Raddysh reaches in and pulls on Wood
Nov. 15th, 2025 07:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
musesfoolWhen I was a kid, the Italian bakery in my neighborhood had all the usual types of fancy butter cookies and pignoli and tricolor cookies etc. but they also had a selection of less fancy cookies - like sesame cookies and S cookies and anginetti etc., and what we used to call chocolate sprinkle cookies, which may have started out similarly to butter cookies but were sturdier/crumblier, piped in a swirl, and covered with chocolate sprinkles. That bakery closed a long, long time ago (though you can still get frozen pasta with their name on it at the supermarket), and I have been trying ever since to recreate those cookies, with little success.
Today I baked the butter cookies from the Dolci cookbook (pic), though I didn't bother with sandwiching them with jam, and instead added chocolate sprinkles, and 1/2 tsp almond extract in order to try to recreate the taste of those old cookies. They are pretty close! They might need to be slightly less sweet, and probably cook a couple of more minutes, but they're the closest I've come so far. Also, I had the correct piping tip AND you don't chill the dough until after you pipe the cookies so it's a much easier proposition all around.
I also made the King Arthur small batch focaccia, but it never rises as much as they say it should during proofing. Still rises nicely in the oven and tastes great though.
The timing all worked out really well, even though I didn't plan ahead. Sometimes I get lucky since timing is generally the hardest part of cooking for me.
Ha! The announcer was like, "low event hockey, with only 5 shots" and now the Blue Jackets are getting a penalty shot! Igor stopped it though.
*
Today I baked the butter cookies from the Dolci cookbook (pic), though I didn't bother with sandwiching them with jam, and instead added chocolate sprinkles, and 1/2 tsp almond extract in order to try to recreate the taste of those old cookies. They are pretty close! They might need to be slightly less sweet, and probably cook a couple of more minutes, but they're the closest I've come so far. Also, I had the correct piping tip AND you don't chill the dough until after you pipe the cookies so it's a much easier proposition all around.
I also made the King Arthur small batch focaccia, but it never rises as much as they say it should during proofing. Still rises nicely in the oven and tastes great though.
The timing all worked out really well, even though I didn't plan ahead. Sometimes I get lucky since timing is generally the hardest part of cooking for me.
Ha! The announcer was like, "low event hockey, with only 5 shots" and now the Blue Jackets are getting a penalty shot! Igor stopped it though.
*
smallville vid: clark x alicia - run away to mars
Nov. 15th, 2025 04:00 pmdevinwolfi posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
viddingTitle: clark x alicia - run away to mars
Fandom: Smallville
Music: Run Away to Mars - TALK
Duration: 3:20
DW | Tumblr | AO3
( Read more... )
Fandom: Smallville
Music: Run Away to Mars - TALK
Duration: 3:20
DW | Tumblr | AO3
( Read more... )
A few cool things
Nov. 15th, 2025 04:27 pmoursinThe Spanish government has granted citizenship to 170 descendants of volunteers in the International Brigades in recognition of their fight against fascism.
Go them!
The daughter of a Manchester man who volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War has reflected on his "incredible feat of solidarity" as her family is set to become Spanish citizens.
***
‘We don’t even know all of what we have.’ Howard fights to preserve Black newspapers.
“We don’t even know all of what we have,” Mr. Nightingale marvels.
The basement is a trove of artifacts, including old editions of Black-owned newspapers that tell the life of Black Americans during the 19th and 20th centuries. Articles cover slavery, lynchings, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights era. The archive project, which is part of the university’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, is bringing to life the faces of yesterday by merging them with the digital world of today. This way, the hope is, they won’t be lost ever again.
***
Disentangling obscured women: One Artist – ‘Mary Katherine Constance Lloyd’ – Dismembered To Create Two: or The Importance Of Biography:
Googling ‘Mary Katherine Constance Lloyd’ led me to the ArtUK page for ‘Mary Katharine [sic] Constance Lloyd’, which included birth and death dates and a short biography[i]. It was then only the work of a moment to discover on Ancestry that the woman with the given dates was not a Mary Katherine Constance Lloyd but a Katharine Constance Lloyd. How peculiar, I thought, and looked again at the ArtUK page. It then seemed obvious that the paintings displayed were unlikely to all be by the same hand. Four, including the one described by Birrell in the chapter on ‘Mary’, might be classed as ‘impressionist’, while the others were formal portraits of worthy 20th-century gentlemen, attired in various robes of office.
