Curmudgemily

@marthawells.com I watched Murderbot this week and I loved it. The rare adaptation that retained the thematic heart of it's source material. can't wait for season 2!

Behold the beautiful coziness of my morning

That's hilarious. And also terrible.

I cannot overstate how much delight this very stupid joke brings me every week. I spent a full minute audibly laughing about it today.
5

But now everyone is invested. Today we hit week 9 with the slide below. My plan for week 10 is to simply replace the slide entirely with the picture.
4/5

Next week we're under 1% again! So I keep the picture but make it a little bigger. Same thing the week after that. When no one had noticed by week 6, I caved and mentioned it. 3/5

Our goal is to keep the number of orders with issues below 1%. A while back I noticed we'd been sub 1% 3 weeks in a row. So I put a tiny meme of Owen Wilson wowing, about the size of a postage stamp, on the relevant slide.
2/5

Every Thursday I put together a presentation for the managers which is then shown at the all-hands meeting Friday morning. One of the main sections is a review of every customer issue that came up the preceding week.
1/5 🧵

And that's the list. If you read any of these books, and I truly hope you do, please let me know what you think of them. They're some of the foundational texts in my life and the ideas and themes in them are so great.
15/15

But it deals with the same themes of growing up and taking ownership of your life as a young woman in a rapidly modernizing world. It's beautiful and poignant.
14/🧵

And last on the list is Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. This one was written later than the rest and some might argue it doesn't belong. It's urban and slightly bleak, rather than pastoral and cozy.
13/🧵

This one also requires some willing suspension of modern sensibilities regarding the dynamics of Judy's relationships with the men in her life. But I swear it's worth it. It also has a sequel, Dear Enemy.
14/🧵

Next is Daddy Longlegs by Jean Webster. This is by far the most light hearted book on the list. Judy Abbott is an absolute delight and the epistolary form is quite fun, aiding the narrative wonderfully.
13/🧵

I still want to be Elnora Comstock when I grow up. And for those of you currently swooning over Gilbert, I think you will quite like Philip Ammon. If you like it, it is a sequel to previous beautiful book, Freckles.
12/🧵

No. 3 is my absolute favorite book growing up, though it is much less famous than the first. It's called A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter. I read this book twice a year every year from 9 to 18.
10/🧵

Next is, of course, Anne. Cozy, whimsical, and romantic. Full of some of the best supporting characters in all of literature. And as you all know, you have a whole series plus other works from Montgomery to dive into.
9/🧵

And whether you prefer the Winona Rider or Saoirse Ronin movie adaptations, you'll find what you loved and more in the book. Plus there are two sequels, which are lovely, if not quite as beautiful as the first.
8/🧵

The first is Little Women by Louisa (Lou) Alcott. It's a little older than the rest and a little more overtly didactic, but it is exquisite. If you want "cozy" you truly cannot do better than this book.
7/🧵

It makes one of the five books I think every girl should read before she turns 20, but also just every single person should read at some point in their life. The themes certainly apply to anyone. And yes, the point is that all 5 are CGL.
6/🧵

Anne makes hard decisions and sacrifices some of her childhood dreams to care for the people she loves. If you haven't read Anne of Green Gables (and the rest of the series) you absolutely should.
5/🧵

Anne Shirley is, of course, a perfect example of this. We meet her as a child and watch her grow into an adult. She doesn't lose the joy and whimsy of her youth, but rather she adds to and tempers them with knowledge and experience, including sorrow but also including romantic love.
4/🧵

I adore this genre. It embraces what I feel to be an under-represented idea of what it means to grow up. It isn't the modern idea of disillusionment, cynicism, and loss of innocence, but rather an increase of wisdom, responsibility, and care for those around you.
3/🧵

Similar to modern YA, college girl lit (cgl) was written for readers a few years younger than the characters. But it's specifically about the transition from girl to woman in the early 20th century. As far as I've been able to tell, it also comes from a particularly American perspective.
2/🧵

Over on #bookthreads, Anne of Green Gables seems to be having a well-deserved moment. Which feels like the right time for me to talk about one of my favorite defunct genres of which Anne was a part, College Girl Literature.
1/🧵

The caterpillars, as you might expect, are *voracious* eaters, since they have to build sufficient fat stores for the adult to survive on. One butterfly garden that said they have to keep the Atlas cats in a separate place or they would have no garden left. They grow up to 12" and look like this
4/4

Adult Atlas moths only live for a few weeks because they do not eat. Their proboscis is vestigial and doesn't function. But it takes a shitton of calories to fly when you're that big, so these babies tend to sleep all day and then go clubbing at night looking to get laid.
3/4

Check out those wing tips: they mimic a snake head and when threatened the moth will fall to the ground and wriggle to mimic the snake's movement.
2/4

Some trivia for you all today. This is the Atlas moth, one of the largest moths in the world (possibly the largest). They can have a wingspan of up to 27cm. They live in forests in Southern and Eastern Asia. They are absolutely harmless and super cool.
1/4

But you could certainly argue that's a cosmetic difference, and the underlying themes match

Hmmmmmmmm....I like this idea but I don't think it's necessarily supported by the text. Elizabeth is playful and saucy, while Eleanor and Edward have a whole conversation about how Marianne is very specifically not a lively girl.