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All Systems Red
by Martha Wells

This is the first of the Murderbot novels and it's clear why everyone loves them and the TV series so much. The title character is a security android who has hacked their own governing software to become fully autonomous and independent, even if they are still owned by a corporation. Murderbot is on assignment to guard a small team of scientists exploring an uninhabited planet. However, when they lose contact with a nearby team, Murderbot and his clients must find out what is going on.
The mystery element of the plot is not terribly complicated and the resolution is straightforward. Murderbot themself is what really makes this book more than a reasonably engaging sci-fi adventure. The character study element is really compelling. Murderbot has a delightfully ambivalent attitude towards their human charges - not really wanting to socialize or connect with them but not wanting them to die or be harmed, either. I also love the way Murderbot just wants to binge TV programs and read books, and often uses that as a coping mechanism. Plus, their competence at security and exasperation with the humans' lack of it is well done.

Current Mood: hungry

kenjari

Devil in Disguise
by Lisa Kleypas

This historical romance was very good. It concerns Lady Merritt Sterling, a widow who is now running her late husband's shipping business. When whisky distiller Keir MacRae arrives at her warehouse with his shipment of fine whisky, sparks fly. However, the potential scandal of their relationship is not nearly as dangerous as the fact that someone is trying to kill Keir. Luckily, that mystery is solved and Merritt and Keir get a scandal-free happily ever after.
I really liked this one. The murder attempt plot is easily resolved and not terribly mysterious, but it does add some excitement and urgency to the story. Plus, Kleypas manages to make decent use of an amnesia episode. Both Merritt and Keir are strong people not afraid to pursue what they really want and what is most important. But they are also kind and loving people with a great deal of care for those around them. They do fall in love fast, but it's not exactly insta-love, since they are both mature people with experience and good judgment. They're just so good together that it didn't surprise me that they came to that conclusion quickly, too.

Current Mood: hot

osprey_archer

When Joann’s closed (RIP), I decided to take advantage of the sale prices to get supplies for a couple of hobbies I’ve long meant to try: a crochet hook and yarn to crochet a scarf, and a cross-stitch kit featuring a motel on Route 66.

I still haven’t attempted the scarf, but I started the cross-stitch in July and I really took to it! I’ve already finished the Route 66 cross-stitch kit, acquired a second cross-stitch kit (from Michael’s, alas) featuring a handsome coffee cup, and spent a delightful afternoon at the library browsing cross-stitch books until I finally winnowed my selection down to Linday Swearingen’s Creepy Cross-Stitch, from which I have selected a favorite pattern that I am anxious to start except I’ve already started the coffee cup so I need to finish that first…

I’ve decided that the path of wisdom is to do one cross-stitch at a time, as the other pathway lies littered with unfinished cross-stitches. Not sure how to balance this with other potential fiber arts? As well as the crochet supplies, I’ve also gotten my little paws on a simple embroidery kit…

However, I remind myself that one does not take to every hobby. For instance, I’ve done some paper-crafting with my friend Christina (who is always happy to set us loose on her paper stash, as getting rid of some paper means she can buy MORE paper), and although I always enjoy our card-making sessions, I’ve never felt the urge to go into card-making myself.

The “one project at a time” principle is bearing fruit in another direction as well. Normally when I get a new cookbook, I mark every recipe I want to try and then make none of them, but this birthday a friend gave me Elizabeth Alston’s Biscuits and Scones, and I put a bookmark at the mushroom pie recipe, and made it… and then the herb scone recipe, and made it… and then the tattie scones recipe, which I made as well… and it’s been just a month since I got the book! (My bookmark now rests at the recipe for apricot swirl scones.)

Now of course it helps that this is just the kind of baking I like, but still, it’s rather magical to find myself actually trying these new recipes. Amazing!

Other hobby news. The garden does not perhaps rise to the level of a hobby yet, although it certainly ought to, as there’s some serious weeding that needs to be done. Sorry to report the tragic news that last week the condo mowers felled my thyme and my cherry tomato plant. The one that had actual baby tomatolets on it! The survivor has at last put forth a baby tomato of its own, but alas, alas, I mourn the tomatoes cut down in their prime…

In keeping with this newfound “one project at a time” theory, I am winnowing down my reading projects. There are currently four, but two of them are close to completion:

Newbery books (2 left!)
Postcard books (3 left!) (one of my friends gave me a set of twelve Famous Author postcards and I decided to read a book for each author. Actually, this coincided with my L. M. Montgomery reread, and so I ended up reading all of L. M. Montgomery… and there was another postcard for Jane Austen, and I had been meaning to finish up my Jane Austen reread… and Charlotte Bronte had a card, and, well, a Charlotte Bronte reread had ALSO been on my list… but then I managed to shake free of this “complete works” business, or else I would probably still be working my way through the complete works of Frances Hodgson Burnett, with a weary eye on the complete works of William Shakespeare, Jules Verne, and Charles Dickens.)

