sovay: (Rotwang)
[personal profile] sovay
I started the afternoon by sitting under the shade of some kind of ornamental cherry while my godchild pruned and weeded the sprawling twenty-one-gourd salute of a vine that has taken over the lawn, but then the sun moved to reflect itself directly into my eyes and I relocated to the fire lane on the grounds that technically I was not parked in it.



Highlights of the later afternoon included napping for at least an hour, Japanese-style egg salad sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and [personal profile] fleurdelis41 notifying me of the identification of the Sanday Wreck and its four decades of service in the Royal Navy and the Arctic fishery. My godson spent most of the evening repainting and rebuilding a chair, partly by lantern-light out on the deck where he looked like some DIY Tarot draw of the Star.

Wildcat Bus (1940) is the definition of a programmer in that its premise of a small commercial bus line suffering a mysterious string of sabotage is reasonably disposable and in execution it is a thorough delight, starting with third-billed Paul Guilfoyle for once not playing a sleaze, a stooge, or any kind of crook at all, but the steadfast and sarcastic, textually acknowledged heterosexual life partner of the hero, the former oil heir played by Charles Lang who cracked up so badly in the wake of personal tragedy that the film opens with his spectacular eviction from the penthouse he couldn't afford on an installment plan, burrowed avoidantly into his bedclothes until spilled out onto the floor blinking at the receiver like the repossession of Bertie Wooster. Technically the chauffeur even when that 1937 Packard Twelve represents the totality of their possessions, Guilfoyle's Donovan is generally the person in the room with the brain cell, although Fay Wray gives him fair competition as the mechanically minded general manager of Federated Bus Lines who if she has a more feminine given name than "Ted" is never once addressed by it, while Leona Roberts' Ma Talbot does almost as good a bait-and-switch as Why Girls Leave Home (1945) as a criminal mastermind camouflaged as a little old charlady. What looks like a comic bit with a voluble Mexican turns into the lesson that if you want to drive a bus in southern California, you had better be fluent in Spanish. When a Chinese-American passenger sounds like a houseboy, he's doing it to razz Lang's Jerry Waters. There's some sweet if rear-projected footage of the Golden Gate International Exposition, a climactically left-field donnybrook, and the breezily Code-blowing demurral, "Why, no, Mr. Casey, I do my entertaining at the Athletic Club." It's not quite Only Angels Have Wings (1939), but when asked point-blank by Ted about the man he's pulled through more than one wipeout, "You really like him, don't you?" I'll take Donovan's thoughtfully frank, "Yeah, I guess I do." He has eloquently mordant eyebrows and an absentminded habit of tidying any office he's left to his own devices in. The whole thing came off the shop floor of RKO in a month and barely clears an hour in runtime and its attractions are unpretentious but satisfying, especially where character actors are perennially concerned. Guilfoyle may always have had a case of resting hangdog face, but come on, it worked for Walter Matthau. "I've taken an awful lot of guff from you for six years, you can take ten minutes from me."

Surprise Birthday Brahms!

Oct. 4th, 2025 04:33 pm
oursin: Brush the wandering hedgehog dancing in his new coat (Brush the wandering hedgehog dancing)
[personal profile] oursin

When I turned on my clock radio - which I do on Saturdays to ensure that the time is co-ordinating with the radio time-signal - Radio 3 was playing the finale to Brahms Violin Concerto.

Joy!

Well, this has been an up and downy year as ever, but I am beginning to poke my nose out of my hole. I am still Doing Stuff, even if various projects seem to have got bogged down (not just on my side ahem ahem).

Anyway, in accordance with tradition, I pass round virtual rich dark gingerbread (and also gluten-free, diabetic-friendly, etc, versions), sanitive madeira (eschewing Duke of Clarence jokes) and other beverages of choice, and lift a glass to dr rdrz.

umadoshi: (autumn - candle and pumpkin)
[personal profile] umadoshi
Suddenly I'm on the other side of the fall crunch at work, early enough that I somehow feel at loose ends even though regular full-time work continues and I have freelance work that badly needs tackling (plus, y'know, the endless litany of things I should do and want to do and only ever make slow progress on).

