raincitygirl | Reading

As you may have guessed, I completely failed to live up to my goal of reviewing everything I read, even in brief. Rather than attempting to catch up to my backlog, I am re-starting from where I am.

Yesterday I did a quick book cull by pulling books off my shelves that have been sitting there for ages, reading the first couple chapters, and deciding if I was likely to continue. I focused on books I'd started before and not gotten very far into. Here are the books that landed in the "move to Paper & Clay's used section" bag.

Trouble and Her Friends, by Melissa Scott

See the new cover? If you've been wanting to read this, it's now available as an ebook!

This is a classic lesbian cyberpunk novel that I have tried to read at least three times, and never managed to get very far into. I kept putting it back on the shelf because it's a classic and probably objectively good, but I'm just not that into cyberpunk. If a lot of the action is taking place online, I tend to lose interest. Also, some books just don't grab me, due to a mismatch between me and the book, rather than being objectively or even subjectively bad. This is clearly one of them. Someone else can be thrilled to find it at Paper & Clay, take it home, and enjoy it.

The Splinter in the Sky, by Kemi Ashling-Garcia

A tea specialist becomes a spy in a far-future colonized world! Unfortunately, this starts with a prologue which reads much like the infamous "trade war" crawl at the top of The Phantom Menace. Yes, I know that turned out to be prescient, but the problem was that it was written in a stultifying manner. The next couple chapters were much more lively, but also had a tendency to clunky exposition - some of which was pretty cool, to be fair. This was the second time I attempted this book, and had essentially the same reaction I did to Trouble and Her Friends - not bad, but not for me.

Furies of Calderon, by Jim Butcher

This has been described to me as "Pokemon in alternate ancient Rome," which sounds amazing. For at least the third time, it failed to grab me. I got about four chapters in and there's still no Pokemon. Someone else will like it more than me.

The Hum and the Shiver, by Alex Bledsoe

A race of people called the Tufa have lived amongst normal humans in Appalachia since the beginning of time. They can see ghosts, have music-based magic, etc. This opens with a Tufa woman very very clearly based on Jessica Lynch, who was a real-life American soldier who was wounded and captured in the US/Iraq war, returning from Iraq. I found this in poor taste. The general style also got on my nerves.

While doing this, I got sufficiently grabbed by the openings to keep reading and finish Maureen McHugh's Nekropolis, which hopefully I will actually review. I also returned Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies and Tanya Huff's Sing the Four Quarters to the shelf.

musesfool

Today's poem:

A Dictionary Names the Wind in the Trees
by Susan Cohen

Psithurism because
what else would we call sound embedded
with leaf mold and breath
zithering just below the daily drone
of power saws and chippers,
eons of air shifting
like an old Chevy through leaves,
riffling papery corn fields
and the eucalyptus,
stuttering through windbreaks,
jittering an aspen
in a beam of breath,
lisping nothing pins me down
in the language of the Huron,
in Olmec, in Sanskrit, chittering
all its unpronounceable names,
its tunes with the shiver of pine needles
and the moves of a river?
Psithurism comes as close
to the clash of wind and trees
as orgasm comes to the friction
of muscles, nerves, bodies,
which is to say when so many words
cannot catch it,
those of us always searching
for just the right one may
as well stop speaking
and lift our heads
like mule deer, ears twitched
for the smallest sound.

*

Current Mood: busy

musesfool

Today's poem:

Eurydice
by Carol Ann Duffy

Girls, I was dead and down
in the Underworld, a shade,
a shadow of my former self, nowhen.
It was a place where language stopped,
a black full stop, a black hole
Where the words had to come to an end.
And end they did there,
last words,
famous or not.
It suited me down to the ground.

So imagine me there,
unavailable,
out of this world,
then picture my face in that place
of Eternal Repose,
in the one place you'd think a girl would be safe
from the kind of a man
who follows her round
writing poems,
hovers about
while she reads them,
calls her His Muse,
and once sulked for a night and a day
because she remarked on his weakness for abstract nouns.
Just picture my face
when I heard –
Ye Gods –
a familiar knock-knock at Death's door.

