holli | Reading

Things I’ve Eaten Recently

So, uh my theory about getting a good chunk of reading done on the train? Correct. Except, that as a reward for actually finishing a book I allowed myself one new book, Winter's Gift by Ben Aaronovitch because previous experience says that a new book in the Rivers of London series will absolutely not make it to the TBR shelf. This was a particularly egrarious example of that as I started reading it with my dinner on the train, read 3/4 of it before I got home to Inverness and then finished it on the sofa that night. I really enjoyed it actually, it's been a long time since I read Whispers Underground, at least ten years if not longer as I read it out the library when I still lived in Stirling, and I don't have my own copy so I couldn't go back and refresh my memory but I like FBI agent Kimerley Reynolds, she's a very different character in a very different context and I enjoyed the very different experience she's having discovering the wider demi-monde of the US versus the one that Peter has in the first few books. I get the impression that Aaronovitch is really enjoying that too, much as with The October Man it feels fresh as though he's writing these novellas as a break from the confines of the plot and worldbuilding of the main series.

After the success of that, I'd hoped I'd shaken loose my reading ability and tried to read a couple of the books I have lurking half-read to no avail. So experimentally I headed to the libary, and picked up a few books from there, theorising that both books I've finished this year were bought and started pretty much immediately and I wondered if I could side step that with libary books. I got a couple of novellas - a re-read in the form of Network Effect by Martha Wells, cos of all the Murderbot chat recently: my thoughts on the trailer? Well I thought the casting of Murderbot itself was a bit unadventurous when it was announced but the trailer itself looks promising and the little bits of Murderbot out of armour that we see looks like Skarsgård understood the assignment so I am cautiously hopeful - and Masquerades of Spring which is another Rivers of London, though this one's a historical, though it feels like he just plonked Thomas Nightngale down in the middle of a (queer) Wodehouse pastiche set prohibition era New York. It didn't entirely work, but it was a pretty good time, as long as i didn't think too hard about anything. ( minor spoilers ) I'm also very glad I read this after Winter's Gifts as otherwise there's quite a few references re in world US magic that would not make sense if I hadn't had the recent reminder.

Also as I've been finishing off my thread organising - every time I think I'm done I find more, I've filled three boxes now, bobbined and organised - and getting back into my jumper I've continued prioritising listening, mostly just keeping on top of regular podcasts but a few others. A Radio 4 book of the week Language City by Ross Perlin that was fascinating made me want to track down the full book, and A Year to Change Your Mind by Dr which I got bored with half-way throught the 'year'.

What I’m Munching On At the Moment

I'm currently reading the other book I got out of the library which is Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World by Anthony Sattin. I'm only about 70-odd pages in so no strong opinions yet, but it's pretty interesting so far.

There's a new series of Curious Cases so that's my current crafting listening. Dara O'Brien is good - it's a different vibe with him, not in a bad way, just different - but I still miss Adam Rutherford. I could listen to Hannah Fry talk science until the cow's come home, that hasn't changed. (I'm also currently watching the new series of The Secret Genius of Modern Life that she also presents and that is very much a show that knows it's audience, every episode she takes apart the item their investigating to explain how it's put together - sometimes that's a screwdriver job sometimes it involves a sledgehammer, her delight in the process is infectious.)

Future Snacking Plans
So I'm thinking about trying to alternate reading new-to-me books and doing re-reads, maybe doing the same with other kinds of media too? I'm thinking maybe the blockage I've been labouring under is as much because I've gotten fixated on working through backlogs of things, and re-reading/re-watching/re-listening for pleasure has gone by the wayside these last few years. (After all, I had no difficulty at all making time for my Forest 404 re-listen or last year's re-read of the Imperial Radch books.)

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Nadine Shah - Stealing Cars

gentlyepigrams

Books
The Kiss Quotient, by Helen Hoang. Genderflipped Pretty Woman but with Asian Americans and autism. It was this author's debut and I found it fun enough that I'll read the next one in the series.
The Murders in Great Diddling, by Katarina Bivald. It's a cozy British village murder mystery with a Scandi protagonist. I liked how it spun out and enjoyed the characters, so I'm down for the next one.

Music
Library Tapes & Julia Kent, Escapism & Shinya Sugimoto & Jeremy Young with Julia Kent, Total Fiction. I listened to both of these along with their predecessor albums by Kent solo that I'd already heard while writing. I feel like I'm going to have to listen to them repeatedly to pick out what her collaborators brought to the albums. I did find them enjoyable enough to go back, though.

Current Music: Silence is golden.

skygiants

The City in Glass is I think my favorite of Nghi Vo's full-length novels so far, for the reason that it seems to feel the least need to actually force itself to take the shape of a novel. The description calls it "a brilliantly constructed history and an epic love story;" I don't quite think it's either of those things, though the first more than the second.

