violsva | Reading

I'm going through all my things in anticipation of my move, including my bookshelves. I've already given away over a dozen books (some to my mom, some to a friend, some to the open bookshelf around the corner), but there's several more I'm not sure about. So I thought I'd try to write down my thoughts in the hope it'll help me decide.

Night Watch; Day Watch; and Twilight Watch by Sergei Lukianenko (in German): Over two decades ago this was some of the first urban fantasy I read, and I was fascinated by it. I remember being very impressed by so many of the abilities and magic, and the "light and dark need to co-exist" set-up.
I started a reread once, also many years ago, and I was much less impressed that time, especially by the writing. I don't think I'm going to ever read it again. The author's political stances are another reason.
Most likely going to get rid of these.

Empire of Ivory (Temeraire #4); Victory of Eagles (Temeraire #5) by Naomi Novik: I enjoyed this series while reading, but there were plenty of elements I rolled my eyes at, and I'm definitely not going to reread the whole thing. But I think #4 and #5 were some of my favorites? It's been a long time. I still have very fond feelings for the fandom in particular, there's some great fics.
I think I might keep these for now.

Side Jobs, Ghost Story, Cold Days, Skin Game (Dresden Files #12.5 - #15) by Jim Butcher: I was a big fan of the series at one point, but gradually lost interest; I haven't even read "Twelve Months" yet, though I might at some point if they get it at the library.
I asked LB if he wants them since he was also a fan at one point, that would be ideal, but I suspect he won't. In that case I think I might keep them a little longer.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke: it was okay, but I didn't like it so much that I'd want to keep it. I had a vague thought at some point that I should reread it eventually because I think I would enjoy it more without the high expectations, but that's not likely to happen any time soon.
Most likely going to the open bookshelf.

The others I was thinking about I think I talked myself into keeping already, but for completeness' sake: Black Wolves by Kate Elliott (I barely remember anything about it but my review said I loved it so I might read it again one day), A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers (I gave away books #1 + #3 because I didn't find them very interesting but I remember really enjoying the second one), The Blood of Olympus (Heroes of Olympus #5) by Rick Riordan (one of my favorites of the whole series), Heaven's Net is Wide (Tales of the Otori 0.5) by Lian Hearn (I'm emotionally attached to the other four books in the series and I think I'll keep the prequel for completeness' sake because it has a sufficiently pretty spine), Myriad Lands #1 + #2 by David R. Stokes (ed.) (I got those at my first Worldcon and while I barely remember the stories - though according to my reviews I liked them - the covers and spines are just so very pretty.)

This helped with decision-making, mission success.

oursin

This week's bread: a loaf of Marriage's Organic Country Fayre Malted Brown Bread Flour, v nice.

Friday night supper: ven pongal (S Indian khichchari).

Saturday breakfast rolls: Tassajarra method, 50/50% white/wholemeal spelt flour. molasses, raisins: turned out rather well.

Today's lunch: a sort-of cassoulet thing, with the other half-pack of pancetta, Belazu Judion Butter Beans, garlic, onion, bay leaves, 5-pepper blend, panko breadcrumbs, worked pretty well; served with buttered spinach and chicory quartered, healthy-grilled in pumpkin seed oil and drizzled with lime and lemongrass balsamic vinegar.

james_davis_nicoll

Another foray into a long cancelled, fondly remembered magazine of my teen years.

Spring 1980 Destinies (Destinies, volume 7) edited by Jim Baen

oursin

Happy birthday,

catlinyemaker,

heleninwales and

ruudboy!

sholio

I have read book 8 (the new one) and loved it, but I haven't posted about it for reasons of general mental overwhelm as mentioned in the last post. (There was a lot in that book!) I decided to reread the first few chapters of book 1 for the early character intros, and uhhhhh I've now reread my way through to fairly late in book 3.

Random thoughts about these early books below, including potential spoilers for the whole series here and in comments.

( In no particular order )

castiron

I have just spent the whole evening reading Saving Grace, a bookverse retelling of Project Hail Mary (bookverse) from Rocky's POV. It's well done, especially in how it shows Grace as an alien species. Heartily recommend.

sholio

The first half of this month was A Lot - mostly family stuff, mostly not bad stuff, just A Lot - and I kept thinking I was going to summarize things, but in the end, I was too tired, and there was too much. (Basically a number of relatives were in town, some staying with me, and I was so peopled out past a certain point that I just sort of collapsed when everyone left.)

Things are much better now! I do have in-laws to deal with this upcoming week, but I'm looking forward to having more time to be online and more mental bandwidth.

