minutia_r | Reading

I mentioned that I did in fact read a couple of good books in my late-June travels to counterbalance the bad ones. One of them was The Pushcart War, which I conveniently discovered in my backpack right as I was heading out to stay with the friend who'd loaned it to me a year ago.

I somehow have spent most of my life under the impression that I had already read The Pushcart War, until the plot was actually described to me, at which point it became clear that I'd either read some other Pushcart or some other War but these actual valiant war heroes were actually brand new to me.

The book is science fiction, of a sort, originally published in 1964 and set in 1976 -- Wikipedia tells me that every reprint has moved the date forward to make sure it stays in the future, which I think is very charming -- and purporting to be a work of history for young readers explaining the conflict between Large Truck Corporations and Pugnacious Pushcart Peddlers over the course of one New York City summer. It's a punchy, defiant little book about corporate interest, collective action, and civil disobedience; there's one chapter in particular in which the leaders of the truck companies meet to discuss their master plan of getting everything but trucks off the streets of New York entirely where the metaphor is Quite Dark and Usefully Unsubtle. Also contains charming illustrations! A good read at any time and I'm glad to have finally experienced it.

marthawells

The new Murderbot short story is up at Reactor Magazine:

Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy

https://reactormag.com/rapport-martha-wells/

Edited by Lee Harris, art by Jaime Jones.

And Murderbot was renewed for a second season!

https://deadline.com/2025/07/murderbot-renewed-season-2-apple-tv-1236453764/

“We’re so grateful for the response that Murderbot has received, and delighted that we’re getting to go back to Martha Wells’ world to work with Alexander, Apple, CBS Studios and the rest of the team,” Chris and Paul Weitz, said in a statement Thursday.

delphi

Fandom 50 #23

Untitled Daisuke and Monty by Julia Stark
Fandom: Dimension 20: Cloudward, Ho!
Relationship: Daisuke Bucklesby/Monty LaMontgomery
Medium: Art
Length: 1 piece
Rating: SFW
My Bookmark Tags: slice of life, happy ending, established relationship, then and now, clothing, nostalgia

Description:

Two full-colour images of Daisuke and Monty, one in the present and one in flashback to their younger days. The first is fully saturated and features the two walking close together with Monty in the lead. Daisuke's hat is tipped forward over his eyes as he looks down with a faint smile and puts away his flask. Monty is watching him over his shoulder, likewise smiling and seemingly mid-conversation with him. Above them, larger and more faded out, is a memory of them sitting together decades ago, Daisuke speaking while Monty watches him with soft-eyed attention.

( Very Minor Spoilers for Episode 6 )
This piece is just so sweet. The whole "getting the band back together" element of Cloudward, Ho! has been right up my alley, and I like that their separation was more about losing something that was holding them together rather than a big falling-out that created any ill will. It's made for a great story so far about some highly competent older characters reuniting warmly with old friends and working well together because of their shared history.

I love how the artist has captured this. The flashback looms large over the two men, creating a sense of those past conversations fuelling their present ease with each other and shared direction. It spot-on conveys Monty's wonderful attentiveness to people and suggests a lot in imagining the usually laconic Daisuke so engaged in talking to him. As someone who loves the aesthetics of this season, I'm also very much here for the details in their outfits and the little ways they've changed over the years.

edenfalling

Trip planning is HARD, you know?

I will be leaving on either Sunday or Monday on an approximately 2-week trip. The main point is a gathering of fandom friends in western Alberta, but I have planned my approach so as to have time to do One Thing in Winnipeg (Manitoba) the afternoon of my first travel day, and One Thing in Regina (Saskatchewan) the afternoon of my second travel day. Then the gathering, and on Sunday the 20th I will head to Drumheller to visit the Royal Tyrell Museum.

I THINK I have my itinerary roughed out for the following week.

