The part of DS9 where they get an airborne aphasia virus and no one wears masks is … interesting …

Really loved and heartily recommended Gautam Bhatia’s The Sentence, and I hope it gets wider distributionn and availability. 📚

Littlest kiddo was sick over the weekend, so both her parents had an excuse to watch our favorite movies with her. She made it through Hunt for Red October in two sittings, and did about 45 minutes of Chariots of Fire with me, which was enough time to remember that movie is just all Scenes. Like there may be connective tissues, and they couldn’t happen in any other order, but each one is its own set piece, for particular purpose, in order to establish the moment. And it’s probablyy because I watched it young and with an uncle I thought was really sophisticated and so imprinted in odd ways, but I absolutely adore it.

“- that I am, and will be whilst I breathe … (cow moos, all laugh, the intensity dissolves in comedy briefly) … a Scot”

Anyway I’m also reading The Sentence (and looking forward to reading Abigail Nussbaum’s review once I finish. It’s an excellent speculative legal thriller, and at times is reminding me of Chariots of Fire. There’s something in both of working out “what, exactly, is the thing I need the reader to see and understand at the end of this” (in Chariots, I think it’s the tensions of the moment, a center which cannot hold, but also the idealism that makes you at least believe that they can be put aside for a while, and perhaps that while can be long enough. Montague’s opening line to his mother about: I know you and pa are disappointed I’ve given up my shorthand, but if you were me, with the chance to compete for the world championships, you’d be just as big a fool). And then carefully working out exactly what is needed to convey that wholeness and putting together only what’s obsolutely necessary to construct that whole. I’m really looking forward to forward to completing The Sentence, and unlike the last book I said that about, I also trust the author along every step of that journey - feeling in very very good hands.

Now two chapters into “The Sentence” and bits like a government cobbled together and held stable for a hundred years seem somewhat silly, but the basic premise, and the twin challenges of big constitutional mediation and an individual cold case seem promising to mash together. 📚

Next book up is Gautam Bhatia’s “The Sentence” 📚

Finished “Menewood” by Nicola Griffith yesterday. Really loved it. Hild is a joyful character to follow. The relationships are incrediblebly well-observed, and the whole thing feels wonderfull. I’m also reading Chris Hayes’ “The Siren’s Call” about the attention economy, and in some ways I am finding it persuasive, and I even think I agree with him that there is somethingng particularly important aboutt social attention as opposed to other forms of attention, and but also I cannot help feeling if that actually the popularization of evolutionary psychology was a mistake and we would all be better off if we never again asked ourselves in what way we are or are not like our imagined Savannah ancestorss. (It may be useful as an actual academic discipline, with its limitations understood) (But in popular books it seems to me it’s used as a way to assert the author’s argument without actually giving evidence from our contemporary times. “This thing is uniquely important and not contingent on our current state of society, which I would probably describe differently from you, so I will imagine another time that neither of us understand, persuade you that it was uniquely important then, and use that to bootstrap you believing me about the current state of of our society because that’s less work than just explaining the current state state of our societyy in a persuasive way”. Which is true! It is less work! And more persuasive! But also kinda bullshit.)

Finished “Siege of Burning Grass” and I am befuddled why there is such emphasis on the main character being a pacifist when he is … not? Like not even not my (Quaker) version, but not at all on his own terms 📚

Finished my first playthrough of “Rebirth” by Reiner Knizia. Highly recommend, both the game and the aesthetics

I sometimes join a Quaker parenting group on Thursdays. Tonight I was reminded of one of New England Yearly Meeting’s advices “Stand still. Wait for divine guidance. Then act.” Also when we lamented the state of things, I realized I cannot be wholly angry at a world where my kids have the words to tell me who they are and find community, which is a gift only recently available.

On Siege of Burning Grass, I like very much the way that the world building unfolds gradually and by upsetting expectations (I have reframed my view of the protagonist at least 2 or 3 times). I am definitely reading to get to the end and see what to make of this pacifist in a world that isn’t 📚

Reading “Siege of Burning Grass” and (as a Quaker) having the first true pacifist representation in SFF that I’ve read in a whilee be entirely secular and reasoned is very jarring.

It seems kinda important at that in our world a butterfly flapping its wings can lead to a hurricane, and in speculative fiction it more or less can’t. Any recommended reading about the lack of Chaos Theory in fiction?

Hard Times Coming

youtu.be/Et9Nf-rsA…

(Re-watched Le Guin’s speech today & figured someone else’s might want to as well)

I do actually need to figure out out how to say something about believing in individual transformation that can be both total and immediate, and the potential for worldly transformation that can be total, if neither immediate nor through any clear mechanism other than a lot of individual transformations, and how SFF sees essentially the reverse

I had not seen “The Lion In Winter” and now I have, and I am I think the better for it.

Overcast has added 2024 stats and yes but also anyone have some recommendations for geeky deep dives that aren’t helmed by white guys?

Sheep on a snowy day is pretty great

Charlie Jane Anders has some thoughts about reviews, and then Roseanna Pendlebury has some additional correctives or additions because, well, reviews aren’t for authors, they are for readers, and so figuring out whether a book should be bought or not is actually not all there is too a review.

And yes but also

One thing about “reviews are for readers” is that readers can actually … learn how to be readers, and how to be better readers. Hopefully we are trying to do that, at least some of the time. So my own preferences when reading a review (which, yes, I need to get back into doing more, but even though this is the season of making resolutions, I’m not going to step on that guilt rake right now), is to read something that I can apply to something else that I’m reading. Ideally, even if I never read the book under review, the review will make me think about why I decide to pick it up, or not, or notice something about some other book I’m reading, or make me more mindful in the future, or in some other way, regardless of the actual subject of the review, impact me as a reader with every new book I read. (Yes, small goals)

And yes, there’s something about “who is writing reviews and in what venue” and having someone who hasn’t had a book blog or other contribution to whatever the SFF discourse is in basically years comment on a reviewer who’s doing “thoughtful, directed, insightful critique” among the unpaid blogs and zines (I am so glad that such things still exist! Were it not for my wariness of making myself feel guilty for failing, I would aspire to rejoin these ranks), who is in turn commenting on the thoughts of someone who has a paid and structured gig at a major publication with an audience primarily not of deeply involved SFF people inevitably means that we all have different things to say.

And yes but also, this thing, about how the point of a review is that it should better me as a readerer, regardless of whether I ever read the book, is my thing to say, and so I shall (or I suppose, and so I have)

Nice Solstice Haul

Latest from Pendle Hill

This post on making gatherings and spaces parent inclusive is very good. slingshotcollective.org/dont-forg… via shellsinanorange.blog

Agreed to be backup Recording Clerk for my Meeting earlier this year, and had to actually perform my duties today. Actually went rather well, I think. We were generally in unity with the basics of what we were doing, but there were some needles to thread about the how and why and wording.

Took a while to persuade the flock to come over the hill for hay this morning

I think I just updated a very vanilla Drupal site to a new version, so I’m pretty sure I’m super powered now.

In case anyone wants a good podcast on the history of trans kids by Jules Gill-Peterson, focused around her amicus brief for Skrmetti - overcast.fm/+AAP0KkHG…