white_hart | Reading

2025/112: Betrothed to the Emperor — Kai Butler

In this ERB pastiche, unremarkable academic Tarl Cabot reinvents himself as a man of action on the counter-Earth, Gor. There's much less BDSM than the series' reputation would lead one to expect.

Tarnsman of Gor (Gor, volume 1) by John Norman

redbird

We got home last night, very late in terms of the time zone we woke up in yesterday morning, then spent some time petting and playing with the cats, eating chocolate and ice cream, and unpacking a few things that I needed or wanted right away (slippers, toothbrush, and prescription drugs). I washed a few dishes, because I walked into the kitchen for chocolate and saw that we were almost out of clean mugs in the size we'd want for tea and coffee in the morning.

The trip home was OK as these things go: I ordered a cab to take us to Heathrow, using the service Mom always used, and paid in cash using my half of the British money she'd had in an envelope, including a generous tip for the driver. We had time to finish things like washing our dishes and clearing Mom's data off her computer before leaving, and enough time at the airport to be at the gate before boarding started, but not enough to get bored. I arranged the cab, and got us all aisle seats for the flight home, on Sunday, and then turned everything over to Cattitude and Adrian once we got to Heathrow. By the time we got off the plane, I was so worn out that I was stopping occasionally to lean on the walls in the airport, but fortunately doing better once we got home.

I woke up this morning at 7:30 Boston time, which seemed good--about 7.5 hours sleep, and back on my home time zone. The milk from before we left was iffy but the cut of tea tasted OK. The igniters for the stove burners didn't work when I turned them on, but I remembered both that we have long matches for just this purpose, and where we keep them, so that was OK for the moment, and we can investigate that further when Adrian and Cattitude are also awake.

We plan to do very little today: order groceries, unpack, and I might inject the about-monthly dose of my current MS medication, which I take every 4-6 weeks, and would have taken Saturday if we'd been home). Some balance PT would also be a good idea.

tamaranth

I felt as taut as a bowstring pulled, ready to release the arrow and realizing that I had to build the target I needed to hit. [loc. 1690]

Airón, prince of the Northern Empire, has been raised as an assassin: his twin sister Eonai is to marry the Emperor of the fearsome Imperium, after which Airón will kill his new brother-in-law. He doesn't expect to survive, but the Imperium must be destroyed. Except it all goes horribly wrong when Eonai and Airón are presented to Tallu, 'a viper' reportedly responsible for the deaths of his parents and younger sibling. Because Tallu decides that he will, instead, marry Airón...

( Read more... )

Current Mood: cheerful

yourlibrarian posting in

common_nature

I interrupt my travel series to share some photos from the last months of birds. This barn swallow was caught almost by accident as it headed off, coming towards us in the parking lot.

( Read more... )

yhlee

Poll #33394 best format for continued hobby mode Ninefox AU/reboot shenanigans

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 18

View Respondents

Best format for hobby-mode Ninefox reboot/AU shenanigans

View Answers

Ninefox MUD
0 (0.0%)

Ninefox text-only browser-based chapter-based adventure (Inkle Studios' Ink)
10 (55.6%)

Ninefox VN
4 (22.2%)

Ninefox comic (this one is happening regardless)
9 (50.0%)

Ninefox animation (Candle Arc is happening regardless because MFA project)
4 (22.2%)

Ninefox reboot/AU serialized novel (prose) [1]
7 (38.9%)

None of these! Something else I will explain in comments.
0 (0.0%)

In terms of sustainable effort:

MUD: medium-high bar if using existing codebase.

Ink serialized web-based text adventure: medium-low bar. Probably chapter by chapter releases.

ETA #1: Wait a second! You can compile Inform 7 to release for playing on the web! Either this didn't exist ca. 2007 or I suck at reading documentation. That's my choice, then. I enjoy writing parser IF (interactive fiction / text adventures) more than choice-based formats. Yay!

VN: high bar.

comic: I'm doing this for myself so it really doesn't matter what anyone thinks, but maybe people prefer this.

2D animated short (we're talking 5-10 minutes): SLOWEST. VERY SLOW. 2D hand-drawn animation is just slow. But I've proposed this for my final major project starting in 2028, so I'm doing this no matter what anyone else thinks.

[1] serialized reboot/AU novel (prose): This would require negotiating with my publisher, which has an option on further prose works. I control the relevant rights for other formats.

