superborb | Reading

Cat Herding: Our beloved Jinksy!bear turned twelve on Saturday. Twelve! He's (by a margin of a good few years) the second-oldest cat I've ever had, and continues to be just the sweetest, softest boy. May he be with us in good health for years to come.

It was also Claudia's birthday, of course, and I always think of her on their birthday. Oh, my darling baby cat.

*The oldest was Jenny, the cat of my childhood who was still with my parents for years after I moved out. She made it to nineteen, most of that time in rock-solid health, and never really forgave me for moving to Toronto and thus straight-up vanishing from her life for months at a time.

Reading: I finished reading Jennifer 8 Lee's The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, which remained an interesting read right through, and read Adrian Tchaikovsky's City of Last Chances, which I think is only the second thing of his I've read? (Elder Race is the other one I'm sure of.) Having finished it, I'm in a position that's annoyingly familiar, where I liked the book quite a bit and am curious about what happens next, but am not sure I cared enough that I'll ever actually get around to picking up the sequel.

(The thing where I've almost entirely been reading books I own for years now doesn't really help, where I've often picked up the first book of a trilogy of series or whatever on sale in ebook because I've heard it's good, and then am not sure I'm invested enough to pay full price on the next one when I own literally hundreds of yet-unread books. Feh.)

Watching:

scruloose and I are up to date on Murderbot and have seen the first episode of Kingdom season 2.

In the case of the former, I'm skeptical about the nqqvgvba bs n punenpgre jub qbrfa'g nccrne va gur obbxf ng nyy--juvpu V'z abg vaureragyl ntnvafg, tvira gung gur fubj vf pyrneyl vgf bja guvat, naq V'z thrffvat fur'f gurer gb pbairl fbzrguvat gung jbhyq'ir orra gevpxl gb qb gur fnzr jnl va guvf sbezng nf va gur abiryyn. Ohg fur'f naablvat, naq V'yy cebonoyl xrrc svaqvat ure naablvat jurgure fur vf va snpg freivat jung V pheeragyl guvax vf ure cebonoyr shapgvba (rarzl ntrag znfdhrenqvat nf nyyl) be fbzrguvat zber vagrerfgvat. [ROT13] Guess we'll find out soon!

Working: Thank goodness the manga I'm working right now is (as usual) a fairly easy rewrite and not a tight deadline, because scrounging the mental energy for freelance work has been frustratingly hard recently. I'm almost halfway through my draft and have about a week and a half left with it, so it's fine, but. :/

Weathering/Householding: We've had a lot of gray days and some high-ish temperatures combined with humidity (which I hate), and the air quality, while not remotely as bad as it is in a lot of places, has been fluctuating significantly...and the AC function of the heat pumps is essentially nonfunctional. >.< This is crappy timing, given how much of the time over the last several days has required having the windows closed (and the air purifiers running for good measure, although they don't address some of the nastiness from wildfire smoke). And for bonus fun, while the heat pumps are still under warranty, the company we bought them from went under a few months ago, which complicates things. (I think possibly the main person died. :/)

That said,

scruloose made a bunch of calls today and we have reason to hope that someone can come in and take a look at them soon, if that particular company has the parts in stock. And while it's been uncomfortably warm inside some of the time because of this, at least it's not full summer yet. Hopefully we can get things dealt with by the time summer heat arrives in earnest.

And on a purely pleasant note, a couple nights ago we were in a phase of "somehow the air quality is fine outside right now, so we can just open the windows and run fans" while it was pleasantly cool and raining atmospherically and the wind was doing a wonderful job of wafting the smell of the lilacs into the living room.

Current Mood: contemplative

forestofglory

Here's some thoughts on media I read and watched recently

Little Thieves by Margaret Owen— This YA fantasy novel was really fun! There are lots of heists and disguises. All the moms are terrible but they aren't dead (being Death doesn't count). I really hated all italicized German words (it is not a problem that they were German I just hate it when “foreign” words are italicized, it's both othering and distracting to me as a reader) However this really sucked me in! It’s fast paced and twisty and the worldbuilding feels grounded.

Coffee Prince ep 5-20— I finished this classic of crossdressing girl media. It was cute and fun! I got a great comment on my post about crossdressing girl media about how crossdressing allows women to form friendships with men on more equal footing. This drama really leans into that and the pleasure of being ‘one of the boys” without having to justify oneself.