A little more online research established that there was, indeed, another artist with a similar name, Mary Constance Lloyd, and that a succession of art reference works had carelessly blended their two lives together – to create ’Mary Katharine Constance Lloyd’. I suppose it is a measure of how little importance is attached to the lives of such women artists that in 50 years no author had bothered to research either subject ab initio – but, when compiling a new biographical dictionary or making a footnote reference, had merely copied the – incorrect – information.
Don't think I shall be rushing to read that book on women artists and still life cited in the opening of the post!
***
We are always up for some toad-related phenomena around here: Newly identified species of Tanzanian tree toad leapfrog the tadpole stage and give birth to toadlets. How about that.
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Nov. 15th, 2025 10:48 amskygiantsI am extremely belated in actually posting about Taiwan Travelogue -- I know that I read it before June, because in June was when I was talking about it with recognito and he said 'oh I think it's an Utena riff' and I was like ?? ?!?! !!!! aj;dlkfjs;l of course it's an Utena riff. (recognito's post about it here.)
Which is of course a very unfair way to begin this post because it's many other things besides an Utena riff- primarily of course a story about colonization and power relations, as told through gender and appetite. Taiwan Travelogue is a book that presents itself as a translation from the Japanese into Taiwanese -- which I of course then read translated into English, another layering into the text -- of a Japanese writer's journal of her time in Taiwan, 1938-9. She's there to promote her book, not to promote the project of Japanese Imperial Expansion, of which she certainly does not really approve! and which she is not going to propagandize, except in the ways that she can't help but propagandize it! and she wants to experience the real Taiwan, most notably Real Taiwanese Food. Aoyama's major passion in life is eating, she is a tall young woman with a huge appetite, and the tour guide experiences that have been prepared for her are not sufficient to her desires.
Enter Ong: Aoyama's new entry point into Taiwan, a quiet young woman from a mysterious background who, unlike her other assigned translator, is willing to not only take Aoyama off the beaten path to Unapproved Culinary Experiences but also to provide additional culinary experiences at home in her lodgings. Whatever Aoyama hears about, she wants to eat. One way or another, Ong makes it happen. Ong, it turns out, is the only person Aoyama's ever met who can eat as much as Aoyama can; Aoyama feels a deep connection to her, is desperate for some sense of genuine reciprocal emotion, but no matter what she tries, moving from their employer/employee dynamic into something genuine seems impossible. From Aoyama's point of view, she's always reaching out, and Ong is always slipping away, putting up a barrier. As Ong sees it -- well, whatever she's trying to tell Aoyama, Aoyama does not understand.
The metaphor of colonialism as played out through the inherent power imbalances of a failed romance is not a new theme and plays out more or less as expected here, though it's relevant that this is a book about A Lesbian: one of the things that the text wants to explore I think is how being, in your own mind, in the position of an underdog and an outsider makes it harder for you to see the ways and situations in which you are neither of those things. But really what I found most striking about the book is not the central relationship at all, but the food. The book has a lot of dishes in it, and every dish has a context and a history: the ingredients come from somewhere, the way it's made has a certain history to it, the way it's made in one location differs from the way it's made in a different location, and Ong always takes care to explain why. The portrait of the impact that colonization by Japan has had on Taiwan is largely drawn through detailed descriptions of changing recipes. The book made me very aware of how hungry I am for material culture in my fiction! ... and also it just made me normal hungry.
recognito and he said 'oh I think it's an Utena riff' and I was like ?? ?!?! !!!! aj;dlkfjs;l of course it's an Utena riff. (recognito's post about it here.) Which is of course a very unfair way to begin this post because it's many other things besides an Utena riff- primarily of course a story about colonization and power relations, as told through gender and appetite. Taiwan Travelogue is a book that presents itself as a translation from the Japanese into Taiwanese -- which I of course then read translated into English, another layering into the text -- of a Japanese writer's journal of her time in Taiwan, 1938-9. She's there to promote her book, not to promote the project of Japanese Imperial Expansion, of which she certainly does not really approve! and which she is not going to propagandize, except in the ways that she can't help but propagandize it! and she wants to experience the real Taiwan, most notably Real Taiwanese Food. Aoyama's major passion in life is eating, she is a tall young woman with a huge appetite, and the tour guide experiences that have been prepared for her are not sufficient to her desires.