Discussion with Solaris suggested they would be happy to talk about a different Machineries trilogy with a new plot and a new set of characters but the two ideas I have aren't trilogy-length and I don't have a sense that any reader wants this! It's theoretically possible Solaris might let me play with a newsletter (etc) serialization if it's something they wouldn't have an interest in offering for and they are assuming zero risk since I doubt anything I do here would tank sales of the existing books. However, there are negotiation complications here that may make this Not Possible rights-wise so I'm hoping no one wants this and I can stop thinking about it with a clear conscience.

I'm sitting on something like 100,000+ words of disorganized prose bits (not a coherent single narrative, it's a bunch of different POVs) and I want to write about that crashhawk unit and Gödel's incompleteness theorems in hexarchate numerology. I have an outline.

But also. For health and family reasons, I'm not signing a book contract in the near future; any prose-format writing is going to be on spec or similar if at all, and if the answer is that it's just noodling that stays on my hard drive, it is what it is. Meanwhile, I have orchestration homework to do, ta!

qatsi

Book Review: The Day The Universe Changed, by James Burke
I dimly remember Connections from the 3-channel TV of my childhood. (Which is to say, I remember being impressed without having much idea what was going on.) This book is based on Burke's later 1985 series, which ironically I don't remember.

The title has to be taken with a pinch of salt. Each chapter is about a stream of progress, rather than an individual event. So whilst it covers the (re)discovery of perspective, Gutenberg's printing press, and Einstein's theory of relativity, the text is far more wide ranging.

A few things emerge. Burke begins in the ancient world. Towards the end of the Roman empire, there was a sense of the end of days among the intelligentsia, who committed the knowledge of the world to posterity as best they could. Whilst much was undoubtedly lost, a remarkable amount of knowledge was preserved and flourished in the Islamic world for hundreds of years before slowly becoming accessible to Christendom, at least partly through the reconquista in Spain. I won't say we're quite there yet, but there is a bleakness around the forces of populism and anti-intellectualism in our time.

Another parallel with modern times is the invention of the printing press. The new technology put many highly skilled scribes out of employment. One can compare this to the threat to jobs from AI. But also, the introduction of the printed word initially led to mass propagation of errors and falsehoods, which sounds like a plague of our own time.

Overall, I would say this text has aged well in 40 years. It is inevitably highly selective, and there are some things we might choose or prioritise differently. The description of the slave trade is rather dry. The chapter on eighteenth and nineteenth century improvements to public health tells the tale of John Snow's measures to combat cholera; we might choose to add Florence Nightingale's data visualisations as another revolutionary tool in healthcare. It's interesting that Burke mentions cholera as the last serious epidemic; the 1918 flu doesn't get a mention. Would the development of an RNA-based vaccine for covid be revolutionary enough to be included if this work was published today?

There's a sense of the inevitability of progress, which is uplifting but jars with my own perception of the last few years.

chickenfeet

https://operaramblings.blog/2025/07/21/a-new-ring-from-zurich-das-rheingold/

Is this the death of the male novelist? The lonely life of a man writing fiction in 2025:

43 ready-to-play Old School modules.

Bundle of Holding: Advanced Adventures MEGA (From 2023)

oursin

Be respected literary novelists, that is?

Here be blokes going wah wah wah about the plight of the male novelist, lo, the voice of the Mybug B heard in the land, no?

“Being a middle-aged white guy and working in this space today feels, to me, like what it must have felt to have been a poet at the end of the 20th century,” Niven tells me, laughing. “It’s a very niche, very recherché area, with a tiny audience. Men just don’t read fiction in anything like the same quantities they used to, and fewer of us, it seems, are writing it.”

You know, women are notably broader in their reading parameters? I'm not convinced by this argument:

He tells me a story about a friend – “with a big public profile” – who published his first novel a couple of years ago. “It was very good, but it was non-genre, and he’s a middle-aged white guy, so I did my best to manage his expectations.” The novel was turned down by every major publisher before eventually being picked up by a tiny independent. The book, once published, came and went, as so many do. “If it had been written by a woman, it would have sold six, seven times as many as it eventually did. But this is where we are today.”

Or maybe it just Wasn't All That?

And apparently at least one of the lairy 'scabrous, satirical, and vigorously male' novelists of the 90s who cannot catch a break these days:

["W]rites crime novels now. The last refuge of the scoundrel is the crime novel. And I get it! There’s a definable audience for crime fiction, but if you’re not writing genre fiction, then it’s difficult out there.”

Because the damselly laydeez never, ever dabble in the waters of crime or genre fiction....

Oh, wait.

