aamcnamara

(This silly site would not let me fit both of their whole names in the title. It's Jo Walton and Ada Palmer.)

Review copy provided by the publisher. Also I've been friends with both authors for a good long while.

Which makes this a very weird book for me to read, honestly, because I met both Jo and Ada through SFF fandom and conventions, through all writing and talking and thinking about genres, and so a lot of the first third of this book is, for me, "the obvious stuff people talk about all the time." Well, sure. Because Jo and Ada are people, and I am around them talking about this kind of thing all the time (or at least intermittently for more than twenty years in one case and more than fifteen in the other, so it adds up), so naturally their points of view on genre theory are in the general category of "stuff I would logically have been exposed to by now." It's a bit "Hamlet is just a string of famous quotes strung together," as reactions go: kind of the cart before the horse. And it means that there are a few things that are in the category of "oh right, there's the thing I always disagree with Jo about; look, she still has her own idea about it rather than mine, go figure." This is to be expected given the long and winding discussion it's been, but it makes it a bit harder for me to say useful things about what it will look like to most readers.

So the first third of the book is the part that most obviously fits the title--it's the section that has the largest-scale thoughts about the nature of genre qua genre. The second third was the most satisfying to me: it was thoughts on disability and pain. I think a too-casual reader might mistake it for random padding to make this book book-length without requiring Jo and/or Ada (some of the sections are co-written and some are written solo by each author) to write more entirely new material. But no. Absolutely not. The way that Jo and Ada process disability is strongly shaped by each of their perspectives as SFF writers and readers, and the way they process SFF is--sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly--shaped by their lived experiences as disabled people. Some of our personal stories are about the project of science fiction and fantasy. Jo's and Ada's are. And they're useful--powerful--to see on the page like this. This is where knowing people for a quite long time doesn't give me a "yes I have already been here" reaction, because three disabled friends do not talk about disability and personal history and its place in the speculative project in the same way as two of them would write about it for a general audience. It's a view from a very different angle, which is great to have. The last section is more miscellany, still related to the title but more specifics, less sweeping theory. It's labeled craft, and this is true, but in a broad sense--there are pieces about The Princess Bride and optimism and censorship as well as about protagonists and empathy in a structural sense.

I wonder if people who come to this book from reading mostly Ada rather than both but by the numbers more Jo would see how Jo has influenced Ada's prose voice in the joint pieces. For me, the stylistic commonalities with Inventing the Renaissance were really striking, but if you'd come directly from reading that I wonder how much you'd be saying, oh, that's got to be Jo Walton because it's not really what I'm used to from Ada Palmer solo! Co-authorship is an interesting beast, and I feel like there's a difficult balance here that's partially achieved by having pieces by each person solo as well as the two together. I'm not sure I can immediately come up with another thing like it that way.

sartorias

One thing that one has to accept with Dickens is that his heroines will be long-suffering, and that men will decide what's good for them, for which they will be grateful.

Given that, I think this the best of his books.

It has the fewest Victorian-plot coincidences, and it has the most and best swathes of bitingly funny satire of soi-disant high society. How the Lammle marriage comes about, and how each of them, in becoming a couple, brings the other down from spoken moral rectitude to the barest pretense of it is as horrific in a quiet way as all the rantings, drownings, and so on.

Bradley Headstone is a remarkably believable depiction of the stalker boyfriend who can't seem to stop himself from sinking into obsession--and violence. Eugene Wrayburn is a fascinating, witty guy for an idle dog.

There are some bits of brilliance--the depiction of the riverside society; Mr. Boffins' educational plan; the Veneering parties.

There were signs of actual personality on Bella's part (when we meet her, she is mourning over being forced to wear black because the guy she was engaged to--whom she had never met--had drowned, which pretty much has finished her socially. Why shouldn't she mourn?) even if the machinations behind her romance are quite wince-worthy.

Dickens also tries to make up for comfortably unexamined antisemitism, and the subsidiary characters are wonderfully memorable.