This leaves me with two projects. First, the Unread Bookshelf, and if I continue with my current pace of one book a month, that will be complete by 2027.

Second, when I was making my booklog, I noticed how many authors were on there whose works I had long meant to revisit. “What if,” I pondered, “I went through a year and wrote down each author I wanted to revisit, and then read one book by each author? And at the end moved onto the next year?”

I started in 2012 (that was the first year I had complete-enough records to make a book log possible) and have now reached 2014, so the great Saunter through the Book Log will keep me busy for a while.

Unfortunately for my hope of getting down to a single reading project, I’ve also been vaguely planning a readthrough of E. M. Forster’s novels (except Maurice, I did it one and three-quarters times and that was enough), and I don’t particularly want to put that off until 2027 or later… However that IS just five books (plus maybe some of his short stories, but those are strictly optional!) so perhaps I could sneak it in…

But not till I’ve finished the Newberys and the postcard books!

steepholm

My friend Rei sent me a photo of herself taking part in an academic panel on international defence at the Osaka Expo. My eye was drawn (as how could it not be?) to that fact that the panelists were sitting beside a large cut-out cartoon hedgehog - which seemed incongruous in a such a serious setting.

Rei tells me that this is in fact a mascot used by NATO for mass communication purposes. In which case, how come I've never seen it?

On looking into the matter, however, I find that the hedgehog was indeed in use during the Cold War, as a formidable beast whose spines were, nevertheless, defensive in nature. (The other picture dates from 1959, and shows 15 hedgehogs, representing the 15 then-members, seeing off a Russian bear. I wonder which is the USA?)

This article from the NATO website suggests that the symbol was dropped in the 1980s, but it has clearly made a comeback - at least in Japan, where no organisation is complete without its mascot character, any more than Lyra without her daemon.

muccamukk

Not sure if anyone else here is into this movie. I'm picking away at the sex pollen fic, but I haven't written fic in long enough that it was slow going the first few days, and now I'm afk while visiting my parents (elder millennial has not warmed to writing fic on phone). Meanwhile, I'm trying to work out the latest backstory.

It's been long enough since I read any F4 comics that I read the wiki to remember the origin story (since the movie just summarises it). The following is a vague stab at a timeline?

( No real spoilers )

Thoughts? Corrections? Anyone just want to talk about the movie?

lauradi7dw

Total solar eclipse is a year from today. My sister and I had talked about going to Spain together to see it. Plane tickets will probably be available soon. Am I ready to plan that?

poliphilo

It was hot yesterday and will be hotter today. Tomorrow we're promised some blessed rain.

"Have you ever worked in a hayfield?" asks Damian apropos of nothing. And I say, "Yes, once in Kentucky- where it gets a lot hotter than it does here. I lasted for a morning; had I carried on it would have killed me- and I mean that literally."

Mike is working a concrete mixer in the front yard. "How do you know when you've got the mixture right?" asks Ailz. "By the colour" he says.

conuly

Ask the Algorithm!

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

( Links )

poliphilo

We went round the farm on a big trailer pulled by a tractor with Peter the farmer driving. At intervals Peter would get down from the cab and tell us what we were seeing.

The farm covers something like 1,050 acres. Back in the Middle ages the land belonged to the Augustinians at Michelham Priory. Peter is the third generation of his family to farm here- and is in the process of handing over to the fourth. His grandfather moved the family south from Nottingham just after the war.

It's a dairy farm, but they also grow maize. The river Cuckmere runs through it- and they're taking steps to stop run off from their fields getting into it- and to eliminate the North American mink who are doing their damnedest to kill off all the native riverine wildlife.
Theyre building a new milking parlour with a a huge central turntable which will speed up milk production no end. They're trying to be scientific, they're trying to be ethical.....