Him.
Big O.
Larger than life.
With his lyre
and a poem to pitch, with me as the prize.

Things were different back then.
For the men, verse-wise,
Big O was the boy. Legendary.
The blurb on the back of his books claimed
that animals,
aardvark to zebra,
flocked to his side when he sang,
fish leapt in their shoals
at the sound of his voice,
even the mute, sullen stones at his feet
wept wee, silver tears.

Bollocks. (I'd done all the typing myself,
I should know.)
And given my time all over again,
rest assured that I'd rather speak for myself
than be Dearest, Beloved, Dark Lady, White Goddess etc., etc.

In fact girls, I'd rather be dead.

But the Gods are like publishers,
usually male,
and what you doubtless know of my tale
is the deal.

Orpheus strutted his stuff.

The bloodless ghosts were in tears.
Sisyphus sat on his rock for the first time in years.
Tantalus was permitted a couple of beers.
The woman in question could scarcely believe her ears.

Like it or not,
I must follow him back to our life –
Eurydice, Orpheus' wife –
to be trapped in his images, metaphors, similes,
octaves and sextets, quatrains and couplets,
elegies, limericks, villanelles,
histories, myths...

He'd been told that he mustn't look back
or turn round,
but walk steadily upwards,
myself right behind him,
out of the Underworld
into the upper air that for me was the past.
He'd been warned
that one look would lose me
for ever and ever.

So we walked, we walked.
Nobody talked.

Girls, forget what you've read.
It happened like this –
I did everything in my power
to make him look back.
What did I have to do, I said,
to make him see we were through?
I was dead. Deceased.
I was Resting in Peace. Passé. Late.
Past my sell-by date...

I stretched out my hand
to touch him once
on the back of the neck.
Please let me stay.
But already the light had saddened from purple to grey.

It was an uphill schlep
from death to life
and with every step
I willed him to turn.
I was thinking of filching the poem
out of his cloak,
when inspiration finally struck.
I stopped, thrilled.
He was a yard in front.
My voice shook when I spoke –
Orpheus, your poem's a masterpiece.
I'd love to hear it again…

He was smiling modestly,
when he turned,
when he turned and he looked at me.

What else?
I noticed he hadn't shaved.
I waved once and was gone.

The dead are so talented.
The living walk by the edge of a vast lake
near, the wise, drowned silence of the dead.

*

Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: I Second That Emotion - Smokey Robinson & the Miracles

rachelmanija

Natalie is a wildly successful trad wife influencer. She and her husband Caleb have a farm and six adorable children, and Natalie has parlayed carefully edited clips of her perfect life into a lucrative career. (She leaves out the two nannies, 30 farm hands, and the fact that Sassafras the cow is actually four sequential cows, replaced every time one dies, like goldfish.)

Then Natalie suffers a mysterious fall from grace. And then she finds herself in what appears to be an alternate version of her own life in the 1800s, with a husband very similar but not quite identical to her original husband, and children who claim to be her own. Has she time traveled? Is she delusional? Has she gotten kidnapped into a non-consensual reality show?

This is an extremely interesting novel that makes a good companion to Saratoga Schrader's Trad Wife. The beginning of the book is extremely similar, though Natalie is much more successful than Camille. Burke's version of a trad wife influencer deluding herself and lying to her followers about her supposedly perfect life is much better-written than Schrader's. But that's a double-edged sword, because it makes Natalie much more unlikable. She's an incredibly hatable character and the book is from her POV, and that makes a lot of the book not really enjoyable to read.

But the book turns out to be much more ambitious and clever than it seems at the beginning. When I finished it, I was glad I'd read it and appreciated it a lot. That being said, I enjoyed Trad Wife more on an emotional level.

I highly recommend not clicking on the cut unless you're 100% positive you'll never read the book. I really enjoyed the non-spoiled experience.

( Read more... )

Content notes: Domestic violence, rape (on-page, graphic), child abuse and neglect, farm animal neglect/poor caretaking (just mentioned), gaslighting, non-consensual drugging, current American right-wing stuff.

