panik: (DW - Crack a smile)
panik ([personal profile] panik) wrote2008-04-17 01:31 pm
Entry tags:

Life's rich tapestry.

Bad news the fyrste: I've done something painful to my leg - about 20 minutes into my run last night, something went ping in the back of my calf and now I'm hobbling like Douglas Bader on a pair of peculiarly dodgy Ludlows* - which means I can't exercise; just when I was starting to get back into shape and feeling quite fit and chipper again  I'm liberally slathered in Power Gel, wrapped in an Ace bandage and hoping for the best. ::sigh::

*See The Meaning of Liff  by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd.


Good news #1: I has new Palm! Yay! My old one packed in and I seem to have been waiting for-bloody-evah for the new one to arrive, but arrive it has and now I can has fic again. Yes! And so much new fic out there in all my shiny, happy, perfect fandoms.*

*Anyone looking for excellence in Doc-Master fic could do worse than a mosey over to
[community profile] best_enemies where they're running an anonymous porn meme that is producing some rather lovely stuff so far...

Bad news the seconde: I'm still struggling to write (insert sad face). I finished my crappy short story - I had two days to bang it out before the deadline, which I did and posted it off, even though I know it's terrible - but since then, I've been doing a lot of staring at a blankly mocking screen. ::sigh:: I'm sure it's just a matter of poor self-discipline and not enough tea but it's a worry...

Good News #2: Morrisons have started selling Rose Pouchong tea! I no longer have to buy it online at great expense. This is excellent news.

Bad news the thyrde: I'm not going to GMOH. It hurts (oh how it hurts) but it's the only sensible decision in the circumstances.

Good News #3: At 3.22am last night, I  finished reading the EDA*  'The Ancestor Cell' - a book I like, but am somewhat ambivalent about re: certain monkeying with the Faction Paradox (and I'll never forgive any of them for what they did to Fitz) - but a rollocking read nonetheless (and a far, far better Time War than anything Rusty's come up with so far). It's not only the end of the Time-War arc, but the last (for a while) of the books I've already read. I'm starting on mostly new-to-me EDAs. I've read the odd one here and there but most are new and shiny So I has new books squee! (Geez, I live a quiet life these days).

*Eighth Doctor Adventure.

Such is my life on this, the seventeenth day of April in the year of Our Lord, two thousand and eight. How about you, my lovelies? How's it going in your corner of this lovely planet?

[identity profile] epistrophia.livejournal.com 2008-04-17 05:04 pm (UTC)(link)
Can you recommend any Eighth Doctor adventures? Do they need to be read in order? And are they suitable for reading a few pages at a time in bed (the only non-academic reading I do apart from newspapers and t'Internet)?

Can you recommend any Eighth Doctor adventures?

[identity profile] gillyp.livejournal.com 2008-04-17 08:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh yeah, lots - sorry, this is going to be a long post...

There are 73 Eight Doc books . You can start from book 2 , the excellent Vampire Science (avoid book 1, The Eight Doctors, at all costs; it's written for ten year olds and adds nothing to Eight's history, imo) but they tend to divide into arcs so you can choose an arc and go with that.

The earliest books, with a few notable exceptions, are on the lighter side - and they have a teenage girl, Sam, for the companion who I'm not overly fond of (this is not an unusual pov *g*).

- Book 19 'The Taint' introduces Fitz, who I think is the best companion ever (again, not a controversial pov) . That's a good place to start.

- Book 25, Interference, is a great place to begin if you like a heavier, meatier, more tragic kind of story. This arc has Faction Paradox and ends with the time war in book 36, The Ancestor Cell.

Then there's a short arc where the doc spends a century alone on Earth, with no memory of who he is or why he's there, recovering from the war (37, The Burning up to 41, Father Time).

In 42, Escape Velocity, he's reunited with Fitz, and gets a new companion, a futures trader, Anji Kapoor.

In book 51, The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, a new arc begins with a new villain, the paradoxical (snerk) Sabbath (tho tAoHS is probably not a great place to start as the book has a strange style; written like a history text, with no pov. I find it heavy going).

OTOH, you could just pick up any of them and start reading - some of them might seem hard going if you're not party to the arcs though. I wouldn't rec starting with The Ancestor Cell, for example, or Henrietta Street, or The Burning. Personally, I love Fitz'. I really like Iris Wildthyme, too (another Time Lord; a large, elderly lady in layers of cardis and a TARDIS in the form of a bus (the #22 to Putney Common) - she first appears in book #15, The Scarlet Empress and reappears regenerated (and very different) in my favourite EDA of all (so far, I haven't read them all, nothing like) #27 The Blue Angel.

There's an excellent Wiki page on the EDAs. The Eighth Doc Wiki pages are all really good, probably a good deal more coherent and helpful that me, tbh.

Re: Can you recommend any Eighth Doctor adventures?

[identity profile] epistrophia.livejournal.com 2008-04-18 08:31 am (UTC)(link)
Wow - that's great! Thank you so much. ::goes to check local libraries::