I do wonder WHY they want to write SRS LTRY FIKSHUN??? is it all about the Kultural Kred? (Am currently reading Norma Clarke on Goldsmith and Grub Street, and how it was Not Gentlemanly to be a hack who wrote for filthy lucre, and the delicate balancing acts Georgian literary figures had to engage in.) And why are they all about being warty boys when they do so rather than being, oh, Henry James or Scott Fitzgerald or noted for their exquisite prose style? is it also about Macho Cred?

My own literary tastes among the Blokes of the Pen whose works you will tear from my cold dead hands have been discursed of here and they range widely. I can't help imagining several of them waxing satyrik about this lot.

silveradept

Sixth prompt time! The

sunshine_revival team has been providing some different topics to ruminate on.

Looks like there's also a new writing community at

fan_writers and some of my older December Days posts appeared as writing meta, so hello to anyone new poking around.

Let's get to the prompt.

It’s game night! Whether for you that means getting together with a group of friends or a quiet evening chilling out on your own with video games, this is where you get to tell us all about it. If you have a favourite game, tell us what you love about it.

Challenge #6:

Journaling prompt: What games do you play, if any? Are you a solo-gamer or do you view games as a social activity?

Creative prompt: Write a story/fic around the theme "game night".

( What games do we play? Many. )

Current Mood: energetic
Current Music: Darren Korb - Song of the Isles

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-green-mans-quarry-by-juliet-e-mckenna/

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=62259

Second paragraph of third chapter:

I took the M6 north. The satnav reckoned cutting across country to Derby and the M1 would be marginally quicker, or taking the M62 later on, but either way meant navigating a tangle of busy motorways with every chance of traffic jams. I stayed on the motorway until Tebay, where I stopped for a late lunch. The farming business that owns this service station offers freshly sourced local food which you can eat while you enjoy the view of the northern Lakes’ fells. I resisted the temptation to sit down for a meal in the restaurant and got a snack from the quick kitchen counter instead. Still, I’d go home the same way, I decided, and stock up with a few treats from the farm shop.

Sixth in Juliet McKenna’s series of novels about Daniel Mackmain, sent on supernatural missions around contemporary England (and in this case Scotland) by the Green Man and other supernatural entities; his girlfriend is a swan-maiden, and the villain this time is a chap who is a part-time giant cat and is wreaking personal havoc in various places.

As well as the complex politics of mythic figures from British folklore, there’s a very good sense of place here, with a particularly well realised Scottish castle in a vivid landscape. The British weather is also a memorable character. I enjoyed it and you can get The Green Man’s Quarry here.

This won the BSFA Award for Best Novel in 2024, beating Airside, by Christopher Priest, and Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, by Wole Talabi, which I have read, and also Descendant Machine, by Gareth L. Powell, and HIM, by Geoff Ryman, which I haven’t. It’s Juliet McKenna’s first major award win in a 25-year career, and not before time.

Just to remind you of last year’s other winning novels: the Clarke Award went to In Ascension, the Hugo to Some Desperate Glory and the Nebula to The Saint of Bright Doors.

I have only one more BSFA winner to go, Three Eight One by Aliya Whitely; and I’ll wind up this reading project with Annie Bot, by Sierra Greer, which won the Clarke Award last month.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-green-mans-quarry-by-juliet-e-mckenna/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=62259

The play park we're waiting for a dentist appointment in has WiFi.

(It's got a building in it owned by the council leisure service to sell ice creams and manage the tennis courts next door.)

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/21-july-books/

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=62468

Non-fiction
Under the Devil’s Eye: Britain’s Forgotten Army at Salonika 1915-1918, by Alan Wakefield and Simon Moody (2006)
The Republic, by Plato (2007)
Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney, by Dennis O’Driscoll (2019)

Non-genre
The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane (2006)
The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway (2009)
Lucy, by Jamaica Kincaid (2012)
And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie (2013)
The True Deceiver, by Tove Jansson (2015)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid, vol 1, by Jeff Kinney (2016)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid, vol 2, by Jeff Kinney (2016)

Poetry
The Knight in the Tiger Skin, by Shot’ha Rust’hveli (2005)

SF
The Afterblight Chronicles: Kill or Cure, by Rebecca Levene (2007)
Misspent Youth, by Peter F. Hamilton (2009)
Fantastic Voyage, by Isaac Asimov (2013)
City of Lies, by Sam Hawke (2020)
Riding the Unicorn, by Paul Kearney (2021)
Appliance, by J.O. Morgan (2023)