While attempting to buy Saratoga Schaefer's Trad Wife, I accidentally bought a different novel called Trad Wife by Michelle Brandon. And Sarah Langan is coming out with yet another book called Trad Wife in September. I am now on a mission to read all four trad wife books, to compare and contrast.

marinarusalka

In a fit of optimism, The Boy and I planted some cherry tomato seedlings behind our condo. Neither one of us has any knowledge or experience of vegetable gardening, so we're going by random internet advice and hoping that the San Diego climate will make up for our inadequacies.

Saturday morning, we went hiking in Torrey Pines, which has been reopened again after being closed all winter "to improve the trails." If there was any actual improvement, we didn't see it, but it was still an excellent hike, with lots of great wildlife views, including a Gray Whale hanging out unusually close to shore. We also spotted three brush rabbits at different spots along the trail, and a flock of migrating lazuli buntings.

( all photos courtesy of The Boy )

Current Mood: awake

selenak

This week starts with some actual rl good news, as the foreunner of right wing autocrats on this continent, Victor Orban, was crushingly defeated. Among other things, this caused a lot of J.D. Vance memes going viral, given the Orange Menace had sent him to campaign for Orban; my favourite is the suggestion from one of our green politicians, Ricarda Lang, for Vance to campaign for the AFD next. This sounds like a great idea to me, except he already did that when speaking at the G7 last year, so maybe his magic touch fails over here.

On to fictional joy. I've read The Autarch's Heir, the fourth volume of Jo Graham's space opera saga The Calpurnian Wars (No.3 was reviewed by me here, and it is as compulsively readable as the previous entries. Though I have to admit I was half-wrong about the previous entry presenting us with the Space!Egypt to the Space!Rome that is the expansion-hungry Calpurnia), in that while the previous location definitely had Egyptian elements, so does Lono, the location of The Autarch's Heir. As before, while there are some characters from the previous cast around - in this case, sisters Aurore and Dian Melian - , we get new central characters to go with the new location, to wit, one Bel Alan, con man, and the drunk and depressed Calpurnian Commander Antisia, formerly the Faithful Lieutenant of murdered Autarch Julus, who has her own problems, such as one Thurinia gunning to be next Autarch, aided by her commander Vipsani. (I must admit that fond of ancient history as I am, I continue to get a kick out of the Roman paralles. In this case: what's not to love about Mark Antony as a Lesbian in space?) It's the first novel to give us something more about the Calpurnians than their expansionism, not just through Antisia's pov, and now I'll have to call them Space!Sparta as well because the way they're raised is definitely more in line with Sparta, transported into a sci fi frame, than with Rome. Anyway: the plot kicks off when Bel Alan, our main character, is contacted by the Lono resistance to steal the priceless Solaste Crown by pretending to be the natural son of the late Julus. At which point, and here I have to go for a spoiler cut, I did think: ( Spoilers made an assumption based on history. ) And yes indeed, it was. Bel makes for an engaging hero because he really isn't into either revenge scenarios or monarchy. He's also, a first for a main character in this series, not a believer. (I find this refreshing within this universe, not because I dislike the various numinous connections the other main characters in previous novels had, but in terms of world building we were due one atheistic sympathetic main character.) I also continue to love the way this series treats compassion and kindness and redeemability as important. Dian, one of the Melian sisters who in the previous novel was in what was probably my favourite scene in which Caralys, the heroine of said novel, was kind to her despite Dian having been hostile towards Caralys the entire novel. And now we see Dian more fleshed out and in a scenario where she in turn is able to show charm, wit and compassion - without negating the earlier issues. Not only is her sibling relationship with Aurore fun, but her hook up with Antisia is a great take on the "relationship started for utiliarian motives becomes meaningful" trope. (Btw, and speaking of Antisia: ( Here it gets spoilery again. ))

The one caveat I have is that while this novel tells its own story, I wouldn't start the series with it but start at the beginning if you're a new reader. (None of the novels are very long, so this doesn't mean years of your reading life, don't worry.) By now, I just think knowing the previous goings-on adds a lot of satisfying texture to what is already a very enjoyable story.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: Munich

dewline

What's going on with Apple Maps and southern Lebanon right now? As of 915 PM EST, this date?