In the first chapter of The City in Glass, the seaside city of Azril, which the demon Vitrine loves, is destroyed, very thoroughly, by angels. Why? That's not what Vitrine cares to talk about or to remember. What she wants to remember is the city in its heyday, the place and the people, and that's what she spends the first half of the book doing: wandering through the ruins, accumulating bits and pieces of memory, grieving and gradually building a determination to see the city become itself again, somehow.

One of the angels is stuck there too, because she cursed him. She is not happy to see him and does not want him there. Though she is glad that this means that he's suffering horribly! Fringe benefit! Nonetheless. This of course is the dynamic that the description calls "an epic love story" which I think does not really accurately convey ... the vibe .......... the thing that is going on here certainly does contain elements of both 'enemies' and 'lovers' but is definitely messier than I think the standard image that this phrase conjures.

Anyway. In the second half of the book, people do come back to Azril, and it becomes a city again. Vitrine, frankly, has mixed feelings about this: no city can ever be the same city twice, and she's still yearning for Azril-as-it-was, which is neither possible to have nor reasonable to want. Nonetheless. The new city of Azril is shaped by both Vitrine and the angel, and reshapes them in turn, as they reshape each other, in various painful ways. And, in the end, Vitrine finds something to love forever!

Weird book. Vivid, evocative, odd. Not really shaped like a novel, and, I think, better for it. I read it in a single night, and had some feelings about the various shapes of its grief.

musesfool

Mets are 18-7 with the best record in baseball right now, and they walked off the Phillies in 10 this afternoon (MARTE PARTAY) to complete back to back sweeps of the Cards and Phillies AND they went 7-0 on this homestand!!! And Soto hasn't even started hitting yet! The vibes are real and they are spectacular! I think the Mets may be good at baseball, actually, this year. Who'da thunk it?

*

Here's today's poem:

Let Me Be As a River
by Kirun Kapur

nothing but motion, muck
mouthed, mud hearted, brackish,
all dirty at the lip, with rise and fall
that exposes hull-gouging stones, no
curiosity about source, no knowledge
of destination, just willingness
to bear anything right to the end,
silver as fish skin, one hour
wrinkled, two hours smooth,
duck-fouled, trash-choked, silent
then gossiping under a full, red moon;
let me be dredged
when the leggy girls go missing,
used for a slow cruise, churned
for speed, reeking of the unseen
ocean or veiled in the scent
of pine trees, a fog in the head
then clear as the tip of a pin,
enough beauty to draw blood,
enough anger to strip the banks,
enough fullness to carry
the pleasure boats high.

*

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: Septet in E-flat Major - Mikhail Glinka

jennaria

...a sad lack of vampires or ghosts, but New Orleans at least provided plenty of ambiance and beignets to make up for it.

( Things I Learned About New Orleans (besides just 'yup, as pretty as expected'): )

Did not eat my weight in beignets (although not for lack of trying), but I did discover what the heck a po'boy is (a sub where the protein, e.g. shrimp, fish, chicken, has been fried - delicious!). Don't know if I'll ever watch INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE, but I'd go visit New Orleans again.

hannah

It was Killer of Sheep yesterday, and Sinners today. One hard to find movie in a small four-screen independent theater, one playing just about everywhere - even taking special screening formats into account - in a multiplex on IMAX. One very quiet, one with a lot of sound. One trying to show you something so ordinary it becomes extraordinary, one trying to tell you a roaring story that takes you all the way out of yourself.

Two movies about being Black in America. Two movies that articulate the directors' intended visions as perfectly, forcefully, and gracefully as you could ask for. Two movies about the sublime power of music and its ability to transfix and transform and take you someplace else, wherever you happen to be. Two movies that each have a scene of people dancing that communicates the central thesis of the whole movie for the length of the song. Two movies with killing and death, and blood flowing freely. Two movies where there's barely the idea of a way out of a suffocating life, much less a means to achieve it. Two movies that capture a specific time and place, looking carefully at the community being portrayed, whether it's in the Mississippi Delta or Los Angeles' Watts neighborhood - it's the same struggle all over, no matter the time or place, to find a little bit of freedom and feel a little bit of joy.

It made for a wonderful double bill, just as I'd hoped they would.

Current Mood: rejuvenated
Current Music: nothing now

umadoshi

PSA: I believe this promo ends tonight, but as of now, Penzeys is offering "16.8% Off most everything!" in advance of tariff-related price changes.

(Will now be the time I cash in my already-purchased gift cards?

Pros: Penzeys; probably the lowest price we'll see for a long time; my free trial of a US-based package-forwarding service has ended, so I need to cancel that soon but haven't yet, so shipping would still be very painful but better than the horror of the straight-from-Penzeys cost.