-Monday 7/21, drive south across the Canada/US border to Glacier National Park, hike an easy trail

-Tuesday 7/22, drive west to Yakima, WA; no stops planned

-Wednesday 7/23, drive to Olympic National Park, hike an easy trail, look for banana slugs, etcetera, then overnight in Forks or Oil City

-Thursday 7/24, drive south on US-101 and stop at some point to get out and dabble my feet in the Pacific Ocean, before heading inland and stopping short of Portland, OR, probably in Beaverton; might also visit Tillamook Creamery if time permits

-Friday 7/25, drive to Boise, ID, possibly stopping at a winery or two along the Columbia River valley (more research needed)

-Saturday 7/26, drive from Boise, ID to Bozeman, MD, skirting the western edge of Yellowstone en route; might stop for photos but more likely will just drive on through

-Sunday 7/27, drive from Bozeman, MD to probably Dickinson, ND, with a stop en route to sightsee in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park and hopefully see some bison and/or prairie dogs

-Monday 7/28, head home to the Twin Cities; no stops planned

This feels generally doable to me. None of the driving days are excessively long, none of the activities are excessively strenuous, and I will return home before August. Now I have to research national park admission policies and also start making motel reservations. Argh.

Current Mood: stressed
Current Location: new brighton, mn

chomiji

Given that Edrehasiver VII became known as the Winter Emperor, I’m not shocked that we don’t have much info about how Midsummer is celebrated in the Ethuveraz (Elflands) in the first book.

But after some searching, I’m saddened to report that there’s nothing in the entire Cemeteries of Amalo on the subject either. In fact, The Grief of Stones has not a single mention of the word “summer,” and the other two only mention it in reference to things like the summer homes of the nobility.

I’m trying to come up with something for a project, and so far I’ve only come up with fireworks and summer fruits like strawberries and plums. I imagine that there are various agriculture-related activities in rural areas among commoners (for example, bonfires rather than fireworks), but does anyone else have any inspirations for Summernight activities among the nobility?

Current Mood: groggy

skygiants

When

kate_nepveu started doing a real-time readalong for Steven Brust & Emma Bull's epistolary novel Freedom and Necessity in 2023, I read just enough of Kate's posts to realize that this was a book that I probably wanted to read for myself and then stopped clicking on the cut-text links. Now, several years later, I have finally done so!

Freedom and Necessity kicks off in 1849, with British gentleman James Cobham politely writing to his favorite cousin Richard to explain he has just learned that everybody thinks he is dead, he does not remember the last two months or indeed anything since the last party the two of them attended together, he is pretending to be a groom at the stables that found him, and would Richard mind telling him whether he thinks he ought to go on pretending to be dead and doing a little light investigation on his behalf into wtf is going on?

We soon learn that a.) James has been involved in something mysterious and political; b.) Richard thinks that James ought to be more worried about something differently mysterious and supernatural; c.) both Richard and James have a lot of extremely verbose opinions about the exciting new topic of Hegelian logic; and d.) James and Richard are both in respective Its Complicateds with two more cousins, Susan and Kitty, and at this point Susan and Kitty kick in with a correspondence of their own as Susan decides to exorcise her grief about the [fake] death of the cousin she Definitely Was Not In Love With by investigating why James kept disappearing for months at a time before he died.

By a few chapters in, I was describing it to

genarti as 'Sorcery and Cecelia if you really muscled it up with nineteenth century radical philosophy' and having a wonderful time.

Then I got a few more chapters in and learned more about WTF indeed was up with James and texted Kate like 'WAIT IS THIS A LYMONDALIKE?' to which she responded 'I thought it was obvious!' And I was still having a wonderful time, and continued doing so all through, but could not stop myself from bursting into laughter every time the narrative lovingly described James' pale and delicate-looking yet surprisingly athletic figure or his venomous light voice etc. etc. ( mid-book spoilers )

Anyway, if you've read a Lymond, you know that there's often One Worthy Man in a Lymond book who is genuinely wise and can penetrate Lymond's self-loathing to gently explain to him that he should use his many poisoned gifts for the better. Freedom and Necessity dares to ask the question: what if that man? were Dreamy Friedrich Engels. Which is, frankly, an amazing choice.