Current Mood: worried

dewline

May Orbán go away quietly and never haunt Hungary/Magyarország in particular or Europe in general ever again and may no one in those places or myself be compelled to regret my saying as much.

Current Mood: hopeful

twistedchick

I've come to a small turning in the road, metaphorically speaking. I've decided to quit newsblogging on Facebook, possibly permanently.

I am worn down by dealing with so much bad news all the time. When I worked long hours at newspapers, there was always something good in the mix, but now it's getting hard to find. And with the overflowing river of news these days, some days I work longer than I did at the papers, just to get through it and try to understand it all.

But there's more. In the last three months I have lost six people, some I've known for 30+ years, others all my life. A beloved older cousin, a talented and kind aunt, a teacher whom I will continue to learn from every time I open one of her books, two friends who always encouraged me (separately, in different ways) to be creative and innovative, and a third friend who challenged me to be as uniquely myself as she was uniquely herself. None of them were under 50, and all had rich full lives -- but the gaps they leave in the world are enormous, not just for me but for many others. And each death's loss and sadness get added to that which was here before, even if for some it was a relief at the end of long illness.

That's a lot. It would be a lot at any time, but it feels like more, now, because of all the horribleness going on -- ICE, the war with Iran, the Epstein entanglements and the many cruelties of this regime.

Also, nobody's paying me to newsblog. Not one no-longer-available cent. I've been doing it because it feeds my newsjunkieness, the reporter's need to know what's happening and tell others. It also ate my day, usually about six hours of it or more.

Enough.

I will still forward relevant articles (as long as I have arms and hands to type) but I'm not going to do the intense drop down into the zone any more, with multiple subject-categorized posts. I'd like to have a bit more life in my life than can be found behind a keyboard -- and have it be my own life, not one I'm looking at from the sidelines. I'll still write the Substack column, but leave it at that.

I will still be there, as I am here, just not as much every day.

And getting away from the keyboard serves my other life goal, which is to outlive the regime and the Occupant and his ilk (great non-swear-word for them) and have a good life doing it.

musesfool

I feel like I've probably oversold this post as well-put-together meta when it is mostly a lot of bullet points with me going "WTF? WTF?," which I guess is basically the Dungeon Crawler Carl experience in a nutshell. Anyway! It's a month until Parade of Horribles comes out, so I figured I'd better post before the post was obsolete. *g*

This is mostly stuff that I've picked up on in reading/rereading and am wondering what will be resolved (and when, given that there's supposedly 3 more books, and ( spoiler ) I also wanted to do a little speculation about endings. Because despite people on reddit being very vocal about Dinniman being a horror writer and how it's not going to end happily and everyone will die, I don't believe that to be the case, necessarily, based on my reading of the books. (I mean, is it likely? Sure. Do I want that ending? Nope!)

The first, less salient, point in my favor is that the books open with Carl telling the story in a way that sounds like he's looking back on it, that he's been through it and lived to tell the tale. This is typical in novels written in first person past tense; however, ( spoilers )

The second, more important, point, to me, is the theme of the story that's being told – one of resistance and revolution, anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism – and having that be snuffed out in favor of late stage capitalism and status quo antebellum being restored is just...I don't see it (especially not now). I guess even if everyone dies, the changes Carl et al. have forced on the galaxy will linger, at least for a while, but I am not sure anymore that even Carl dies at the end (I would have said 98% yes he does, but I read some interesting meta on tumblr that made me wonder if he will in fact survive and why, rooted in his own past trauma to make it make sense).

I do think a lot of our favorites will die, probably horribly, but I also think Donut will make it out alive. I cannot imagine killing the cat at this point. It would be interesting and somewhat surprising to make Carl live in the new world too. (I am not just saying this because he's my blorbo, but that might be a major factor in it.) Though how – given his primal race – could be as something new and different (or its own horror, given the givens), which might as well be death in some ways? Metamorphosis, at least. Idk.