I looked through the skeleton of the new milking parlour and many miles away were Windour Hill and The Long Man. I ran my telephoto up as far as it would go.....

sholio

Working on belatedly writing up some books I've read lately.

A new Ben January book came out in July, and I had tremendous fun with it! This is one of the books in the series where Hambly goes Full Pulp with the plot, and she is delightful at it - buried treasure, pirates, abandoned houses crumbling in the swamp, identity shenanigans, long-lost relatives ...

( Spoilers )

mrissa

Review copy provided by the publisher.

This collection featured stories I'd read--and very much liked--before as well as stories that were new to me. I read extensively in short SFF, so that's not unexpected for any collection these days. What's less typical is how consistently high-quality these stories are, across different tone and topic.

There is a rootedness to these stories that I love to see in short speculative fiction, a sense of place and culture. It doesn't hurt that Campbell's sense of place and culture is a northern one--not one of my parts of the north but north all the same. And forest, oh, this is a very arboreal book. There's death and transformation here--these stories are like an examination of the forest ecosystem from nurse log to blossom, on a metaphorical level. I'm so glad this is here so that these stories are preserved in one place.

lauradi7dw

My first action in response to Trump's militarization of DC is to donate to street sense media.
There are many outrageous aspects of all this, but worrying about homeless people seemed like a place to start.
https://streetsensemedia.org/article/homeless-residents-react-to-donald-trumps-threats-to-clear-encampments-in-d-c/

lauradi7dw

Often there is music in my head when I wake up. This morning it was a sentence fragment:
"a meek, mild, passive little fly known as Hiram."
A quick search sent me to this site
https://www.toonopedia.com/fearless.htm

Then I went to youtube and discovered that I can recite along with parts of the voice-over

Watch on YouTube

I cannot explain what pops up.

osprey_archer

sholio posted this MCU meme, and as you know I love nothing more than lists, so I couldn't resist filling it out.

Bold = Watched Entirety
Italic = Watched Part
* Watched more than once.
† Watched in the first few weeks of release (at least initially, for TV shows).

Phase One:
*Iron Man (2008)
The Incredible Hulk (2008)
*Iron Man 2 (2010)
*Thor (2011)
*Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
*The Avengers (2012)

Phase Two:
Iron Man 3 (2013)
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV 2013–2020)
Thor: The Dark World (2013)
*†Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
†Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Ant-Man (2015)
Daredevil (TV 2015–2018)
*Agent Carter (TV 2015–2016)
Jessica Jones (TV 2015–2019)

Phase Three:
†Captain America: Civil War (2016)
Luke Cage (TV 2016–2018)
Doctor Strange (2016)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)
Iron Fist (TV 2017–2018)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
The Defenders (TV 2017)
The Punisher (TV 2017–2019)
Inhumans (TV 2017)
Runaways (TV 2017–2019)
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
†Black Panther (2018)
Cloak & Dagger (TV 2018–2019)
†Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
†Captain Marvel (2019)
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)

Phase Four:
†Black Widow (2021)
WandaVision (TV 2021)
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (TV 2021)
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
Eternals (2021)
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Loki (TV 2021-2023)
Hawkeye (TV 2021)
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
Moon Knight (TV 2022)
Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
Ms. Marvel (TV 2022)
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (TV 2022)

Phase Five:
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
Secret Invasion (TV 2023)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)
†The Marvels (2023)
Echo (TV 2024)
Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)
Agatha All Along (TV 2024)
Daredevil: Born Again (TV 2025-2026)
Captain America: Brave New World (2025)
Thunderbolts (2025)
Ironheart (TV 2025)

Phase Six:
The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)
Wonder Man (TV 2025)
Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026)
Vision Quest (TV 2026)
Avengers: Doomsday (2026)
Avengers: Secret Wars (2027)

A few notes: Captain America: The Winter Soldier was my MCU gateway drug, and I was always more of a Captain America fan than an MCU fan as a whole. I rewatched most of the phase one movies in 2014 and 2015 as research for my massive Captain America fic Reciprocity, which is why I've seen most of the phase one movies twice.

For the same reason, I'm pretty sure I watched the first two seasons of Agents of SHIELD twice. What a show! I mean that in a mostly derogatory manner! But at the same time it did an amazing job creating characters that I still remember years later and liked even as they were making incredibly terrible choices in an inconsistently written show. I jumped ship after season 3 because I'd finished my fic and also was falling hard out of love with the MCU following Captain America: Civil War.

