A good start

[liv]

So, day 16 of my newfound gym habit, and I haven't missed a session yet, in spite of the worst weather and the busiest week this year. In fact, I've even added in some extra sessions, including letting mathcathy talk me into getting out of bed for a swim on Saturday morning. (She came over for lunch and political debate and boardgames afterwards, making for a highly enjoyable day.) I'm generally feeling better for it, while only a little resentful of the time taken from sleep and fun.

Yesterday evening I had my induction session; I had thought it was going to be about a trainer yelling at me to keep pushing on when I wanted to stop, but no, he was very friendly and helpful and just showed me in a bit more detail how to use the machines. The initial programme he set up for me is more or less what I was already doing, but a tad more intense. This isn't because I'm particularly clever, but because mathcathy had done a good job of showing me the basics so I could get started right away and not wait for the official induction. But not knowing how hard I should be pushing myself is one of the big reasons why I needed professional advice. So last night I did a full session: 10 minutes of rowing machine at a gentle pace, 15 minutes on a treadmill at 6 kph with varying slopes, 10 minutes of exercise bike on a medium setting, and 5 minutes of the evil "X-trainer", which is supposed to represent cross-country skiing but feels like running with weights. I didn't really take more than a few breaths of rest between these either. I know that's not very impressive, but I feel good that I can do that much more than I expected to be able to manage. So I have to do that twice a week for the next few weeks to accustom my heart to hard work and adaptation to exercise, and after that they'll give me something more interesting to do.

An unexpected thing I find comforting about the gym is relaxed, non-sexual nudity. They have a strict policy against cameras of any kind in the changing rooms, and although they do provide private cubicles, most women just get changed in the public areas. And there's something very very cheering about seeing real people naked, all ages, all body types – even the slim, toned, bronzed young models and athletes don't look like the airbrushed images that bombard your eyes from posters, magazine covers, screens and so on. Swedish women tend to take a casual attitude to nudity, (I should recount the incident of the convert who shocked her Beth Din (rabbinical court) by bounding out of the mikveh stark naked and rushing into the room where they had carefully sequestered themselves to protect to her modesty...), but it's often too cold for removing clothes, and I didn't have much exposure to contexts where nudity was reasonable. So the place I really associate with treating bodies as just bodies, not something to be covered up and hidden away, is Israel. I miss that, and the gym changing rooms are giving me something of it back. Plus, watching people transform themselves from someone who rolled out of bed, grabbed a tracksuit and headed to the gym, to a beautiful, immaculately made-up and groomed and well dressed woman is just fascinating.

So, yay, gym is a happy thing at the moment. I'm going to take a break over Christmas, but I have three more workouts planned before then, and I'm not even dreading them any more!

Anyway, I think what would improve my gym experience is something to take up my spare attention which I'll enjoy more than watching MTV, or mainstream TV with subtitles. (I suppose I could regard my gym subscription as partly a subscription to TV channels I wouldn't bother with at home, but honestly I don't much see the appeal of most of what's been on, especially with no soundtrack.) Does anyone have any recs of working out music? Or even audiobooks (I'm not sure if I could concentrate on an audiobook while treadmilling, but I want to give it a try.)

While I'm filling up my media players, what are you digging in terms of general music at the moment? And can you recommend me any novel-length (or at least >10k word) fanfic? I know about Harry Potter and the methods of rationality, but what else good is out there? The sort of thing I'm after is:
- Firefly, though not spoilers for Serenity as I haven't seen that. I ship Inara / Kaylee, but really whatever.
- Harry Potter; I don't really care about spoilers, though I haven't actually read past about a quarter of the way through book 4. I've picked up enough from general culture that I can follow fanfic, and I don't particularly need to be shocked by the twists in the later books.
- Classic children's books, though preferably gen or stuff set after the characters grow up, cos I don't really want to read about kids having sex.
- Sandman
- Inception
- The matrix, especially Neo / Morpheus (does that ship even exist?) I haven't seen the sequels, but don't particularly mind spoilers.
- Star Trek, mainly TNG, but I'm not averse to TOS or the reboot film. Haven't seen DS9 or Voyager

I'm interested in any pairing, OT3 or more, any combination of genders. I'm happy with kinky stuff but I'm not into dubcon and I'm not sure how to describe the line in my head between playing with consent and pain, and the sort of thing that would read as rape to me. (I hope that's not too unhelpful or kink-shaming, I'm trying to talk about what I like to read rather than making moral judgements about what anyone else should read.) As I said, I'm not interested in any kind of underage sex; can cope with 16-year-olds if it's fairly non-explicit, but generally I find adults much much more hot. Again, no offence to Harry Potter fans or anyone else! Also, I'm definitely interested in gen stuff that explores relationships or characters or aspects of the story which aren't sexual.