So naturally I tripped and signed up for an exchange.

Outside POV Flash. This is a flash exchange - 300 wd minimum, 1 week writing period, 1 fandom request/offer minimum. Signups close tomorrow.

Yes, this is a shameless attempt to lure in more fandom-compatible people. It's only a week! It's only 300 wds! Maybe someone might want a warm-up for IPQ, you never know ...

Other things currently ongoing -

summerofhorrorexchange is in signups! This exchange has slightly unique rules so see post here. (I don't think I can do this one this summer, because I also have assignments in both Whumpex and IPQ, but I've really enjoyed it all the times I've done it!)

It's finally spring here, and I'm so ready. Except for the sudden but inevitable pollen.

sanguinity

For

unsent_letters_exchange I was assigned to

luzula again, presumably on the strength of our sharing so many very rare fandoms. However, I thought Luzula might be entertained by receiving not-the-usual from me, so I decided to branch out into a new-to-me fandom, albeit one I was very familiar with via osmosis: Pride and Prejudice.

Luzula's request was for Elizabeth/Darcy/Colonel Fitzwilliam, inspired in part by

AMarguerite's Soulmark AU An Ever-Fixed Mark, an excellent series that I've read and enjoyed. However, I wasn't about to review a half-million words of fic for this assignment, and the request was officially for the novel anyway, so I figured I was in the clear to start fresh.

So I picked up the novel, read through the bit at Rosings Park (which contains all the Colonel Fitzwilliam material that exists in the novel), had a nifty little idea for a fic, and sat down to write it...

...and remembered halfway through that

unsent_letters_exchange is an epistolary exchange. (*looks askance at my story of Darcy and Fitzwilliam sitting around in their shirtsleeves without a pen in sight*) Whoops. Never mind, Luzula would enjoy it as a bonus story after reveals.

As it turned out, that false start ended up being a prequel of the (epistolary!) story I did gift her, which was a little bit awkward, because that required finagling my official fill so it could be enjoyed as a stand-alone, but I'm reasonably pleased with how it all came out.

Together, the series is called A Message Will Bring Me and features Fitzwilliam and Darcy in an established relationship, trying to navigate whether/how/on-what-terms Darcy proposes marriage to Miss Bennet. I may or may not add to the series someday; as it is, I have another partial story in draft and books on the shelf to research it.*

An Evening at Rosings

Pride and Prejudice
Darcy/Fitzwilliam, Darcy/Lizzy

Missing Scene, Polyamory, The Poignancy of Not Calling the Shots

He was not so attached to Miss Bennet as to feel a pang at yielding preference to his cousin, but to see Darcy so much in love… Well, it had always been a day that was coming: they would each find a wife, Darcy for an heir and Richard for a fortune, and that would be all.

Fitzwilliam and Darcy discuss Miss Elizabeth Bennet.

Another Opinion to Set Beside One's Own

Pride and Prejudice
Darcy/Fitzwilliam, Darcy/Lizzy

Missing Scenes, Polyamory, Metamours, Epistolary

If there is one comfort in all this, it is that you never had the opportunity to propose your arrangement to her. What a disaster it would have been if you could have had her but for your attachment to me…

Colonel Fitzwilliam's correspondence with Miss Bennet and his cousin Darcy.

Major props to

phoenixfalls, who insisted I go back and make both stories better (she was right, they are better), and to

grrlpup, for her willing ear and speedy copyedits.

----

* I asked the library for books on the Peninsular War. It tried to sell me on a bunch of Sharpe novels. Thank you but no. I need another long-eighteenth-century military fandom like I need another hole in my head.

mrissa

Review copy provided by the author, who's a convention/online buddy.

Sometime in your life, you've probably met a smartass who always has a joke for every occasion--and then gradually realized that this person was genuinely kind. That they were not punching down, and mostly they weren't punching at all, instead focusing their jokes on wry incongruity or situation rather than mocking individual people. That there was a core of tenderness behind the wisecracking. If you know the kind of person I mean (let's be real: several of you are the kind of person I mean), you will understand Sol, the narrator of Hornytown Chutzpah pretty much right away. He's not just called Solomon the Wise Guy for a wry historical reference. He's definitely a wiseacre--but not as dumb as he might joke that he is. He's coping using a very specific kind humor--in this case, the instantiation of it that shows up in a lot of American Jewish culture.

And boy, does Sol have a lot to cope with. I knew I was hooked all the way when the guy who is enough of a smartass to earn the nickname Solomon the Wise Guy can be brought to action with a reference to tikun olam. Look, friends, I'm not Jewish, but I know that one. A call to repair the world? those are lyrics everyone can enjoy. And having it be a touchstone, a point that rings our hero like a bell? I'm in, I'm all in.