Altogether it's a real page-turner. Glad I reread it.

jazzfish

*mindblown.gif*

Okay, so, clefs. If you've seen piano music you know how it's got two staffs, one for the right hand / high notes and one for the left / low notes. The staffs have a squiggle on the left end of them: the high one has a sort of loopy thing and the low one has a sort of 7 or 2 with a couple of dots. These are clefs, specifically treble clef and bass clef. They tell you what pitch the notes on the staff represent.

Technically the symbols are a G clef and an F clef: the spiral at the centre of the treble squiggle is always on a note that's a G, and the two dots on the bass are always on a note that's an F. Technically if you put the symbols on other lines you'd indicate different pitches. In practice, these days nobody does that, and 'G clef' and 'treble clef' are synonymous, as are 'F clef' and 'bass clef.'

Violin music is written in treble clef. Cello music is (mostly) written in bass clef. The range of notes you can easily play on those instruments more or less coincides with what you can easily write in those clefs without egregious use of extra ledger lines for notes above/below the staff.

There's also another clef symbol. The C clef symbol looks like a capital B, and the middle of the two humps is always on a note that's a C. It's used to indicate two uncommon clefs. Alto clef gets used for viola music and nothing else as far as I know, and tenor clef gets used for cello music that's off in the upper registers of the cello. Alto clef is... honestly I don't know what its relation to treble clef is, other than "lower," I think it's a sixth lower? Maybe a seventh? I don't read treble clef very well so I don't really know.

Tenor clef is a fifth higher than bass clef. This makes it really convenient for cello music. The strings on a cello (or violin or viola) are a fifth apart, so if you're used to reading bass clef for cello then tenor is the same thing just one string up.

A viola is a fifth lower than a violin, and an octave higher than a cello. If you put 'octave strings' on a viola, it plays the same notes as a cello. A tenor viola is an octave lower than a violin, and a fifth higher than a cello.

Which means it can natively play music in tenor clef. Hence the names.

Here endeth the classical music neepery for the day.

jazzfish

( violistic nattering )

shadaras

mm, in service of Remembering To Post, a bit from the thing I'm working on right now:

Quail and Olive’s does serve both quail and olives, but turns out to be named for the proprietors, a married Orcish couple who tease them about being on a date until Rhei waves their hands and says “We’re friends” in an exasperated tone that, wonder of wonders, convinces them it’s true.

Later, most of what Mouse remembers is that Rhei keeps pushing more onto Mouse’s plate and hands them the wrapped bag of leftovers—“to share with your father”—because they had ordered far more than it was possible for two people to eat. Mouse doesn’t remember the taste, just the warm light and the way Rhei banters with Olive and smiles at Mouse, including them even though Mouse barely speaks aloud, too overwhelmed by the richness of the food and the way they’re assumed to be a person and not a slave.

Rhei leads them back through Adrium’s streets, calling a glowing orb to their hand to light their path. At Mouse’s start—Adrium is not a city of mages but a city of merchants—Rhei says, “Elf blood,” rather apologetically. “El sighs over the odd array of spells I’ve learned to cast, but light is useful and not too hard.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Mouse says, because Rhei seems to expect some response.

“If you want to learn, you can. Not from me,” Rhei adds a moment later, laughing. “I’d be shit at teaching magic. But Tsarra—she’s the magic-user on retainer at the House—or El probably could teach you the basics. Don’t worry about it right now, there’s no rush, but— It’s an option, should you desire it.”

Desire is something too big for Mouse to consider right now. They’ve desired little things in the past—clean new clothes, a full night’s rest, a piece of cake—but the only big thing they could think of is the freedom they have just begun to attain. They nod, say nothing, and let the strange feeling of possibility bubble through their chest. It feels like anxiety and anticipation, and Mouse can’t look too closely at anything but the longing to see their father again.