Now even as I write this, I know that

genarti is glaring at me for the fact that I am allowing Francis Crawford of Lymond to take over this booklog just as the spectre of Francis Crawford of Lymond takes over any book in which he appears -- and I do think that James takes over the book a bit more from Richard and Kitty than I would strictly like (I love Kitty and her cheerful opium visions and her endless run-on sentences as she staunchly holds down the home front). But to give Brust and Bull their credit, Susan staunchly holds her own as co-protagonist in agency, page space and character development despite the fact that James is pulling all the book's actual plot (revolutionary politics chaotically colliding with Gothic occult family drama) around after him like a dramatic black cloak.

And what about the radical politics, anyway? Brust and Bull have absolutely done their reading and research, and I very much enjoy and appreciate the point of view that they're writing from. I do think it's quite funny when Engels is like "James, your first duty is to your class," and James is like "well, I am a British aristocrat, so that's depressing," and Engels is like "you don't have to be! you can just decide to be of the proletariat! any day you can decide that! and then your first duty will be to the proletariat!" which like .... not that you can't decide to be in solidarity with the working class ..... but this is sort of a telling stance in an epistolary novel that does not actually center a single working-class POV. How pleasant to keep writing exclusively about verbose and erudite members of the British gentry who have conveniently chosen to be of the proletariat! James does of course have working-class comrades, and he respects them very much, and is tremendously angsty about their off-page deaths. So it goes.

On the other hand, at this present moment, I honestly found it quite comforting to be reading a political adventure novel set in 1849, in the crashing reactionary aftermath to the various revolutions of 1848. One of the major political themes of the book is concerned with how to keep on going through the low point -- how to keep on working and believing for the better future in the long term, even while knowing that unfortunately it hasn't come yet and given the givens probably won't for some time. Acknowledging the low point and the long game is a challenging thing for fiction to do, and I appreciate it a lot when I see it. I'd like to see more of it.

possibilityleft

The mosquitos are relentless this summer I swear!!!

*****

( books! )

osprey_archer

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I mentioned last week how much I was enjoying Hilary McKay’s The Time of Green Magic, and I continued to enjoy it all the way through. Just the kind of children’s fantasy I like: an old house all covered in ivy, magic that is strange and lovely and just a bit scary (as unknown and unknowable things should be), and just enough real world issues (in this case, the children in a blended family learning to get along) to give the story some emotional ballast without making the magic a mere metaphor for anything.

I also finished Marilyn Kluger’s The Wild Flavor, part food memoir and part foraging manual for wild foods in the Midwest and Northeast. Morels! Persimmons! Hickory nuts! And more! An inspiring read for anyone with foraging aspirations, and an appetizing read for anyone who likes reading about food.

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve begun Lord Peter, a collection of all of Dorothy Sayers’ Peter Wimsey short stories. The second story begins with Peter Wimsey admiring a comely French girl who turns out ( spoilers, if anyone cares about spoilers for a hundred year old short story? )

What I Plan to Read Next

I’ve got the Max in the Land of Lies! How will our twelve-year-old spy handle himself in Nazi Germany?? Tune in to find out!

osprey_archer

Onward in the Aikening! This time

littlerhymes and I read Midnight is a Place, which is very loosely related to the Wolves series in that it also features an industrial city named Blastburn. There are no crossover characters, no wolves, no reigning Tudor-Stuarts, and the town has completely different industries. Aiken may have just liked the name Blastburn.

However, I’m glad that it is described as related to the Wolves books, as otherwise we wouldn’t have read it and this book is PEAK gothic. Start with Midnight Court, an old house which is falling into ruin because the crabbed and miserly owner has been selling off the furniture and firing all the servants! Add a lonely orphan boy and his Mysterious Tutor! Throw in a Dickensian carpet factory where the carpet-making process ends with a press that can and will squash children on a regular basis! Stir in one more lonely orphan, this one a small and furious girl from France, and you have yourself a rich and savory gothic stew.

This is merely the set-up. Other gothic elements arrive in due course. For instance: the current owner of Midnight Court won it in a midnight bet at the Hellfire Club! (Not actually called the Hellfire Club, but the same idea.) The lonely orphan boy must make his living by descending into the sewers to find treasure. (The sewers are inhabited by savage rats and thirty to forty feral hogs, because Aiken loves a wild animal attack.) The child-squashing press on the mantelpiece does of course go off.