Even after Civil War, I tried to stay on top of the movies for a while. But after phase 2, I never even tried to keep on top of the TV shows, and it's startling to look at this list and realize how many MCU shows there are that I've never even heard of. Hawkeye had his own show? What?

Agent Carter is one of the few MCU properties I've rewatched for its own sake and not as fic research. I was very sad when it was canceled, but given the general downhill trend of my MCU feelings it may be just as well that it got canceled when it did... However, I've heard the third season was supposed to be set in London, which would have been fantastic and in my heart I'm still sorry we didn't get it even though season 2 was a mess and there's no reason to believe season 3 would have been an improvement.

I do vaguely intend to see a few of the later movies: The Eternals (big Chloe Zhao fan!), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and of course Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts. But they're somewhere below Moana 2 and catching up with all the Pixar movies I've missed since 2020, so it may or may not ever happen.

shewhomust

After various excursions which I hope to write about later, we left Pitmedden this morning. We lunched very happily in Perth with

fjm, Chilperic (as he once was, in another place), their other house guests (who announced that in fact we had met once, long ago: they had been staying with

desperance and he had brought them to

durham_rambler's birthday party) and the more sociable of their two cats.

We are now in Culross, looking out across the rooftops towards the Firth of Forth; very soon it will be time to go to th Red Lion in search of dinner.

I am taken aback by how easily these three places are within reach of each other. It seem that Aberdeen is not where I thought: or rather, it is more or less (I might have swapped it with Peterhead) where I would have marked it on the map, but that turns out not to be as far north as I thought. The length of the drive from Scrabster to Pitmedden may contain a clue - though that includes a fair distance east as well as south.

We were driving, as we were during most of our week in Aberdeenshire, through the harvest, golden fields of grain (some of it was certainly barley, but maybe not all). There were rolling hills, but not really even distant views of mountains. Before leaving home I checked my Lonely Planet to the Highlands and Islands, and was quite surprised to discover it did not include Aberdeenshire. This was ignorance on my part.

selenak

Meme time! Bear in mind that we Germans used to get not just tv shows about a year later than they were broadcast (if not longer), and even blockbuster movies took their own sweet time in ye olde days before getting released overseas. This changed in the past 25 or so years, of course, and now we sometimes get to see coproductions in Germany before they're released in the US, and can stream tv shows simultanously.

MCU Meme from

vaysh and

muccamukk:

Bold = Watched Entirety
Italic = Watched Part
* Watched more than once.
† Watched in the first few weeks of release (at least initially, for TV shows).

( It seems I watched a lot of Marvel )

Star Trek Meme from

aurumcalendula :

Bold = Watched Entirety
Italic = Watched Part
* Watched more than once.
† Watched in the first few weeks of release (at least initially, for TV shows).
( And I've watched even more Star Trek )

Current Mood: silly
Current Location: Bamberg

larryhammer

For Poetry Monday:

“when the proficient poison sure sleep,” e. e. cummings

when the proficient poison sure sleep
bereaves us of our slow tranquillities

and He without Whose favour nothing is
(being of men called Love) upward doth leap
from the mute hugeness of depriving deep,

with thunder of those hungering wings of His,

into the lucent and large signories
—i shall not smile beloved;i shall not weep:

when from the less-then-whiteness of thy face
(whose eyes inherit vacancy) will time
extract his inconsiderable doom,
when these they lips beautifully embrace
nothing
and when thy bashful hands assume

silence beyond the mystery of rhyme

First published in XLI Poems in 1925, in a section of sonnets.

---L.

Subject quote from We Belong, Pat Benatar.

thawrecka

!!!! The new Kaiju no 8 episode! An absolute killer. I did not expect to be so emotional because I didn't think I was that invested in that character, but I cried. That episode was beautifully done.

Click for spoilers

Shinomiya Isao ;_; It was so good, he went so hard, and got so close. He was willing to destroy his body to defeat the kaiju and it wasn't enough! It got me all the more so because of that tech guy who stayed close to help and had to witness it all. And the flashbacks to his wife, and to Kikoru as a child, sobbing forever. I feel so bad for Kikoru. This is absolutely going to mess her up. She was already so fucked up by seeing Kafka nearly kill her dad, but now no 9 ate him. JFC, that's horrific. This was the emotional depth this season needed.

