white_hart | Reading

The complete Omnibus with the rules and eight settings for Awfully Cheerful Engine, the cinematic action-comedy tabletop roleplaying game.

Bundle of Holding: Awfully Cheerful Engine

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/thirteen-fourteen-fifteen-oclock-by-david-gerrold/

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=61368

Second paragraph of third chapter:

light squeals in red and white flashes

Intense story of a gay man who serves in Vietnam and becomes a biker. Graphic and lyrical language; mercifully short. Not really sure what more to say. You can get it here.

I thought that this was the sf book that had lingered longest on my unread shelves, but it turns out to be non-genre. Next on the unread SF pile is Knowledgeable Creatures, by Christopher Rowe.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/thirteen-fourteen-fifteen-oclock-by-david-gerrold/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=61368

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/wednesday-reading-101/

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=61559

Current
Footnotes in Gaza, by Joe Sacco
Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, by Lea Ypi
Sunbringer, by Hannah Kaner

Last books finished
These Burning Stars, by Bethany Jacobs (excerpt only)
Knowledgeable Creatures, by Christopher Rowe
On Vicious Worlds, by Bethany Jacobs (excerpt only)
Doctor Who: Warrior’s Gate and beyond, by Stephen Gallagher
Doctor Who: Logopolis, by Christopher H. Bidmead
The West Passage, by Jared Pechaček
Logopolis, by Jonathan Hay
The Politics and Culture of Honour in Britain and Ireland, 1541-1641, by Brendan Kane

Next books
A Labyrinth of Scions and Sorcery, by Curtis Craddock
The Water Outlaws, by S.L. Huang
A Restless Truth, by Freya Marske

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/wednesday-reading-101/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=61559

oursin

What I read

Finished The Life Revamp - okay, not mind-blowing?

Having another bout of lower-back misery, re-reads of KJ Charles, Any Old Diamonds (Lilywhite Boys, #1) (2019), Gilded Cage (Lilywhite Boys, #2) (2019) and Masters in This Hall (Lilywhite Boys, #3) (2022). Still querying the understanding of the divorce law at the time.... (there seems to be an assumption at one point that spouse in prison was grounds??).

On the go

Started Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth (Lanny Budd, #3) (1942). This is the one with spiritualism taken in the serious experimental fashion of the times along with New Thought, besides the whole international political situation. Also, spot-on fashions in child-rearing, though I don't think Truby King was actually name-checked over the strict 4-hour feeding regimen!

Set to one side as Vivian Shaw, Strange New World (Dr Greta Helsing, #4) came out yesterday.

Still dipping into Melissa Scott, Scenes from the City.

Still working on the book for review, which is rather dense: excellent work but not exactly light reading.

Up next

Should get to Anthony Powell, Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (1960) in preparation for online discussion group.

Discovered that there is a new work by Gail Godwin, Getting to Know Death: A meditation (2024), a memoir generated by a serious accident at the age of 85.

Still have not got round to latest Literary Review.

sartorias

I've been snowed by various loads of stuff, including reading subs for Viable Paradise's workshop in October. My reading has been sporadic, and usually language-related. Like, I'm making my glacial way through a really good biography of Liselotte von her Pfalz, which is in German. I'm reading French comics, and so on and so on.

But! When I lumber this old bod out for daily steps, I listen to audiobooks. I've been making my way through T. Kingfisher's stories, and enjoyed them, but took a break for a real delight called RAVENMASTER, by Christopher Skaife. He wrote about his job as Ravenmaster at the Tower of London.

I'm sure the printed book is just fine--it's vigorously written, full of all kinds of facts as well as legends, etc, and sprinkled with humor. But I highly recommend the audio book, which he narrated. He has a great voice, which adds to the sheer delight. I wish it was longer.

OK, back to work trying to crawl back into my twelve-year-old headspace so I can finish a project that has been hanging fire for too many years.

chickenfeet

https://operaramblings.blog/2025/05/21/more-farewells/

Darn kids, always battling ghosts and exposing conspiracies and making a mess...

Five SFF Works About Meddling, Mystery-Solving Kids

Recent third-party tabletop roleplaying adventures for Old-School Essentials.

Bundle of Holding: OSE Treasures 2

2025/076: Knave of Diamonds — Laurie R King

An assortment of short pieces from the author of Delicious in Dungeon.

Ryuu no Gakkou wa Yama no Ue Kui Ryouko Works By Ryōko Kui

spiralsheep

- Reading: 53 books to 21 May 2025.

53. The Lie of the Land, Who Really Cares for the Countryside, by Guy Shrubsole, 2024, non-fiction, 5/5, is a book of practical environmental policies, written in an accessible style, and presented in solid contexts of history and society.