Overall a delight. The only flaw is that the last chapter is pretty rushed, and introduces a completely random plot thread for two pages which is then summarily dropped. ( Spoilers for the random plot thread ) But you can just kind of ignore that bit and savor all the gothic everything that precedes it.

marthawells

Kerr County Flood Relief Fund

The Kerr County Flood Relief Fund supports relief and rebuilding efforts after the flood of July 4, 2025. Your generosity helps our neighbors recover.

The Community Foundation - a 501(c)(3) public charity serving the Texas Hill Country - will direct funds to vetted organizations providing rescue, relief, and recovery efforts as well as flood assistance. The Fund will support the communities of Hunt, Ingram, Kerrville, Center Point, and Comfort. All donations are tax-deductible, and you will receive a receipt for your gift.

https://cftexashillcountry.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=4201

And Kerrville Pets Alive! is taking donations for rescue and fostering lost pets.

https://kerrvillepetsalive.com/?link_id=3&can_id=588b5a597b5d30fd7e36b213e5ba6987&source=email-freedom-is-fought-for-not-given&email_referrer=email_2803907&email_subject=how-you-can-help-texas-flood-victims&&

delphi

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

delphi

✓

kingstoken's 2025 Book Bingo: Non-Human POV

(I checked this square off my bingo card last time, but this new release arrived with perfect timing, so I'm doubling up.)

Ew, It's Beautiful is the newest collection of cartoonist Joshua Barkman's webcomic False Knees. It contains around 120 short comics, the majority of which were new to me, separated into sections for winter, spring, summer, and fall based on their setting.

The stars of False Knees are usually birds, but there are some cats, insects, and at least a couple of beavers in the mix here. Barkman's art is legitimately beautiful, with a naturalist's specificity and a knack for combining human expressions with realistic animal features, and his writing captures the universal experience of being a small creature in an unfathomably big world. It's full of absurd humour, occasional moments of awe, and recurring bits about the creative process, self-image, and the way friends or family can be on entirely different wavelengths. The comic is where I got my current default icon from, and it almost never fails to bring me a little joy or give me something to appreciate.

( 3 Comics )

jadelennox

I've been trying very hard to cheerful!post this week because I'm frequently struggling to breathe, as one does these days. You all know how it is. I was planning on posting from the perfect 4 July book (The Westing Game). But when I looked at the exact words of the quotation, it felt much too on the nose:

The sun has set on your Uncle Sam. Happy birthday, Crow. And to all of my heirs, a very happy Fourth of July.

So, okay, I thinks to myself. I'll quote my other favorite Fourth of July bit from the end. But when I looked it up, uh. That didn't feel any less apropos to the moment?

Turtle?"

"I'm right here, Sandy." She took his hand.

"Turtle, tell Crow to pray for me."

His hands turned cold, not smooth, not waxy, just very, very cold.

Turtle turned to the window. The sun was rising out of Lake Michigan. It was tomorrow. It was the Fourth of July.

Ah, well. Ready for a nice game of chess?

landofnowhere

Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones. Reread of a book I read many times in my teens and early twenties, but this was my first time reading it in quite a while. It is still a very good book, though I don't love it as unreservedly as I did when I was a teenager. (Also it is the source of my username :-)) Things I noticed in this readthrough: I find Tom's "heroic driving" far more alarming now that I actually know how to drive a car. I'm also thinking about how things look from Seb's point of view, which I didn't before because he comes across as such an unlikeable character. I was wondering if the detail that he's a fan of Michael Moorcock is supposed to suggest that he's a Moorcock protagonist seen from the most unflattering viewpoint, but as, thanks to this book, I have never had any desired to read Moorcock, I can't say. (That said, Seb actually has decent taste in rock music! I find the Doors' Riders on the Storm to be evocative of the same themes as Fire and Hemlock, and wonder if it was an influence.)

