Thank you so much! I think part of the issue was I’d heard somewhere that there were only three lol
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Just finished The Flood. It really is an excellent finale and all around great story. RTD and Moffat must’ve read this story because I caught at least three ideas they stole/adapted from it.
First of all you’ve got Moffat stealing the idea of the Cybermen using rain as a weapon in the Series 8 finale, though one could argue that in-universe these Cybermen are adapting that plot since this batch is from the far future.
Second you have RTD stealing the heightened emotions for the Toymaker’s plot in The Giggle.
Finally, you have the Doctor regenerating from contact with the vortex. Here, despite being given the opportunity to show the regeneration of Eight into Nine, the need for a clean slate meant they didn’t go through with it. But you can definitely see the similarities between Eight wiping out the Cybermen and Rose destroying the Daleks.
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Really enjoying The Last Dodo at the moment. Was reaching the halfway point and wondering, however, how Rayner would keep the story going and then Martha goes and sends thousands of extinct animals back to 21st Century Earth and I was like, oh, that’s how you keep it going 
A fun, breezy read and nice characterisation of Martha.
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I finished rereading The Eight Doctors last week! Honestly I like it more on the second read than I did on the first. My biggest problem with it is the Fourth Doctor section which is still an absolute slog that I didn’t enjoy in the slightest. The plotline that’s a sequel (or perhaps midquel?) to Trial of a Time Lord is still fantastic and the best thing about the book, but I also particularly enjoy the Third and Fifth Doctor sections. The First and Seventh Doctor sections I no longer feel strongly negative about as I used to, I think they’re pretty solid, although I’m still a little annoyed my two favorite Doctors get by far the least to do in the book. I enjoyed casting Sue Johnston as Flavia in my head, given that she’s explicitly said to be in a new incarnation (something I didn’t recall from that first read). I remain of the opinion that Dicks’ writing style is extremely and detrimentally shallow despite its quick readability, and he is prone to sudden moments of writing people wildly out of character. I also don’t think he had a very clear idea of Eight’s character for most of the book to begin with, as I struggled to read much of the dialogue in McGann’s cadence, and his most notable attribute in this book is being extremely chill and casual about violence lmao. Sam does not feel like she’s being written by someone who’s ever met a teenager, but she did genuinely make a good first impression at the beginning of the book, and I at least have a voice in my head for her now, which I didn’t previously!
That’s another thing, btw—I didn’t remember at all from my initial read that Sam was in fact a teenager and a high school student (well, the UK equivalent) at the time. It’s going to be interesting to have another teen in the TARDIS, but knowing certain tendencies of the Wilderness Years writers, I am very concerned about ways that could go.
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I am listening to the Mel Bush book. It is okay but a bit slow. I am trying to read the Dooms Day book but I am a bit unmotivated to read it.
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I started listening to the Mel book, but I gave up after around a third because I found it boring. Will give it another go at some point, I think.
I started listening to Feast of the Drowned instead. Now, this is a fun DW adventure!
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I have a hard time not to finish stuff. But yes it is boring.
I thought that it was okay. Not really a favourite of mine.
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I used to force myself to finish stuff as well. But then I realised that life is too short to spend time on ruff you do enjoy, so I shouldn’t push myself to read, watch or listen to something I know I won’t enjoy. I can always give something another chance, and I can oftentimes enjoy something that isn’t very good, but if something is boring, I have decided not to waste my valuable time on it.
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I try to have this mindset and I am getting better at it. But sometimes it is harder than other times. I don’t really have anything else that I want to listen to at the moment.
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Only slightly related and probably in the category of “no one asked for this info dump”: 
A few years back (time flies), I attended a workshop about tsundoku, a Japanese concept around having stacks of unread books.
I’m having trouble finding the article about it and Umberto Eco’s “Antilibrary” that I remember from back then. So I’ll just share two articles that may or may not be of interest:
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Oh this is a disappointing to hear as I was looking forward to this - Bonnie and Jac Rayner seemed like something that couldn’t fail but I suppose everyone can have an off day.
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I’m with you here. It was kind of a whirlwind tour of classic DW nods and nostalgia… and at a time where that really meant something. Not a great book. Not even a good book, but it did have its merits.
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Agreed. The Eight Doctors is by means that good of a companion introduction, but just as a nostalgia-piece and a general read, it’s a lot of fun. The bits surrounding Trial of a Time Lord are the best bits.
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Started “Sovietistan: Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan, and Uzbekistan” by Erika Fatland last night. It’s a nonfiction travel memior about a Norweigian woman traveling around the former soviet states of Central Asia.
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Scandi alert! Scandi alert!
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We don’t recognize Norway as a part of Scandinavia.
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The only Scandinavian stuff mentioned thus far has been a little bit of the author background, mainly a brief mention of visiting Viipuri in her last year of school.
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Why? What did they do wrong? Do they not love the Moomins enough?
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They’re Norwegians, isn’t that reason enough?
It’s a thing you non-Scandinavians will never understand!
I can’t be friends with anyone who doesn’t live the Moomins enough!
(And I’m still waiting for that Moomin/DW crossover. Moomin Characters Ltd, are you reading this??)
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