Anyway, I've wrestled with how to organize this – by character? by theme? – and decided to go with *drumroll* location! It seemed to make the most sense to me, anyway.

There's spoilers for all 7 books (I am not a member of the Patreon so I haven't read any excerpts from book 8 or the extra material from the print versions of the books) from here on out.

We'll start wide with ( the galaxy )

Which brings us to ( earth's surface )

And then, the most important location, ( the dungeon )

I'm sure there are things I've forgotten/missed/am making too much or too little of, but there is just so much going on that I needed to track it all somehow, and so here we are. If you've read the books, what do you think?

*I said this on tumblr, but I do hope someone makes a Carl vid to Springsteen's Trapped - it's definitely #1 on the Carl playlist I did not actually make but which lives in my head while I contemplate inchoate fic ideas I will never write.

***

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Mets vs A's on tv

sanguinity

Back in 2014 I published a fusion of Elementary and Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century called "Persistence of Memory." It was always meant to be a longer story, but because of the urgency of due dates (it was written for the

holmestice exchange), it was necessary to publish the first chapter as a stand-alone.

Which worked fine. Over the next little while I wrote a second chapter, and bits and bobs of a third, before laying it aside for other writing projects. Except for some excerpts on tumblr, I never published any of the continuation, wanting to wait until the whole thing was finished.

Now, twelve years later, it seems silly to have that second chapter just sitting in my WIP file, unavailable to people who might care about it.

Perseverance

Elementary x Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century
Joan, Sherlock, Robo!Watson
Fusion, Angst, Wrong Watson Feelings
~9000 words, Gen, No warnings apply.

Joan Watson has had her life ripped out from under her, a kidnapping and cryosleep marooning her in the twenty-second century. At least Sherlock is here—and, due to some blackly humorous twist of fate, so is Jamie Moriarty.

And so is a compudroid that calls itself Watson.

Joan rebuilds her life from the ashes. And maybe catches an international criminal mastermind along the way.

A couple of notes:

This will not make sense without having read "Persistence of Memory" first.
This is very much a work in progress: updates will happen whenever they happen, and I make no guarantees of completion.

That said, most nights I'm watching a double feature of a SH22C episode and an Elementary episode, and in the last couple of weeks I've written new words on chapter three (or what will be chapter two of Perseverance). The main obstacle to finishing this was my main obstacle twelve years ago: I've got to work out a bloody casefic for it. That said, I've written a handful of casefic in the last decade, so I know more now about how to do that than I did then. So we'll see how it goes!

serrico

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: blah

selenak

In which there is added poignancy due to the sole good RL news these past ten days, i.e. the Artemis II moon mission, which I admit to following avidly.

( Are you ready? )

Current Mood: pensive
Current Location: Munich

musesfool

Today's poem:

July
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

The figs we ate wrapped in bacon.
The gelato we consumed greedily:
coconut milk, clove, fresh pear.
How we'd dump hot espresso on it
just to watch it melt, licking our spoons
clean. The potatoes fried in duck fat,
the salt we'd suck off our fingers,
the eggs we'd watch get beaten
'til they were a dizzying bright yellow,
how their edges crisped in the pan.
The pink salt blossom of prosciutto
we pulled apart with our hands, melted
on our eager tongues. The green herbs
with goat cheese, the aged brie paired
with a small pot of strawberry jam,
the final sour cherry we kept politely
pushing onto each other's plate, saying,
No, you. But it's so good. No, it's yours.
How I finally put an end to it, plucked it
from the plate, and stuck it in my mouth.
How good it tasted: so sweet and so tart.
How good it felt: to want something and
pretend you don't, and to get it anyway.