This did the best job of “The MC thinks he’s gay because he likes the crossdressing FL” that I’ve seen (Though I haven’t seen many) it could be even better but I was pleased with it nonetheless.

(Content note: Blink and you'll miss it miscarriage and fertility issues)

The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy— Somehow no one told me that it is a crossdressing story but trans. That is, the main character is a trans girl who starts the book thinking she’s a boy in disguise. Interestingly she "disguises" herself as a girl so that she can go out into the world and become a witch (mostly crossdressing men in media are trying to access "inner" spaces). The author even thanks Tamora Pierce in her acknowledgments, so it's very clearly part of that tradition.

What people did tell me about this book is that there are a bunch of meetings, in fact I was expecting more meetings based on how much people talked about them.There are some meetings, but they don’t drag out and are often summarized. But I was not expecting it to be quite as brutal as it was, there was a lot of fighting and some killing, and also quite a bit of phillosy about power and making choices. Definitely a book that gave me a lot to think about.

I don’t often go seek out reviews after I read a book, but this one I really wanted to see what other people said about it. I really liked Roseanna’s review.

The Truth Season 3 cases 4-5— I continue to really enjoy this show! I especially liked the set of costumes that looked part of a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Also they have been playing with the format in fun ways with these two cases.

osprey_archer

The university where I work happens to have a bronze cast of Degas’ “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen”, so before I read Camille Laurens’ book of the same name (recommended by

troisoiseaux), I went to have a good long look at the sculpture.

It’s less than life-size - perhaps two-thirds, one-half the size of the actual fourteen-year-old dancer. You can see the bronze creases in her stockings at the ankles and knees, the places where socks begin to wear out. Her forehead slopes back sharply, more sharply really than I think the human forehead can. Her hair hangs down her back in a rope braid, which is tied with a golden satin ribbon. A real ribbon, fabric rather than bronze.

She wears, too, a cloth tutu, and the curator told us (when I visited with my parents months ago) that the tutu has to be replaced every now and then, always to great debate about exactly how it should look, as the tutu on Degas’ original statue (wax, not bronze) was long gone when collectors decided to make a metal cast. How long should it be? What color? What kind of fabric?

The one at my university is about knee-length, much pleated, creamy pale layers of some fabric that might be tulle, the outer layer purposely frayed for the bottom quarter inch or so. The dancer’s feet are in the fourth position, but her hands are behind her back, and seem rather large for her size.

Thus prepared, I dived into Camille Laurens’ Little Dancer Age Fourteen: The True Story Behind Degas’ Masterpiece, translated by Willard Wood. Laurens is attempting to write a biography of Marie van Goethem, the girl who posed for the famous sculpture, but as there is very little material about Marie, it becomes a hodgepodge of other things, including a partial biography of Degas (and indeed it’s filed under his name at my library).

The book is also about the historical conditions of the young dancers at the Paris Opera, who were called rats and generally assumed to offer sexual favors on the side, giving the ballet a scandalous vibe that most 21st century viewers probably don’t pick up from looking at Degas’ pictures, since nowadays ballet is seen as a refined high art. (Is a picture, or a sculpture, worth a thousand words? Or can it tell us anything that we don’t already know?)

And it’s about the initial reception of Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, which more or less universally appalled viewers when it was first exhibited. Was it because Degas modeled the sculpture’s head to fit what was then considered the physiognomy of criminals? (Hence the sharply sloping forehead.) The association of ballet dancers with prostitution, which perhaps becomes a little queasy-making when you look at this flat-chested statue of a child?

Or the fact that the original statue was modeled in grayish wax, so the little dancer must have looked just a little corpse-like? A completely different viewing experience than the bronze cast I studied so carefully.

Degas, Laurens notes, was upset about the restoration attempts on a famous painting in the Louvre, a Rembrandt if I recall correctly. It was not the quality of the attempt that he objected to, but the fact that an attempt was made at all. Art, Degas thought, is a living thing; and like all living things, an artwork has its time to die.

popliar

After performing in Sydney a couple of years ago, on a festival line up with The Boyz and Infinite, it was great to see NMIXX back again for a full concert - this time including a show in Melbourne, Lily's hometown. For this show at the Hordern, it was full though not totally sold out on this cold winter's night. On entry we were handed some freebies: an official poster and pc (I got Jiwoo), and a fan freebie with a bracelet.