52. The Museum of Whales You Will Never See: And Other Excursions to Iceland's Most Unusual Museums, by A. Kendra Greene, 4/5, is a collection of non-fiction (mostly) essays about the meaning and practice of making and keeping museums in the context of the 266 museums (official tourist board count) in Iceland where the population is about 330,000 people (= 1 museum for every 1250 people). The writing style is a crossover between quirky popular travel writing and the publisher Granta's thinky-thoughts house style. The title refers to two of Iceland's whale museums: the one the author tried to visit but couldn't manage to find, and the one she implies has no actual whales in it. Quotes:

pg52: "At first I felt as if I was borrowing the stones - but now I have come to terms with the fact that they will remain here forever."

pg108: Mostly when I have thought about eggs, if I have thought about them at all, it has been as symbols, as beginnings. Only here does it occur to me that they are easily read in reverse, as finality, as the punctuation to some other process, some other series of events.

pg113: And notice how singular objects don't need initials carved in their sides - a unique enough thing needs no further distinction - but the stuff of plenty is marked up in ownership, personalised in that way, so that at the end of haying season, everyone can take back what is theirs.

pg159-60: When I think about the red house, I wonder if it had to be the last building, if the volunteers couldn't have saved this one building until it was the only one left to save. Momentum can be hard to come by, and the last chance focuses the effort. There's a kind of urgency to the endling that's different from the last thirty, or even the last four, then three, then two. So often we can't hold onto the one until we have lost the many.

pg188: Siggi is not a collector. There was that time he kept a belly-button lint collection to disturb his daughter-in-law - which proved effective - but with objective achieved he abandoned the project.

pg225: "You know what to do with your fear of a mask - but how do you begin to approach the bones that hold it up?"

pg236: They counted to three and then each bolted, in a sprint. They ran in opposite directions. They ran screaming. They ran singing. They ran shouting at the top of their lungs. And they ran like this, crying out in the night, so each might hear the other, for as long as they possibly could.

spiralsheep

Aurora Australis readalong 5 / 10, Southward Bound by Lapsus Linguæ (anon), 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 Southward Bound by Lapsus Linguæ (warning for mention of euthanising an injured pony):
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/Southward_Bound

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

Reminder for next week, An Interview with an Emperor, by Alastair Mackay, about an imagined discussion with an Emperor Penguin:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/An_Interview_with_an_Emperor

( Links, vocabulary, quote, and brief commentary )

andrewducker

1. Avenge yourself on the icebergs that sunk you in Titanic Re-Christened: Maiden Vengeance: (tags:stupidity games titanic review )
2. UK Suspends Trade Talks With Israel Over 'Abominable' Situation In Gaza: (tags:uk israel gaza )
3. What happened to American manufacturing is not unusual - here's what experts says helps: (tags:manufacturing economics )
4. Chicago Sun-Times prints summer reading list full of fake books: (tags:newspapers ai OhForFucksSake )
5. How many carers does it take to afford a flat? The answer is Labour's big problem: (tags:economics labour care precariousness migration )
6. The Hive - a glorious piece of art in Kew Gargens: (tags:bees art gardens viaKenny )
7. Flying dinosaur fossil with intact feathers reveals how first birds took flight: (tags:birds dinosaurs flight fossils paleontology )
8. The Default-Parent Problem (I am delighted that both school and nursery have now mostly learnt to call me first): (tags:parenting sexism society )
9. Israeli MP Yair Golan hits out at own country for 'killing babies as a hobby': (tags:Israel genocide )
10. The mayfly's lifecycle: a fascinating, fleeting story: (tags:life insects )

oursin

Happy birthday,

lotesse and

nilchance!

tamaranth

I'd planned this. (I plan everything, so you can bet I'd worked on how to do this.) (Not, mind you, that I'd entirely decided just how much to tell her.) (And about whom.) [loc. 602]

I was an avid reader of Laurie R King's Mary Russell books (in which an elderly Sherlock Holmes marries a young woman of considerable talents) -- my enthusiasm waned around Pirate King, and though I've read and enjoyed several novels in the series since then, there are definitely others I've missed. No matter! This, the nineteenth novel in the series, more or less stands alone (though there are clear and rather intriguing references to earlier books) and I found it engaging and fun, though (again) Russell and Holmes are separated for a good part of the novel.

The year is 1926. Mary has just returned from a wedding in France (cue a lot of namedropping: Hemingway, 'Scotty' Fitzgerald, Picasso...) when she's visited by her long-lost Uncle Jake, who she hasn't seen since before her parents died. ( Read more... )

Current Mood: calm

redbird

I just bought a membership in this year's Wiscon, which is entirely online, so I don't have to worry about energy levels, or covid risk, and all I'm paying for is the con, not airline tickets and a hotel room and all.

kaberett

This evening we went to the plot so I could water things (and say hi to people). We wandered up past the woodpecker nest; there was a Great Yelling; we heard some wood being pecked; all seemed well.