Despite the crunch, I've gotten some tidying/organizing done in my office; it could still use a lot more work, but I've cleared some surfaces that haven't seen the light of day in a long time, so that feels good. And a couple bits of autumnal decor have crept out here and there around the house, but maybe this weekend we can do a more serious job with that sort of thing.

Quick book notes: I don't think I've specifically mentioned that I did finish and enjoy Caitlin Starling's The Starving Saints (mind the cannibalism, though); I've made further slow, slow progress on Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World; last night I finished Silver and Lead, the new October Daye book, which was a solid installment; and last night I also started reading, for a total change of pace, Her Halloween Treat (romance, Tiffany Reisz), which I presumably saw recced somewhere when it was on sale (I think around this time last year, but I didn't get to it before last Hallowe'en), and which I'm only a couple of chapters into.

I don't generally make a big stab at seasonal media, other than trying to watch a couple of Christmas movies the last year or two, but since I have a few seasonally-appropriate books, that's as good a way of choosing "what next?" as any.

And with the crunch over, I imagine [personal profile] scruloose and I will soon be back to listening to Murderbot books.
davidlevine: (Default)
[personal profile] davidlevine
You may have heard about the Anthropic AI piracy settlement, in which (some) authors whose work was downloaded and used without permission or compensation by Anthropic will receive a cash payment in compensation for (some of) their pirated works. You may not know that the list of pirated works includes not only novels but short story anthologies.

I have over sixty published short stories, many of which have been collected in anthologies. Fortunately I keep very good records. I have been able to identify 56 published anthologies that contain at least one story of mine. Of these 48 have ISBNs, and of those 14 have copyright registration numbers and are included in the Anthropic settlement database.

My understanding is that if I file claims on these anthologies I may eventually receive a share of the settlement on those titles. Assuming the settlement goes through as I understand it and that my claims are accepted, I may eventually receive roughly a hundred bucks for each story (assuming the settlement per title is about $3000, minus 25% for the lawyers, minus 50% of the remainder for the publisher, divided by the number of authors which I'm assuming for the sake of argument is about ten).

This is in addition to the claims I'm going to file on my two novels Arabella of Mars and Arabella the Traitor of Mars, which may eventually pay off about $3000 * 0.75 * 0.50 = $1125 each. (I think the publisher's 50% in this case will go to Open Road, the current publisher, rather than Tor, the original publisher, but there are still a lot of open questions here.)

Arabella and the Battle of Venus, the middle book of the Arabella trilogy, does NOT appear in the Anthropic settlement database, and I believe this is because Macmillan failed to register the copyright for that volume. However, according to Locus, Macmillan has issued a statement that "If your work was excluded from the settlement for this reason, we will make you whole by paying you what you otherwise would have been paid under the settlement." I've already sent an email to Macmillan inquiring as to next steps.
pegkerr: (All we have to decide is what to do with)
[personal profile] pegkerr
I had two Year of Adventure meetings this week, both dedicated to teaching me how to make something new.

I met with my sister Betsy, who showed me how to make an apple pie from scratch, including the pastry. The secret, I was duly informed, is the use of lard (which makes the pastry light and flaky) and tapioca to thicken the apple filling. Okay, I will admit that the pastry cover was placed a little crookedly, but I can assure you that it was delicious.

I also got together with [personal profile] carbonel, who invited me to her home to give me my first lesson on spinning wool into yarn. I had some experience with a drop spindle many years ago, but spinning on a spinning wheel takes a degree of coordination that I obviously did not master in the time we were working together. First, the treadle must be worked in the correct direction at a steady rate--I kept hesitating on the pedal, and the wheel would aggravatingly start turning in the wrong direction. And the hand coordination was another thing: I kept holding the rover (the combed wool) in the left hand too tightly ("hold it lightly, as if were a baby bird" [personal profile] carbonel kept chanting in my ear with only a hint of exasperation), and my clumsiness with the drafting (feeding the wool with the right hand) meant that the yarn kept overtwisting.