***

I caught up on Abbott Elementary last night and ( spoilers )

***

Current Mood: shocked
Current Music: Feelin' Alright - Joe Cocker

skygiants

Scorched Earth is described on its website as a piece of dance theater about a detective reopening an Irish cold case, a description which fascinated us so much that we made a second patently absurd decision to once again park in NYC just exactly long enough to see a show before continuing on our multi-state travel.

If you'd forced me to describe what I expected from this show, I would have hazarded something like 'Tana French book, adapted as a ballet?' Not at ALL correct. The cold case is not a mystery, not full of twists: we've got one detective, one suspect, one victim, one piece of land (and one ambiguously metaphorical donkey.) The ninety-minute show begins with a series of projected documents explaining the history of Irish Land Dispute Murders before establishing a more-or-less regular pattern: short interrogation scenes between the detective and the suspect, interspersed with bursts of emotion and memory, some dramatized and some in dance.

Sometimes -- often -- this worked extraordinarily well. The land under dispute is represented, personified, by a dancer in a ghillie suit who slithers in and out of the central interrogation/morgue table* like a giant muppet, or the Swamp Thing and dances a violently romantic duet with the suspect -- and it could have looked so silly, as I'm describing it it sounds silly, and instead it was haunting and evocative, perfectly elucidating the narrative themes of the show while also just being a gripping and powerful piece of performance.

*remarkable piece of set design, that table; afterwards we all agreed it was the hardest-working table in show business

Other times, the balance felt a little off; the dialogue would tell us something and then a duet would be danced and I'd think, well, you didn't need to tell us both ways, one or the other would have worked fine. Or I'd start to admire the dialogue for its spareness in suggesting the complexity of a dynamic -- who's from here, who isn't, who has rights to land, who doesn't, what's worth punishing on behalf of the community, what isn't -- and then it say it again more explicitly and I'd be like, well, okay, but you didn't have to. What I'm saying is that I think the show probably could have been just as powerful at sixty minutes as at ninety minutes. But I wasn't at all unhappy to be there for ninety minutes! I was compelled the whole time! If the show sometimes told me things about the situation more times or more explicitly than I needed to hear them, it did an admirable job of not telling me what to think about them, and trying to decide what I did think about them left me plenty to occupy my mind.

A lot of the creative team seem to have a history with Punch Drunk and have worked on Sleep No More explicitly, and it was interesting for me to compare/contrast -- the style of expressive choreography is notably similar, but Sleep No More is a piece of theater that has almost no dialogue, that draws a lot of its power from being oblique and ambiguous to the point of fault. Finding that exact right point of convergence for dance and theater seems to be an ongoing challenge and point of interest for the people coming out of the Punch Drunk school and I'm very curious to see other explorations of it.

shadowkat

The doctor wants to insert a gell into my knee which will act as lubricant or an oil job for the knee - or a cushion. Evaluation is in two weeks.
Then three weeks of injections, if insurance goes for it. Mother informs me this is standard practice - apparently she's had it done multiple times.
Also the stiff leg is normal. Plus, I appear to be walking more than most people do. (I average anywhere between 4,000- 10,000 steps a day depending on the day of the week.) They said walking and being mobile was a good thing, and to make sure I stand periodically.

This spiel motivated me to walk from the Doctor's office on Atlantic and Henry Street to the subway station on Smith and 2nd street. Which is approximately a 15-20 block hike or a little over a mile. I stopped along the way - in the B&N book store to pick up a few books (mainly the latest book by Illona Andrews - which is the first I've actually found in hardcover in a book store along with B&N's tote - bag of books). I spent way too much at B&N, they talked me into their premium membership card.
(Which I will most likely live to regret - already regretting it.) Note to self - stop going to book stores after doctor's appointments.

The books, I grabbed were for the most part across genres.

1. This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Illona Andrews

It's a portal fantasy, and a kind of satire of portal fantasy novels. The protagonist, Maggie, finds herself naked and muddy and alone in the world of the fantasy novels she knows by heart. But these aren't princess riding unicorns style fantasy novels, they are more along the lines of Game of Thrones fantasy novels. She has no powers, no friends, just her knowledge of the novels and the world depicted to an extent within them, and the fact that for some reason or other she can't die.