The Hornytown of the title is an incursion of Hell into the Washington, DC, area, complete with hellfire around it and sin-eating demons within (and sometimes without). It's run by a figure that will look unfortunately familiar, but rest assured that our hero is all-in against him. I was frankly worried by the title, because my interest in "city of people who would like to have a lot of sex" is pretty minimal, but it's not that kind of Hornytown at all. Whew. Is there chutzpah, though? There is chutzpah to spare. Which is a good thing, because the literally hellish nature of the problems Sol faces will require it.

sanguinity

unsent_letters_exchange opened last week, and authors are due to reveal later today. But first, let me recommend two stories to you.

Worth Waiting For
The Flight of the Heron
Keith/Ewen/Alison
Epistolary, Long Distance Relationship, Established Relationship, Gardens and Gardening

(no summary provided)

My gift, which makes use of the epistolary format to tease out the peculiar joys and frustrations of a long-distance relationship. Even among the frustration and pining and doubt, there is the anticipation of coming together at last, an anticipation that is almost as sweet as its fruition. The gardening metaphor is beautifully apt, and I especially enjoy thinking of Keith as a prickly artichoke--except that it's not the prickliness or bitterness of an artichoke that his lovers associate with him, but the long cultivation and anticipation. (Have they ever tasted an artichoke, I wonder? Will the prickles be a surprise?) Just a lovely story all around.

Beta Feedback
Vorkosigan Saga
Cordelia/Aral
POV Outsider, Documentation, In-Universe Film Criticism

Three columns, over five years, from the Betan paper of record.

Clever, twisty, multi-layered work in which Cordelia's adventures have been multiply adapted into holovids, and critics tear into them. I love the layers of interpretation and re-interpretation here, and the unreliable-narratorness of both the explicit and implied accounts of Cordelia's life. (Which raises the question of whether we should be taking Shards of Honor as a wholly reliable account...?) Just a hair over a thousand words, and just like any good journalism, makes every one of those words count.

oursin

Not so much re-inventing the wheel, as having to point out something that is already known and has been for a long time (it was not really news when my primary-school teacher was making the point): Children’s reading should prioritise pleasure over learning, says laureate. Sigh.

***

Also on perhaps a similar theme that the obvious straight road is not actually the way there: science is not simply a sequence of tasks that can be optimized:

It advances through a process analogous to Darwinian evolution: variation across many independent efforts; selection through critique, replication, and competition; and retention of robust results. This distributed structure is what allows science to correct itself and to generate novelty. Independence is not incidental; it is the mechanism that produces both reliability and discovery.
....
The scientific system thrives on inefficiency: redundant efforts, failed attempts, and divergent paths. These are not costs to be eliminated but sources of discovery. By contrast, optimization pressures drive convergence—faster iteration within a constrained search space. The result may be more output but less exploration of the unexpected.

***

I stumbled across a remarkable collection of photographs:

There are several images in the collection of relevance to queer history, not least in those that record varieties of touch between men that would later become discouraged. In one, we see four young men sitting together on a bench in a garden: two of them hold hands. In another, a man takes another man on his lap, posing as lovers in a pose that mimics the popular visual culture of the day.
But the collection is arguably of most interest to LGBTQ+ history, specifically trans history, for the kinds of gender play it records. Several images in the collection illustrate traditions of gender crossing in British culture. Some show pantomime dames and another perhaps shows the role of a boy character taken up by a woman.

?Normal for Norfolk???

***

An extraordinary story of people who appear to be the 'good guys' (Liberal representing the anti-slavery interest in Lyme Regis) absolutely knee-deep in electoral corruption. Bonus appearance of Mary Anning!

What is most striking about Pinney’s career as an MP is not just the willingness of a fairly advanced Liberal to engage in wholesale electoral corruption, but his own attitude to slavery given his family background. As early as 1832 he had called on the hustings for its complete abolition and in 1838 he willingly voted for the Whig government’s apprenticeship reforms.

***

This is fascinating: The Plotland Houses of Britain: How a 20th century working-class housing movement was stifled, but I'd like to see some consideration of how the post-WWII prefab housing developments and attitudes thereto would fit onto what's described here.

(Also resonates with account in Houlbrook's Songs of Seven Dials about what well-intentioned progressive town-planners wanted to do to those traditional parts of inner London, but in the event, didn't.)

chickenfeet

Benevolence Opera Project's "Don Giovanni" in support of ther Redwood Women's Shelter

https://operaramblings.blog/2026/05/23/don-giovanni-and-domestic-violence/

james_davis_nicoll

A dozen books new to me: eight fantasy, three science fiction, one historical, at least four of which are series.