In the vicinity of ten minutes later, someone heading home realised that Things Sounded Wrong, and established that one of the babies had launched itself out of the nest while really not remotely being fledged yet (it. does not have that many feathers.) by dint of hearing that the yelling was not all coming from up, and also some of it was Louder Than Usual. (I am pretty sure we didn't miss this when we were ambling up? I think it genuinely did go on an incredibly misguided adventure somewhere in that ten minutes.)

... I was delegated to stand guard for the purposes of Dissuading Foxes. Other people went to fetch A Ladder. I subsequently provided A Torch, and Part Of The Ladder Steadying.

The Errand Child was delicately posted back into its hole.

The tenor of the yelling from the hole... changed.

An adult popped its head out, all "what the fuck just happened???" Paused. Quite clearly thought, upon Observing the Assembled, something along the lines of "... right then." Retracted.

And then everyone settled down apparently to sleep.

I was perhaps not in fact The Fae, but I did get to be at least fae-adjacent, and I got to see a shit tiny dinosaur that really I ought not to have but in a way that was minimally bad for the poor thing.

Fascinated by the evolutionary strategy of "screaming incessantly might get me eaten or might get me The Fae, but there's no good outcome from not screaming, so... screm?" Evidently in this case it worked!

(It had the start of its little red hat! It was simultaneously Tiny and Lorge, and definitely Distinctly Round! It was a BABY. I am so glad friend human realised Something Was Wrong.)

wychwood

I continued the culture theme - actually I forgot to post about it, but I also went to the opera! That was ten days ago now, Peter Grimes, a Britten piece I'd never actually heard before. What a downer though.

Anyway. On Saturday I went to the cinema to go and see Ocean, a new David Attenborough that was having a theatrical release. Excellent as ever, although mostly not new; I liked the juxtaposition of "incoming climate disaster" with the example of Save the Whales as a campaign that really worked. Afterwards I had a couple of hours to kill before church, and they were offering £5 tickets, so I took myself across the building to see Thunderbolts*, which was entertaining, had some genuinely touching character moments, and did not go in for too many extended fight scenes as a replacement for plot. I mean, there definitely were plenty of fight scenes, it's still Marvel, but sometimes you think "really we could have cut half an hour of fight scenes out of this film without losing anything" and I didn't, here. Helped that it was a two-hour film, probably.

Then on Sunday my dad got confused answering one of the crossword questions and produced the concept of Douglas Adam's Watership Down, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since.

chickenfeet

https://operaramblings.blog/2025/05/20/having-your-cake/

cosmolinguist

At the gym, I spotted someone holding what looked like a guide cane. (There are different kinds of white canes.)

He was just standing around, looking kinda vague. So when I finished the exercise I was doing, I went over and asked him if he would like any help.

We didn't share much language, but I got the impression he didn't want to be bothered, so I cheerfully went on my way.

But when I was doing my next exercise, he came over and said something about "check weights."

I hopped up with a confidence I soon realized was unearned. I was at that time actually using the only machine I can read the weight numbers on...because they've been repainted by hand. I rarely use the free weights because I can't find the dumbbells I need most of the time -- everything is labeled black-on-black! Why?!

Anyway, he didn't actually want help setting the weights for a machine or finding free weights. He wanted me to read his weight, from a scale that I hadn't even known was in the gym.

The numbers on the scale were so tiny.

Oops: I quickly realized I'm the worst person in the gym for him to ask!

Luckily I had my phone on me, so I could do what I usually do when I'm out and about and something is too small for me to read: took a photo on my phone and zoomed in.

I read out the number to him, and he seemed dismayed. He actually handed me his cane and asked me to read his weight again.

Guide canes are only a meter long, they're hollow, and they're very light. White canes working properly depends on them being very light! Sorry my friend: the number was the same the second time.

Anyway, moral of the story is: sighted people should offer help to a blind person, because if you don't another blind person is gonna recognize their cane and be excited about it and offer help that it turns out I'm shit at actually providing.

Got a notice from Campus Health that I may have been exposed to measles in Hagey Hall on the 8th, between 5 PM and 11 PM.