(otherwise: work is work, school takes too much time and is sometimes very visibly "we need to say you've been in this building for X number of hours" more than "we have specific things to teach you", and Daylight Savings Time stealing an hour throws off my bodyclock so much.)

boxofdelights posting in

wiscon

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bloodygranuaile

I read Mansfield Park sometime a million years ago, by which I mean in college, but now I have a beautiful shiny Pepto-Bismol pink copy with a peacock on it, so I had to read it again. I read it four chapters a week as part of an online readalong, up until this weekend, when I decided that I was so tantalizingly close to the end that I would just finish it up before I had to start Bleak House. (I think I am doing too many nineteenth-century lit readalongs.)

A lot of people don’t like Mansfield Park very much because the heroine is very quiet and shy, which I think is bogus. I like Fanny Price; I do not so much like Edmund Bertram; he is a bit of a drip. This is a common enough fault in Austen heroes, but I suppose they have to be sort of dumb for plot reasons in order to be kept away from our heroines for the length of a story (except Henry Tilney, who is kept away via other means). In this case, Edmund, in a chronic case of opposites attracting, falls for a lively and materialistic young lady named Mary Crawford, and then spends a lot of time agonizing that she makes snarky comments and possibly won’t want to become a middle-income clergyman’s wife out in the country. This is very distressing to Fanny, who is in love with Edmund but would never say anything because she is a poor cousin whomst was brought in out of charity and has had it beaten into her head every minute of every day that she should be grateful and never ask for anything.

I hadn’t read this book in so long that it was basically like reading a brand-new Austen for me. I couldn’t remember what was going to happen with all these secondary characters for the life of me, and knowing Fanny and Edmund would get together at the end doesn’t count as remembering; we all know that’s how these types of stories end. Apparently some people are upset that they get together because they are cousins but I think this was normal at the time and they are clearly well suited for each other because they are both upstanding if somewhat judgmental country mice. Anyway, I don’t read Austen for the romance; I read it for her excellent taxonomy of Types of Guys, and Mansfield Park has Types of Guys galore. Aunt Norris is possibly the most memorable example of a Type of Guy (women can be Types of Guys too), being someone who always has big ideas about what other people can do with their money and time and resources, but who always totally would be involved/generous/etc with her own resources too but tragically can’t because reasons. Hating on Aunt Norris is one of the most fun parts of reading this book.

Some of the morals on display are a bit old-fashioned but they make sense in the context of the time, and if you grasp why these things are important (which may take some research), then it becomes full of scandalously bad behavior and is all very exciting! I had a blast rereading it!

asakiyume

We eat rice almost every night, so I buy it in 20-pound bags--Goya medium-grain rice. For us, it's pretty much as good as Japanese short-grain rice and less expensive. (Sometimes we have different rice--basmati or jasmine or wild rice, or any style of brown rice, but generally it's white Goya medium-grain rice.)

I like the look of the bags, and I thought it would be fun to use an empty bag as a bag ... and finally I got round to making one:

Here's the front, with a fold-over flap

woman modeling a long-strapped bag made from a 20-lb Goya rice bag

And here's the back

woman modeling a long-strapped bag made from a 20-lb Goya rice bag

Might take it grocery shopping with me next time I go!

Current Music: Gitkin: Night Tripper

bloodygranuaile

OK, so there’s one Wayward Children book written every year, basically, and published at the top of the year, and I am actually more than a full year behind. This is, somewhat paradoxically, the fault of a very kind local bookseller, who informed me that the Wayward Children series is actually an adult series and not YA, which promptly Ruined It until I checked Goodreads and it is indeed labeled YA. A good story is a good story but there’s a certain amount of “spelling things out explicitly” that is fine for stories aimed at younger audiences but makes me feel talked down to if I think the story is actually aimed at adults.

Anyway, having re-convinced myself that Wayward Children is YA as befits its ease of reading, ages of the protagonist, general coming-of-age themes, and tendency toward plainly stated moral insights, I checked out Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear, the tenth installment. This one follows a Russian orphan named Nadezhda, who was born missing most of one arm, and who managed to have basically a perfectly fine time at the orphanage in which she was raised. At nine years old, she is adopted by an American family on some sort of Christian missionary trip and taken to Denver, where her new parents are–not cruel, really, they are in fact painstakingly nice, but in a very specific way where they’ve got a lot of unexamined assumptions about how things are supposed to work and do not seem to be very interested in Nadya’s specific and individual thoughts and feelings about anything except as they conform to their own preconceived notions of poor foreign orphans who ought to be grateful they’ve been rescued. They get her a prosthetic arm, which she hadn’t asked for and didn’t think she needed, and that ends up really being the inciting incident for Nadya falling into a turtle pond and becoming a Drowned Girl.

