fred_mouse

This morning the goal was 'put all the clutter we can from the main room into Youngest's room', which we achieved. There are now an unknown number of early 20s individuals scattered across some amount of the house (Artisanat and I have retreated to the bedroom, and closed the door, because they are loud and I am headachy).

We also (with houseguest R) wandered up to the local shops for coffee; I collected my replacement glasses (swapped to these a little while ago, and now my right eye hurts less, which I think is helping with the headache).

And now, with the air con on, and the house full of people, tasks need to be low energy and possible to do in the bedroom. I have no oomph for craft (well, more accurately, I'm the wrong kind of tired to craft; I determined that last night when I stuffed up the simplest of sewing tasks, by sewing a wrong and a right side together). So, faff about on computer, reading, etc.

I have Aurealis reading (no clue on how many unread stories, but there are ten files in the unread folder), 'in progress' reading (27 items, with the oldest started in 2021), and many many tabs open. I have two quite small books on the bed, plus the 'I want to make progress on this every day' one, and it is reasonable to anticipate finishing at least one. Stretch goal is all three. Aurealis minimum goal is to have 9 or fewer items in the unread folder; stretch goals are Everything! and have the spreadsheet updated. There is at least one work coming that has ~10 stories, so I'm not going to have the spreadsheet 'nearly done' no matter what I achieve, but at least I have hopes.

It has been a busy reading week, although some of that has been because I had a couple of things that were easy to finish with my weekly commute, because I'd been slowly getting through them.

finished:

1. Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road (Kyle Buchanan) - 4 stars - A unique look at a movie, and a moving making process, that were pretty damn unique.  Each chapter has a bit of a summary, and then the narrative is done in interview quotes. Hard going, but worth it.
2. The Castaways of Harewood Hall (Karen Herbert) - 3.5 stars - Set in and around a retirement village. Large cast of viewpoint characters, including a cat and a dog. Some of the characterisation seemed a bit rough around the edges. Herbert has managed delightfully distinct voices for each of the viewpoint characters, but there are times that they are just a bit didactic, a bit stilted for my liking. Some poetic licence has been applied re: descriptions of locations, which gave me the sensation of being shown an Escher-type perspective on a place I am very familiar with.
3. A Pursuit of Miracles: eight stories (George Turner) - 2 stars. Collection published 1990, seven of the eight stories are reprints from 1978 - 1986, although most of them feel older than that. This is a reread; some of it is memorable; I don’t recommend it. Paints Turner as many kinds of bigot. Writing good, plots suck, world building good, characters are all horrible. If you have previously read and loved it, I suspect you would discover it has been visited by the suck fairy. Has the use of being able to point at as example that catastrophic effects of climate change were already something people were aware of, but probably better to read Turner’s The Drowning Towers (which, ah, I have not reread, so may also have been visited by said suck fairy).
4. Mammoths at the Gates (Nghi Vo) - Singing Hills, book 4- 5 stars - As with the other books in this series, this is a gentle, meditative story about how stories work, and how people make stories work for them

abandoned unfinished

1. Agatha Christie and the Eleven missing days (Jared Cade) at 2/3 for being too dull to keep going. Supposedly about the eleven missing days, there was so much gumph and I didn’t gel with the writing style
2. Seven Wherewithal Way (Samantha-Ellen Bound) at 7% for being the kind of middle grade book that doesn’t work for me. Basic premise being that despite a kid saying no repeatedly, they are still taken away from where they are supposed to be for ‘adventures’, with someone their parents have forbidden them from seeing. I can no longer deal with that kind of story line; my suspension of disbelief fails when up against those kinds of transgressions on consent.
3. Flying the Nest (Rachael Johns) - romance continues to be a mostly miss genre for me; I was much more invested in the burgeoning friendship with the woman who ran the cafe than I was with the relationship with the ex-husband or the probable love interest — when I realised this I decided it was time to stop, even though the love interest had barely been introduced.
4. The Jewish Gospel (Daniel Boyarin with Jack Miles) - The historical details are presented well enough for someone with very sketchy knowledge of the time period, but I'm not familiar enough with either Judaism or Christianity to follow the discussions of faith. I have this to give away if anyone wants to put their hand up.

progressed:

1. The Flaw of Averages: Why We Underestimate Risk in the Face of Uncertainty (Sam L. Savage) - non-fiction about estimating and why focusing on averages causes wrong estimates.
2. No Man’s Land (A.J. Fitzwater) - NZ novella set during WWII. Period typical racism, misogyny, homophobia have been deftly referenced in a way that I found kept them at a distance.