The theme of the show was a science lab, which resulted in some utterly dorky and silly VCRs with the girls mixing up potions with themes such as "love" "rockstar" and "alpha" and drinking them because of an impending bomb or something. It made nil sense!

The show was a lot of fun, they are enjoyable performers and they have some great songs. Lily was so cute, Haewon charmed me (my concert bias!), they all had their moments on stage. The momentum of the show ebbed and flowed somewhat, partly due to an extended games ment, so the pacing could have been tightened up; and I do wish there were more recent songs.

Some moments:

Lily said she cracked up during one song because Haewon made a silly face at her; and Haewon said she thought she was being cool.
Lily taught Haewon to say "prawns on the barbie"
The relay drawing game went on way too long. They did six drawings! SIX! That said it did have some cute moments:
- Lily guessing kangaroo: "So easy! Well there is the other one but you wouldn't know that" (she meant wallaby). Bae was quite good at drawing.
- They collectively drew the worst Sydney opera house good lord but it was cute that they tried to get everyone to sing opera
- The word to guess was 'lawyer'. A mess. An audience member drew a picture for Sullyoon. Chaos
For their cover, they did NCT's Kick It.
At one point Haewon and Lily sang a bit from 4 Non-Blondes.
Lily: we're 50 and you're 50 and you gave 100 so together we're 150 yay maths!
When it was encore time, they walked around in the crowd which was a bad idea in this venue - there's no barriers between any sections, so people were leaving their seats on the floor and in the stands to rush over to them, it was total chaos. Do not recommend.
In the encore they did cover of 5 Seconds to Summer's She Looks So Perfect which Lily said was an iconic Australian song for her generation lol.
Lily got her Swiftie fanchant moment by getting the crowd to shout "Sydney!" ala Blank Space.
Men were yelling at Sullyoon during her ment; she was like okay thanks…
For Break the Wall they said wave your lightsticks, any lightstick is fine! They spotted a candybong in the crowd.
For the finale they did neverending Home.
A few Aussie phrases they left the stage with: you ripper, crikey, and of course Aussie Aussie Aussie oi oi oi.

( setlist )

yuerstruly posting in

baihe_media

Welcome to the read-along for Miss Forensics by Jiu Nuan Chun Shen! As previously stated, we will be reading FIVE (5) chapters a week, so a new read-along post will go up every 2 weeks. Each chapter summary will be posted and serve as parent threads for each chapter, so please do your best to keep your comments under the correct ones!

One chapter will go up per day, Monday through Friday, and I will do my best to slip them in before it's evening in Asia. Of course, if you are up for it, please feel free to post the chapter summaries to get the read-along going!

The link to the novel on JJWXC can be found here.

You can also follow the novel through the audiobook on Himalaya, though there may be slight changes and ommissions from the original.

osprey_archer

Joan Aiken finished the last two books in the Wolves of Willoughby Chase sequence just before her death in 2004. The penultimate book, Midwinter Nightingale, has certain flaws that indicate a rushed or weary author, but before I discuss these flaws I do want to state that I’m very glad Aiken did write these books, as it seems right and proper that the series should come full circle with Dido and Simon at the end.

The main flaw in Midwinter Nightingale was the pacing, which is usually Aiken’s strong suit: in most of her book she packs so many happenings into a chapter that

littlerhymes and I struggled to discuss all the developments. But here, the characters spend the first half of the book wandering more or less aimlessly before the plot really kicks off.

Also, this is petty but I just have to complain, Aiken offers three separate and incompatible lengths for the time that has elapsed since King Dick’s coronation. It happened 15 years ago, as it coincided with his marriage to his (second) wife Princess Adelaide. (As it turns out, Prince Davie who died in the mines was the son of King Dick’s hitherto unmentioned first wife, which means Davie was a teenager when he went to investigate the mines, which is better than going off to investigate at the age of about five as I first thought.)

But it also happened six years ago, because that’s when Dido said she first got back to England, and as we know Dido saved the ceremony which otherwise would have been interrupted by St. Paul’s Cathedral rolling into the Thames. But then Dido mentions her adventures on the island of Aratu, which happened before her return to England, as occurring “two or three years ago.” WHICH IS IT, AIKEN? Please just stop giving us numbers.