Like all the Wayward Children books, this book has Themes, and an impressive number of them for a book of less than 150 pages. The most obvious one is the disability justice one, where Nadya doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with her until other people make it very clear that they think that she can’t possibly be happy with herself. Bodily autonomy, and children’s lack of autonomy in general, is also a big one, and very explicitly bound up in a critique of certain types of grown-ups for whom children are a prop in having a particular kind of correct life. The Christian evangelical flavor of Pansy and Carl’s approach to adoption cannot be overlooked, but it’s just a particularly intense version of a widespread enough failure to see children as individual people. The most jarring moment of the book for me was a brief dip into Pansy’s POV, where she thinks “She’d tried so hard to understand the girl,” and realizing the it was entirely believable that Pansy really thought that. She’d tried to guess and reason from the information she had according to the logic and assumptions she thought were reasonable about the Way Stuff Worked, but what she hadn’t done was ask, and it had never occurred to her that asking could be a way of obtaining information about somebody, and eventually even if she did ask, she was teaching Nadya not to bother answering honestly because she got so visibly upset and disappointed if the answer wasn’t the one she was expecting–i.e., she was never actually asking a question, she was looking for validation. And lots of people go through life relating to other people in that way and wondering why they’re so disappointed in everybody.

Anyway, Nadya eventually goes to live with the turtles in a magnificent underwater city full of Drowned (but very much alive) humans and talking turtles, and her prosthetic arm is eaten by a giant frog, and the river water provides her with a new arm only when she actually wants it, but even this arm is also an obligation, because the river’s gifts are never free. Unsurprisingly, this eventually results in her getting pulled back into our world–at her previous age, after growing up and getting married in Belyyreka, which must have been a pretty nasty shock–and that’s how she’s going to end up at Eleanor’s, even though we haven’t gotten quite that far yet. It’s been so long since I’ve read the earlier ones of these books that I can’t remember if we’ve met Nadya yet (we’ve met another Drowned Girl, but her story was different and didn’t have turtles). Anyway, I’m looking forward to the next one!

skygiants

Sometimes you read a book at exactly the wrong time, and you're like 'god this stupid big fat fantasy novel. Why are you six hundred pages. Why is everybody Sexy. What's the point of you. I'm tired' and sometimes you read a book at exactly the right time and you're like 'thank god! actual worldbuilding!! somebody had a good time getting weird with this! please tell me more about how weird you're getting!!' and I think I could easily have gone either way on Tessa Gratton's The Mercy Makers depending on the four books I'd read just previous as well as the time of the moon. But as it happened, at the point I read it I was really hungering for something, ANYTHING that felt like it actually cared about depicting a unique and distinctive society with characters that felt like they actually belonged in that society, and The Mercy Makers gave me that in spades, so I ended up really high on it! I had a great time! Please understand that I mean it lovingly when I say that it felt like a visual novel high fantasy dating sim!

-- this is a bit disingenuous for me to say, I haven't actually played more than a bit of any of the long visual novel high fantasy dating sims I'm thinking of, but I have read extensively through

alias_sqbr's write-ups of them and the book profoundly reminded me of something like [

alias_sqbr's description of] My Vow To My Liege, where a player character has to play a lot of really dramatic political games to decide the fate of the kingdom, while surrounded by Hot People, and different elements of the plot will play out depending on which Hot Person she's closest to --

Okay, so we are in a fantasy empire that is built around a central religion that values Balance and forbids Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery and Medical Techniques. Our heroine Iriset, of course, is an atheist who's wildly gifted with Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery and Medical Techniques, and is also the daughter of a criminal mastermind. Iriset and her father have carefully crafted a secret identity illusion so that everyone thinks that someone else is the Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery Mad Scientist Genius and that the famous criminal mastermind's daughter is just a nice girl who's not really involved, so that when her father eventually gets arrested -- as indeed is the inciting incident of this book -- Iriset can hopefully stay free and rescue him instead of also getting arrested herself as a famous magical heretic.