Started

1. Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods (Catherynne Valente)

Forgot about a reading post last week, so just copying the notes I dropped in to the Habitica Discord (if there are people reading this who were in the reading guild on Habitica and haven't found the Discord, or who are on Habitica and would like to know more, poke me about it and I'll try and remember to make a post. I may have said this already once, but I'm too lazy/comfortable to go back and check).

14th October: I had a couple of pre-ordered books arrive, and then tripped over a bookshop yesterday, which means I'm now one over my limit at 36/35. I have, however, finished two this week -- Gaysia by Benjamin Law, and Everyone in my family has killed someone by Benjamin Stevenson.

I ran out of oomph entirely yesterday evening, and once I'd eaten dinner retreated to bed to do SFA. Which included skipping the first rehearsal of term. Still a bit flagged today. Worked from home, because I had a skin check appointment (rescheduled from last Friday; good that I could get a new appointment so fast, given it was about three months wait for this one) at 8:30am. Nothing anomolous or concerning detected, which is a win.

Came home, walked to the shops for coffee (given I'd already notified my line manager that I was going to be late in), and made it to my desk just in time for the weekly team meeting. I was the only one online, which is unusual. And we managed to get through everyone in 15 minutes, which is unheard of. Mind you, there were at least three people missing, and many of us didn't have a lot of variety in our reports (three of us were approximately 'more code for [project]; three projects, or possibly four).

And then coded for the rest of the day. I now have half a function where I had zero function and ideas yesterday afternoon. But by 3:45pm I was so vague that I couldn't work out whether my tests weren't failing because there was an error in them, or because my code wasn't working (they should have been failing. I had captured a snapshot, then updated the code. The snapshot should be changing because I added a thing). The joy of unit tests. But without them I would be guessing and writing half arsed tests, which is the way I used to do it.

Craft: The next step on the quilt is trimming the edges. This requires not being too tired to safely hold a rotary cutter. That was not me yesterday, and may not be me today. In which case, I'm going to pick the 'next' project, which is to finish up the yarn I've been using to make 15cm squares for purrdence's knitting for kitties project. Miniumum task is thus one row, which is 30 stitches, which I should be able to do no matter how shit I feel. And because it is in a nice self-contained pouch, I can keep it next to the bed.

Books: I have no idea why past me put Jane in Love on my library holds list. I stalled out at about 30% for failing me on plot, writing, and characterisation. It only needs one of those to hold me! The world building was good, and I love bits of the way Jane (Austen) interacted with the modern day. But I loathed one of the other viewpoint characters, for being written as completely vapid and off putting. Like they were written for a farce, in what was otherwise shaping up to be a somewhat bland rom-com. And even the time travel bits didn't keep my attention. (also, it was published in 2020; set in 2020. Which means it completely missed the experience of living through 2020)

Instead, I have grabbed the next ebook on the library shelf. This is Old Boy by Georgia Tree, which is a biography of their father. It is written in first person, which is occassionally off putting -- somehow it manages to break the fourth wall at times. Which, given it was assembled partly from transcripts of conversations, makes sense. The father, whose name I haven't worked out, is a decade and change older than I, and grew up in suburbs around where I lived while I was at uni. There are so many fascinating historical details -- like the kids playing in the builder's sand of the nearly hospital (presumably Charlie's, but could the Hollywood Private) building site; and similarly around the train stations being built on the Fremantle line. And a reference to throwing boondies, which is one of those words I've never really encountered outside WA. As a kid I was told it was an Aboriginal word, which presumably meant Noongar word. But I've also heard a similar word for besan ladoo at some point, and given that a boondie is a handful sized lump of yellow sand that holds together, that would be plausible.

and that is enough waffling from me. Off to look at my craft options :)