However, it is lovely to be back with Dido again. Is is fine but she’s just not the same. I enjoyed the reappearance of Aiken’s trademark ferocious creatures in the form of a moat filled with man-eating fish and crocodiles (although I’m still so sad they killed spoiler redacted and spoiler redacted!), and also the unexpected plot point of two completely non-ferocious bears. They just want Simon to give them head massages to help them cope with the wet cold of England! Who among us has not dreamed of a bear friend?

The next (and last) book is very short, and was in fact published posthumously. I envision Aiken writing it on a legal pad in her hospital bed, and will not hold it against her if it occasionally devolves from prose into a list of bullet points.

halfcactus

I've been neck-deep in a hundred different fandom projects that I have yet to cross-post but for the meantime, some bullet points:

Mangadex got hit with a big DMCA take-down, so that's a lot of fantranslations disappearing.

Justice in the Dark fandom had another round of tension at the end of May when Wowow released a statement about, idk, piracy and copyright infringement; in reaction to this, people started locking their accounts, deleting their posts, taking down translations(?)... I've also locked my Twitter account, more for fandom peace of mind than the fear of WWW seeing my GIFs/edits and cancelling the show lol. I've been having a lot of feelings about fandom, fandom norms, and Anglo cfandom experiences that I want to process but I'm too distracted to write about them. Anyway I'm pretty excited for the show to be fully released so the air feels more clear.

白鲨Jaws/Baishajaws (the band who does Link Click's theme songs) disbanded. I've only skimmed internet reactions but it seems like a messy situation involving copyright(?), pay, and allegedly the front man being a dick.

The Mo Du / Silent Reading audio drama hit a new streaming milestone, so they recorded a message thanking the listeners and wishing us the best. (I literally screamed when I got the update notification lol.)

A screenrecording of my subtitling process because I was showing someone how to sub on Resolve... Now I'm wondering if other apps (eg. Aegisub) are better, after all. (I use Resolve bc I also edit videos and I just supplement with other software, depending on my needs.)

On my reading list: Inside Gaming - Interview with Former Square Enix Translator Tom Slattery

Art advice by

nn-ee-zz:

I keep finding out again and again that people react to my designs the most when I draw earnestly. I recommend the same to you, the world is a lot more interesting with your vision in it. If you’re scared people won’t like it just remember that you should be your biggest fan and that you’ll be glad you put your heart on paper. An honest design will last you a lot longer than a popular one. It’ll make you stand out more, too.

Art rec: Prutas card series (Rambutan / Papaya, Mango / Pineapple / Sugar Apple / Banana / Durian by emeldraws: anthropomorphized fruits, with very interesting design choices. I'm kind of obsessed with these!

368 chickens game (h/t

superborb), my new source of distraction and rage.

meitachi

May felt like a long month: while it slowed down at work significantly as students left campus, my schedule still felt full of community engagements. Both in good ways and exhausting ways. Some highlights: local AAPI artist showcase, a weekend trip to Toronto, launching a small APIDA restaurants week, participating in a book club, going to an AAPI summit in Albany, and posting my own mini recs on Instagram. Watching lots of OnlyOneOf.

I also read a lot and got much more into webtoons! They make for very easy reads, both physically on my phone and mentally not a heavy lift. So many interesting things on my to read list though (including favorite rereads) and I'll be traveling a bit next week, so the plane rides should provide good reading opportunities.

( Books, May 2025 )

Prepping for the Stray Kids concert I'm attending at the end of the month. I can name all 8 members, recognize 5 consistently, and know 2.5 songs. I'm working up to knowing like 5 songs by the concert!

Current Music: Stray Kids - Chk Chk Boom

lightreads

Asunder

4/5. For reasons, an isolated death speaker, who gained her powers through a deadly compact with an eldritch demon thing, gets bound at the soul to a man from another culture. Their attempts to separate take them on a long road trip across this strange fantasy world with a complicated recent political/religious history.

I liked this. It is about many kinds of joining and sundering – social, political, romantic, familial, religious. But the heart of it is the relationship that forms between two people unwillingly joined and forced to trust each other. Our protagonist is the sort who has a really hard time understanding when people are kind to her, because she’s had almost no experience of that. She doesn’t really figure it all out in this book, but she does come a long way.