Enter Ong: Aoyama's new entry point into Taiwan, a quiet young woman from a mysterious background who, unlike her other assigned translator, is willing to not only take Aoyama off the beaten path to Unapproved Culinary Experiences but also to provide additional culinary experiences at home in her lodgings. Whatever Aoyama hears about, she wants to eat. One way or another, Ong makes it happen. Ong, it turns out, is the only person Aoyama's ever met who can eat as much as Aoyama can; Aoyama feels a deep connection to her, is desperate for some sense of genuine reciprocal emotion, but no matter what she tries, moving from their employer/employee dynamic into something genuine seems impossible. From Aoyama's point of view, she's always reaching out, and Ong is always slipping away, putting up a barrier. As Ong sees it -- well, whatever she's trying to tell Aoyama, Aoyama does not understand.
The metaphor of colonialism as played out through the inherent power imbalances of a failed romance is not a new theme and plays out more or less as expected here, though it's relevant that this is a book about A Lesbian: one of the things that the text wants to explore I think is how being, in your own mind, in the position of an underdog and an outsider makes it harder for you to see the ways and situations in which you are neither of those things. But really what I found most striking about the book is not the central relationship at all, but the food. The book has a lot of dishes in it, and every dish has a context and a history: the ingredients come from somewhere, the way it's made has a certain history to it, the way it's made in one location differs from the way it's made in a different location, and Ong always takes care to explain why. The portrait of the impact that colonization by Japan has had on Taiwan is largely drawn through detailed descriptions of changing recipes. The book made me very aware of how hungry I am for material culture in my fiction! ... and also it just made me normal hungry.
Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson
Nov. 15th, 2025 10:07 amlightreadsBrown Girl in the Ring
4/5. A story of family and crime and survival in a sort of post apocalypse Toronto, all flavored with afro-caribbean mythology.
Of course I’d heard about this book for years and years before reading it. What I heard: great writing, rich own voices fantasy, just plain good. Correct, correct, and correct. But I spent most of this book occupied by its exploration of intergenerational trauma. Four generations, from an infant to an old matriarch, and how they fail their children and how they don’tand how useless men are. This book lets it all be terribly messy and textured and real, in that way where mothers are incredibly sympathetic and deeply unsympathetic at the same time. That’s good stuff.
I am worried about the quality of the audiobook narration on other books of hers, though, which I hear lean even more heavily into the dialect.
Content notes: Violence, torture, possession, organ harvesting.
4/5. A story of family and crime and survival in a sort of post apocalypse Toronto, all flavored with afro-caribbean mythology.
Of course I’d heard about this book for years and years before reading it. What I heard: great writing, rich own voices fantasy, just plain good. Correct, correct, and correct. But I spent most of this book occupied by its exploration of intergenerational trauma. Four generations, from an infant to an old matriarch, and how they fail their children and how they don’t
I am worried about the quality of the audiobook narration on other books of hers, though, which I hear lean even more heavily into the dialect.
Content notes: Violence, torture, possession, organ harvesting.
[dreamwidth/dreamwidth] ee7ebe: Bump js-yaml from 4.1.0 to 4.1.1 in /api
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multiple sclerosis and now lupus
Nov. 14th, 2025 11:26 amthistleingrey"Stanford Medicine scientists tie lupus to a virus nearly all of us carry," i.e. Epstein-Barr.
See also the paper in Translational Medicine (paywalled).
See also the paper in Translational Medicine (paywalled).
Van Gogh and the End of Nature
Nov. 14th, 2025 11:02 ampsocopteraVan Gogh and the End of Nature, Michael Lobel, 2024 art history/art criticism nonfiction. I don't read a lot of nonfiction - I don't even have a tag for it - but I had recently been to a show of the Roulin portraits at the MFA, and I had seen some of his stuff in Paris, and I heard about this book and thought it sounded interesting. And it was! I got to see lots of images of Van Gogh works I had never seen before and learn more about his historical/technological context and consider the relationship of industry and nature in his art in a whole new way. Good stuff. Possibly I should read more nonfiction.
Snake-Eater
Nov. 14th, 2025 10:46 ampsocopteraSnake-Eater, T Kingfisher, 2025 fantasy novel. Similar to her horror - a woman, a life event, a house, family history, alarming events - but maybe tipped toward fantasy rather than horror, tonally. I continue to like this book and will read it as many times as she writes one; I particularly enjoyed this one because we got to spend time in the desert and it appealed to the little part of me that's always missing the West.