Since the start of the 'just one book' I have

• Read Lone Women by Victor LaValle - 5 stars, thoroughly recommend, content warnings for period typical racism, some truly unpleasant people, deadnaming of a character, food scarcity, and a 'how are they going to survive this winter with these resources'. Note that as well as that, it is horror, and possibly the best 'growing dread' I've read in recent times.
• Started and abandoned (19%) Stone Sky Gold Mountain by Mirandi Riwoe - this was not a good choice for immediately after the previous. The first two chapters are from the perpective of two Chinese siblings working in one of the Australian goldfields (Queensland, I think); the third from a woman working as a servant to a prostitute (that is relevant in the way that they get treated). It was unrelentingly grim. And much more explicit violence, police brutality, and just all round nastiness. And then I read the blurb and realised that it is going to get worse, because there is going to be a murder, and these three are going to be treated as the suspects. I may come back to this, but for now I've returned it to the library
• Started Deathstalker by Simon Green. This is batshit, and I'm appreciating it. Some of the sword and sorcery stuff that I appreciated when I was much younger, moved to a space opera setting. With aspects of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat books. Not entirely sure how I've entirely missed Green as a writer. I had actually been looking for a different one in the libby app, but only this series (and only some of them) is available.

For Reasons, most of which have to do with 'I put a hold on this book in Libby months ago, and forgot about it until it was suddenly by turn', I am rereading Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir during my commute. Originally I wanted to reread it before Nona the Ninth, but the hold on that one came through in late Jan or early Feb.

I love this series. I love the writing. I love the characters. I love the world-building. I love the tiny bits of brilliance embedded in the text, I love the rococco descriptions, I love the completely batshittery of the setting.

But I really really don't get it.

I can tell this, because Middlest and I sat in the car and talked about it for at least ten minutes yesterday, and 90% of the conversation was them explaining something and me going 'huh, I missed that'.

And now, I can tell you why. Muir does an amazing line in visual description. Relevant plot is built in to the visual description. I read visual description as pretty poetry, sound scapes, because it does zero for me in terms of communication. Because if you tell me you are visuallising something I get the sense memory associated with touching that thing, if I have one, and zero visual anything. There is a scene where Gideon enters some extraordinarily large room, and all I got out of the description is that it was echoey, in a way I associate with a very large indoor swimming pool. This was heightened by the description of the smell, in such a way that I had the very strong (but presumably incorrect) sense of chlorination. The description of the shape of the room, or where the doors are, the decorative touches, or any of that did nothing, so now I have that room coded as 'like the local council swimming pool, but empty'. The movement in space doesn't agree with that, so I just spent time being confused and not retaining the information.

So, relevant plot points such as 'what was outside the window that Nona kept looking at' skipped me, because I thought it was just 'something bright'. Nope. Huh. It's a what? Nona is what? Who? Where did you get that from ... ah, right. Gideon's reactions to the other characters are heavily dependent on visual descriptions, and I have no hope of keeping them clear.

Eh, I'm enjoying it. But don't ask me to explain it.

Stated goals were 'get currently reading list under 20' and 'do some craft'. I didn't state 'have an administrators meeting', catch up with M, or 'accidentally join an orchestra'. The first two were on the required list, and the last wasn't even on the horizon.

Reading: Finished the last couple of chapters of two books yesterday; read a lot of one of the library books over yesterday and today. Plus marking as read one I'd finished in the middle of the week. And so I have 19 books on my currently reading list.

Craft: during the online administrators meeting, there was enough time where I needed to focus but didn't have anything specific to be doing, so I pulled out the lowest energy knitting project and cast on. This is 30 stitch squares, and I either do stockinette or garter, depending what catches my fancy, until it is square. I'm doing these on size four needles, and have had a sudden sinking moment that I was previously doing them on size 5, so they aren't going to match. purrdence, if you see this, is it going to matter? Over the meeting, and listening to one and a half episodes of the Ditch Diggers podcast, I finished one square.