Oddly, that's not a one-to-one correspondence with my shift on the 8th. My shift started at 3:45 PM. The client's company was there before me, so if they were the source, the warning should begin earlier. I wonder what time Plant Ops evening shifts begin?

qatsi

Book Review: Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, by Alexander McCall Smith
So, after re-reading the series so far and de-duplicating the second-hand copies I bought by mistake, I returned to the travails of Mma Ramotswe. As usual, the agency's cases are more often puzzles and problem-solving than crimes, but right now seems at least as good a time as any for a bit of light escapism. The ladies are investigating possible match-fixing in one of the local football teams, and they find themselves with little background knowledge to fall back on; meanwhile, one of Mma Makutsi's fellow alumnae from the Botswana Secretarial College (who scored much less than 97%) is up to no good. This is a series that makes most sense from the start, so I imagine the audience has become self-selecting by now.

oursin

Today partner and I did make it through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered (actually, 2 Tubes, 1 Overground, and a walk through Belair Park) to Dulwich Picture Gallery for the Tirzah Garwood exhibition.

Also a certain amount of queuing even if we had timed entry tickets, as due possibly to the way things were laid out there was a certain amount of clumping up around the early parts of the exhibition.

But really rather good - got the impression that Garwood was an artist who was having fun with her art rather than Suffering For It, as well as, like so many female artists of her day, working in a whole range of media and crafts. E.g. her work on marbled paper seems to have been a significant contribution to the family income at certain points. Also did embroidery, quilting, collages, etc and there's a lot of playfulness to her work. Though also I found a number of her 'house' pictures verging on the unheimlich (a certain Shirley Jackson-esque note?)

Did a fairly quick walk round the rest of the gallery after we'd done the exhibition (not our first visit) and then home by a different route - the other Dulwich station, Overground plus Tube. Nostalgia of train passing through vistas of South London.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-peladon-audio-plays/

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=61358

For reasons that I may or may not divulge, I have been listening to the Big Finish plays set on the planet Peladon. There are six of these: The Bride of Peladon, a main sequence Fifth Doctor story from 2008; The Prisoner of Peladon, a 2009 Companion Chronicles story starring David Troughton as King Peladon again; and a four-story box-set from 2022, set at different points in Peladon’s history and with a largely different cast for each play.

The first of these is more than two hours long, and all the rest are over an hour, for a total listening time of the guts of nine hours. I found them very rewarding, especially (shout-out in advance) The Death of Peladon by Mark Wright, the third of the four-fold sequence. Robert Valentine, as script editor for the 2022 stories, drew up a timeline for Peladon’s history, so you can experience the stories in historical order if you like (though I’m writing them up here in release order):

Valentine explained on Twitter/X that the events of the Gary Russell novel Legacy got eaten in the Time War, so the audio sequence should not be understood to be in the same continuity as the book.

In 2009, I wrote:

I loved The Bride of Peladon: OK, a substantial amount of it is a retread of The Curse of Peladon, but that is probably my favourite Third Doctor story so it’s not a bad start; and then we have the Osirans as in Pyramids of Mars, as well as Ice Warriors, Alpha Centauri, Aggedor, Arcturans and all. Erimem’s departure is as you would expect (though we have some good misdirection) and Peri promises that she will not leave the Doctor to marry an alien king. I laughed so loud at that line that passers-by were very startled. But you also have Phyllida Law as the royal grandmother, and Jenny Agutter as the baddie, and it’s generally excellent.

Sixteen years later, I agree with myself. It’s a tremendous ensemble piece, one of my favourite Big Finishes. I should have said that Caroline Morris as Erimem, the Egyptian princess who is a companion for the Fifth Doctor in a dozen Big Finish plays, and Nicola Bryant as Peri, both put in great performances and have very sparkly chemistry in their last appearance together. It’s a bit odd that the dodgy McGuffin can tell who has royal descent by sniffing their blood though. You can get it here.

Also in 2009, I wrote:

The Prisoner of Peladon, by Mark Wright and Cavan Scott, is the latest in the Big Finish series of Companion Chronicles, although this time the story is told by a non-companion who appeared in only one story in 1972, King Peladon of the eponymous planet (played by David Troughton, son of Patrick, who has also of course appeared in other Who stories both Old and New and recently took on the cloak and dead bird of the Black Guardian for Big Finish). Troughton is, as ever, great, and Nicholas Briggs is, as ever, good as the monsters (Ice Warriors this time, of course). The concept is very interesting – Peladon has taken in large numbers of Ice Warrior refugees after an internal conflict, with the result that Ice Warrior politics spills catastrophically over to the host planet; the Third Doctor arrives to sort things out, of course, but – and this is the bit I really liked – the King gets a brilliant rant about how badly Three behaves to people, to which the Doctor has no answer. Scott and Wright would not have got away with it if Pertwee was still alive, but it gladdened my heart. (This was directed by Nicola Bryant who herself visited Peladon as Peri in a Fifth Doctor audio last year.)