Doctor Who
Doctor Who [The Novel of the Film], by Gary Russell (2007) [Eighth Doctor, novelisation]
Conundrum, by Steve Lyons (2011) [Seventh Doctor, spinoff novel]
Wonderland, by Mark Chadbourn (2012) [Second Doctor, spinoff novel]
Vanishing Point, by Steve Cole (2013) [Eighth Doctor, spinoff novel]
Millennium Shock, by Justin Richards (2014) [Fourth Doctor, spinoff novel]

Graphic story
Napoleon Bonaparte for Little Historians, by Bou Bounoider (2014)

The best, also the one you haven’t heard of
A hidden jewel from the Clarke submissions list: Appliance is a great collection of themed short stories about the invention of a teleporter and its consequences. I felt that it was not a novel, and therefore not eligible for the award, but it was great all the same. (Review; get it here)

Honorable mentions
Reading The Old Man and the Sea, somehow you are out there in the Gulf of Mexico, struggling against the forces of nature. Brilliant stuff. (Review; get it here)
I met Seamus Heaney only once, a chance encounter in a pub (the Foggy Dew in Temple Bar in Dublin, some time around 1989); he offered to buy me a drink on the basis of having known my parents in their mutual QUB days, but I was too shy to accept. I wish I had. I learned a lot from Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney, and I would have learned something from even ten minutes’ conversation with him. (Review; get it here)

The one you haven’t heard of
Alliance, by J.O. Morgan; see above.

The one to avoid
Even worse than The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Bou Bounoider’s childrens’ book about Napoleon is rambling and poorly written. Readers will be startled to learn that “Wellington was an Englishman, a bit like Paddington Bear.” None of those things is quite like the other. Wellington was born in Ireland, and Paddington Bear was a) from Peru and b) a bear. The book is aimed at the 6-12 age group, and they will like the illustrations but may not learn much from the text. (Review; get it here)

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/21-july-books/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=62468

jesuswasbatman

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

Delta Pilots Avoid Mid-Air Collision with US Air Force B-52 bomber

2006: J. Richard Gott III’s methodology suggests 80-year-old Queen Elizabeth will live until somewhere between 2032 and 2066, a European heatwave sets a record that will surely stand in perpetuity, and Profumo’s demise at an advanced age reminds Britons of the dire consequences for politicians of scandal… nil.

Poll #33385 Clarke Award Finalists 2006

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 56

View Respondents

Which 2006 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Air by Geoff Ryman
21 (37.5%)

Accelerando by Charles Stross
38 (67.9%)

Banner of Souls by Liz Williams
16 (28.6%)

Learning the World by Ken MacLeod
19 (33.9%)

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
11 (19.6%)

Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds
10 (17.9%)

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

Which 2006 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Air by Geoff Ryman
Accelerando by Charles Stross
Banner of Souls by Liz Williams
Learning the World by Ken MacLeod
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds

cosmolinguist

I am too full of feelings to work today.

I've been slacking lately, and the work that only I can do is building up. Which is just another thing to stress about.

The feelings today are about seeing the Zillow link for my grandparents' house, now up for sale. Just looking at the photos last night and the little "3d tour" that let me more or less walk around it again...I miss it so much.

And I'm really sad I can't go back to help my aunts (not my mom, who limits her involvement to continual refusals to be involved with this process at all while gripping about it constantly) clear it out.

I can so clearly imagine D and I flying back, him renting a car again, and just spending a few days doing some heavy lifting for my body and no doubt for my emotions too. It feels so plausible and easy. But it's also so distant because it's so impossible.

We're getting toward late summer, a time of year that will never feel right to me without a week of being around corn taller than I am, root beer floats, county fairs, black diamond watermelons, the fluffy summer clouds and the starry summer nights under wide horizons.

And every single time I went back I visited my grandparents' house, the roses next to the garage, the yard where I played so much as a kid... Where we spent every Christmas Eve, the adults playing cards until after midnight. Where we had to stay that summer when my mom was so sick she wasn't allowed to be far from the hospital and then I (6 years old I think) got chicken pox and my brother (who would have been 4) got some kind of intestinal bug and my grandma had to look after all of us. Where I listened to so many baseball games on the radio with my grandpa.

I knew every time I visited might be the last time I'd see my grandparents or then my grandma. But I never thought I'd visit that house for the last time without even knowing it.