Orchestra: M, Artisanat, and I met at the Canning River Cafe for brunch, then went for an amble. M brought small dog (small variant poodle, but I can never remember which size is which), who had a lovely time wandering along and sniffing things. Saw the smallest skink I ever remember on the path (about 2cm long) and shuffled it off the path. And we got to talking, and M talked about missing swing dancing, and Artisanat will let them know when the next social gathering is, and then talked about joining a beginners orchestra. Who are in need of a viola player, because they only have the one. And they rehearse two suburbs north of here, and I reckon I could fit that in to my life. So, hopefully, I'm off to investigate an orchestra tomorrow night! I've pulled out the viola, and found the replacement string, and found my shoulder rest (and discovered that the rubber has all perished so it has lackey bands around the grips) and the good viola bow, and strung the viola, and tuned it about four times, and done just enough playing to be confident that my hand spacing is currently set to viola and not violin. And tomorrow, I have to relearn how to read a c clef. Bah.

Ten books read, all fiction; one novella, one anthology, eight novels. Six books from series; two from one series, one from randomly in a sequence, book three of an ongoing series I grab hold of as soon as I can, book 2 in a trilogy. At least 2500 words (one ebook had no page count available)

Rated 5

• Ninefox Gambit and Raven Strategem (Yoon Ha Lee), books 1 and 2 of Machineries of Joy series. I love these so much I want to shove them into so many people's hands. Mathematics as magic.
• Into the Riverlands (Nghi Vo) - book 3 of The Singing Hills Cycle. I continue to love this series to pieces; Cleric Chih and Almost Brilliant learn more about how stories happen.
• Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures (Kate DiCamillo) - very clever not-a-superhero story, done in a non-standard style. The opening chapter, a comic about a man giving a completely inappropriate gift as a birthday present, is so very relevant to the rest, but somewhat offputting!

Rated 4 - 4.5

• Sea of Tranquility (Emily St John Mandel) - twisty story of time travel and pandemics. 4 stars
• Legends and Lattes (Travis Baldree) - supposedly low key fantasy; about an orc setting up a cafe, I found it surprisingly stressful to read. Listed as book 1 of a series, not sure I'll get any future ones unless the family want to read them. 4 stars
• The Sugared Game (KJ Charles) - post The Great War London, queerness and spies and nasty plots. This is the weak one of the trilogy. 4.5 stars
• The Blue Castle (L M Montgomery) - got this as an ebook from Project Gutenberg, given that I only know the author from their famous series. This was well worth it, about a young woman who decides to throw caution to the wind following a diagnosis of not long to live. There were some fabulous coincidences, but I liked them. 4.5 stars
• Unnatural Death (Dorothy Sayers) - this is supposedly book three of the Lord Peter Wimsey series; I've read a somewhat random selection of Sayers works and have no idea how they fit together. This was another public domain one, although not from Gutenberg. My reading notes say 'a bit on the easy reading side; period typical racism and anti-semitism'. 4 stars

Rated <4

• Canberra Tales (Dorothy Johnston, Dorothy Horsfield, Marion Halligan, Marian Eldridge, Margaret Barbalet, Sara Dowse, Suzanne Edgar) - each author has several short stories in this anthology of stories set in Canberra, written in the 90s. I'm not the audience for gritty realism. 3.5 stars

Despite my goal to finish every book I started this year, I have come across one book that I have chosen to DNF anyway - Willa Cather's Death Comes to the Archbishop. I got roughly a third of the way through, and I loathed it. Racist, ableist, judgemental about people's moral character based on the way they look, and the writing in no way makes up for any of that for me - I found it tedious and rambling, rather than poetic. I like a good bit of scenic description, but this wasn't doing it for me.

And then I went and read the reviews other people have written at The StoryGraph, and there are so many positive reviews. Also, several reviews that had the same racist overtones that the book does, so I guess the level of racism isn't as 'extreme' as I thought it was. I mean, it's bad, but I'm guessing some of the readers are the same level of racist.

There were also people gushing about the atmosphere, and how well written it was, and I'm all 'are we reading the same book'?

Definitely channeling grouchy mouse today.

According to storygraph, I read 87 books in 2022 (up to 28th Dec). Some of those were relatively short, as I was on a novellas judging panel for the Aurealis award, which means that I've read all but one of the submissions already, and fully expect to finish the last one in the next three days. Looking at the stats page, 48 of the books were <300 pages, which fits with the feeling that I'd be reading shorter works. The vast majority were fiction; I've really struggled with non-fiction, and have started a lot and then shrugged and put them back down.