I should make it clear that this was a format of Big Finish plays where there were only two actors, Troughton (jr) and Briggs with Troughton doing the narration and most of the voices. Listening to it again, I stand by all of the above, and it is really remarkable how prescient the refugees plotline turned out to be – this was in 2009 when the flows from Iraq and Afghanistan had slowed to a trickle, the Syria war had not yet begun, and the wave of economic migrants from sub-Saharan Africa was also yet to become a thing. You can get it here.

The four-volume box set from 2022 features Jane Goddard as Alpha Centauri in three of the four episodes, but different rulers of Peladon in each. (And unseen growling Aggedors throughout.) This brief promotional video name-checks the other big stars, but also showcases Howard Carter’s tremendous moody interpretation of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” (aka “Klokkleda, Partha Mennin Klatch”) which is a unifying theme tune for all four plays.

Watch on YouTube

The first of the four stories is The Ordeal of Peladon, by Jonathan Barnes and series script editor Robert Valentine. This brings back David Troughton as King Peladon in old age, dealing with a wandering prophet and a cosmic inspection by the Federation. The plot takes us on a journey across Peladon for the first time – up to now we have only seen the citadel itself and the Ice Warrior refugee camps – and gives a strong sense of a world with gross inequality and structural stress, setting the scene for the next three plays. Both the prophet and his acolyte are played by Black actors (Ashley Zhangazha and Moyo Akandé), which of course has further resonances. There is a well-judged cameo from Qnivq Graanag nf gur Sbhegrragu Qbpgbe at the end.

The Poison of Peladon, by the normally reliable Lizzie Hopley, was probably the one of the four that worked least well for me. River Song is posing as a high priestess at the court of Queen Thalira (played here by Deborah Findley); Ribble the Arcturan (Justin Salinger) is posing as a friend but actually fomenting revolution; Chancellor Gobran (Aaron Neil) is spreading literal poison; there is a villainous Earth priest played by Ariyon Bakare (recently the evil Barber in The Story and the Engine). A lot of moving plot parts that didn’t gel as much as I’d have liked. (Also, for me there is only one Ribble.)

On the other hand, the Death of Peladon by Mark Wright is a taut and well-structured political drama, with an all-female guest cast. A hundred years on from The Poison of Peladon and fifty years on from The Bride of Peladon, Queen Minaris (Sara Powell) and her disaffected daughter Isabelda (Remmie Milner) face both a dissatisfied population led by insurgent Helais (Liz White) and environmental disaster from the (now exhausted) trisilicate mines. The Sixth Doctor and Mel tumble into this but it’s mainly up to the Pels to sort themselves out.

Finally, The Truth of Peladon is more or less a two-hander between Paul McGann and Meera Syal, the latter playing expert seamstress Arla Decanto, who the Doctor persuades to become a rebel by showing her the dark side of Peladon’s society, rather like the Three Ghosts and Scrooge. Jason Watkins gets a look in as evil Chancellor Barok, and Nicholas Briggs turns up again too. Syal is always great, but I did not quite understand why the Royal Seamstress in particular needed to have her eyes opened.

I thought this was a very decent box set. As I said, the third episode was exceptional, and even the second is far from dreadful. You can get it here.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-peladon-audio-plays/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=61358

2025/075: Bee Speaker — Adrian Tchaikovsky

A horny but pious Mormon and a hot but godless scientist witness the wrath of an angry god.

That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made by Eric James Stone

lnr

Unions now have a meeting on Thursday with the Pro-VC, senior HR and EDI people. I'm going to be attending on behalf of UCU, along with our Equalities Officer Amanda. Our main requests are better communication of actual practical support for staff and students, not changing policies without consultation based on the rushed EHRC interim guidance, and asking for them to contribute to the consultation. There's a lot more subtle stuff involved, but that's kind of the absolute minimum.

It turns out I'm now having trouble getting back to sleep if I wake in the night, because I'm too busy thinking about how the hell we communicate this properly, and what our chances of success are in ensuring trans, intersex and non-binary people continue to be treated with dignity and respect and remain safe at work. Because that feels like a really basic thing to be asking for when you put it like that.

My HoD finally got back to me yesterday, to reiterate support, but it's meaningless if it's only said to *me*, and not to all staff and students.

tamaranth

It is truly amazing how many flavours of dumb an apocalypse can spawn. [loc. 1990]

Third in the series that began with Dogs of War and continued with Bear Head. The time is about two centuries after the events of Bear Head, and three generations after the fall of the Old ('the world that once was') due to failure of the global information network, in a 'deluge of artificially-generated false testimony' exarcerbated by climate disaster. Human existence on Earth is now rather dystopian, as a group of Martians discover when they respond to a distress call.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: cheerful

julian

My mother is not actually (yet) a wanderer, dementia-wise, though she is accident prone, which is basically the functional equivalent.