Books Received, May 16 — 22

Poll #34638 Books Received, May 16 — 22

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 44

View Respondents

Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

A Dance of Burning Blades by M. H. Ayinde (April 2026)
9 (20.5%)

Crimson in Quietus by Eugen Bacon (September 2026)
10 (22.7%)

To Ride a Rising Storm by Moniquill Blackgoose (January 2026)
21 (47.7%)

Blade of Two Faces by Blake Blessing (November 2026)
4 (9.1%)

The Silver Hand by Shawn Carpenter (August 2026)
7 (15.9%)

Like the Moon We Rise by Annabelle Cormack (January 2027)
3 (6.8%)

Little Necromancers by Emma Devlin (March 2027)
10 (22.7%)

Eyes of Kings by Chloe Gong (August 2026)
1 (2.3%)

What Haunts the Ice by S. Hati (January 2027)
6 (13.6%)

The Curve of the World by Vonda N. McIntyre (March 2026)
31 (70.5%)

The Unfolding: Mairee by S. Nyland (April 2026)
4 (9.1%)

Project V by Park Seolyeon (April 2026)
8 (18.2%)

Some other option (see comments)
1 (2.3%)

Cats!
27 (61.4%)

oursin

Happy birthday,

szandara!

james

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

genarti

The Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network does a lot of vitally important work supporting immigrants in and around and from Massachusetts, including paying bond (the immigration detention equivalent of bail) to get people released from ICE detention. So much so, in fact, that after paying out over $1.5 million in 2026 alone (!!), they're scraping the bottom of the barrel for their bond fund. They urgently need more money to keep up this work. This is an all-volunteer organization -- I volunteer with them, and can vouch that aside from a tiny bit of overhead, every penny goes to helping immigrants.

I know times are tight and there are a million worthy causes around right now, but if you happen to have some spare funds you'd like to toss at a good cause, this is a really good one and a really good time to donate. Every little bit helps.

(And if you're not in a position to donate, no shame and no judgment.)

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3249/

We definitely put the pool in a mine for shielding. It was absolutely not to hide it from the funding people.

https://xkcd.com/3249/

oursin

Anyway, I was dipping in again to the Violet Hunt Tales of the Uneasy and in 'The Operation' there is the backstory where a man's first wife -

had smoothed and made easy the path of divorce for the man she loved.... full of zeal to give him his freedom. It was hardly human, so the woman who had profited by her action thought, and certainly not very womanly. Florence could not imagine herself allowing a cold business-like lawyer to dictate her a letter bidding Joe come back to her herewith; a summons intended, of course, for ultimate publication. It disgusted Florence, this horrible business of sueing for restitution of conjugal rights!

Only a divorce-law nerd like moi would probably be able to decode this?

This was the cleanest way a woman could get quit of a husband pre 1923 - he had of course to be adulterous (or appear to have been) and refusing to restitute conjugal rights counted as desertion.

Otherwise she had to prove cruelty (which could include knowing infection with a loathsome disease) or that he was guilty of a sexual crime (rape, sodomy, incest....).

But in a situation where the man had, presumably, already run off with Another Woman, having to go through that legal rigmarole of asking him to come back so that he could refuse and be legally deserting does strike one as a very chagrining procedure.

chickenfeet

https://operaramblings.blog/2026/05/22/opera-5-toronto-opera-festival-preview/

james_davis_nicoll

A Gun For Godzilla, which is along the lines of de Camp's A Gun for Dinosaur or Drake's Time Safari, except the excessively optimistic rich people are hunting Kaiju.

The hunters have .600 Nitro Express rifles while their prey can melt steel with their body heat.

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Violsva

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April 2026

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Page generated May. 25th, 2026 12:28 am

We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far

Reading

Sorting through books

Culinary

Spring 1980 Destinies (Destinies, volume 7) edited by Jim Baen

(no subject)

Dungeon Crawler Carl reread

fic rec: Saving Grace

Too much, but maybe some exchanges will help

Unsent Letters Reveal (plus a bonus!)

Hornytown Chutzpah, by Andrew Hiller

Unsent Letters Recs

Rather miscellaneous

Don Giovanni benefit performance

Books Received, May 16 — 22

(no subject)

Good Things

quick signal boost for a local-to-me and worthy cause

Neutrino Project

This is really, really niche

Preview of Opera 5's Toronto Opera Festival

Today's stupid idea

Profile

April 2026

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