese is definitely different, because you have to learn a whole writing system as well as spoken word. And there are 3 alphabets T_T The first two are pretty easy, because they're just syllabic, but the 3rd uses Chinese characters, which portray meaning rather than sound, and each character is a lot more complicated. I'm not sure if it's just because I'm a beginner, but Japanese sentence structure generally seems simpler than English (probably because English grammar has no rules & makes no sense).
Our Japanese New Year is mostly rice xD I'm sure there are other traditions, but I'm a 4th generation Japanese American so our family doesn't know a lot of them.
Hmm, favorite movies...I really love the 2019 Little Women, Star Wars, and some of the newer Marvel (Black Panther & Captain Marvel). I also love animated TV shows like Amphibia and Steven Universe. All Creatures Great and Small is sooo good too! I think we are on episode 3 of the new season. It's such a feel-good show, I love all the characters so much. I miss Tristan though; he hasn't been in this season at all so far.
Have you read Percy Jackson? I'm definitely not as much of a die-hard fan as some people, but I did really enjoy those books when I read them, so I've been watching the new TV show adaptation. It's great so far! If you like those books I definitely recommend it.
(January 27, 2024 - 4:49 pm)
Hi! Sorry I took a few days to reply :)
Good heavens, three alphabets?! That's amazing. At least the sentence structure's simpler, though. And yes, English grammar makes absolutely no sense :/ At least, it does, but if you attempt to officially study it (as I've had to do to prepare for tests) it's just an awful mess. Actually though, if you think about it, is any grammar inherently more logical than another? I took a linguistics introductory course for school a few months ago, and one of the most interesting things I learned was that there's no universal system of grammar - there are even languages where you can say "Eats rice John" to mean "John eats rice" - so it made me wonder if all ways of expression are equally valid. What got you interested in Japanese, if you'd like to share?
I've seen the 2000 version of Little Women, but not the 2019 one. It looks interesting, though; I should really watch it :) Oh, and I just saw Episode 4 of All Creatures Great & Small yesterday! *sigh* The characters are just the best... I miss Tristan as well - he was so funny - but I think Richard Carmody makes a nice addition to the series :) Somehow he reminds me a little of Bertie Wooster in the Jeeves books by P. G. Wodehouse, kindhearted but pretty much living in his own little world.
I've never gotten into Percy Jackson, sadly, though I've always been intrigued by the idea of re-using Greek myths in a more modern setting. I did read an excerpt of one of the books in my literature class once, though. One of these days I do want to give it a try, and hopefully the series as well :) Right now I'm rereading Time at the Top, which is a really good fantasy/historical fiction blend. Do you have a favorite genre to read or write?
Hmm... what singers or bands do you like? I've been trying out a ton of new singers lately, and I finally listened to Taylor Swift and decided that I like a few, though not all, of her songs, mainly "red" and "ivy" and "seven" :)
(February 1, 2024 - 9:27 pm)
(January 31, 2024 - 11:23 pm)
The CB is back, yay!
I have not heard of Time at the Top, but historical fantasy is one of my favorite genres! Some of my favorite historical fantasies are Ophie's Ghosts (1920s Pittsburgh + restless ghosts) and Hollow Chest (WWII London + talking wolves). As for other genres, I mostly read fantasy and realistic fiction. One of my favorite sub-genres is adaptations of classics, like modern spins on Anne of Green Gables or something.
"seven" is such a good song! I mostly listen to indie pop/folk so that song is more my taste than most of Taylor Swift's music. Some of my favorite artists are mxmtoon (indie pop), boygenius (indie rock), AURORA (fantasy-ish vibes, kinda hard to describe), and Raye Zaragoza (folk). What about you?
I guess you're right, the logic of grammar is totally subjective. It's cool how different languages are from one another--especially languages like Basque that don't really have roots in any other living language. Taking a linguistics course would be so fun...I hope I get to do that in college.
I'm mostly taking Japanese because my dad's family is Japanese but no one really speaks it. Also, we're going to Japan this year for the first time so my family has decided I'm their designated translator (even though I know practically nothing).
(March 7, 2024 - 9:10 pm)