oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)
[personal profile] oursin

What I read

Gail Godwin, Getting to Know Death: A Meditation (2024) - rather slight, one for the completist, which I suppose I am.

Robert Rodi, Bitch Goddess (2014): 'told entirely through interviews, e-mails, fan magazine puff pieces, film reviews, shooting scripts, greeting cards, extortion notes, and court depositions', the story of the star of a lot of dire B-movies who has a later-life move into soap-stardom. I hadn't read this one before and it was a lot of campy fun.

TC Parker, Tradwife (2024) - another of those mystery/thrillers which riffs off true-crime style investigation - somebody here I think mentioned it? - I thought it went a few narrative twists too far though was pretty readable up till then.

On the go

Apart from those, still ticking on with Upton Sinclair, Wide Is The Gate (Lanny Budd, #4), boy I am glad that I am reading these in e-form, because they must be monstrous great bricks otherwise. In this one he actually ventures back to Germany, his marriage starts to crumble, he continues his delicate dance between all the various opposed interests in his life while managing to get support to the anti-Nazi/Fascist cause, Spain is now in the picture, and I have just seen a passing mention to Earl Russell being sent down for his Reno divorce (that wasn't quite the story, but one can quite imagine that was what gossip might have made of it 30 years down the line).

Up next

New Literary Review.

The three books for the essay review.

I think more Robert Rodi might be a nice change of pace from Lanny's ordeals.

asakiyume: (yaksa)
[personal profile] asakiyume
It's a cold, surreal post-apocalyptic world, plagued by meteor showers, crumbling apartments patrolled by tigers, one where former tar-spreading technicians repurpose themselves as morning soup sellers. Bobby is wakened by a knocking at his door. He doesn't open it, but he's told, through the closed door, that Belle-Medusa, an immensely huge jellyfish, needs his help. Belle-Medusa has a library of scents in her memory, but they're mainly ocean scents. She wants Bobby to collect and convey land scents to her:
In truth, she only had one passion anymore: she collected smells. Aromas, perfumes, whiffs, and scents of all types. She numbered them and she put them in tiny special cases in her memory, in a classification system that nobody, apart from herself, was able to understand.

For this purpose, Belle-Medusa has already "plugged into" Bobby. There are various ways he can convey the scents to her, but the way he settles on is to plunge his face into water and speak them.
I had my cheek pressed against the windowpane. Just under my nose, fed by the steam that escaped from my mouth, the frost drew branching ice wisps, which imprisoned the dust. If I had had to specify the smell that lingered on the surface of the glass, I would have spoken of a dusty ice floe, of frozen goose down, of dark sherbet. Wait, I thought, maybe I could send that to Belle-Medusa, in order to check that the communication between us is well established.

I left my observation post. I groped my way to the bathroom and I filled the sink with what flowed from the faucet, water that carried with it cubes and needles of ice. Before immersing my face, I had to stir it with my hand so as not to use the end of my nose to break the film threatening to form ... I sank my head into it to my ears.

"It's me, Belle-Medusa," I said.

Heh, this got long. Let's put in a cut. )

It's a strange and wonderful story, and I recommend it. I read it in an anthology called XO Orpheus: Fifty New Myths, edited by Kate Bernheimer and published in 2013. The anthology was lent to me by a friend who had picked out that story especially for me to read because (I'm flattered to say), they said it reminded me of the story of mine they'd read--and also, I suspect, because the story's important to them: it's entered their vocabulary. They talk about their scent library. The other stories in the collection look promising too; while I'm borrowing the book, I think I'll read some more.

It also exists as a 64-page standalone publication, but only in its original French, as Belle-Méduse. For the anthology, the translation was done by Sarah and Brian Evenson.

*Manuela Draeger is a fictitious author, a librarian whose stories are intended as distraction for children in containment camps. The author of her world is Antoine Volodine ... which is in turn a pen name of the writer Jean Desvignes.

In which I read therefore I am

Jun. 11th, 2025 04:03 pm
spiralsheep: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (Default)
[personal profile] spiralsheep
- Reading: 66 books to 11 June 2025.

63. Faith Fox, by Jane Gardam, 1996, 3/5: her most depressing novel? My favourite Gardam novels are Bilgewater then Crusoe's Daughter then The Flight of the Maidens (but Old Filth is probably her most popular work).