I will say, there is supposed to be a sequel to this book, but my understanding is that the publisher didn’t buy it. Yet, hopefully? This got a surprise award nomination, so. But my point is, if the sequel happens, then great. If it doesn’t, then this ending is really not okay.

Content notes: Recollections of child abuse/domestic violence, a threat of . . . forced pregnancy by a demon is I guess what you’d call it.

skygiants

A while back,

lirazel posted about a bad book about an interesting topic -- Conspiracy Theories About Lemuria -- which apparently got most of its information from a scholarly text called The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories by Sumathi Ramaswamy.

Great! I said. I bet the library has that book, I'll read it instead of the bad one! which now I have done.

For those unfamiliar, for a while the idea of sunken land-bridges joining various existing landmasses was very popular in 19th century geology; Lemuria got its name because it was supposed to explain why there are lemurs in Madagascar and India but not anywhere else. Various other land-bridges were also theorized but Lemuria's the only one that got famous thanks to the catchy name getting picked up by various weird occultists (most notably Helena Blavatasky) and incorporated into their variably incomprehensible Theories of Human Origins, Past Paradises, Etc.

As is not unexpected, this book is a much more dense, scholarly, and theory-driven tome than the bad pop history that

lirazel read. What was unexpected for me is that the author's scholarly interests focus on a.) cartography and b.) Tamil language and cultural politics, and so what she's most interested in doing is tracing how the concept of a Lemurian continent went from being an outdated geographic supposition to a weird Western occult fringe belief to an extremely mainstream, government-supported historical narrative in Tamil-speaking polities, where Lost Lemuria has become associated with the legendary drowned Tamil homeland of Tamilnāṭu and thus the premise for a claim that not only is the Lemurian continent the source of human origins but that specifically the Tamil language is the source language for humanity.

Not the book I expected to be reading! but I'm not at all mad about how things turned out! the prose is so dry that it was definite work to wade through but the rewards were real; the author has another whole book about Tamil language politics and part of me knows I am not really theory-brained enough for it at this time but the other part is tempted.

Also I did as well come out with a few snippets of the Weird Nonsense that I thought I was going in for! My favorite anecdote involves a woman named Gertrude Norris Meeker who wrote to the U.S. government in the 1950s claiming to be the Governor-General of Atlantis and Lemuria, ascertaining her sovereign right to this nonexistent territory, to which the State Department's Special Advisor on Geography had to write back like "we do not think that is true; this place does not exist." Eventually Gertrude Meeker got a congressman involved who also nobly wrote to the government on behalf of his constituent: "Mrs. Meeker understands that by renouncing her citizenship she could become Queen of these islands, but as a citizen she can rule as governor-general. [...] She states that she is getting ready to do some leasing for development work on some of these islands." And again the State Department was patiently like "we do not think that is true, as this place does not exist." Subsequently they seem to have developed a "Lemuria and Atlantis are not real" form letter which I hope and trust is still being used today.

china_shop

I was just clearing out my screenshot folder and re-found some things I made a couple of years ago during the Guardian rewatch. They amused me, so: repost!

Shen Wei meme in two parts that reads "Came to Wedding" and "Kicked the Groom".

Shen Wei meme in two parts that reads "Came to Wedding" and "Kicked the Groom".

:D

[Tumblr post #1 | Tumblr post #2]

silveredeye

( Fire Weather )

( Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years )

Witness for the Dead, The Grief of Stones and The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison. Fantasy.

The third one was coming out, so I reread the previous two to prepare for it.

( The Cemeteries of Amalo )

Current Mood: thoughtful

qian

I enjoyed watching bits and bobs of this 1980s BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, dramatised by Fay Weldon (!) -- I saw it recommended on my network though I can't remember by whom. As might be expected of a novelist's adaptation, it makes good use of Jane Austen's own perfect sentences (the screenplay for the 2020 Emma, written by Eleanor Catton, did this too), and it dramatises some scenes you don't get to see in the famous more recent adaptations.