Con[s]: we have many, many spices at this time. Also, it's been an expensive couple of weeks in general. But the shipping cost is unlikely to get any better in the foreseeable future, and again, we already have the cards. So. We'll see.)

My number of open tabs has crawled back up over 1750. This is...not ideal.

My brain is very scratchy and unfocused. Do I have three deadlines in the five weeks or so? I sure do. Is my progress so far limited to a dent into one of the three? Uh-huh. (To be fair, I don't even have the materials for the third yet. But the first and second are due a day apart, which thankfully doesn't happen very often. A hazard of multiple clients!)

I think that's all I've got right now.

Current Mood: stressed

oursin

What I read

Made a rather slow progression through Li, Wondrous Transformations, and finished it, a little underwhelmed somehow. Some useful information, but a fair amount of familiar territory.

As a break, re-read of KJ Charles' Will Darling Adventures, Slippery Creatures (2020), Subtle Blood (2020) and The Sugared Game (2021), as well as the two short pendant pieces, To Trust Man on His Oath (2021) and How Goes the World (2021).

Then - I seem to be hitting a phase of 're-reading series end to end'? - Martha Wells, All Systems Red (2017), Artificial Conditions (2018), Rogue Protocol (2018) and Exit Strategy 2018), and the short piece Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory (2020).

Also read book for review (v good).

Literary Review.

On the go

Martha Wells, Network Effect (2020).

Up next

Predictably, Fugitive Telemetry and System Collapse.

Also at some point, next volume in A Dance to the Music of Time for reading group (At Lady Molly's).

Still waiting for other book for review to turn up, but various things I ordered have turned up, so maybe those.

rydra_wong

"You Wouldn't Steal A Gender" and "I Would Definitely Steal A Gender" badges, in exactly the font you'd expect.

vass

Books
Very little progress.

Crafts
Dyed a 36x45cm piece of white 14 count aida cloth purple, for Secret Reasons. And now I know that I can get a reasonable result doing that with a large storage box and hot water, winging the quantity of Rit dye. Shenanigans may result.

Food
My parents' Christmas present to me, a new frying pan, just made it to me today. I haven't test-driven it yet, but it looks nice. And like it should heat up easier than the cast iron one my stove can't really handle, much as I love it.

Weather
Finally cooling down. Good.

Other
One of the Discord servers I'm in had a PowerPoint night. I didn't present, but I contributed a very unserious set of slides for someone else to present sight unseen. This was a heap of fun, and I recommend this form of grownup show and tell to other nerds. I am already working on my next such document.

In a different Discord, a discussion of linguistics prompted me to make a series of noises which in turn made Dorian give me a very funny look. If you would like to provoke yourself to make a series of noises that will make your cats give you funny looks, here is the chart.

vass

What if, when you went to a nonprofit/charity/etc website because you want to donate money to them, you could add ?nomarketing on the end of the link, and it would bring up a barebones version of their donation page that would JUST LET YOU MAKE A SINGLE DONATION.

It would not sign you up to their newsletter.
It would not give them permission to contact you.
It would not ask you to share their link on social media.
It would not ask you how you found them.
It would not show you a thank you letter written in the first person by a composite version of one of their clients.
It would not show you tragic and distressing photographs or descriptions of the horrible things happening to the people you HAVE ALREADY DECIDED TO GIVE MONEY TO HELP.
There would not be any animated banners or carousels.
There would be no popups.
Required fields on the form would only be information they genuinely cannot accept your money without, and they would have checked both the law on what information they actually need and their assumptions about names and titles (e.g. not everyone has a first name, not everyone has a last name, not everyone's name is short, some names have spaces or apostrophes or hyphens, not everyone belongs to one of the four genders Mr, Mrs, Miss, and Dr.)
It would not give you a menu with three choices: make your one-off donation a monthly amount, make your one-off donation a monthly amount but more money, or (deselected and in a duller colour) "keep your one-off donation" before letting you donate.
Or after you donate.
Or both.

I understand they have a job to do, but do they understand how aversive this experience is? It is the biggest thing about charitable giving that I dread, when I have enough to give. "Hi, I'd like to give you some mon-" "CAN YOU GIVE US MORE? CAN YOU GIVE IT EVERY MONTH? KIDS ARE DYING, VASS, ANIMALS ARE DYING, THE PLANET IS DYING, MOREMOREMOREMORE CAN WE TEXT YOU, CAN WE CALL YOU UP AND TELL YOU ABOUT THE DYING KIDS CAN YOU TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS TO GIVE US MONEY TOO-"

If they made it less stressful, I would not have to psych myself up to do this. And by definition this is how they are treating people who already want to help them.

rydra_wong

https://whatthetrans.com/compilation-of-protests-against-the-supreme-court/

oursin

Happy birthday,

damnmagpie!

gentlyepigrams

This month's Tasting Collective dinner was at Via Triozzi, which is on Lower Greenville. I liked the idea of the menu but the execution was disappointing.