For some reason, however, after her father's arrest, Iriset -- whom everyone knows is a criminal heiress but, once again, thinks is a nice and sweet criminal heiress who's not really involved, rather than an amoral heretic mad scientist -- is sort of non-consensually invited to become one of the handmaidens of the Emperor's hot sister as part of complex political schemes, so she spends the rest of the book in the palace, where she meets the following hot people:

- the Emperor, an earnest and well-intentioned young man who is really devoutly religiously dedicated to maintaining the Balance of the Status Quo
- the Emperor's sister, Iriset's boss, whose job as per official tradition for the Emperor's sibling is to be a priestess who placates the religion's divine devil-figure by going and being really sexy at a shrine every day, but has political visions and ambitions for the Empire far beyond her Sexy Role
- the Emperor's fiancee, a very sweet princess from neighboring island kingdom, who is a fundamental element of the Emperor's sister's overarching plans for an empire that expands through marriage alliance instead of conquest
- a mysterious, suffering, untrustworthy fairy sort of creature who has been publicly imprisoned behind the Emperor's throne for the past several hundred years and is now just sort of a standard part of the decor

In addition to these obviously romanceable characters, Iriset also has an existing criminal boyfriend on the outside of the palace who she's attempting to get in touch with and coordinate with about Operation Rescue Her Dad, and she also meets a palace maid and a fantasy-nonbinary magical architect (uses one of several archaic gender forms) who in the dating sim version of this would probably be secret or hidden routes.

The first, like, two hundred pages or so of this six hundred page book are mostly just Iriset wandering around the palace, trying not to be too obviously a heretical mad scientist, building various schemes for father-rescue and trying not to get distracted by much she would quite like to bang any or all of these hot people. And, again, at another time I might have gotten bored, but at this point in time I was really just enjoying the slow rich worldbuilding. It's weird! It's interesting! Everyone always wears elaborate masks and facepaint except for the foreign princess who's confused by the whole system, and we've reinvented a different kind of four humors system so everybody's like 'well of course she would act this way, she's got too much ecstatic force in her system', and the political conversation about marriage reform refers to the law that forbids conquered peoples within the Empire from marrying within their own ethnic group for a certain number of generations, and there are several archaic genders that are no longer used and people have chat about how actually we should bring them back because two is an imbalanced number and four would be much more balanced -- what I'm trying to get at is that it feels like the people in this book think in ways that are shaped by their world, and not by ours. The plot in its actual happenings is constantly contriving itself so that Iriset will be pushed into a position where, eventually, she'll have to Rebel Against Empire, but the thought patterns that get us there feel distinctive and grounded in the world and setting that Gratton has built.

But eventually, of course, we are going to have to get some plot and it is obviously going to have to involve Chekhov's Heretical Plastic Surgery and messy identity porn. ( the rest is spoilers )

bloodygranuaile

March’s Discworld reread was Equal Rites, which is both a Discworld book and an entry in one of my most lifelong favorite subgenres of fantasy, Little Girls Rebelling Against Gender Roles. After nearly 40 years of this and seeing how little progress has been made in those 40 years I don’t love this quite as much as I did when I was myself a Little Girl with mixed feelings on how I was supposed to Rebel Against Gender Roles (the good and proper kind of Rebelling Against Gender Roles for girls in the ‘90s was to do sports, which I wasn’t interested in; the incorrect kind was to want to be a Catholic priest, which I was). It’s less complicated when reading pseudo-medieval fantasy novels where the things they are trying to do are not really choices for either gender, like being a knight or, in this case, a wizard.