But at least I have my first effort of spun wool sitting on my dining room table, and I keep glancing at it with an interesting mix of pride and embarrassment. It is very, very bad, but at least I can now say that I have tried spinning.

This collage is not one of my favorites, being both too busy and too monochromatic, but hey, that's what I have.

Image description: Center: a smiling woman (Peg) stands at a counter with a rolling pin and an unbaked apple pie. Top left: hands cut a pastry cutter through pastry dough in a bowl. Top right: hands work pastry dough in a bowl. Below that: various apple pie ingredients. Lower left: a hand holds unspun wool. Lower right: a spinning wheel. Lower center: a butterfly of (badly) spun undyed wool.

Making

39 Making

Click on the links to see the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

New Worlds: Greasing Palms

Oct. 3rd, 2025 05:02 pm
swan_tower: (Default)
[personal profile] swan_tower
For October, my loyal patrons in the New Worlds Patreon have voted for a turn toward the field of economics! Though what we're talking about this first week could potentially have gone into the "law and crime" category instead, as we're talking about bribery . . . comment over there!

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/UOvoSd)

Demon Slayer Movie: Infinity Castle

Oct. 3rd, 2025 05:53 pm
profiterole_reads: (Kuroko no Basuke - Kagami and Kuroko)
[personal profile] profiterole_reads
Demon Slayer Movie: Infinity Castle was one of the best cinematographic experiences I've ever had!

The Infinity Castle already looked awesome on the small screen (think of the architectural effects in Inception), it was absolutely amazing on the big one. The background music was perfect for the action scenes. If you have the opportunity to watch it this way, I highly recommend it.

Omniumgatherum

Oct. 3rd, 2025 02:56 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin

In case this has passed dr rdrz by, it is now possible for ordinary people to register for access to JSTOR's massive collection of scholarly resources.

***

This month's freebie from the University of Chicago Press is Courtenay Raia, The New Prometheans: Faith, Science, and the Supernatural Mind in the Victorian Fin de Siècle on psychical research.

***

Okay, I know I was going off at people getting all up in the woowoo about the Pill, but this is a bit grim about Depo-Provera: Pfizer sued in US over contraceptive that women say caused brain tumours. I was raising my eyebrows at this:

Pfizer argues that it tried to have a tumour warning attached to the drug’s label but this was rejected by the US regulator, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The company said in its court filings: “This is a clear pre-emption case because FDA expressly barred Pfizer from adding a warning about meningioma risk, which plaintiffs say state law required.”

and going hmmm, because there was a huge furore in the 70s in the UK about Depo-Provera and what sections of the population were actually being put on it, i.e. there was a whole ethnicity/discrimination pattern going on, and I would not be entirely astonished to find out that there were programmes in certain US states which were maybe no longer sterilising 'the unfit' (though I'm not sure I'd bet good money on it) but blithely applying long-acting hormonal contraception instead.

***

And also in the realm of reproductive control: Of embryos and vaccines: If you REALLY want to protect the unborn... on rubella. Abortion historian notes that one reason (apart from thalidomide) for resurgence of abortion activism in UK in early 60s had been a German measles epidemic.... Also recall that my sister - who like me was not of a generation that routinely got this vaccine in childhood - when she fell pregnant with her first getting tested in the antenatal clinic to see if she needed to get the jab stat (in fact, she had high level of antibodies, so maybe we'd all had German measles among all our other many childhood ailments and barely noticed....)