64. The Geographer's Map to Romance, by India Holton, 2025, fantasy romance novel, 3/5

A "marriage of convenience" romance novel set in a fantasy version of Victorian Britain (supposedly 1890), peopled by characters with 21st century sensibilities and international English language. The plot, such as it was, would have been enough for a much shorter story, and the magical trappings are arbitrary, but the prose is lively and full of in-jokes and meta-humour about romance and fantasy tropes which entertained me enough to read on. I was excessively pleased that the solution was to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, lmao. Warning: if you dislike "only one bed" scenes then be aware that's a running joke and Holton crams in as many examples as possible.

Quotes and commentary )

P.S. Can confirm Much Marcle is the sort of place where a rain of frogs would seem normal.

65. [Redacted: acquaintances kept telling me this novel is "not good" but that I should read it, with the same delivery as, "This smells terrible... go on, sniff it!" They were correct. 'nuff said.]
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Tales of dissidents, dissenters, and iconoclasts taking on the status quo...

Five SFF Books About Oddballs Resisting Conformity
spiralsheep: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (Default)
[personal profile] spiralsheep
Aurora Australis readalong 8 / 10, An Ancient Manuscript by Shellback (Frank Wild), post for comment, reaction, discussion, fanworks, links, and whatever obliquely related matters your heart desires. You can join the readalong at any time or skip sections or go back to earlier posts. It's all good. :-)

Text of An Ancient Manuscript by Shellback (Frank Wild):
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/An_Ancient_Manuscript

Readalong intro and reaction post links:
https://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/662515.html

Links for next week, this week's vocabulary, quotes, and brief commentary )

Wednesday Reading Meme

Jun. 11th, 2025 08:01 am
osprey_archer: (books)
[personal profile] osprey_archer
What I’ve Just Finished Reading

A reread of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I had intended to reread Through the Looking-Glass, too, but to my distress I found that I no longer enjoyed the absurdism of the first book (maybe politics have imitated art a little too hard in this area recently?), so it seemed pointless to subject myself to the second as well.

Maybe I’ll give it another go in a decade or two and find that I’ve come back around to enjoying it again.

What I’m Reading Now

A little bit of this and a little bit of that, but nothing that merits a progress report right now. My attention has been mostly taken up with the exigencies of a plumbing crisis, alas.

What I Plan to Read Next

Still waiting for the library to bring me Evelina!
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
As always, Evil!Janeway is hot, though less so than the Living Witness version. It's the eyes - our main characters all have huge eyes, so the somewhat more realistically animated adult human characters look slightly uncanny valley, even though their eyes ought to make sense.

Also, damn, Chakotay has got some arms! Is this true IRL? I don't remember ever seeing the live actor ever without sleeves....

Also also, I honestly love every time Gwen gets a moment of happiness, no matter how small. She really has had a miserable life. Every second chasing replicated pie over the ship, or squirting whipped cream into her mouth, or, one hopes, finally spending some time playing goofy holodeck games, is a second worth living. And so, I will say, I appreciate that the animators took the time to let her smirk a little when Evil!Chakotay proposed starting his torture session with "the cute one", aka Murf the Indestructible. You gotta find those moments of joy when you can, sweetie!

(Question: Are mirror tribbles... nice? What about their new team pet, Bribble? Would Bribble have a goatee and be evil in the mirror verse? How sapient is that thing, anyway?)

********************


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(no subject)

Jun. 11th, 2025 09:49 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] angevin and [personal profile] spaceoperadiva!
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
I don't want this getting lost in the links: A Journey Through the Dystopiaverse (some of those poems hit hard)

In personal news, how many nos is one expected to get before they get a yes?

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I managed to find some non-doom-and-gloom links to shove in here as well )

(no subject)

Jun. 11th, 2025 01:09 am
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly posting in [community profile] agonyaunt
Dear Pay Dirt,

My brother and his wife recently bought a broken-down house. They asked my husband, who runs his own construction company, for a quote to fix it up. My sister-in-law brightly chimed in, “and we expect the friends and family rate.” Well, my husband immediately drew a hard line.