(Apparently, especially with sundowners, people do just. Wander a lot, and also there is the subsection of them who want to find old homes that no longer exist and/or they no longer live in.)

The first time this seemed wandering-esque, last month, it was that she had gone out to, presumably, get ice around 5 am at night in a hotel. (She and my dad were going to an archeo-astronomy convention). She then forgot her room number and hadn't brought her room key with her, but she eventually found the front desk, and they called my dad. ....who hung up the phone on them because he was 3/4 asleep. So my mom and the front desk clerk went and banged on the door of their room, several times. (She then forgot the part about their having called my dad until several days later when I was talking to them about it. This is the problem with reconstructing events, sometimes she doesn't remember a recent thing has happened at all, and then sometimes, 10 minutes later, she remembers both the event and a particular detail, and it's never predictable which way it'll go.

However, I would like to praise her problem solving skills on the night of the event, there.)

The second time this happened was last week, which my father reported to my brother and I as her "losing her car keys," but what actually happened was she locked them (and her purse) inside the car outside her local pharmacy, and since she didn't have her cell phone on her (she never does, is the problem), she went inside the pharmacy and asked to use their phone (again, top tier problem solving skills, but I suspect she had to do a lot of hemming and hawing about it because she's become *even more* unable to get to the point of her questions/train of thought than she used to be.) First, she called my dad, who called AAA for her. I lose track of the narrative a bit here, but I think basically, AAA took awhile so she got impatient, then the pharmacy called Riverside Community Care Elderly Services, who called the Dedham Police, who called the Dedham Fire Department, who kindly broke into her car for her. Riverside then followed my mom home and offered my dad their Elderly Services brochure, and said they'd call Monday, and my dad was sad because dementia, and also he wants to deal In His Own Way, and I suspect also because my mom had become Obvious To Their Hometown.

(They did not call today.)

Anyway, so my brother and I stopped by today to have dessert and commiserate with them, and we are inching toward my dad being OK with getting a 3-ish-days-a-week helper, which would assist *infinitely* with dinner, which causes a lot of stress because my mom thinks she can still be organized enough to cook and she isn't.

I also, today, registered her as a wanderer with the Dedham Police, or anyway, that's what the form focuses on, but it's serves just as well as, "Please return this person if she's having troubles." Really, what she *is* is a a) deaf, and b) a source of confusion for people who run into her in stressful and/or confusing situations, because she takes shortcuts in her brain, doesn't let other people in on the shortcut, and also, as noted, no longer asks questions that give people enough clues to figure out either the answer or the question. So she may occasionally functionally *act* like a wanderer even before she becomes one, and if the Dedham Police know this, so much the better.

The point of this post is, I dun' like it.

donut_donut posting in

little_details

Hi! I'm writing a novel that takes place in the French Pyrenees (modern day), and I'm trying to figure out what plants to place in this fictional garden.

More info:
The novel takes place at a villa owned by a middle-aged bohemian lady who moved there from Paris maybe a decade ago. Gardening is her hobby. In the back of the house is a potager (vegetable garden), and I've got that covered. But the front of the house has a flower garden, and I don't know so much about that.

It doesn't need to be plants that are native to the region, but it has to be plausible that they would be available and could thrive there. It's summertime (late July-August), and I would like there to be flowers, because we often see her pruning the old blooms. I assume rose bushes would work, but I would love some other options to work with. I've been picturing something like hydrangeas or rhodedendrons, but I don't know how common they are in this environment.

Some kind of ornamental tree would also be nice, for a character cry under. A flowering tree or large bush would be nice but not necessary.

She has somewhat offbeat tastes, so anything off the beaten track would be great, but it has to make sense for the climate.

Thank you!

chickenfeet

https://operaramblings.blog/2025/05/19/schmaltz-and-pepper-cd-launch/

spiralsheep

Still obsessed with the fact a whole family decided to go with Blundell-Hollinshead-Blundell as a surname.

Poll #33140 A whole family went along with this....

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 16

View Respondents

Why choose Blundell-Hollinshead-Blundell as a surname?

View Answers

Why settle for less than a 7 syllable, triple-barrelled surname?
9 (56.2%)

Inherited wealth impairs people's judgment
10 (62.5%)

Married their cousins too often (genealogical)
7 (43.8%)

Married their cousins too often (genetic)
1 (6.2%)

To psych out their frenemies
3 (18.8%)

Mistake by the birth registrar
0 (0.0%)

Misanthropy against bureaucrats and historians
5 (31.2%)

Rulebooks, Adventure Anthologies, + 4 adventures for the Old-School Essentials tabletop roleplaying rules set from Necrotic Gnome.

Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy Bundle

But not the Planet Nine You May Expect

yourlibrarian posting in

common_nature

I've only seen one here twice before, once in the months after I moved in, and again a few years ago. Unfortunately just as this time, I had been on my way to the grocery, and I assumed I'd have time to take photos when I came home. Which I didn't because it was gone. ( Read more... )

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/hugo-novels-2025/

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=61354

Now that I am just another punter, I can reveal my votes in this (and other) categories. I found this a much easier ranking than in some years.

6) Service Model, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Second paragraph of third chapter:

Some past interaction had resulted in the inspector’s cheek and the side of his neck being torn open, revealing plastic bones and the ducts of his hydraulics. For a moment Charles’ proprietary centers prompted him to deny access to Master on the basis that the inspector was improperly dressed, and to ask him to return when his face had been repaired. Police authority overrode him, though. Now that the inspector had arrived, Charles could not impede the investigation. Which was only fair, given that he was the murderer.

I’m sorry, I just don’t like the travails of anthropomorphic robots and their makers as a storyline, and that’s what this book is about. Shortlisted for the Clarke Award. Locus Top Ten (SF).

I like all the rest though.

5) Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Second paragraph of third chapter:

‘What did I do?’ I demand, and by the second time it’s more pleading and begging. There aren’t many good reasons to be hauled off to see the big man. And I can’t see why they’d need to make an example of someone right now, given all the varied examples that our delivery method provided us with, but that’s the only thing I can think of. They’re going to dangle me from the scaffolding just to make sure everyone else is sufficiently educated as to the way things are run around here. A final irony, the career academic ending his life as a lesson.

Well imagined, plot-twisty take on exploration of an alien planet, where the scientists themselves are under the control of a brutal autocratic regime and the planet’s environment is horrifyingly hostile. Shortlisted for the BSFA Award but withdrawn. Locus Top Ten (SF).

4) Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell. Second paragraph of third chapter:

And they never once thanked her for it.

Fantasy novel told from the point of view of the anthropophagous monster, which falls in love with a human girl whose family are horrendously abusive. Lots here about disability. Shortlisted for the Nebula Award. Locus Top Ten (First Novel).

3) A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher. Second paragraph of third chapter:

At first her sleep-fogged brain thought that it might have been a sound. Had there been rain? Had she woken because the drumming on the roof had stopped? No, there wasn’t any rain last night, was there? It was clear as a bell and chilly from it.

Another fantasy story with a protagonist whose best friend betrays her early in the book and whose abusive mother has evil plans which need to be thwarted. Shortlisted for the Nebula Award. Locus Top Ten (Fantasy).

2) The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. Second paragraph of third chapter:

This meant the Empire always had better soldiers than most other fighting forces, certainly. But the beating heart of the Empire were the Sublimes: the cerebrally suffused and augmented set who planned, managed, and coordinated everything the many Iyalets of the Empire did.

Murder investigation in a richly imagined fantasy empire which is beset by adversaries without and within. Locus Top Ten (Fantasy).

1) The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. Second paragraph of first part of third chapter:

Debility, Stanley had said. Well, they all knew what that meant. Scurvy. Men ruptured by melancholy, bleeding from their hairlines. Teeth loose in the head as a blown rose’s petals. Weeping for home— more so than usual. Aching at the joints. The smell of an orange, it’s said, could drive a debilitated man to derangement. The word “Mother” is like a lance to the ribs. Old wounds reopen.

The narrator is assigned to help a member of the Franklin expedition, rescued from 1847, integrate into contemporary British society (where the government has secretly discovered limited time travel). But the project turns out to be much more than she could have anticipated, in several ways. Ticked a lot of my boxes and gets my vote. Shortlisted for the Clarke Award. Locus Top Ten (First Novel).

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/hugo-novels-2025/

This collage of covers was constructed by hand using PowerPoint and Paint, without use of AI.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=61354

Beware of smooth-talking hustlers, frauds, scammers, and charlatans!

Five Books About Imposters, Swindlers, and Con Artists

oursin

Pillion review – 50 shades of BDSM Wallace and Gromit in brilliant Bromley biker romance (Peter Bradshaw in Cannes, you have been warned).

But, anyway:

Soon Ray is requiring the gigglingly thrilled Colin to cook and clean and shop for him (though of course never permitted touch his motorbike) and sleep on the floor like a dog at his bland house in Chislehurst*

Now comes the HORROR:
while Ray reads Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle in bed.

Safeword for unbearable ponceyness, no?

*CHISLEHURST!!!, the subtle connotations of which I have previously discussed.