***

Something more agreeable: the Royal School of Needlework's Stitch Bank:

RSN Stitch Bank is a free resource designed to preserve the art of hand embroidery through digitally conserving and showcasing the wide variety of the world’s embroidery stitches and the ways in which they have been used in different cultures and times. Now containing over 500 stitches, each stitch entry contains information about its history, use and structure as well as a step-by-step method with photographs, illustrations and video.

***

Asking good questions is harder than giving great answers: this so resonated with my experience as an archivist: 'often when people ask for help or information, what they ask for isn't what they actually want'.

***

Many years ago I used to go to a restaurant- Le Bistingo in South Ken, as I recall - that had a cartoon pinned on the wall depicting a chef bodily ejecting a diner. Waiter to observers: 'He Attempted To Add Salt'. This was rather my reaction to this particularly WTF 'You Be The Judge': Should my partner stop hankering after salt and pepper shakers?

Why do you need salt and pepper on the table, haven't you seasoned the food adequately? (oh, and btw, Gene, as a comment remarks, salt has naturally antiseptic properties*).

*I remember some historical drama of Ye Medeevles on the telly in my youth about dousing somebody's flogged back in salt water (?or rubbing it with salt) to stop it festering.

lydamorehouse: (nic & coffee)
[personal profile] lydamorehouse
 Of course now that things are underway, it only now occurs to me that I could have easily had a Gaylaxicon icon and then those of you who wanted to skim or skip would have been forewarned. 

I wavered on whether or not I wanted to go to the GoH dinner last night, especially when I found out that [personal profile] tallgeese was not coming because he didn't feel well. The things that propelled me out the door were 1) Mason had planned to make a fancy curry dish for himself and Shawn.I tend to be the default cook when I'm home and I didn't want to come between that; and 2) I'd just been through one of these in Capclave and... frankly? Without the right people it can be fairly deadly.

We met out at Heather's in Minneapolis, a place I have never been before. They had a lovely, long table for us out on the patio. Turns out that Emma Törzs (rhymes with dirge--so, like terrge,) used to work with the Heather of Heather's, so that's kind of cool. I ended up, by accident, sitting in between KD Edwards and Emma, with Jim Johnson at the end of the table on the other side of KD (Keith.)  I should have, as soon as she arrived, switched places with Emma because I was pretty good at keeping the left side of the table entertained and Emma ended up somewhat stuck in conversation with someone who was, shall we say, enthusiastic in a hyperfixated way about a singular subject about which is was unclear that Emma was similarly enthusiastic. I asked her, later, if I should have done more to rescue her, but she said it was enjoyable enough though she did appreciate Bast and my efforts when we were able to pry her back into the larger conversation. To be fair to this person? I do the same thing sometimes?  We're all nerds here, So no shade. 

After a very lovely dinner, where I got to watch KD Edward's shoulders visibly relax when I explained that Minnesota is a blue state and that Minneapolis/St. Paul is so blue it might as well be navy (he's living in North Carolina), we all trundled over to Dreamhaven for the reading. 

I sort of thought that my herding cats portion of the evening was over, but Anton tapped me to do introductions so I jumped up to do that. I probably should have done more "here's a quick bio" of everyone and I managed to stumble over Emma's last name (terrrge! Like dirge!) which sucked, and I think, too, I should have had everyone go in the reverse order that we started with. Ending with Nghi Vo, instead of, like I ended up prompting, starting with her and ending with Jim Johnson. Especially since, unbeknowst to me, despite the fact that Jim is an author of several books, he decided instead to read the introduction to his newest Star Trek: Adventures book--which was... again, let's just say less high energy than spirit cannibals, which is what Nghi started with. 

BUT! The event was super well attended. Dreamhaven ran out of chairs and, really, room. (That bookstore is what you find when you look up cramped and byzantine in the dictionary.) I don't have even an unofficial count, but if I had to guess I'd say over 30. We ended up even getting an on the spot sponsor-level membership for the convention out of the deal. It was by almost all measures a success.

So yay!