He responded that he would prefer not to engage in a business agreement with family, as it can lead to misunderstandings, and he recommended another company. Well, my sister-in-law completely lost her mind.

She screamed at him and said that they would never have bought the property if they knew he wasn’t going to help them. It seems that they, without any encouragement, expected him to offer his services at a significant discount and are now in a bind because they cannot afford the reconstruction and will make a huge loss if they sell.

Now my entire family is being drawn into a massively acrimonious discussion. My brother and sister-in-law are claiming we “betrayed them” and left them bankrupt. I get daily calls from my weeping mother begging my husband to reconsider, while my father has threatened to beat him up. It’s insane. I don’t want to lose my family, and I can’t ask my husband to change his mind, so what do I do?

—Built on Sand


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walkitout: (Default)
[personal profile] walkitout
Inspector came out and signed off on the electrical work. Yay!

I drove out to Florence early and did my three meetings. Circulation stair down to pink world is in place, so that was exciting! Also, the doors onto the deck off of the master suite were installed, so that was cool. The numbers from the metal artist look fine to me. And I am very cautiously optimistic about the custom door maker. Fingers crossed.

I caught up on Odd Lots. I’d never heard of India’s UPI. That’s amazing! The future looks so bright at moments like this.

The carpet for the attic room is apparently backordered and so won’t be installed for a couple months. I may call the contractor and discuss alternatives, but honestly, the only house guest I have lined up is coming while T. is out of the house so it hardly matters and everything is so delayed anyway.

I’m doing laundry, because we’re down to A.’s last pair of shorts. I made a single layer, heart shaped chocolate cake with chocolate frosting for R.’s bday. I stopped at Stop and Shop for the confectioners sugar to make the frosting, and didn’t notice it was tapioca starch instead of corn starch. Flavor is subtle, but probably a mistake for me, altho honestly it didn’t set me off as much as tapioca in general does.

Recent theater

Jun. 10th, 2025 06:36 pm
troisoiseaux: (colette)
[personal profile] troisoiseaux
Emily Burns' new adaptation of Frankenstein at the Shakespeare Theatre Company is phenomenal— I've been struggling to explain it in a way that a. doesn't undersell how well it works and b. isn't just the Jenny Slate Drunk History meme, but trust me, it's so good. It's a reimagining of Mary Shelley's original plot— the first half takes the events of Victor's return to Geneva and re-centers it on his foster sister/fiancée(!) Elizabeth, and on Justine, the servant framed for the murder of Victor's younger brother; the second half departs from the book entirely, but has more than a little of Mary and Percy Shelley's history in its DNA— with a distinctly contemporary voice, but it weaves in Mary Shelley's original text in ways that carry new meanings: ... ) The dynamic between Victor and Elizabeth is messed up in a way that makes for delicious theater— Victor is the worst, in an "abusive boyfriend learns therapy words" way that, I swear, you could feel the audience (which, at least where I was sitting, skewed towards younger women) mentally screaming for Elizabeth to throw the entire man out; this play leans into the Gothic faux-cest vibes with flashbacks to the pair of them sniping like siblings— and the main theme is one of parents and children, explored through three different plot threads: obviously, that of Victor Frankenstein's refusal to take responsibility for the creature he created, which hangs over most of the play as an unspoken but omnipresent rebuke; the undercurrent of grief (mutual), resentment (Victor's), and guilt (Elizabeth's) over the fact that Victor's mother died because she'd nursed Elizabeth when she was ill; and spoilers! )

Also saw The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical at the Signature Theater, having finally wised up to the fact that if a new musical is being produced in DC it's probably on its way to Broadway, so I might as well see it now. (Cheaper tickets! Potential bragging rights!) This is exactly what it says on the tin - a rock musical by Joe Iconis about writer Hunter S. Thompson, father of Gonzo journalism in the 1960s-70s - and certainly timely; to lean into the inevitable Hamilton comparisons, Hunter...'s Burr is Richard Nixon as a so-sleezy-it's-camp psychopomp haunting Thompson's final hours as he runs through his life story, and the parallels to, you know, that other guy are about as subtle as a bonk to the head. Very meta, overall: as it goes on, the other characters begin to confront Thompson over his version of events and demand to speak for themselves. There was a frequent use of puppets, including a peacock, a baby that could make a fight the man! fist and flip the bird, and a giant Nixon head. (Yes, in addition to the actor playing Nixon. It was a whole thing.) I enjoyed this a lot!! But the one downside of seeing a show that's still in the pipeline is that I've had random snippets of lyrics and melodies floating around in my head for days and there's no cast recording to listen to. (ETA: There is an official trailer, though!)