Overall this is still very much an early Discworld book and it shows–it’s shorter, more episodic, and a little more ‘80s, having been published the same year I was born. But it’s still very funny, full of groanworthy puns and comically unflattering character descriptions. Most importantly, it introduces us to Granny Weatherwax, one of the all-time iconic characters of the Discworld, and her concept of “headology,” which I occasionally forget is not a real word outside of Discworld fans and have been known to use like I think people should know what I’m talking about. Anyway, despite being a little clunky at times, the gender politics of this one are reasonably solid, dunking on both gender essentialism and the devaluation of traditional “women’s work” (it’s amazing how many people manage to fumble one or the other of these). I had fun revisiting it.

asakiyume

I was so shocked to hear you have left us,

minoanmiss. You are a fountain of art and fic and joy at making babies smile. You've sent me poems, you've sent me stickers that have decorated letters I've sent people. When the pandemic hit and I posted about the Japanese amabie, you made a fridge magnet of one. She's on my fridge above your Minoan dancers.

photo of fridge magnets

Do you remember when you sent me a postcard for a pine tree, and I took it there?

You made magic happen.

I will think of you every time I see someone making a baby smile. I will talk to that pine tree about you. Maybe it has your forwarding address, and I can send you a postcard.

bloodygranuaile

As part of this winter’s “learn to darn” project I checked out a book that Andrea had gotten out of the library after she returned it, because I like to have a book about things when learning a new skill, even if it’s the sort of skill where books aren’t the best resource–and for mending, I have to admit the superiority of video tutorials. The book was Skye Pennant’s Well Worn: Visible Mending for the Clothes You Love, and it turns out she also has a channel full of video tutorials, so I could use both. Yay!

This book was great for learning more about mending, like, contextually, and seeing lots of pictures of what it could look like and learning to think about how to approach specific mends. It is organized largely by type of clothing and type of damage, which is very useful–I could go right to “sweaters” and “socks,” and see what she recommends as the best type of darn for fixing underarms, or elbows, or heels. I also learned what some of the different types of stitches are called, which is a thing I’d managed never to learn before even on the occasions I had learned the stitches themselves. This all made it much easier and more helpful to figure out what to look for when looking for video tutorials on Youtube, which I did have to do for my actual mending because I did find myself having a fairly difficult time trying to translate the still images of the various steps of stitching into motion, especially with the horizontal image flip I had to mentally do given that I have a different dominant hand than the author.

At the end of the day I am not sure I’m hugely on the visible mending train specifically since my wardrobe tends to be pretty monochromatic, but it’s nice to have options and it’s good in the learning phase to not be focused on the idea that if a darn is visible then I have somehow failed. If the hole is gone then I have not failed. Maybe one of these days I’ll be brave enough to darn black socks with red thread, but in the meantime, my favorite black sweater is nice and discreetly Scotch darned and I can wear it again, so overall I’m feeling pretty pleased about the whole endeavor.

asakiyume

In 2018, Wakanomori and I went for the first time to Colombia. We went just as an election was happening. We were in Bogotá, and we ended up walking through rallies for both candidates--the progressive ex-guerrilla and the conservative son of privilege. We ended up with some of the flyers for the progressive guy--they were bright and optimistic, and I made them into postcards:

We didn't know much about Colombian politics at the time, but we hoped he'd win:

But he lost. The conservative candidate, Iván Duque, won.

But then in 2022, the progressive ex-guerrilla won. And that's Gustavo Petro, who's in office now. So you know ... change does happen.

( My microfiction for today was partially inspired by the memory of picking up those flyers. )

Current Music: Grupo Bahia: Vamo' a levanta'

mrissa

New story out in Clarkesworld: Person, Place, Thing! This was such a fun voice for me to fall into writing, and it ended up surprising me with how many Muppet references it wanted. Usually I am opposed to "I am but a servant of the muse" claptrap from writers, but when that muse is demanding aliens who have very earnestly learned from mid-to-late period Henson...well, what am I to do?

mrissa

Joan Coggin, The Mystery at Orchard House, Why Did She Die?, and Dancing With Death. So I finished this series all in one gulp, which I wouldn't have done if a friend had not lent me the last two, but...they did, so here we are, no regrets whatsoever. They're very much on the light end of mystery, and Lady Lupin remains funny and generally quite kind. I don't know that they're going to change your life except for giving you some pleasant hours in your life, which...sometimes is the kind of changing your life a person needs right now.