The new episode of The Summer Hikaru Died was also great. I love how it went into Asako's early childhood and showed what it meant that she could see ghosts, and how this was a positive for her, and the way she felt Yoshiki was safer with Hikaru. But also love the jealousy Yoshiki feeling turning to horror and anger at the end of the episode, and the complicated ways he's feeling about Hikaru. I think the complicated intense feelings - the way everything for Yoshiki is on the edge of one thing or another, never pure and uncomplicated, but always intense - is the great strength of the show. It really captures those teenage feelings through the supernatural horror metaphor of it all, but also works on the non-metaphorical level as well.

I'm now at the end of episode 325 of Bleach. I got through the end of all the Aizen stuff! Finally! The anime really dragged that out to the point of being tiresome, whereas I know I enjoy it a lot in the manga. I'm now square in the filler zone. The characters talk a lot faster in filler episodes because they're not trying to drag things out to avoid outpacing the manga 🤣 I thought I was going to appreciate the anime giving more time and space to the immediate aftermath of Aizen's defeat, but it turns out Ichigo watching Rukia fade from view as his powers disappear in the manga hits me a lot harder than the 'idk it could disappear some time' thing they're going for in the anime. I get why, it's so they can have filler arcs, but still. I do appreciate seeing Matsumoto's grief for Gin, though.

Some of the one shot filler episodes are pretty fun! The one with the squad 11 training exercise is fun, not just for the repeated joke of Renji and Ichigo joining in for no good reason, but also because it's about squad 11 (and especially that dumbass Ikkaku) being shitty and immature and passive aggressive about something for 100 years and Ichigo fixes that problem. The Kenpachi and Yachiru in Rukongai story was also great; I liked how it used those characters in a more serious way and filled in some of their backstory. Right now I'm in the midst of the Reigei arc, which is fine. Some of the fights are pretty cool.

I also started watching The Apothecary Diaries. I wasn't sure during the first episode, but the second episode charmed me, so I'm about six episodes in right now. I like the light touch it takes to serious things, without being too light, and Maomao and Jinshi are charming characters.

poliphilo

We show up yesterday morning and the litter tray has been used and some kibble eaten so we search the house again- and this time we find her. She's nestled between two bags in a bedding box under the bed in the spare room.

Phew.

We have to go take a final look at her this morning and then- unless we hear to the contrary- her owners will be back.

Another heat wave is underway. This afternoon we've said we'll be going on the "hay ride" which a local Quaker farmer lays on once a year as a treat for Sussex Quakers and residents of the Quaker-run care home where Ailz is a trustee. He owns dairy cows and pastures them on a chunk of of lovely Sussex landscape in the parish of Arlington- and the tea he lays on after the tour of the farm is supposed to be fabulous.

The world of East Sussex Quakerism is intense and circumscribed and if you hang about long enough you get to know everybody. Happily everybody is nice. Oh, we all have our foibles and some of us have dictatorial habits but dive beneath the surface insecurities and fear and distrust drop away. There's a woman we originally dubbed "Scary Mary" because her public face is so formidable but I've got to know her properly now and she's become one of my favourite people.....

conuly

(Some of which I may have asked before, in which case, forgive me.)

1. People often do say that the English subjunctive is in decline. However, literally nobody I've ever heard say this has provided any sort of evidence. Is there any data on this other than "yeah, feels that way to me"?

1a. I've also heard that the subjunctive, or at least some forms of the subjunctive, is more common in USA English than UK English, from somewhat more authoritative sources but with roughly the same amount of evidence.

2. I got into it with somebody on the subject of "flammable/inflammable". I am aware that there are signs that warn about inflammable materials, and also signs warning about flammable materials. Is it actually the case that anybody has ever been confused and thought they were being warned that something could not catch on fire? Or is that just an urban legend / just-so story to explain why the two words mean the same thing and can be found on the same sorts of signs?

3. Not a language question! I've recently found one of the Myth Adventures books in my house. Gosh, I haven't re-read these in 20 years. Worth a re-read, or oh god no, save it for the recycle bin?

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

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Myth Happens

Sovay's Friends

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Book Review

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Hedgehog vs. Bear

FF:FS timeline thoughts.

one year's notice

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At last, an advice column we can all get behind!

On The Farm

Murder in the Trembling Lands (Ben January #21)

The Other Shore, by Rebecca Campbell

easier than going to DC

very random brain dump

MCU meme

Geography lessons

Meme Time!

“we belong to the light we belong to the thunder / we belong to the sound of the words”

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