Spoilers: ( Read more... )
By coincidence, my next book is looking to be Motheater, which would have made a nice double-feature review, but it's long enough that I didn't want to wait to do this one until I finished it for fear of losing track of this one.
Spoilers: ( Read more... )
By coincidence, my next book is looking to be Motheater, which would have made a nice double-feature review, but it's long enough that I didn't want to wait to do this one until I finished it for fear of losing track of this one.
Thinking women
Nov. 14th, 2025 02:51 pmoursinI don't think we actually have to claim she invented science fiction, because to the best of my recollection and without going and looking it up, various people in the C17th were doing similar things. Also, honestly, why can we not claim women among the Great Eccentrics of History? What we like about Margaret Cavendish is that she appears to have heartily embraced this identity rather than having it plonked upon her by a judgemental world: The Duchess Who Invented Science Fiction.
Though I am slightly muttering under my breath about the women of the time who were also Doing Science and Being Intellectual in a rather less flamboyant fashion e.g. Lady Ranelagh, and indeed women in the Evelyn circle....
***
Quiet persistence and a lucky combination of first husband dying after a few years of marriage and sympathetic second husband (see also Mrs Delany): Mary Somerville – the first scientist - she taught Ada Lovelace, plus she lived to be 92. (You know, I am sorry for those women in science who died tragically young, but we hear a lot less about the ones like Dorothy Hodgkin who had a long and spectacularly effective career in crystallography while suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and actually GOT THE NOBEL. I also mark her up for persistence in humanitarian concerns.)
***
Okay, Amy Levy did die, by her own hand, distressingly young: but her personal archive, up till now in private hands, has now been acquired by the University of Cambridge Library: The archive of enigmatic 19th-century writer Amy Levy has a new home at Cambridge University Library
you're keeping calm, you're aiming higher
Nov. 13th, 2025 08:20 pmmusesfoolToday at work, they announced that we will be getting a COLA, retro back to July 1! My boss also floated a potential promotion for me (really, the work would mostly stay the same, but the title and money would be better) for after the new CEO is in place. We'll see if that ever happens. It would be cool if it did, but I won't hold my breath.
I thought I had other things to say, but I fell asleep on the couch after I logged off work and now I'm all fuzzy-headed.
*
I thought I had other things to say, but I fell asleep on the couch after I logged off work and now I'm all fuzzy-headed.
*
A certain concurrence here....
Nov. 13th, 2025 07:32 pmoursinNoted as of interest a day or so ago, ‘I don’t want anyone to suffer like I did’: the intersex campaigners fighting to limit surgery on children - am a bit gloomed to think that this is Still An Issue because I look back and surely this was brought to wider attention, oh, at least twenty or years ago?
Ah. A little delving shows me that the person I remember as doing pioneering research on the subject, published around the late 90s, and also involved in intersex activism, has become A Figure of Controversy and I think we probably do not mention them.
But quite coincidentally this emerged today: who, according to work done by A Very Reputable Scientist sequencing DNA which does appear to be his, had a Disorder of Sexual Development (as intersex conditions are sometimes termed)? Did Hitler really have a ‘micropenis’? The dubious documentary analysing the dictator’s DNA.
Here is a thoughtful and nuanced piece by an actual scientist taking issue with some of the more tabloidy accounts A slightly different take on the news that Hitler’s DNA reveals some genetic anomalies. The most interesting thing to me is that history has a profound capability for irony.
That Hitler himself had a condition that was discovered and named by a Jewish man who also held some responsibility for the scientifically misguided murderous policies of the Nazis is at least a reflection that history is often imbued with a sense of complex and confusing irony.
State of the Hobbies, Mark 2
Nov. 13th, 2025 08:07 amosprey_archerIt has been some time since I’ve given a hobby update! In the months since my previous post, you will be glad to know that I’ve kept cross-stitching.
In fact, I’ve been enjoying cross-stitching so much that I’ve finally managed to set up a morning tea routine: get up around 6:30, make tea, put one (1) chocolate-covered hobnob on my favorite little plate, and then cross-stitch till 7:15 when it’s time to get ready for work. Life is so much better when I get up in time for a gentle on-ramp to the morning, and yet until now I haven’t been able to convince myself to actually get out of bed in time.