Now, before I head outside to do a little more painting on the fence, I need to time one of my stories. There's a woman in-town, Cole, who runs SciFi Reading Hour at the Bryant-Lake Bowl and she's looking for an emergency replacement for their November 2nd show. I don't know that she's considering me for that slot, but she did ask me to time one of my stories when read aloud. So, I need to do that for her in case it will work out.

Then, it's off to the convention this afternoon.

Cow facts

Oct. 3rd, 2025 07:36 am
asakiyume: (turnip lantern)
[personal profile] asakiyume
A couple of weekends ago was the B'town fair. I didn't get to see the parade, but I did seize some time to go to the exhibit hall and the 4-H tent. The theme for the fair this year was "Shake, Cattle, and Roll" (lots of good entrants for the brochure cover contest...), and inside the hall was this poster with cow** facts:

Cow facts

(You can click through to see it bigger)

These are amazing! Cows only sleep three hours a day? They are great swimmers and can swim for miles? I had no idea ...

Though ... it gives me a wicked desire to make up other cow facts that aren't true at all. After all, if a kid's display is going to have me believe that cows can swim for miles and steer with their tails, what else might be true?

--I have perfect night vision
--I have a kind of moo I use only with my calves. It's called the lullaby moo
--If the circumstances are right, I can live to be 80–90 years old

I mean, why not? Any fake cow facts you'd care to add?

**Isn't it weird that in English, we don't have a common, nongendered, singular word to use for this type of animal? We have "cattle," which can be either sex, but that's plural. But all our other words are gendered: "Cow" does not include bulls or steers (castrated bulls), which as terms in turn exclude cows. And "heifer" is a young cow, "typically one who hasn't had a calf."

(no subject)

Oct. 3rd, 2025 09:46 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] quartzpebble!

Cars and trips and maps we ripped

Oct. 2nd, 2025 09:41 pm
sovay: (Sovay: David Owen)
[personal profile] sovay
So that was definitely the Yom Kippur that was, but I have eaten a phenomenal quantity of unagi and seaweed salad as well as a sweet rice donut with red bean paste inside and part of [personal profile] selkie's cream bread and am inordinately entertained by this TikTok from the Fenimore Art Museum which N. shared with me. [personal profile] spatch lit last night's yahrzeit candle for remembrance of the dead. The rest of us are still here at the start on the other side. G'mar tov. My godchild gave my laptop existential angst.

Going a-bloomsburying

Oct. 2nd, 2025 06:16 pm
oursin: The stylised map of the London Underground, overwritten with Tired of London? Tired of Life! (Tired of London? Tired of Life!)
[personal profile] oursin

So yestere'en there was a get-together for the Fellows of the institution I have had the honour to be award a Fellowship of, so I thought I ought to Make The Effort and turn up at least for a little bit.

So I trotted off, and in spite of some hitches with the Tube (several trains going to the wrong branch) got to the right stop, and lo, the Scientologists are still infesting Tottenham Court Road, what is this thing that this thing is?

So I crossed the road, going, surely the traffic flow used to be one-way? Confusing.

And went down a side-street, and came to this lovely and surprising thing, which I am sure wasn't there last time I was in these parts, early in 2020:

Alfred Place Gardens

and was charmed.

Then on to venue, where everything seems same as it ever was.

Hearing aids still not optimum in room full of overlapping conversations: but I did manage to have some fairly coherent conversations, including one with old academic acquaintance who was most gratifyingly complimentary about The Biography, all these years later.

So I think a win, even if I did suppose that this event would also include some admin stuff relating to Fellowship, which it didn't.

profiterole_reads: (Nü Er Hong - Shi Yi and Hua Yu Tang)
[personal profile] profiterole_reads
The first episode of the GL anime This Monster Wants to Eat Me was intriguing! A mermaid protects a high school girl until she gets to eat her. ^^

It's available on Crunchyroll.

----------

Netflix's j-drama Alice in Borderland Season 3 was great!