2025/111: Return to the Enchanted Island — Johary Ravaloson (translated by Allison M. Charette)

1. Lighthouse of Alexandria rises again as 22 massive blocks resurface from the seafloor after 2,000 years: (tags:history light sea architecture egypt archeology )

selenak

The third volume in Jo Graham's series about Giulia Farnese is compelling Renaissance romp, full of fascinating personalities, political intrigue and emotional crisis. (You can read my review of the first Giulia novel here, and of the second here.) Incidentally, it's eerie how these novels fit with contemporary events. The last one which dealt with the papal elections, and one key point it makes was no, it does matter which candidate succeeds, sneering that one is like the other gets you into the abyss fast, and now this one features the French Invasion of Italy. (No need to name the many wars and invasions currently happening.) It coincides with the first big personal crisis between our heroine and her beloved, Rodrigo Borgia aka Pope Alexander VI., which Graham uses to expertly tie the personal and political story together.

( Mild spoilers ensue )

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: Bad Wiessee

oursin

Happy birthday,

coughingbear and

kerk_hiraeth!

tamaranth

He got sent to a cell... went before the judge, did three months of community service at the Garches hospital, was all the same spared extradition—a random impulse would never extinguish his luck.[p. 96]

Translated from the French, this novel is the first I have read by a Malagasy author. It interweaves Malagasy heritage and history with the story of Ietsy Razak, privileged son of a wealthy family, named after the 'first man' in Malagasy myth. ( Read more... )

Current Mood: disappointed

It seems venerable Canadian game company RAFM has shut down.

azurelunatic

One of the LED bulbs in the bathroom vanity developed a distracting (which is code for sensory nope) flicker. Since the porch fixture takes the same bulb, I proposed that the ailing bulb become a public nuisance rather than a private one.

One of my oncologists (I believe I have dubbed her Dr. Bitsblobs, the oncology gynecologist) is retiring soon. So she has been bidding her patients farewell. Apparently I am a "gold star" patient in terms of trying my best to comply with medical advice, and for self-advocacy. A good grade in cancer, something that is normal to want and possible to achieve.

kaberett

Reading. ( Wells, Lister, Tufte, Brosh, McMillan-Webster )

... I also technically started reading a little bit of Descartes, and more around Descartes, for the pain project -- but really not very much as yet.

Playing. A round of Hanabi with A & houseguest! We were playing with very different House Norms which led to some hilarious miscommunication, but A Good Time Was Had.

A good time was also had following the toddler around a playground, including some time On A Swing where we worked out How Legs Do. :)

Cooking. Several Questionable loaves of bread (mostly "too much liquid, ergo puddle"). Three more recipes from East, none of which were particularly interesting to us. (Piccalilli spiced rice; Sodha's variant on egg fried rice; a tempeh-and-pak-choi Situation.)

And Ribiselkuchen! I have been very very happily eating Appropriately Seasonal Ribiselkuchen.

Eating. A made us waffles for breakfast this morning. I had them with SLICED STRAWBERRIES and SLICED APRICOT and MAPLE SYRUP and also LEMON JUICE and VANILLA SUGAR and I was very happy about all of this.

Making & mending. It is Event Prep Week. There are so many potions.

Growing. ... I got some more supports in for my beans? I have just about managed to break even on the sugar snap peas this year (should NOT have eaten the handful I did...) and might yet manage to do a little better than that, with luck.

Squash starting to produce female flowers (yes I was late starting them). More soft fruit (which desperately needs processing; I will be sad if I wind up needing to just compost the jostaberries that have been sat in the fridge for ...a while, now). Many many tomatoes, none of which were actually ripe yet last time I actually made it to the plot...

Observing. Peacock butterfly at the plot! Tawny owl (audio only)! Bats (ditto)! The Teenage Magpie Persists!

Also a variety of awkward teenage waterfowl in Barking Park, along with a squirrel who was most unimpressed when our attempts to feed it mostly involved accidentally handing it an empty half-peanut-shell. It made it very clear (well before any of us had independently noticed The Issue) that it understood we were willing to feed it but that we were doing a terrible job at this and Should Try Harder. I was delighted.

redbird

We went into central London this afternoon, intending to visit the British Museum, but we made a very late start, and after our late lunch discovered they were sold out of (free) tickets for today.

So we went to the National Gallery, a few bus stops away, and looked at paintings. I wasn't up for a huge amount of walking, but bny the time I was ready to leave, so were Adrian and Cattitude. We spent a few minutes just enjoyong being in Trafalgar Square on a sunny afternoon, then walked to Charing Cross to get the Underground. Annoyingly, while it was (as whichever app Cattitude was using said) only a few minutes walk to Charing Cross, there was a lot more walking underground, and we had to go down several flights of stairs.