Kate Emery, The Dysfunctional Family's Guide to Murder. This is a YA mystery from an Australian writer, and while I don't know a lot of Australian teens, the voice feels authentic to me. Another on the light end of mystery, successfully so.

Jamie Holmes, The Free and the Dead: The Untold Story of the Black Seminole Chief, the Indigenous Rebel, and America's Forgotten War. I really appreciated having a lot more about this period filled in. I feel like the way that American schools taught the Trail of Tears, at least when I was in school and I strongly suspect now, sort of...had it happen in isolation. Did not encourage people to do the math and realize that the Southern whites who were "defending their way of life" had in many cases had that land and that way of life for less time than I've lived in the house I live in now. The relationships between Black Americans and Native Americans have been complex and interesting, and a book that focuses on some of that also does a better job of decentering whiteness than many histories, so hurray for that.

S.L. Huang, The Language of Liars. Discussed elsewhere.

Fatemeh Jamalpour and Nilo Tabrizy, For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran's Woman-Led Uprising. Oof, the timing on this one. Well. It's an earnest account from two writers, one of whom was on the ground for the events described. This is very recent history--2022-24 or thereabouts--so if you don't have any familiarity with Iran outside that period you'll probably want additional reading before or after reading this, but I think after would be fine, I think you could learn about these brave women now and get more of their backstory later with no problem.

Judy I. Lin, Song of the Six Realms. This was secondary world YA fantasy that frankly did not stick with me particularly well. There was a girl musician swept away to a magical realm with peril and stuff, and it was fine, it did just fine at that, but I wasn't really driven to seek out more of the author's work.

C. Thi Nguyen, The Score: How to Stop Playing Someone Else's Game. For my group of friends I am very much toward the "non-game-enthusiast" end of the spectrum, so one of the things that was interesting to me about this book is that he could be very clear about what things appeal to game enthusiasts in ways that I could understand even if I didn't share them. But I think the parallels and cross-connections with games and metrics, and how to keep that from growing toxic, is some really useful stuff, worth thinking about.

Karen Parkman, The Jills. This was a very readable thriller that ended up mildly disappointing to me in the end. The protagonist is a member of the Buffalo Bills American football team's cheerleader group, the Jills (if you're like me you did not know that they had a special name), and another of her cheerleader friends goes missing. She has dealt with missing loved ones before because her sister has struggled with addiction, which makes for compelling backstory in a thriller context. However, I felt like several of the plot twists were not very smart ("what if your stalker actually helps you out and is not the real problem" no stop that), and the ending pulled its punches both on dealing with the toxic aspects of professional football cheerleading that it had started to gesture at and at making the protagonist deal with her personal life choices and history.

Cat Sebastian, After Hours at Dooryard Books. I am a tough sell for romances, and I don't want to say "but this isn't a romance" just because I like it. It is, it is a romance between two men in 1968. It is also an historical novel about grief. It is both, it can be both, and it is very beautifully both. It also involves raising a baby and learning to be a family. It is also about moving forward from things you are not proud of without denying they've happened. I love this book. I am so glad about this book. I picked it up because two different friends said it was just what they needed right now, and it was just what I needed too.

sartorias

Yu know the world situation, which adds its mite ( for definitions of "mite,"watch out for falling pianos) to the stress closer by. The worst of it is feeling helpless to do much besides donate money to the outer stresses and listen as I can to the inner. Which I have been doing, in spite of our income dwindling. But this is a common plight.

My brain did go into revolt, and a bit of OT3 fantasy comedy of manners unspooled itself over the past month and a half or so. I wouldn't mind that happening again because it keeps me busy--besides various books and TV shows. But none of those have lit my fire quite as much as having a brainmovie again.