I missed Chishiya and Kuina, but good for them that they didn't have to go through more death games. Along with Arisu and Usagi, there's a new protagonist, Ryuji, who uses a wheelchair.

It Begins....

Oct. 2nd, 2025 08:48 am
lydamorehouse: (ichigo freaked)
[personal profile] lydamorehouse
 Tonight there will be two events for Gaylaxicon. First is the private dinner with the GoHs and the concom who have agreed to come. This will not include Nghi Vo, I presume, since she is very COVID cautious and I don't believe she is eating with others. Which is a shame because, for me, the fun part of the private GoH party is getting to see what people are like when they're not "on." But, I will get to meet her at the reading at Dreamhaven, which follows all of this at 7 pm.

Then, of course, tomorrow things kick off.

I don't know how I'm feeling. Am I ready? Am I ready for this to be over? Am I excited? I think I'm all the things at once, if I'm honest. I'm pretty sure that my family is ready for convention season to be over. Everything around here has been Gaylaxicon, Gaylaxicon, Gaylaxicon.

I had my phone chat with Ashley from AccentCare, the folks I'd be working with if I end up doing hospice volunteering. I almost missed it because my phone continues to be weird, but at about half past the hour she was meant to call I emailed her to tell her that my phone has been flakey and I am still around if she has time. I have been priming our fence to be painted, so I had nothing else going on until it was time to go fetch Shawn from work.

Ashley called less than a minute later. We had a nice chat. I was very clear with Ashley that I'm really uncertain if I have the emotional resiliance for this job as I feel things very deeply, and she had no advice for me other than to acknowledge that the work is hard and not for everyone. However, they are very aware of the emotional strain and so in-person hospice workers are only assigned at MOST two families, whom you see through their entire journey, including following up with the family after the funeral, etc. She seemed excited when I mentioned my wife in passing because they are always looking for under represented/marginalized folks to pair with like, though she did note that a lot of their patients/clients are Hmong. So, I'd be expected to be culturally sensitive, which honestly, made the job more interesting, in a way. (Though suddenly I'm looking at Duolingo wondering if I can learn a more useful language besides Japanese.) Similarly, she brought up that they also serve Jewish families, etc., as I think a lot of their volunteers do it for Jesus. (I was clear on my application that I'm not Christian.) I was glad to hear, too, that they will provide training, though it sounds like it's hours of online videos. Still, I'll take what I can get. 

Next steps seems to be meeting in-person and getting started on background checks, etc. We arranged to meet at my favorite coffee shop at 9 am next Thursday. Wish me luck? (I'm still not sure I'm up for this, but I would like to see if I can do it.)

Shawn and I talked about it a bit last night. She noted that, selfishly, she's hoping that if I get some of this training it will help when the time comes for her elder brother Keven. (Who has, by the way, responded really well to treatment. There's noticible shrinkage of his cancer, but it's all, in many ways, just about extending life and quality of life.) I thought about that, too, and I've been thinking, of course, of Terry Garey who I haven't seen since she moved to the Edina place, years ago. I think I'm hoping that learning more about this will make it easier for me to just make time to see Terry. I send cards and think about her a lot, but I feel really badly that I haven't been to see her in so long. I know that Laramie has been hired to care for her, so she's not alone--but Terry was one of my writing mentors.

Ayway, that's my own stuff that I need to work out, certainly before taking on this kind of volunteering for others.

Let's see, other news.

Yeah, so I alluded to the fence above. We had a new fence put in a couple of years ago and we have needed to either seal/stain it or paint it and I am FINALLY getting around to that. It's been good, actually, to have something physical to be doing, given how anxious I get sometimes around whether everything will work out (or not!) with Gaylaxicon. 