Storygraph has some interesting ways of grouping 'genre'. The top of my list was fantasy, at 34 works, which is not what I would expect. Second is "LGBTQIA +" which is not a genre per se, but I do like that that gets captured -- 20 works there. Then a range of classifications, including things that I consider genres (mystery, romance) and some that are capturing other features (graphic novel, memoir. Also 'race', which I might dive in to at some point, because if only 2 of my books meet that criteria, something hinky may be going on.*). At the bottom end of the spectrum, one book each for speculative fiction, dystopian, classics (which yes, was Dracula, as part of Dracula daily), sports, literary, economics, comics, and business.

My most read authors were T Kingfisher, Meg Kassel, Alice Oseman, and Leigh Straw, each with three books. Kassel did this the easy way, with me reading through three books in a series. Straw was definitely the outlier though--three non-fiction books about Australian history (two WA, one NSW).

I also DNFed around 15 books, and I'm going to be adding around that number over the next few days, as I determine that no, I'm not going to make an effort to read that or that or that. (I'm also going to clear all the books that don't fit on one specific shelf in the bedroom out, ready to start a new year of stockpiling, as I pick more than one book out of the shelves, but don't read them all before doing the same again).

* a quick check determines that the two books are George M Johnson's memoir about growing up black and gay in the USA, and the other is Anti-racist baby. I think I'm missing some nuance about what that word is being used to represent.


( Rambline about reading challenges )

Five star rated books

These are in the order that Storygraph gives them to me; there is almost no processing of the details, except to format. (oh, and to add the number of pages, because that was of interest to me)

• The Empress of Salt and Fortune (The Singing Hills Cycle #1) - Nghi Vo (121 pp)
• The Survival of Molly Southbourne (Molly Southbourne #2) - Tade Thompson (128 pp)
• Elder Race - Adrian Tchaikovsky (201 pp)
• Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir - Cassandra Alexander (307 pp)
• Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day - Seanan McGuire (192 pp)
• Where the Drowned Girls Go (Wayward Children #7) - Seanan McGuire (150 pp)
• Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back - Mark O'Connell (272 pp; non-fiction)
• Keeper of the Bees (Black Bird of the Gallows #2) - Meg Kassel (304 pp)
• The Secret to Superhuman Strength - Alison Bechdel (240 pp; graphic memoir)
• The Magpie Lord (A Charm of Magpies #1) - KJ Charles (204 pp; reread)
• The Year of the Fruit Cake - Gillian Polack (332 pp)
• Remote Control - Nnedi Okorafor (160 pp)
• Tool Tales: Microfiction Inspired By Antique Tools - Kaaron Warren, Ellen Datlow (30 pp)
• All the Crooked Saints - Maggie Stiefvater (320 pp)
• A Spindle Splintered (Fractured Fables #1) - Alix E. Harrow (128 pp)
• Near the Bone - Christina Henry (368 pp; this one I don't recommend, unless you like your horror grim)
• Code Name Verity - Elizabeth Wein (452 pp)
• A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot #1) - Becky Chambers (147 pp)
• When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain (The Singing Hills Cycle #2) - Nghi Vo (125 pp)

Two books listed as finished in June. Which, hmm. Have I not been recording them, or just not finishing anything? I've rated both as 3.5 stars, as good, but not great.

Antiracist Baby, by Ibram X. Kendi. I like what this book is doing, and I haven't a kid of the right age to read it to so I'm not sure how it would work for reading aloud, but I found that the writing was rather clunky, and the rhyming didn't work for me.

Nettle & Bone, by T. Kingfisher. From my review at Storygraph: I feel weird about rating a book I sat and read in one sitting so low, but the reality is that I finished it in one setting through sheer bloody mindedness, not any kind of fascination or absorption. Looking through the rest of the review, the story is uneven, and while very on brand for Kingfisher, wasn't up to their usual standard. Also, marketing I read implied fantasy, really closer to horror. And so many content warnings, some of which are spoilers (see linked review).