ETA: I was emotionally worn out to the point that I was glad it was just the three of us yesterday, not socializing with anyone else. I hadn't realized that beforehand, only that I was tired enough that committing to anything involving other people seemed imprudent. Being around my brother for most of several consecutive days was a lot of 'there are people here,' even though, or because, much of it wasn't socializing so much as being near each other and sometimes asking whether we needed, or wanted, various items.

I was pleasantly surprised by how little my joints hurt by the time we got back to Mom's flat. I took both naproxen and acetominophen before we left, and wore my better walking shoes and a pair of smartwool socks, and the combination sdeems to have done me a lot of good.

We're flying home tomorrow. I booked a cab, which will pick us up at 2:15, and logged onto the British Airways website and changed the (acceptable) seats it had assigned us to ones we like better (I got us all aisle seats, instead of all next to each other so one person was in a middle seat).

taelle

I actually like reading self-help books, because they're kind of inspiring. Like Reader's Digest articles I read in the 1990s - 'this person had problems and overcame them in this and that way'. Even if the particular way doesn't suit me.

But I really love books about people's love for books. Autobiographies in books, etc. Like Helen Hanff (I read not only Charing Cross 84 but her other two autobiographical books and loved them, even though her taste in books is a bit idiosyncratic for me). I love reading other people's book lists and 'my top tens' (though strangely enough I never got into Youtube book bloggers. Maybe I am too old for them)

These musings are all because I managed to get my hands on Jonathan Rose's Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes and really loved it - especially for stories of autodidacts, but also for what Rose has to say about culture, its change and economics, and about how people do not always find in texts what their authors planned to put there.

... and now I want to sit among my plants and read all the things. Unfortunately, tomorrow I have seven English lessons to give (or fortunately. I do need money)

oursin

This weeks bread: a loaf of Dove's Farm Organic Heritage Seeded Bread Flour, v nice.

Friday night supper: penne with bottled sliced artichoke hearts.

Saturday breakfast rolls: eclectic vanilla, strong white flour - perhaps just a little stodgy.

Today's lunch: kedgeree with smoked basa fillets - forgot the egg due to distractions and basa cooking rather more slowly than I had anticipated, still quite good - served with baked San Marzano tomatoes (we entirely repudiate the heretical inclusion of tomatoes in kedgeree but they are perfectly acceptable on the side), and a salad of little gem lettuces quartered and dressed with salt, ground black pepper, lime juice and avocado oil.

spiralsheep

- The nation state of Israel's genocide of Palestinians in Palestine continues.

- In the UK there continue to be large peaceful pro-Palestinian protests, including a march in Edinburgh attended by thousands of supporters.

- Led By Donkeys released a video explaining that the "charity" UK Lawyers for Israel hosted a far-right Israeli MP who has subsequently been sanctioned by the UK government for supporting genocide, and that the uncharitable wing of UK Lawyers for Israel continues to use vexatious legal bullying to attempt to erase Palestinian culture from multicultural Britain including shutting down a children's kite-making meeting by claiming it was akin to terrorism. Some people would call this "ethnic cleansing" and "cultural genocide" of Palestinians. A previous mention of vexatious claims by Lawyers for Israel that failed to remove a public art work.

- Led By Donkeys previously made a 6min video about intentional destruction of our right to peaceful protest in the UK by authoritarian politicians such as Keith Starmer (who is handing the next election to Farage on a plate complete with fascist garnishes).

- In the UK over 220 people have now been arrested and could be imprisoned for 14 years as "terrorists" for holding signs saying things such as, "genocide in Palestine, time to take action" and "I oppose genocide, I support Palestine action".

- One woman in Kent was threatened with arrest by armed police for standing in public displaying the sign "Free Gaza" with a Palestinian flag: "It’s terrifying, I was standing there thinking, this is the most authority, authoritarian, dystopian experience I’ve had in this country, being told that I’m committing terrorist offences by two guys with firearms." The police officers are on vid saying, "We could have jumped out, arrested you, dragged you off in a van." Kent Police issued a statement supporting the illegal actions of their armed fascist officers.

- Multiple legal British organisations with "Palestine" or "Palestinian" in their names have had their bank accounts frozen by multiple banks with no explanation. Some of these orgs send aid to Gaza, amongst other legal activities.