I finished my Halloween cross-stitch in time for Halloween (want to find a better frame for it though), stitched a tremendously round little red Christmas bird as a break (amazing how fast you can cross stitch when the whole thing is just one color!), and am now working on a little Victorian Christmas tree which is for my ornament exchange with my friend Caitlin.
This little Christmas tree is WAY more involved than I expected, so I probably won’t finish my little cornucopia in time for Thanksgiving. But I have acquired the cornucopia pattern and will at any rate have it ready for NEXT year.
Other patterns on deck:
The absolutely adorable Puss in Boots from Veronique Enginger’s book of fairy tale cross stitch.
A Tiffany window inspired pattern of birds and bamboo and flowers from a book of Art Nouveau cross stitch. (I have the floss for this one but have been momentarily stymied in finding the right color fabric.)
And I’ve promisedtroisoiseaux a Nevermore, garnished with ravens…
I’m also taking a two-part embroidery class. On Monday I started my jellyfish, and next Monday I will hopefully finish the jellyfish. The backing fabric is a dark navy blue so the tentacles are pink floss, and the top is going to be gold and turquoise and dark royal blue beads.
Book projects: since the previous post, I finished the Newbery project, and then just this weekend finished the Postcard Book project! (Jules Verne was the last Famous Author postcard from the set.) Which means that I COULD start the E. M. Forster readthrough...
But I’ve decided to hold off until after Christmas, because I just had a brilliant idea for a Christmas project: a picture book Advent calendar! I have MANY Christmas picture books on my list this year, so I’ll get them from the library, wrap them up in brown paper (or newspaper or whatever paper I have available), and then select a surprise book each night to read.
I probably won’t end up posting about most of them because I often don’t have a lot to say about picture books. Although maybe a weekly round-up with a line or two about each book?
At the moment I’m actually a bit short of books (I thought the list was AMPLY long, but some of the books are only available in the archives etc.), so I may have to poke around to find a few more. We shall see!
And of course I AM planning some December archive visits to enjoy those Christmas books! In fact, I believe I can schedule an archive visit next week (not for Christmas books of course; a firm believer in saving Christmas season till after Thanksgiving), as registration is at long last winding up. Perhaps it’s time to begin A. A. Milne’s The Princess and the Apple Tree.
In fact, I’ve been enjoying cross-stitching so much that I’ve finally managed to set up a morning tea routine: get up around 6:30, make tea, put one (1) chocolate-covered hobnob on my favorite little plate, and then cross-stitch till 7:15 when it’s time to get ready for work. Life is so much better when I get up in time for a gentle on-ramp to the morning, and yet until now I haven’t been able to convince myself to actually get out of bed in time.
I finished my Halloween cross-stitch in time for Halloween (want to find a better frame for it though), stitched a tremendously round little red Christmas bird as a break (amazing how fast you can cross stitch when the whole thing is just one color!), and am now working on a little Victorian Christmas tree which is for my ornament exchange with my friend Caitlin.
This little Christmas tree is WAY more involved than I expected, so I probably won’t finish my little cornucopia in time for Thanksgiving. But I have acquired the cornucopia pattern and will at any rate have it ready for NEXT year.
Other patterns on deck:
The absolutely adorable Puss in Boots from Veronique Enginger’s book of fairy tale cross stitch.
A Tiffany window inspired pattern of birds and bamboo and flowers from a book of Art Nouveau cross stitch. (I have the floss for this one but have been momentarily stymied in finding the right color fabric.)
And I’ve promised
troisoiseaux a Nevermore, garnished with ravens… I’m also taking a two-part embroidery class. On Monday I started my jellyfish, and next Monday I will hopefully finish the jellyfish. The backing fabric is a dark navy blue so the tentacles are pink floss, and the top is going to be gold and turquoise and dark royal blue beads.
Book projects: since the previous post, I finished the Newbery project, and then just this weekend finished the Postcard Book project! (Jules Verne was the last Famous Author postcard from the set.) Which means that I COULD start the E. M. Forster readthrough...
But I’ve decided to hold off until after Christmas, because I just had a brilliant idea for a Christmas project: a picture book Advent calendar! I have MANY Christmas picture books on my list this year, so I’ll get them from the library, wrap them up in brown paper (or newspaper or whatever paper I have available), and then select a surprise book each night to read.
I probably won’t end up posting about most of them because I often don’t have a lot to say about picture books. Although maybe a weekly round-up with a line or two about each book?
At the moment I’m actually a bit short of books (I thought the list was AMPLY long, but some of the books are only available in the archives etc.), so I may have to poke around to find a few more. We shall see!