I do have Katherine Arden's latest here, and it looks good. But it's called The Unicorn Hunters and appears to be based on the tapestries so splendidly displayed in New York. Very handsome tapestries, but whew. Those boys strutting their tight breeches and little short jackets and perfect hair were a bunch of brutes. The tapestries illustrate an exercise in human cruelty, and the news is kind of overflowing with that, so I'm waiting for the right mood for the book.

II've done some rereads, and some new reads, I continue to listen to audiobooks while trudging my daily steps.

Oh! edited to add: I watched the Plympics ice skating and ice dancing. Some really lovely stuff, though they do seem to be obsessed with the quad spin.

elisem

Whoops! It was John Henry Newman's birthday the other day, and I missed the opportunity to post this again. It can be sung to at least one version of John Henry, though things may have to be adjusted here and there. Here ya go:

When John Henry Newman was an Anglican

He went down to the Holy See

Said I wanna see the Pope 'cause I got a crazy hope

That they're gonna make a Catholic out of me, Lord, Lord,

They're gonna make a Catholic out of me.

When John Henry Newman was a young man

He wrote about a Kindly Light

He called it "Pillar of Cloud," and if you sing it real loud

It'll lead you through the gloomy night, Lord, Lord,

It'll lead you through the gloomy night.

John Henry Newman was at Oxford

He was a deacon and a curate too

He got to be a vicar but decided it was quicker

To scribble down a tract or two, Lord, Lord

To scribble down a tract or two.

John Henry Newman up at Oxford

At St. Mary's chapel on the side

He told them in a lecture that it was his conjecture

The middle way was fine and wide, Lord, Lord

The middle way was fine and wide.

John Henry Newman got in trouble

Reading monophysite lore

"This bit about "securus" -- it doesn't reassure us

I think I better think a little more, Lord, Lord,

I think I better think at Littlemore. "

John Henry Newman had a buddy

Father Ambrose, he liked Rome

They liked St. Philip Neri, so in the vale of Mary

They built themselves a home sweet home, Lord, Lord,

They built themselves a home sweet home.

John Henry Newman got converted

And it made him feel alive

But he lost a few subscribers the day he swam the Tiber

On 9 October '45, Lord, Lord,

On 9 October '45.

John Henry Newman bought a ticket

John Henry Newman went to Rome

But though he got ordained, he did not remain

He packed his bags and headed home, Lord, Lord,

He packed his bags and headed home.

John Henry Newman went to Oscott

To have a little toast and jam

And in a blaze of glory to build an Oratory

They later moved to Birmingham, Lord, Lord,

They later moved to Birmingham.

John Henry Newman took exception

To what he heard Kingsley say

Newman said "I showed ya ; I wrote an Apologia

And it's Pro Vita Sua all the way, Lord, Lord,

It's Pro Vita Sua all the way."

John Henry Newman got promoted

And they gave him a big red hat

They put it on his head, and everybody said,

"Mercy, will you look at that, Lord, Lord,

Mercy, will you look at that."

When John Henry Newman was an old man

He was a little on the quiet side.

He got a telegram from heaven on August eleven

And laid down his missal and he died, Lord, Lord,

He laid down his missal and he died.

John Henry Newman in his coffin

On compost did recline

He said "I have chosen, by completely decomposing,

To leave not a relic here to find, Lord, Lord,

I will leave not a relic here to find."

There. That was written by me some while ago -- September 20, 2010, I guess it was. Enjoy!

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Reading

Trace Elements: Conversations on the Project of Science Fiction and Fantasy, by Walton & Palmer

Wednesday reading--Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens

tenor viola followup

various session options

it's the vibe of a sunday six even if it's more than six sentences

Registration is open

In which Fanny is plagued by Types of Guys

Goya rice bag bag

Turtles all the way down

(no subject)

You can't do that, it's against the lore

miss you

This winter's cozy project

live to fight another day...

I speak fluent human

Books read, late February

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Cardinal John Henry Newman filk, repeated

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