- Article, posted here for archiving purposes, from Scottish newspaper The National:

I'm a journalist covering Palestine Action arrests. This is all absurd.
By Laura Webster, 18th July

( archive )

None of it makes any sense to me, or our team.

The people doing the killing and destroying face no consequences. The people raising the alarm are taken away in handcuffs.

I wonder how many arrests our reporters will witness before the UK decides to take real action against Israel?

If this really is the new normal, Scotland shouldn't have anything to do with it.

I'm a journalist covering Palestine Action arrests. This is all absurd. (Link to The National)

( note )

Watch on YouTube

selenak

In which it's time for the charming nostalgia show again.

( While the season opener resolves last season's cliffhanger, episode 2 makes one of Peter David's inventions canon )

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Bad Wiessee

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/hugo-dramatic-presentations-2025/

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=62596

A reminder that the deadline for Hugo voting is coming up fast. Sending best wishes to this year’s Hugo team, but also personally relieved that I have stepped away from it myself.

I didn’t finish all of these, but I watched enough of them to decide my votes.

Short Form

6) Fallout: “The Beginning” – I watched half of this but really had no idea what was going on. Voters who enjoyed the entire season naturally nominated the season finale, but on its own it doesn’t make a lot of sense. I think there is a strong case for diving the Dramatic Presentation categories differently, for Best Episodic Drama and Best One-Shot Drama or something like that, which would better reflect the way we actually consume sf media.

5) Agatha All Along: “Death’s Hand in Mine” – I really enjoyed the series as a whole, which looked gorgeous and is acted with conviction; I just wasn’t sure that the plot of this one made sense.

4) Star Trek: Lower Decks: “Fissure Quest” – and here we have not only the season finale but the second last episode of the season getting on the ballot. I watched the first few seasons of Lower Decks, really enjoyed them, but haven’t seen any of the fifth series apart from the two finalist episodes. Even so, it all makes sense. Bumping this one a little below the other on grounds of plot complexity.

3) Star Trek: Lower Decks: “The New Next Generation” – and it makes a difference in your appreciation of a season (and indeed a series) finale if you are familiar with the characters; I loved the closure but I also loved the humour.

2) Doctor Who: “Bubble and Dot” – tremendous effects, impactful plot, an evil society, apparently Ncuti Gatwa’s first filmed scenes, and he started as well as he continued.

1) Doctor Who: “73 Yards” – in my original ranking of Season One I put this third and “Bubble and Dot” top, but I’ve rewatched this and reassessed it, and now I definitely like it more. Apparently Millie Gibson’s first filmed scenes. Gets my top vote this year.

Long Form

6) The Wild Robot – I hate cute anthropomorphic robots, and the animation is actually rather poor. Didn’t last past the first 20 minutes.

5) I Saw the TV Glow – writing this post, I realised that I couldn’t remember anything about it although I watched it only a couple of weeks ago, which is never a good sign. Checking other sources than my memory, it’s a commentary on cult TV that doesn’t quite hit the mark.

4) Furiosa – looks fantastic, but really, such awful people doing such horrible things to each other; ick.

3) Dune II – sat down to watch this on streaming and it weas fifteen minutes before I realised that I’d actually seen it in the cinema. Looks great and well acted, but a little lacking in soul.

2) Wicked, Part 1 – I did not have time to watch more than just the start of this, and probably won’t have time to before the voting deadline, but it’s clearly the kind of thing that I will enjoy a lot when I see the full thing.

1) Flow – an incredible achievement of animation and mystery. You could watch it over and over. I only watched it once, but it gets my vote.

I may do a note on my Best Series vote if I have time.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/hugo-dramatic-presentations-2025/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=62596

Finally, a publisher willing to preserve the last few male writers, who as we know are rarer than trilobites, more delicate than orchids, and more precious than... well, you know.

As of 2021, 50.45% of authors within the US are women and 49.55% of authors are men.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-best-known-books-set-in-each-country-sri-lanka/

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=62275

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Sri Lanka.

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
The Fountains of Paradise	Arthur C. Clarke	31,256	3,686
Anil’s Ghost	Michael Ondaatje	18,593	4,118
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida	Shehan Karunatilaka	54,665	1,257
Wave	Sonali Deraniyagala	22,405	939
Running in the Family	Michael Ondaatje	9,699	1,781
The Tea Planter’s Wife	Dinah Jefferies	21,637	608
You’re Invited	Amanda Jayatissa	24,448	457
Funny Boy	Shyam Selvadurai	8,648	887

You may quibble that The Fountains of Paradise is mostly set on a fictional island called Taprobane; but Taprobane is in almost exactly the same place as Sri Lanka in our world, and it’s pretty clear where the writer had in mind when he was writing the book. Also I love it.