And of course I AM planning some December archive visits to enjoy those Christmas books! In fact, I believe I can schedule an archive visit next week (not for Christmas books of course; a firm believer in saving Christmas season till after Thanksgiving), as registration is at long last winding up. Perhaps it’s time to begin A. A. Milne’s The Princess and the Apple Tree.
Bits of semi-recent reading swept together from the corners of the room
Nov. 13th, 2025 11:39 amlandingtreeDark Reflections, by Samuel Delany.
Realist novel about the life of someone with many of Delany's own marked identity traits - black gay writer in New York before and after Stonewall - who is deeply unlike Delany in various ways, most notably: his writing career remains largely unrecognised, and he is ill at ease with his own sexuality. Interesting project, kind of makes me want to go off and compare Delany's favourite writers with the ones Andrew, the protagonist, likes - not going to be a favourite of mine but I like being inside Delany's writing.
The Merlin Conspiracy, by Diana Wynne Jones.
Every so often over the years I’ve remembered that there is one Diana Wynne Jones novel I never read (not counting The Changeover.) I’m not sure why I didn’t get around to it, except for a vague sense of lack of hype. But it does mean that now I’ve had the treat of reading one last Jones novel as an adult whose plot I did not know! Also not a favourite but I enjoyed it a lot and made guesses about the plot that were totally wrong (see under the cut.)
It never occurred to me that this book might be a thriller, and it mostly isn’t, but I did think the early sequence in the magic security detail of a prince attending a cricket match, combined with the appearance of super-badass Romanov, was the book waving at other ‘The proper noun common noun’ titles.)
It feels weird to be reading this last, like putting a puzzle piece into a jigsaw without having known there was a piece missing. Partly this is listening to Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones (and I read this now partly so as to have thought about it well in advance of the podcast getting to it), partly it's having read all the other late DWJ: it feels close to Year of the Griffin, having a dyslexic character whose magic is backwards, and a broader point to make about how a particular system of education in wizard’s magic gives access to only a tiny blinkered subset of magic's real possibilities - and also they're both structured around a sequence of striking people showing up. The book starts out in the retinue of the King of Blest (very nearly Britain), which constantly travels the country to maintain its magics. And in fact it is a book about touring Blest to maintain its magics, although not quite in the way the retinue is supposed to.
( Spoilers )
Peregrine: Primus by Avram Davidson.
Read this, preferably aloud, for wit and flowing language and classics jokes. Do not read it for plot or character or women doing things. It is a pure picaresque, pleased with its own prose style (and with some reason to be.) I found two-thirds of this book boring, was delighted by the middle third mainly because that was the bit I read aloud to myself and was in the mood for, and on the balance of all this, am selling my copy, having kept it around unread for more than ten years because Michael Swanwick put it on a list of recommendations.
Currently reading:
I'm halfway through the sweet collection of letters between a group of booksellers and an overseas customer who they become friends with, 84 Charing Cross Road. It is very short and I will finish it this week.
I am also halfway through The Power Broker, the Robert Moses biography, but that is a very different halfway through! I will probably post about it at more length at some point, it is very good, but I've got to the point where I need to take a break, because Robert Moses was in many ways not a wonderful force in the world to begin with but I think I'm at the pivot-point where the last of his redeeming features evaporate, and I need to take a deep breath first. (For a big chunk of the book, he is very good at getting things done, in situations where things desperately need to get done. But now he has reached the point where he's too powerful for anyone to stop him and also too busy to check whether the things he's doing are actually good; but of course they're good! He's the one doing them! Gosh I hate Robert Moses.) For several weeks I have been responding to almost entirely unrelated bits of conversation with, "This reminds me of something I learned about Robert Moses, a man I hate," so like I said, deep breath.
Realist novel about the life of someone with many of Delany's own marked identity traits - black gay writer in New York before and after Stonewall - who is deeply unlike Delany in various ways, most notably: his writing career remains largely unrecognised, and he is ill at ease with his own sexuality. Interesting project, kind of makes me want to go off and compare Delany's favourite writers with the ones Andrew, the protagonist, likes - not going to be a favourite of mine but I like being inside Delany's writing.
The Merlin Conspiracy, by Diana Wynne Jones.