Adventures in moving

Jun. 10th, 2025 05:22 pm
mildred_of_midgard: Johanna Mason head shot (Johanna)
[personal profile] mildred_of_midgard
Getting settled in Brazil is complicated! I mean, I have my own horror stories of bureaucracy being chaotic here, but I hear from my partner that it is so much worse there.

Here are some funny stories from the last week or so, around settling in and also the massive decluttering project I got left with. Context/inside jokes: "igneous" is our word for something we disapprove of; "furs and hairspray" are code for the amount of junk she left behind; Mari is her name; Rio de Janeiro is where she lives.

Trying to order food in Brazil )

Trying to get rid of stuff in Boston )

Still trying to get rid of stuff )

So much stuff )

Kitchen sinks are hard )

The lightbulb has to want to change )

Does anything in this country work? )

On the plus side, the food is better in Brazil, and the pools are actually heated (the pool in our complex here nominally got heating last summer, but after all the hype, it was very ineffective heating that didn't make a bit of difference).

Hopefully things calm down soon! I have been having a heck of a time with donation pickups, and I don't have a car, but we'll get there. I'm glad I left myself 5 months to deal with this stuff; I would have had to pay a junker to remove everything! I've taken out upwards of 50 30-gallon bags of trash so far, and I've got upwards of 100 bags, boxes, and small furniture items to try to get picked up by charities. 2 pickups have happened, but I need at least 3 more. Then larger furniture items go to freecycle, then the junker can take the rest (mostly mattresses and broken electronics).

ETA: Oh, and once the amount of stuff is dramatically reduced some more, I need to do a lot of sweeping/vacuuming/dusting/wiping/mopping. I've already started, but it's hard with still 70-ish bags and boxes and furnitures lying around, plus a bunch of time-consuming decluttering logistics to deal with.

I'm mostly just letting the house get dirtier than I would like until I have time and space to clean. I was really looking forward to enjoying this house when it looked nice, without all the clutter and filth of living with two borderline hoarders, but at this point I'll just be happy to leave it in a good state when I move out. But at least I've started being able to do some intermittent cleaning.

I was similarly hoping to be able to focus on my fitness this summer and enjoy walking to all my favorite spots and maybe some new spots before I leave, but at this point I'll be happy if my knee allows a normal (for me) amount of walking, and maybe some fitness efforts when I arrive in LA. Oh, well!

I'll never see my mom's guitar again

Jun. 10th, 2025 02:47 pm
sovay: (Sovay: David Owen)
[personal profile] sovay
Under the circumstances, I had different weird dreams than I would have expected: writing a poem, watching some incredibly threadbare film noir with no waking equivalent, hearing a performance from a musical theater star ditto. I am beginning to think the pop culture of my dreams actually is the hell of a good video store next door, leavened in the last few nights by dreams of re-reading real-life authors currently in storage like P.C. Hodgell or Joan D. Vinge. I remain physically fried, news at nowhen. At least the rain seems to have kept off the neighborly leafblowing which perforated so much of yesterday. The news continues to feel like stupidly lethal cosplay, which I remember from the last round of this administration, which doesn't make me hate it less.

Prodigy

Jun. 10th, 2025 12:48 pm

(no subject)

Jun. 10th, 2025 10:50 am
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly posting in [community profile] agonyaunt
Dear Eric: My husband and I have been estranged from our 17-year-old granddaughter for eight years. We were loving, supportive grandparents but after the mother of our granddaughter broke up with our son, the father, she stopped our granddaughter from seeing us as well.

For eight years, I have tried to keep contact with our granddaughter with gifts and cards on her birthday, Christmas and other times. I do not receive a response of any kind from her. We believe her mother forbids her from contacting us.

My question is should I continue to send cards and gifts to her? I’m ready to stop. I don’t want her to forget us but I’m very tired of attempting to reach out to her with no response.

– Estranged Gramma


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