It’s surprising for the top book on my metric to be only in second place on both Goodreads and LibraryThing. Indeed there is an unusual divide between the two systems here: Michael Ondaatje is relatively way more popular than usual on LT, while the women writers on the list are relatively way more popular than usual on GR.

I must say that the book I most want to read off this list is probably Wave, which sounds interesting but tough, as Huck Finn said about Pilgrim’s Progress. I am not completely sure if it passes my 50% test, but it seems more likely than not.

I disqualified only two books this time (see also China, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, Cameroon and Australia). They were both by Michael Ondaatje, who attracts “sri lanka” tags for obvious reasons. One was The English Patient, which actually outranked everything else by miles, but has no internal reference to Sri Lanka at all, and the other was The Cat’s Table, which would otherwise have been just below Anil’s Ghost and just above The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.

Coming next: Taiwan, Malawi, Zambia and Chad.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-best-known-books-set-in-each-country-sri-lanka/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=62275

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/20-july-books/

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=62465

Non-fiction
J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, by Tom Shippey (2004)
Veeps, by Bill Kelter and Wayne Shellabarger (2009)
EU Lobbying Handbook, by Andreas Geiger (2020)
Kosovo: A Short History, by Noel Malcolm (2022)
Stability Operations in Kosovo 1999-2000: A Case Study, by Jason Fritz (2022)
The Smell of War, by Roland Bartetzko (2022)
How to End Russia’s War on Ukraine, by Timothy Ash et al (2023)

Non-genre
Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens (2010)
Desert, by J.M.G. Le Clézio (2013)
Confessions of Zeno, by Italo Svevo (2013)
The Last Empress, by Anchee Min (2013)

SF
Galactic Patrol, by E.E. “Doc” Smith (2006)
Dawn, by Octavia E. Butler (2014)
The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein, by Theodore Roszak (2014)
The Goblin of Tara, by Oisin McGann (2014)
The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame (2019)
Wormhole, by Keith Brooke and Eric Brown (2023)

Doctor Who
The Also People, by Ben Aaronovitch (2013) [Eighth Doctor, spinoff novel]

The best
Tom Shippey’s J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century is a great analysis of why it is that Tolkien’s works have struck such a deep chord with so many readers. (Review; get it here.)

Honorable mentions
Kosovo: A Short History is magisterial, but only goes to 1997 unfortunately. (Review; get it here)
Dawn is a typically unsparing Butler examination of slavery and symbiosis. (Review; get it here)
Desert goes from the Western Sahara to Marseilles, and finds that the human desert may be in the latter rather than the former . (Review; get it here)

The one you haven’t heard of
Maybe it’s slightly cheating to count thinktank papers as books for these purposes, but I found the June 2023 Chatham House report on “How to end the War in Ukraine” very rigorous and coherent, in particular debunking the various justifications that have been given for the war. Though my good friend Ian did this rather more pithily a year earlier. (Review; get it for free here)

The one to avoid
I do not understand the reverence for the works of E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith in the history of science fiction. They are all rubbish, and Galactic Patrol is as bad as any of them. (Review; get it here)

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/20-july-books/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=62465

Sophia, it seems, just likes hanging around.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

An assortment of disco-era fantasy stories.

Basilisk edited by Ellen Kushner

cosmolinguist

This morning I read something attributed to Agatha Christie:

As life goes on, however, it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself every day. This is sometimes disconcerting for those around you, but a great relief to the person concerned.

I've been watching people at the more recent stages of leaving bad marriages and seeing them tell themselves or be told the same things I was told when that was me: I look forward to seeing who you will become is what I remember from this time.

And...I appreciate I have literally transed my gender since then. And gotten my first white-collar job. But...I also feel like I haven't changed. I am still bad at relaxing, at having hobbies and I fear this is because enjoying my free time requires more self-driven impulse than I seem to have (except in circumstances where it's terribly inconvenient, I have many and strong impulses there!).

The idea of "relapsing into individuality" is so interesting to me because this makes it sound so easy that overcoming it takes work. Divorce gave me every license to shed "the character I invented for myself," but I just feel like I don't have anything left once I did.

I don't exactly feel bad about this, but I do feel curious about it.

1. Online Piracy Almost Died. Now It's More Popular Than Ever.: (tags:video piracy TV football manga viaSwampers )