The Fair-Haired Eckbert, Puss in Boots, The Midsummer Night by Ludwig Tieck, in English translation by various translators, available on Wikisource. I've for a while entertained the extremely aspirational idea of writing historical fantasy about the Mendelssohn siblings, and as part of that project I've been reading fantasy/fairy tales by German Romantic authors whose poems Fanny and Felix put to music. (A previous installment of this was Eichendorff's The Marble Statue, which I never wrote up.) The Fair-Haired Eckbert is one of these, and generally worked for me as a weird fairy tale, despite over-the-top plot twists and being the sort of tragedy where the characters alwasy make the worst possible decisions. But the main thing I got from it was from looking at the song part in German, and learning the excellent word Waldeinsamkeit.

Puss in Boots was recommended by a friend on Discord, after I mentioned reading Tieck: it is a comedy-satirical meta-theatrical adaptation of the fairy tale, published in 1797 but not staged until 1844 (I can see why -- it seems like a hard play to stage! but I think it will be fun to do as a group readaloud.) Tieck is just much more enjoyable when he's not taking himself too seriously.

The Midsummer Night, or Shakespeare and the Fairies is 16-year-old Tieck's Midsummer Night's Dream fanfiction, which he was prevailed to publish late in life, and is pretty good for that. (I wish I knew more about the Mary C. Rumsey who translated it.)

Homer's Daughter, Robert Graves.

cahn's Odyssey read reminded me of this book, which I enjoyed when I was younger; and while I should in fact reread the Odyssey, I was visiting my family and looking for a paper book to pick up, so I started this; the premise is that our protagonist is a young Sicilian princess who is going to go on to write the Odyssey, basing certain parts on her own life. I'm liking it as much as I remembered it (especially once I got past the info-dumpy prologue), and enjoying how many details of women's work it weaves in to the events of the story. (I know now that Graves shouldn't be taken seriously as a scholar of ancient mythology, but it still makes for interesting worldbuilding and story.)

possibilityleft

Looking forward to this three day weekend!!

*****

( books! )

jadelennox

The full case name is "City of Eugene v. Debutante Society of Oregon", but the abbreviated version is fine too.

-- tahnan

osprey_archer

As always on my birthday, I am having my annual birthday sale. This year, since I’m planning to raise prices post-sale ($3.99 for a novella, $5.99 for a novel), I decided to put everything on sale for one big final blow-out. So currently all my novellas are $0.99, and all my novels are $2.99.

Do you like Cold War spies falling in love on an American road trip, even though they're from opposite sides of the Iron Curtain? Then give Honeytrap a try!

If a Civil War soldier woke up from an enchanted sleep in 1965, how long would it take for him to cotton on that men are no longer allowed to touch? Find out in The Sleeping Soldier!

Are you interested in an m/m World War II retelling of Beauty and the Beast? Then Briarley may be for you!

How about a couple of boys riding the rails and falling in love during the Great Depression? Tramps and Vagabonds has your back.

Do you like watching post-World War I woobies suffer beautifully by the seaside? The Larks Still Bravely Singing may be warbling your name.

More Cold War spies, but this time CHRISTMAS! Deck the Halls with Secret Agents is a holly jolly short return to a favorite theme.

Do you like throuples and World War II and retellings of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? Then A Garter as a Lesser Gift may be coming to a Green Chapel near you.

Do you like throuples and pining and strawberry shortcake in post-Civil War America? Then give The Threefold Tie a try.

Do you want Cold War spies (again!), but this time they're the leads in the fandom that our two heroines are obsessed with? And kind of role-play as while trying out the joys of "your interpretation of this character is so incorrect" hatesex? Enemies to Lovers is calling your name.

You know it is when there's this new girl in school that you're sooo obsessed with because you both love art, and then you have an obsessive friendship ending in a terrible falling out, and then meet again years later in Florence? Have a gelato with Ashlin and Olivia.

And finally, a couple of oddballs. A retelling of Little Red Riding Hood in pre-Revolutionary Russia! Kind of f/f if you want to be! The Wolf and the Girl features forays both into the Russian forest and the nascent French silent film industry.

Last but not least, if your inner eleven-year-old yearns for a magical timeslip story, there's The Time Traveling Popcorn Ball

osprey_archer

Today is my birthday! Happy birthday to me!