I'll try to remember to post some pictures when I'm done with it. We are painting it emerald green again. The problem is the posts. When we first got the original verson of this fence the wood was so BLAH and already painted an ugly brown. So we painted it a cheery green to spruce things up. Now that we could have a plain wooden fence, the posts are all dark green. We're sort of stuck with green unless we wanted to paint the whole thing a different color. And, part of me wants to keep the memory of our old neighbor, from 1990-whenever we were first painting it--looking across at it, not knowing I was in the yard, and muttering, "Those Micks will paint ANYTHING green!"  Which. Do people still use that slur? Also, I'm Polish, Czech and English? (That last one being the direct opposite of Irish.)  Shawn's family is pretty green--though, despite the whole Shawn Patricia, Keven Kerry, and Gregory Bryce (and her father being Kerry Patrick) the Rounds seem to mostly consider themselves Germans from Russia, at least in terms of the food they eat. Anyway, I still think that whole interaction was kind of funny, so I'm going to keep painting ANYTHING green. :-)

Hope you're all doing well, and maybe I'll see some of you local folks at Gaylaxicon this weekend!

I will, of course, try to do a con report, though given my schedule it may happen after the fact. I'll take copious notes, however!

been a minute

Oct. 1st, 2025 10:58 pm
jazzfish: Pig from "Pearls Before Swine" standing next to a Ball O'Splendid Isolation (Ball O'Splendid Isolation)
[personal profile] jazzfish
So, I'm not journaling. I am doing quite poorly, I think. Mostly this is a response to Lack Of Job but partly it's that I have spent an inordinate amount of time playing Silksong, a video game that came out somewhat unexpectedly at the beginning of September. Which is also something of a response to Lack Of Job.

Continuing to apply for both GIS and tech-writer jobs; so far I've seen a grand total of three responses, since May. Not great.

Anyway, I'm currently in Duluth MN at a GIS conference, in the hope that there will be Networking Opportunities. Not that I know how to Network; I am notoriously bad at being social with strangers even at SF/gaming/etc conventions.

In other fun news, the connector port on my phone died last Monday (while I was spending the day accompanying Mya for minor outpatient surgery), and the connector port on my tablet died on the way to Minnesota. The phone I can at least charge magnetically; the tablet is as good as dead until I can get it fixed. Bah. Never rains but etc. I would consider replacing my phone but a) money, and b) it is the Correct Size of phone (iPhone Mini) and they don't make them like that anymore.

Finally getting around to reading Neon Yang (fka JY Yang)'s Tensorate novellas. I forget who recommended these, or if it was anyone specific vs a general "hey these exist and are pretty good". They are in fact pretty good: Chinese-inflected fantasy, magic that feels magical, excellent prose and broad but quite believable characters.

Onward. Sleep and then more sociable.

Reading Wednesday

Oct. 1st, 2025 06:22 pm
troisoiseaux: (reading 3)
[personal profile] troisoiseaux
Kicked off spooky season with Bored Gay Werewolf by Tony Santorella, which is mostly a satire of "alpha bro" influencer mentality with the wolf metaphor made literal: Brian is a gay 20-something college drop-out with a budding drinking problem and, oh yeah, also a werewolf; at loose ends, he falls under the sway of Tyler, a trust fund wanna-be entrepreneur/life coach/cult leader with big ideas for a werewolf lifestyle start-up, The Pack (Tee Em). The parts that weren't satiric were a bit twee (maybe your real pack was the friends you had all along!), and I accidentally didn't pay much attention to the one subplot that turned out to set up the novel's punchline: ... ) But it was a fun read!

Have also just started The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson; two chapters in and I already love Eleanor Vance, and especially her dynamic with Theodora. They'll be fine, right? :) Nothing bad is going to happen to them. :)

(On a very different note, I was sad to hear that Jane Goodall has passed, although she had 91 years of incredibly well-lived life. She was my childhood hero; I read everything about her work studying primates and in conservation that I could get my hands on, and my library's copy of her book My Friends, the Wild Chimpanzees more times than I can count.)
oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)
[personal profile] oursin

What I read

Finished The Literary Life of Rebecca West, felt a bit meh about it.