Every so often over the years I’ve remembered that there is one Diana Wynne Jones novel I never read (not counting The Changeover.) I’m not sure why I didn’t get around to it, except for a vague sense of lack of hype. But it does mean that now I’ve had the treat of reading one last Jones novel as an adult whose plot I did not know! Also not a favourite but I enjoyed it a lot and made guesses about the plot that were totally wrong (see under the cut.)
It never occurred to me that this book might be a thriller, and it mostly isn’t, but I did think the early sequence in the magic security detail of a prince attending a cricket match, combined with the appearance of super-badass Romanov, was the book waving at other ‘The proper noun common noun’ titles.)
It feels weird to be reading this last, like putting a puzzle piece into a jigsaw without having known there was a piece missing. Partly this is listening to Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones (and I read this now partly so as to have thought about it well in advance of the podcast getting to it), partly it's having read all the other late DWJ: it feels close to Year of the Griffin, having a dyslexic character whose magic is backwards, and a broader point to make about how a particular system of education in wizard’s magic gives access to only a tiny blinkered subset of magic's real possibilities - and also they're both structured around a sequence of striking people showing up. The book starts out in the retinue of the King of Blest (very nearly Britain), which constantly travels the country to maintain its magics. And in fact it is a book about touring Blest to maintain its magics, although not quite in the way the retinue is supposed to.
( Spoilers )
Peregrine: Primus by Avram Davidson.
Read this, preferably aloud, for wit and flowing language and classics jokes. Do not read it for plot or character or women doing things. It is a pure picaresque, pleased with its own prose style (and with some reason to be.) I found two-thirds of this book boring, was delighted by the middle third mainly because that was the bit I read aloud to myself and was in the mood for, and on the balance of all this, am selling my copy, having kept it around unread for more than ten years because Michael Swanwick put it on a list of recommendations.
Currently reading:
I'm halfway through the sweet collection of letters between a group of booksellers and an overseas customer who they become friends with, 84 Charing Cross Road. It is very short and I will finish it this week.
I am also halfway through The Power Broker, the Robert Moses biography, but that is a very different halfway through! I will probably post about it at more length at some point, it is very good, but I've got to the point where I need to take a break, because Robert Moses was in many ways not a wonderful force in the world to begin with but I think I'm at the pivot-point where the last of his redeeming features evaporate, and I need to take a deep breath first. (For a big chunk of the book, he is very good at getting things done, in situations where things desperately need to get done. But now he has reached the point where he's too powerful for anyone to stop him and also too busy to check whether the things he's doing are actually good; but of course they're good! He's the one doing them! Gosh I hate Robert Moses.) For several weeks I have been responding to almost entirely unrelated bits of conversation with, "This reminds me of something I learned about Robert Moses, a man I hate," so like I said, deep breath.
Wednesday has now had the porcelain inlay done
Nov. 12th, 2025 07:25 pmoursinWhat I read
Well, most of the time it was One Clear Call, which had (as had preceding volumes) a certain amount of resonance with contemporary events.
Read The Scribbler Annual no 1, which was a change of pace.
On the go
Dipped a bit more into Some Men in London, 1960-1967.
Started the final book in my review pile, which is pretty good though also raises, I think, some interesting points for discussion. (And as a rather tangential thought, during the heyday of lesbian murder mysteries from feminist presses, were there any set in wymmynz communes?)
Have also started a re-read of The Golden Notebook - given how long it is since I last read it, so much seems very familiar.
Up next
Still haven't got to the latest Literary Review. Otherwise, dunno.
Tags:
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Nov. 12th, 2025 01:22 pmgreenI can't keep saying 'I miss the COMMUNITY of fandom' and then not do anything to contribute to/foster said community.
I'm writing, though. Lots of writing. I've been working on this one fic for about 6-7 months now. Just hit 50k on it. I'm hoping the first draft is almost done. And then I will have lots and lots of editing. But I have faith in this story. I think it's going to be good.
Two goats from across the street came to visit me today while I was taking out the garbage. I love goats! But I did not know these goats, so that made me wary. Another neighbor came along and tempted them back home with Cheez-Its.
Right now there is a physical therapist here in my home with my mother. Mom needs help. She's not using the walker she got, but then again there aren't many places she wants to go where she can use it. She wants to be outside, but the yard is bumpy and the wheels on the walker/rollator can't handle the terrain.
We've also got a companion from an agency who comes in twice a month who can take mom to places or pick up meds or vacuum and dust the house. It takes a lot of pressure off me, but it's only one day every other week. (So far)
Ummmm not much else going on. Meg is doing well. I'm hanging in there. We're alive.