***

Let me cleanse the timeline with this adorable story about saving the Welsh watervole by making its poo glittery: Endangered water voles in Wales are being fed edible glitter in a bid to save them from extinction:

The hope is that if the water voles are willing to consume the glitter then it will come out in their poo, allowing the small mammals - which are often mistaken for brown rats - to be tracked by conservationists.
Different colours of glitter could be used to allow conservationists to track different families of water voles and how far they range.

1997: The UK wins Eurovision, the BBC foolishly embraces that passing fad known as the internet, and Tony Blair wins a razor-thin 179 seat majority.

Poll #33137 Clarke Award Finalists 1997

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 32

View Respondents

Which 1997 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh
3 (9.4%)

Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
17 (53.1%)

Gibbon's Decline and Fall by Sheri S. Tepper
9 (28.1%)

Looking for the Mahdi by N. Lee Wood
4 (12.5%)

The Engines of God by Jack McDevitt
11 (34.4%)

Voyage by Stephen Baxter
5 (15.6%)

Bold for have read, italic for intend to read,, underline for never heard of it.

Which 1997 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh
Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Gibbon's Decline and Fall by Sheri S. Tepper
Looking for the Mahdi by N. Lee Wood
The Engines of God by Jack McDevitt
Voyage by Stephen Baxter

selenak

I rewatched Rogue One for the first time since I originally saw it in the cinema, obviously inspired by Andor, and curious whether two seasons of an excellent prequel to a prequel would make a difference. In the grand scheme of things, it didn't - I liked the film then, I still do, with a few exceptions, I'm not interpreting things very different from when I was newly introduced to (most of) these characters. I'm still irritated by the same plot element in the opening sequence , possibly even more so post Andor- ( spoiler cut just in case ). I still like and appreciate pretty much everything else. Then as now, I feel the movie is a love letter to all redshirts, and far more original and creative than the one sequel movie which was already released by the time Rogue One premiered, The Force Awakens, because instead of modelling itself on A New Hope and repeating the exact some emotional and plot beats, it told an actually new story within the SWverse.

There are a few differences seeing this for the second time and post Andor does make for me:

- Jyn Erso no longer feels like the main character, Cassian does, with Jyn only guest starring, so to speak

- the delighted shock at the appearance of Saw Guerrera (not so much for Saw's sake but for the fact that up to this point, he had been an animated Clone Wars character, and if he was now big screen canon, then so was Ahsoka) made room for ( a more spoilery reaction )

- I like the Rogue One only (i.e. not appearing in Andor) characters of Bodhi, Chirrup and Baze a lot and in retrospect Bodhi especially forshadows Team Gilroy's ability to create nuanced imperial defectors/undercover-for-the-rebellion people who with not much screen time still make me feel a lot for them (see also Lonni Jung, or even just the maintenance worker Cassian interacts with in the first episode of s2)

- the way fascism works on a dog-eats-dog basis, with groveling towards those above you and kicking downwards, is really perfectly illustrated if you contrast Krennic in this movie (where we mostly see him with people who outrank him, like Tarkin and Vader) versus Krennic in the show (where we exclusively see him with people he outranks, like Dedra and Partagaz)

- yep, the digitally recreated counterparts of Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher still look creepy, and Andor with Bail Organa proves you can successfully recast if an actor (for whichever reason) isn't available anymore

- I stand by my observation from my original review that the fact Rogue One as a prequel could not show the Death Star destroying a planet (since Alderaan has to remain the first occasion this happens) was a blessing, because what it shows instead - ( spoilery in nature ) is way more viscerally frightening, only now I think Tony Gilroy might have shown that restraint even without the prequel factor, because the Ghorman arc in s2 illustrated he and his creative team are very very aware of how you buld up to, execute and then show the aftermath of such an event in a way that really affects the audience. (Meanwhile, The Force Awakens went completely into the opposite direction and tried to top the one destroyed planet with multiple destroyed systems and no emotional resonance whatsoever.)

Some more thoughts about Jyn: ( Which are spoilery. )

What Rogue One and Andor between them accomplished for good, though, is to realign the whole focus of the Rebellion era in SW from the force wielding Jedi and Sith characters to the non-force users (Chirrup's belief in the Force notwithstanding), and thereby making it feel far more of a story about Revolution versus Authoritarianism. This doesn't mean I disdain the Jedi and Sith aspects of the story now, btw. Or that I think the only valid SW has to be like Andor. As mentioned elswhere, I adored Skeleton Crew*, which is defiantely aimed at kids and about them, and which is just as much SW. But I am really really glad there is room for both.

*Speaking of which, I hear one young actress is now the new central Slayer in the BtVS sequel? On the one hand, good for her, she was great in Skeleton Crew, otoh, I guess that means it remains a miniseries without a second sason.....

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