Despite my unswerving affection for Jennifer Ehle's Elizabeth Bennet, I think this is genuinely the best Lizzy Bennet I've seen -- at first I thought she was too pretty, but she absolutely has the sweetness and archness "which made it difficult for her to affront anybody". Jane is not prettier, which she should be, but she is at least as pretty (though her eyebrows strike me as distractingly modern). But I find the Darcy a let-down: a friend recently remarked that Colin Firth is not good-looking and that is why she doesn't like the 1995 series, but actually this Darcy, who is better-looking, is a reminder of why Firth works in the role. Colin Firth manages to convey the sense that he is fundamentally a decent guy underneath it all and that's why he works; there's a vulnerability to him which makes his Darcy very sweet and human. The 1980s Darcy too kayu lah.

Are there any (relatively) obscure Austen adaptations you'd recommend? In my top tier are the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice miniseries, the 1995 Persuasion film, the 2020 Emma and Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility. I don't like the Keira Knightley P&P film. And I thought the Romola Garai Emma was, like, fine, though that's mostly because I find Johnny Flynn's Mr Knightley more fanciable than Jonny Lee Miller (though fair dues to both of them for making him fanciable at all -- one of the least sexy heroes Austen ever wrote, only slightly less sexless than Edmund Bertram). I would love to watch a really good Mansfield Park adaptation some day ...

nnozomi posting in

senzenwomen

Kanno Suga, also called Sugako, was born in 1881 in Osaka, where her father was an itinerant mining engineer. Her mother Nobu died when Suga was twelve, to be replaced by a wicked stepmother who abused her (according to some accounts, having her raped and spreading rumors of her bad behavior); at age nineteen, she was married off to support the family’s failing finances. Shortly divorced, she returned home and helped support her younger sister and brother.

She studied writing with the author Udagawa Bunkai, joined Yajima Kajiko’s WCTU, and thereby developed an interest in socialism and pacifism through her acquaintance with the writer, editor, and all-around good guy Sakai Toshihiko [to whose daughter Magara Suga willed her best kimono], then running the Heimin Shimbun left-wing newspaper. She was apparently particularly moved by an article in which Sakai argued that women who had been raped should bear no more responsibility for it than women bitten by mad dogs.

Suga addressed woman’s issues from her own earliest days as a journalist, working for the Osaka Morning News: she criticized the plan to have geisha dance at the Fifth National Industrial Exhibition held in 1903, calling them “women of low repute,” a daring move given how many high governmental officials were then married to ex-geisha (she later regretted this stance, shifting to criticize the social structure in general rather than the women involved in it.) In 1906, with help from Sakai, she moved to Wakayama to edit a newspaper there while its original editor was in prison; she subsequently married her colleague Arahata Kanson and moved to Tokyo with him, although this marriage likewise did not last more than a year. Her articles continued to call on women to stand up for themselves against men’s double standards and perfidy.

In 1908, she was arrested as part of the so-called Red Flag Incident, in which anarchists including Arahata, Osugi Sakae, and Kotoku Shusui waved red flags marked with anarchist and socialist slogans when welcoming a comrade back from prison, clashed with police, and were arrested in large numbers. Shortly after the incident, Suga and Kotoku began to live together (he was technically still married, but his wife Chiyo had stayed home when he came to Tokyo. Arahata, Suga’s ex-lover, did not hesitate to use this and other points to blacken Suga’s name in later years; he famously described her as “not at all pretty, but very sexy” or words to that effect, implying that she had slept with almost every man she met). Along with Kotoku, Suga became editor of the journal Liberal Thought, which was promptly banned.

In 1910, Suga, Kotoku, and a number of their comrades were arrested in what became the High Treason Incident, on suspicion of plotting to assassinate the Meiji Emperor. Even at the time it was widely known that most of the charges were entirely falsified (in part by chief prosecutor Hiranuma Kiichiro), as part of the increasing crackdown on the left wing. According to some accounts, Suga, who was already suffering from tuberculosis, knew herself not to be long for this world in any case, and decided to die with her comrades rather than plead her innocence; others have her a central part of the conspiracy, considering herself a latter-day Sofia Perovskaya. Regardless, she was hanged for treason in January of 1911, at the age of thirty.

Buried in a Tokyo temple, her remains disappeared during the war. While it was originally thought that they had been ravaged by the wartime military, a postwar survey found that they had been taken by comrades for safe reinterment in Okayama; her grave is still with her sister's in Tokyo.