Sample?
( Read more... )

Pets book. Book and I are going to get along famously. Only one problem - I read it better with contacts and reading glasses. Bi-focals not so much.
But it does mean I can read it on subways - if I desire - even if it is a hard back book that takes up space in the backpack. Also has a very pretty cover. It's love at first sight. (I fall in love with books all the time. Books, music, movie and television shows. People - I've increasingly become leery of.)

2. Also picked up "A Walk in the Park - the true story of a spectacular misadventure in the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarku" - per the back cover:

" Shortly after quitting his job to pursue the ill-advised ambition of becoming a white-water guide on the Colorado River, Kevin Fedarko was approached by his best friend, National Geographic photographer Pete McBride, with a vision as bold as it was harebrained. Together, they would embark on an end-to-end traverse of the Grand Canyon, a journey that McBride promised would be a walk in the park. Against his better judgement, Fedarko agreed - despite being dimly aware that there is no trail spanning the entire canyon and that the tiny cluster of experts who had actually completed the crossing billed it as the " toughest hike in the world"." [ It has pictures. And was Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award and Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non-Fiction...] It's in large paperback.

3. The others are also large paperbacks, with bigger print than average paperback novels. "The Lies of Locke LaMora by Scott Lynch" a fantasy novel about a con gone famously wrong, with lots of twists. "The God of the Woods by Liz Moore" - in Large Print paperback - it's a mystery novel. When a teenager goes missing from her Adirondack summer camp - two worlds collide.

And some tea - Honey Lavender Black Tea from the Republic of Tea.

After that - I went grocery shopping at Union, picked up various gluten free items, and to Planted for a gluten free jelly donut (it was okay) and a chocolate chip cookie (gluten-free) - also okay. Not really worth the price of admission, so to speak.

**

4. Today was pretty. But I spent it inside sorting through clothing and yanking out spring clothes for 50s-80s weather. It's supposed to warm up next week.

Been in a grumpy irritable mood of late (hence the book buying) - so I'm glad the doctor's appointment on Friday went quickly and well. Part of it is due to physical issues. ( Read more... )

* Insominac Cookies Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies are by far - the best gluten-free chocolate chip cookies I've had from any establishment in my life.

* The only other good gluten-free chocolate chip cookies are from Bakery Island Foods - Chocolate Chunk Gluten Free Cookie Dough. It's excellent - I got it from Union. (I couldn't remember where I got it - so was happy to see it at Union again and grabbed two packages of it.)

I spend more on groceries - because of my diet restrictions. Gluten Free + Carb Free + Sugar Free + Fresh vegetables/Fruits and Fish and Eggs. Cheap groceries = pain and suffering.

***

5. Fandom Entertainment News

* The International Buffy Fandom is plotting a major protest and various activities in connection with it on April 14, Buffy's Birthday - aka International Buffy Day - with the first celebration happening on April 14.

"International Buffy Day is both a celebration and a protest, a global show of solidarity from Scoobies everywhere.

How to get involved:
( Read more... )

***

* "X-men Film Reboot News" - X-men reboot director has hired the show-runners of BEEF and The Bear to write the script
( Read more... )

* Spiderman: Brand New Day

* Super Girl - Woman of Tomorrow - about Super Girl saving her dog and getting revenge in space. Actually this flick looks really good. I think they finally found someone who understands the DC Universe to show run these flicks?

* Avengers: Doomsday - all the official trailers so far

* Star Wars Films currently in the works

***

6. Television

Watched this week's The Pitt, and Robby really resonated with me. ( spoilers )

I realized recently when people say - I just want to go home (my father and grandmother said it all the time prior to their deaths, almost on an hourly basis) - they aren't talking about a place on earth, a house, or even family - but home, the source, where their "energy" originated from. To go back home to their source. Because being energy beings in degenerating meat sacks on a swiftly turning planet in the vast vacuum of space with oh such creatures on it - can be wondrous at times, but also deeply painful and often at the same time.