Also finished The Military Philosophers, which is more of Nick Jenkins being in the backwaters of the War while other people die in theatres of war or he remembers dead people. Isobel (wife) actually got to be on stage and have a few lines.

Then, largely because there had been some discussion on [personal profile] troisoiseaux's DW about his works, picked up Dick Francis, Longshot (1990), as it happened to be in a conveniently accessible spot on my shelves; and then went straight on to Come To Grief (this features Sid Halley, who is I think the nearest Francis came to a series protag) (1995); To the Hilt (1996); and 10lb Penalty (1997), which were adjacent. This kind of back to back read really shows up an author's recurrent tropes (quite apart from the hosses and the hero getting painfully done over), like, the mostly quasi-father-son relationships, the quietly competent women minor characters etc etc. The last of this run was the weakest - it's a bit odd, to say the least, to have a plot which is all about politics and Parliamentary ambitions which is rather, um, coy, about actual political allegiances. Francis is very more-ish, though. Interesting that these do not all of them bring things to a tidy conclusion. (I wonder if this is the sort of thing that disappoints the once-a-year on the beach reader?)

Preordered and turned up yesterday, JA Jance, The Girl from Devil's Lake (Joanna Brady, #21) (2025), which, alas, does one of my least favourite crime novel tropes: serial killer with substantial portions of narrative being in their POV.

On the go

Have just picked up, because I felt like it, okay? Rebecca West, This Real Night (1984)

Up next

No idea.

Wednesday reading

Oct. 1st, 2025 01:47 pm
asakiyume: (Em reading)
[personal profile] asakiyume
Thanks to [personal profile] osprey_archer's Newbery project, I got out The Flying Winged Girl of Knossos (thanks for catching that [personal profile] light_of_summer!) originally published in 1933 and reissued in 2017 by Betsy Bird, who's served on the Newbery Committee, reviewed books for Kirkus, blogs about children's literature, and has in fact written her own middle grade novel (Long Road to the Circus --I haven't read it).

It's easy to see why Betsy Bird and [personal profile] osprey_archer loved this story: it's great fun and excellently told. I loved it too. The author (Allena Best, writing under the pseudonym Erick Berry) was entranced with ancient Minoan culture, and that love shines through on every page. And in Inas, the daughter of Daidalos (she's genderswapped Icarus for Inas), she's got a great heroine. Who dives skillfully for sponges? Inas does! Who is the best bull vaulter? Inas is! Whose hang glider experiment leads to realization that flying into the wind works better than flying with it? Again, Inas!

The authorial voice is definitely not contemporary, but it's lively and fresh. Every now and then there's something about people's races or features that's winceworthy, but mainly the 1930s-ness of it wasn't intrusive in a negative way.

Tangentially, I loved this description of archaeologists, from the author's introduction: "Then in our own time came the archaeologists, those magicians who build authentic history out of lowly potsherds." Magician archaeologists.

I also read a hilarious short story about the foiling of a racist: "Supply and Demand," by [personal profile] f0rrest. Why yes, his user name is my IRL last name, but we are not related in any way. We stumbled upon each other quite by chance.

In "Supply and Demand" a pushy racist is hoisted by his own petard, his petard in this case being his successful participation in capitalism: he ends up supporting and promoting what he despises. I loved the hapless narrator (a young employee at a big-box home goods store) and the digs at retail training scripts. I will also offer a content warning, though, because the racist dude says alllllll the negative things you can think to say about "those people," as he calls them. There are no slurs, and he never specifies exactly who comprises "those people," but you may not feel like imbibing his nonsense, even if it's to see him taken down. His vituperations are pretty hilarious though, e.g, his rant about the historical Santa Claus (and later, his praise of Santa Claus as a hard worker up there at the North Pole).

Anyway, if you want to see a racist taken down in an unusual way, give it a try. It's about 7,000 words.

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