Sources
Nakae, Ishii, Mori 1996, Tanaka
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/kanno-sugako-reflections-on-the-way-to-the-gallows (English; translator unknown) Suga’s record of her sentencing and thereafter. A LOT.

osprey_archer

I’ve never owned my own TV before, but one of my friends had an extra which became mine when I moved into the Hummingbird Cottage. A Target gift card had just come into my possession as a housewarming gift, so I traipsed off to Target for a DVD player.

“I didn’t know we sold those anymore,” the bemused clerk informed me. (Target does, however, have a large record selection. Also WiFi enabled record players. What a time to be alive.)

Undeterred, I made my purchase, and drove home happily dreaming of all the new movies and shows I would watch.

I did in fact manage to watch a couple of new movies: Studio Ghibli’s The Red Turtle, a wordless movie about a man marooned on an island who ends up marrying a turtle who turns into a woman (as turtles are wont to do), and Werner Herzog’s Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, which is a fascinating documentary about trappers in the taiga, although it does keep saying things like “These trappers are almost untouched by modern civilization” as the trappers zoom off in their snow mobiles. I mean. Maybe a little touched by modern civilization?

However, what I’ve mostly been doing is rewatching old favorites. I rewatched the Romola Garai Emma and the pre-Raphaelite miniseries Desperate Romantics (both of which I own), and contemplated borrowing the 2006 Jane Eyre and 2008 Sense and Sensibility miniseries from the library before deciding that no, it was better to wait till I could find them used somewhere, and therefore enjoy the thrill of the hunt.

(I have not yet found either of those miniseries, but on my last visit to Half Price Books I DID find a copy of the 1981 Brideshead Revisited miniseries for a mere $10!!! which was instantly stolen by a friend who hasn’t seen it yet. Which is fair enough I guess.)

I did get the first two seasons of The Vicar of Dibley from the library, and have now started in on their Poirot collection, and was disconcerted to discover that with Poirot in particular I have barely any memory of the show. Things like the bit where Miss Lemon says “Poirot looked middle-aged even as a baby,” yes. The solutions to the mysteries? No. Gone. Might as well have never watched the show. Which is convenient for a rewatch, admittedly.

As much as I’m enjoying my rewatches, however (season one of Downton Abbey next?), I would like to stir a few new-to-me things into the mix as well.

1. I’ve started the 1981 sitcom A Fine Romance, because (a) it stars Judi Dench, and (b) the episodes are half an hour long. (I’m a sucker for shows with half hour episodes.) It’s cute, but I’m not totally sold yet. Will give it a few more episodes and see how I feel.

2. On the topic of half hour shows (actually 22-minute shows), I’ve heard Abbott Elementary is fantastic. Yes? No? Maybe so?

3. Given my love of Poirot, I was looking thoughtfully at the Miss Marple adaptations. But alas they’re all two hours long, and I turn into a pumpkin at about 60 minutes.

4. Has anyone seen Flambards? Would you recommend it? I’m considering it because it’s on the shelf at the library and I have a vague memory of someone, somewhere, gushing about it, except maybe they were gushing about the book that it’s based on and not the show.

5. I attempted to watch a Vanity Fair miniseries, by which I mean that I got a copy out of the library and then never even put it in the DVD player because the thought of watching Becky Sharp be mean to people while smiling sweetly was too stressful. Strongly suspect I would feel the same way about the classic 1979 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy miniseries, which is unfortunate as it would be the perfect capper for my George Smiley readings.

6. However, as a general rule, I do enjoy book to miniseries adaptations, especially if they’re period pieces and the episodes are less than an hour long. So please let me know if you have recs!

queenlua

Been a while since I bookblogged here, huh? This isn't EVERYTHING, but this post already took me fucking hours to type up, so, let's get into it—

Jhereg by Steven Brust
Mickey7 by Ashton Edward

Both of these books were romps, though the former is the more compelling overall package.