I've been struggling not to lash out. Suppressing the impulse to verbally smack folks upside the head for being idiots - has grown wearisome. Off to watch Daredevil kick some asses.

musesfool

Yesterday, after I logged off work, I made these banana blueberry muffins, which used up the last of all the fruit that I got last week in the wrong grocery order (well, the raspberries got moldy before I could use them, so they just got thrown out, but I used the strawbs, the bluebs, and the bananas in the end). They're good!

Then this afternoon, I tried out this vanilla cupcake recipe, which I had originally planned to make for Easter. As written, it makes 40 mini cupcakes, so if I make it next weekend to take to work on Tuesday, which is what I am thinking, I will double it. And make that KAB whipped ganache frosting. I might do that tomorrow, just because I can, once the last of the ground meat I received last weekend is thawed and used to make meatballs. I have ravioli in the freezer so I can free up even more space (I used the frozen tortellini last night). Anyway, I want to see if these vanilla cupcakes really do stay moist for a few days. I already replaced vanilla with funfetti for Christmas, but I feel like you should always have a good vanilla cupcake recipe in your back pocket, and the one I like for cake was never the best for cupcakes.

Now I've got a chicken roasting in the oven and it smells so good.

Anyway, here's today's poem:

Hurry
by Marie Howe

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store
and the gas station and the green market and
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,
as she runs along two or three steps behind me
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.
Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?
To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?
Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,
Honey I'm sorry I keep saying Hurry—
you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.
And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking
back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,
hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.

***

Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: Rangers vs Stars on tv

trobadora

Dear

fandom5k writer,

thank you so much for writing a story for me! I've requested and received all of these fandoms before - some for many, many years, and often with the same prompts, because when I really enjoy something, I immediately want fifty more takes on the same thing. *g* So if that's what we matched on, don't worry about repeating things! I'll be absolutely thrilled about anything you can create about the relationships I requested.

Everything important is in the requests themselves, but if you'd like even more info, general likes etc., here you go.

My AO3 account is

Trobadora, and it's set to welcome treats.

General Preferences

( Likes & Dislikes/DNWs )

Fandoms and relationships

In somewhat alphabetical order - note that some sections are expanded compared to the sign-up form:

Jump directly to:

Grimm: Nick/Renard/Juliette
镇魂 | Guardian (TV): Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, Ya Qing/Zhu Hong, Shen Wei & Ya Qing
Grimm/镇魂 | Guardian (TV) crossovers: Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan & Sean Renard & Nick Burkhardt, Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan & Sean Renard, Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan & Juliette Silverton, Shen Wei & Sean Renard, Shen Wei & Juliette Silverton, Sean Renard & Ya Qing, Sean Renard/Ya Qing
Nantucket Trilogy - S.M. Stirling: Kashtiliash & Raupasha
Sherlock (BBC): Sherlock/Moriarty
山河令 | Word of Honor: Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu

( Grimm: Nick/Renard/Juliette )

( 镇魂 | Guardian (TV): Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, Ya Qing/Zhu Hong, Shen Wei & Ya Qing )

( Grimm/Guardian crossovers: Nick Burkhardt & Sean Renard & Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan, Sean Renard & Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan, Juliette Silverton & Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan, Juliette Silverton & Shen Wei, Sean Renard & Shen Wei, Sean Renard & Ya Qing, Sean Renard/Ya Qing )

( Nantucket Trilogy - S.M. Stirling: Kashtiliash & Raupasha )

( Sherlock (BBC): Jim Moriarty/Sherlock Holmes )

( 山河令 | Word of Honor: Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu )

rydra_wong

and oh god it's so good, that unique polished authorial confidence of The Fortunate Fall is so back, and like The Fortunate Fall it's a book that's somehow slipped out of time, not exactly in sync with the present moment in sf/f but maybe both older and newer, and it's very quiet and calm except for that bit in a recent chapter which actually made me make an involuntary noise of shock and alarm out loud, and I have no idea where it's going and I hope she sticks the landing but right now the vibes are Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand and The Left Hand of Darkness, and what with those being two of my favourite novels ever, I'm having a very good time.