Yesterday I took chocolate white chip cookies to Dulcimer Gathering and everyone played me Happy Birthday. Today, I caught up on my correspondence while sipping my free hot chocolate at Starbucks, then spent the rest of the day happily puttering: a little cross stitch, a little dulcimer, a little reading with tea and the last of the aforementioned chocolate white chip cookies.

Next up: dinner with the family, and then I will be taking them on a tour of the Hummingbird Cottage! This is the first time that my brother and sister-in-law have seen the place with actual furniture, so I also spent some of my puttering time tidying so that everyone will believe that I live in an oasis of peace and cleanliness.

The herbs and the cherry tomatoes are growing well. There are little green tomatoes on the tomato vines now! Also, one of the tomatoes is next to a climbing vine of some variety, which has latched onto the tomato cage and as far as I can see tied itself there. Most impressed with the plant’s knot-making abilities.

edenfalling

Note: I am repurposing my stock Yuletide letter here, which is why some of the sections may seem slightly off-topic for a single fandom exchange.

Hi, and thank you in advance for writing a story for me! I'm pretty easy to please -- unless you write context-free porn, I'll be thrilled just to get a response to one of my prompts. *grin* But I realize that's not terribly helpful, so here's the (very!) long version. (I am sorry for the tl;dr, but I like to talk about things I love and I figure more details are better than fewer.)

---------------

( General Information )

Okay. On to specific prompts.

---------------

( Jadis & the Gods of the Narnian World )

---------------

( The Secret Life of Lasaraleen's Pet Monkey )

---------------

( Arthuriana & Morgan Le Fay )

---------------

( Telmarine Aeneid )

---------------

( Journey to an Alternate Charn )

---------------------------------------------

And that is that.

Current Mood: excited
Current Location: new brighton, mn

edenfalling

Hey, quick update: I am IN MINNESOTA!

More specifically, I am in my parents' basement, because apparently this is my current millennial life milestone to hit. *wry*

Anyway, the U-boxes were delivered on Monday, we sorted and packed Tuesday and Wednesday, and then decided to order a third U-box because my dad was uneasy about the weight limits. So on Thursday the delivery guy (who is also apparently the local warehouse manager) picked up one box that we had completed and dropped off an empty replacement. We finished packing both boxes that afternoon and moved on to packing the cars and cleaning. Friday morning the delivery guy picked up the two remaining U-boxes, we finished cleaning, and I turned in my keys to Landlord Dude in return for my security deposit refund.

(I stayed in my parents' hotel room Wednesday and Thursday nights, since we packed my bed on Wednesday.)

Then we drove from Ithaca to the Twin Cities in two days (Friday and Saturday), which was kind of a lot and included two stints on local city streets in downtown Chicago because of a nasty traffic jam on I-90. My mom kept going through stoplights just as they turned yellow so I had to follow on red; it was extremely stressful. But we made it!

I have spent the past few days changing addresses with assorted companies and getting my license, car title, and car registration switched from NY to MN. Today I may or may not see about getting a local library card and visiting a Verizon store to see if they can clear some unwanted apps off my phone (I would do this myself but they came pre-installed and don't seem to have a delete option) and also ask about international calls to/from Canada. Also I will try switching my car insurance and AAA membership to MN -- I couldn't do either of those before I got my car paperwork dealt with.

We have been eating down some food brought from my fridge and freezer, since my parents' freezer was very full already. I have seen Vicky briefly when she picked up Alfie (her dog) Sunday evening -- my parents were watching him while Vicky and some friends were staffing a booth/table at a local Pride festival. Also my dad had a colonoscopy yesterday, my mom had a cardioversion this morning (for her afibrillation), and my aunt should currently be getting knee replacements. It has been a medically exciting week!

I believe I still have one refill left for both of my prescriptions, and my Ithaca pharmacy said that although they can't mail medications, I can have a Minnesota pharmacy contact them and they can transfer the authorization. So that is a relief, though I should still find a local primary care doctor sooner rather than later.

Oh! And signups for the 2025 Narnia Fic Exchange are open until July 11, so if you have any interest, please check that out over at