I'm writing, though. Lots of writing. I've been working on this one fic for about 6-7 months now. Just hit 50k on it. I'm hoping the first draft is almost done. And then I will have lots and lots of editing. But I have faith in this story. I think it's going to be good.
Two goats from across the street came to visit me today while I was taking out the garbage. I love goats! But I did not know these goats, so that made me wary. Another neighbor came along and tempted them back home with Cheez-Its.
Right now there is a physical therapist here in my home with my mother. Mom needs help. She's not using the walker she got, but then again there aren't many places she wants to go where she can use it. She wants to be outside, but the yard is bumpy and the wheels on the walker/rollator can't handle the terrain.
We've also got a companion from an agency who comes in twice a month who can take mom to places or pick up meds or vacuum and dust the house. It takes a lot of pressure off me, but it's only one day every other week. (So far)
Ummmm not much else going on. Meg is doing well. I'm hanging in there. We're alive.
Wednesday Reading Meme
Nov. 12th, 2025 07:57 amosprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
It took me some time, but I’ve finished Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea! I read the translation by Mendor T. Brunetti, which comes with an afterword which talks a bit about the history of Verne translations. Apparently the first guy who translated Verne into English didn’t understand a lot of the science, and either mistranslated or straight up cut it out, which gave Verne a very poor reputation among American science fiction fans for years until someone finally went back to the original French and said “Now wait a minute.” So the Brunetti translation is a corrective.
We also do NOT find out the specifics of Captain Nemo’s tragic backstory, although the afterword kindly explains that there were two different versions, one that Verne’s publisher axed for political reasons and one that was eventually published in The Mysterious Island. ( spoilers )
Tons of undersea details all the way through to the end, and a very interesting glimpse of 19th century science. Nemo and co. visit the South Pole by sailing the Nautilus under the ice shelf and then popping up in the polar sea, which reflects the popular scientific theory of the day.
What I’m Reading Now
Daphne Du Maurier’s The Winding Stair: Francis Bacon, His Rise and Fall. This is the sequel to Du Maurier’s Golden Lads, a biography of the Bacon brothers which mostly focuses on Francis’s older brother Anthony the sickly spymaster. I found Golden Lads a bit of a slog (Anthony just spends so much time ill in bed), but The Winding Stair is zipping right along! Bacon has just befriended the king’s new favorite George Villiers, who seems a great improvement on the last favorite who awkwardly has just been found guilty of poisoning someone with an arsenic enema.
What I Plan to Read Next
My Unread Bookshelf book for this month is Gene Stratton Porter’s The Harvester. Every GSP book I’ve read has been absolutely deranged, so I’m excited to see where this book will take me.
It took me some time, but I’ve finished Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea! I read the translation by Mendor T. Brunetti, which comes with an afterword which talks a bit about the history of Verne translations. Apparently the first guy who translated Verne into English didn’t understand a lot of the science, and either mistranslated or straight up cut it out, which gave Verne a very poor reputation among American science fiction fans for years until someone finally went back to the original French and said “Now wait a minute.” So the Brunetti translation is a corrective.
We also do NOT find out the specifics of Captain Nemo’s tragic backstory, although the afterword kindly explains that there were two different versions, one that Verne’s publisher axed for political reasons and one that was eventually published in The Mysterious Island. ( spoilers )
Tons of undersea details all the way through to the end, and a very interesting glimpse of 19th century science. Nemo and co. visit the South Pole by sailing the Nautilus under the ice shelf and then popping up in the polar sea, which reflects the popular scientific theory of the day.
What I’m Reading Now
Daphne Du Maurier’s The Winding Stair: Francis Bacon, His Rise and Fall. This is the sequel to Du Maurier’s Golden Lads, a biography of the Bacon brothers which mostly focuses on Francis’s older brother Anthony the sickly spymaster. I found Golden Lads a bit of a slog (Anthony just spends so much time ill in bed), but The Winding Stair is zipping right along! Bacon has just befriended the king’s new favorite George Villiers, who seems a great improvement on the last favorite who awkwardly has just been found guilty of poisoning someone with an arsenic enema.
What I Plan to Read Next
My Unread Bookshelf book for this month is Gene Stratton Porter’s The Harvester. Every GSP book I’ve read has been absolutely deranged, so I’m excited to see where this book will take me.