The first course was a celery and fennel root salad, which would have been better if there had been more of the sweet gorgonzola with it. Second course was a fancy mussels in sauce with spicy chickpeas, which I thought was the best thing on the menu (and the only item from the regular menu). The third courts was a mushroom pasta. The pasta was fine; the mushrooms were amazing. The fourth course was a roasted chicken ravioli. We thought it was a little weird because there was chicken outside the ravioli, and little bits of crispy chicken skin. Not bad, just a little strange. Apparently it was based on a comfort meal for one of the chefs. The dessert was olive oil cake with whipped cream and macerated berries, and it was fine but the olive oil cake was dry, which ... I'm not sure how you do that.

Like the Goldie's trip we did a while ago (which I failed to write up at the time), this was mostly a tasting menu of new ideas, and not yet refined by the chef into menu quality. Based on the bar, the service, and the one dish from the regular menu, I'd try it again, but not with the enthusiasm that I tried Rye.

Current Music: Silence is golden.

settiai

I was feeling nostalgic, so I pulled up Road Not Taken and played it for a little while earlier. It took a bit to get back into the swing of things, but I started to remember some of the hidden details and combinations after a while.

It's been ages since the last time I played, and I'd forgotten just how much I love it. It's so helpful if I want to turn off my brain for a little while. I can't believe it's been over a decade since it was first released.

Current Mood: nostalgic

musesfool

Today's poem:

I Have News for You

There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don't interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.

There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures unrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings

do not send their sinuous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you—
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.

--Tony Hoagland

*

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Mets vs Phillies on tv

jjhunter

Let's take a breath for poetry. It is April, and as good a time as any for a collaborative poetry fest. Please find below a starting stanza or two of a brand new haikai (what's a haikai, you ask? Think extended haiku: alternating stanzas of 5-7-5 and 7-7). Comment with a following stanza to build on that seed. Someone (most likely me) will respond with another stanza, and so on and so forth throughout the day.
===

daffodil focus
bell song, valdrome, pheasant's eye
live stained glass glory

_

likeadeuce

DC, Open (2844 words) by likeadeuce
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: Challengers (Movie 2024)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Art Donaldson/Patrick Zweig, Art Donaldson/Original Female Character(s), Patrick Zweig/Original Male Character(s)
Additional Tags: Tennis, Missing Years, watches and other status symbols, Patrick Zweig's POV, tashi haunting the narrative
Summary:

Patrick is trying to get his tennis career together when he runs into Art again at a tournament in Washington, DC.

Are they so back, or is it so over?

rydra_wong

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/04/protests-erupt-across-the-uk-after-supreme-court-ruled-against-trans-rights/

Many many pictures.

Also, more protests yet to come, apparently, with ones scheduled for Oxford and Cambridge.

oursin

So today was my physio let's see how you're doing assessment, at the different health centre -

- which I was in a bit of a swivet about getting to, because the obvious straightforward route is the longest, and there are shorter ones but these involve a tangle of residential streets -

- not to mention, whichever way you slice it, the road winds uphill all the way, yea, to the very end, because the health centre is bang opposite Parliament Hill.

Nonetheless, I found a route which seemed doable, which said 24 mins (and that was not actually starting from home base but from the road by the railway line), which I thought was possibly optimistic for an Old Duck such as myself, but mirabile dictu it was in fact just over 20 but under 25 minutes, win, eh?

And took me along streets I have seldom walked along since the 70s/80s when I was visiting them more frequently for Reasons.

Had a rather short but I hope useful meeting with the physio - some changes to existing exercises and a new one or two.

Thought I would get a bus back as I had had time to check out the nearby bus stops, and there was one coming along which according to the information at the stop was going in a useful direction.

Alas it was coming from the desired direction, but still, cut off a certain amount of homewards slog.

Profile

holli

December 2018

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Page Summary

glinda - I was waiting for Wednesday to post this and then missed it
gentlyepigrams - Weekly media report - for the week ending 2025 04 23
skygiants - (no subject)
musesfool - all dirty at the lip
jennaria - Far off places, daring sword-fights...
hannah - Art in conversation.
umadoshi - Time-sensitive Penzeys PSA | Technically an update, I suppose
oursin - Wednesday wishes Will S a happy 461st birthday
rydra_wong - Relevant, interests
vass - Things
vass - Daydream
rydra_wong - UK: compilation of upcoming trans rights protests
oursin - (no subject)
gentlyepigrams - We ate at: Tasting Collective's Via Triozzi dinner
settiai - Road Not Taken
musesfool - in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha
jjhunter - Haikai Fest: "'The World's Most Popular Spring Flower'"
likeadeuce - (no subject)
rydra_wong - If anyone could use a morale boost
oursin - Physio reprised

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