Also any good podfics or non-fictional podcasts? I want to get into those genres but have no idea at all where to start!

Comments

[falena]

I posted a lot of recs, including but not only Firefly, HP and podfic, just a few days ago. If you click on my recs: fanfic tag you'll find more.

[falena]

As for podcasts, I love Laurie Taylor's Thinking Allowed on BBC 4. It's about social science.

[liv]

Squee, thank you for those. I haven't been particularly seeking out River stuff, because she's a kid and not mentally stable besides. But on reflection that probably makes her a really interesting character to explore, if it's done sensitively.

[falena]

Actually the Firefly recs were all female-centric or femmeslash because yvi had asked just for that, but as you said, I think River is a very interesting character (precisely because her mind is so much different from...anyone else really. Post-Serenity this makes more sense, anyway).

I just re-read your request fro HP stuff and realised you prefer gen. I did post some HP gen recs after Deahtly Hallows came out

[elf]

Tira Nog's A Nick In Time and sequel Growing Pains are classic Snarry, and Growing Pains is one I regularly re-read. They were written pre-book 4, I think, and take place years after the series is over.

Fabularasa's Snape/Sirius stories (can't link directly by pairing, but the tag list on the side can sort them out) are terrific; Stone Cold Sober is another one of my re-reads. (The only reason I don't re-read the prequel, Under the Influence, is that I somehow saved them in different spots and keep forgetting to combine them. Also, SCS is 80k+ words; UtI is less than 2k.)

[liv]

Thanks for those, they look like just the kind of thing I'm looking for. At this point I would truly rather read tens of thousands of words of HP fanfic than get round to finishing the originals; I'm sure I'm not alone in this position.

[elf]

There's some plot twists in the later books that made a lot of earlier fanfic impossible. (I mean, more than most series do. One of my ideas for a long-term project is to track down a list of pre-book5 fanfic that still works as canon-compliant.) But other that those... after about book 4, they seem to have fired Rowling's editor on the theory that that was wasted money; people were going to buy the books no matter how much she rambled or how many incomprehensible loose threads tangled up the plot.

Other fandom--If you're looking for sheer wordcount and quality writing, there's Observations by jAnon; it's Trek Reboot, and 414,000+ words. No missed decimal; this thing is ~8 novels long. It's *wonderful,* but I suspect it won't get a wide following because it's huuuuge. (I used the "print" button to get all the chapters on a single page, and copied it into my ebook reader.)

[redbird]

40 minutes of varied cardio exercises is nontrivial. Can't really help with music: I tend to read and do crossword and sudoko puzzles on the exercise bike. (This wouldn't work on a treadmill, which is one of the reasons I seldom use the treadmill.)

[liv]

It's not trivial; it's more exercise than I've ever done in my life before, seriously. But I don't want to sound as if I'm showing off about a really beginner level of exercising!

Huh, sudoku and crosswords, that's not a bad idea. I am not sure if simple puzzles like that would take more or less concentration than listening to an audio book while I'm also getting out of breath and bobbing up and down. I want to get away from the treadmill once I've built up a basic level of fitness; part of the point of joining a gym was to find a form of exercise that doesn't involve running, so once I stop finding a brisk walk challenging, I'd really rather do something else. At the moment, my thighs run out of oomph before my heart does on the bike, but once that balance changes, that may be the best for combining with something less boring.

[shreena]

Music-wise, things I like that you might like:

Chumbawamba (in particular, The Boy Bands Have Won, ABCEDFG, English Rebel Songs, A Singsong and a Scrap, these are all from the more acoustic recent phase, not the punky phase (though I like that too)) - interesting lyrics, playful with musical style, it's all good.

The Levellers, just generally but I particularly like the Live at Glastonbury album for getting on with stuff, suspect it might work well for working out

The Duckworth Lewis Method - suspect you have to enjoy cricket to enjoy it!

Jez Lowe and the Bad Pennies

Edward II (and the Red Hot Polkas) - Reggae/folk fusion, I love it! Recommend the Live at Cropredy album and their compilation greatest hits album

The Men they couldn't hang

Blythe Power

McDermott's Two Hours

Julie Fowlis - all in Gaelic but still great to listen to

Kate Rusby

Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Witt

Be interested to know what you think if you listen to any of these. They're all around the folk-rock genre as that's what I listen to!