( Jhereg )

( Mickey7 )

That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation by David Bentley Hart (DNF, 48%)
Honest to God by John A.T. Robinson (DNF, 54%)
Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thích Nhất Hạnh (DNF, 24%)
Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by N.T. Wright

Look, to tip my hand, I'm in the (very!) early phase of writing a weird fantasy/historical/pastiche-y novel that dares to ask questions like "damn what was it like to be The Greatest Haterliest Poaster Of All Time" and also "what if Martin Luther was a chick" and "what if Martin Luther was two people instead of one" and "what if those people ~~kissed~~ failed to kiss" and "what if Martin Luther were a radical pacifist on top of all the other crazy shit he was doing" and "what if sacred music was actually efficacious and had geopolitical implications" and so on. I blame Lyndal Roper specifically for presenting a portrait of Martin Luther so vivid and intriguing that I could not help but go patently insane over him thereafter.

The logical next step for researching such a novel would be to read up on the theology and history of that period, because even if I'm VERY heavy on the pastiche aspects, it's nice to understand the historical context and some contemporaneous sources/writings for the period of history I'm interested in, if only for riffing purposes, yaknow.

Alas, however, I'm a magpie with no self-control, and thus easily beguiled by Every Other Book I Trip Over On The Way To The Stuff I Should Actually Be Reading, which is how I wound up with this grab-bag of rather more contemporary theology.

All of which I am entirely unqualified to properly evaluate, to be clear, as someone who's variously identified as "Southern Baptist," "Christian agnostic," "deist," "Quaker," "neopagan," "animist," and "some weird woo bullshit syncretic thing ig, sorry it's cringe I know" at various points in my life. But that sure won't stop me from prattling about 'em on my blog.

( That All Shall Be Saved )

( Honest to God )

( Living Buddha, Living Christ )

( Surprised By Hope )

Aside: all of these books felt pretty repetitive. Something to do with the genre, I guess? No way to theology-y people to feel like they've gotten your point across without restating it three different ways? IDK.

ANYWAY. I should probably quit dicking around with these books for a bit, since, y'know, novel. I gotta read more Martin Luther himself and also probably some John Calvin. (Alas this means my copy of Kosuke Koyama's Five Mile an Hour God will likely remain mostly-unread on my shelf. Did I mention I'm a magpie. Books pile up in my home whenever I get on a weird pseudo-reasearch-y kick, and I am blessed with an indulgent partner who just keeps buying me more bookshelves instead of telling me to cut it the hell out, which is very sweet of him, but also I could really use someone to stop me before I commit more Irresponsible Spending Crimes... though I saw someone the other day comparing book-buying to wine-buying, e.g. hey it's valid and normal to let some of them age in the cellar & have more than you'll be able to drink; you want to have good wine when the time is right! and UNFORTUNATELY this is very effective for allowing me to continue in my profligate ways. RIP me.)

...okay yeah I couldn't find any way to fit Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik into all of this. Spinning Silver was very good, but I don't have much to say! The primary romance was a total nothingburger, but that's fine because mostly the book is about Miryem girlbossing her way through Rumpelstiltskin and that shit totally rules. I would like to read several more books about moneylenders Being Incredibly Good At Their Job. The book gets a bit bloated and flabbier as it goes along (though the parts with secondary-girlboss Irina and horrible little man Mirnatius can stay; those bits were great) but never enough to knock it down from the "very good" tier. Fairytale retellings aren't normally my thing but this one was solid.

littlerhymes

Is - Joan Aiken
Cold Shoulder Road - Joan Aiken
The Castle of Llyr - Lloyd Alexander
Taran Wanderer - Lloyd Alexander
The High King - Lloyd Alexander
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup - John Carreyrou
Chinese Parents Don't Say I Love You - Candice Chung
Heaven Official's Blessing 6, 7 and 8 - Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
Saga 12 - Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan
Before the Coffee Gets Cold - Toshikazu Kawaguchi, transl. Geoffrey Trousselot
Warlight - Michael Ondaatje
Batman: Wayne Family Adventures 1 - CRC Payne, Starbite

( books and comics )

lirazel

I have made many a post about how no other writer scratches the same itch that Robin McKinley does, but here is another one, expanded out to talk about other writers who scratch very specific itches.

I am skeptical of the BookTok/GoodReads "readalikes" conversation, because I don't think there are any writers who actually readalike--every writer is distinct--and also I hate the tendency of book copy to compare books to other books/writers ("for readers of...") mostly because the comparisons are usually bad comparisons! Book B is nothing like Book A actually! Why did you even say that it was? Have you, person who wrote the copy, actually read both books? Etc.

However, I do think that thoughtful comparisons of writers can be helpful is the conversation is very specific about what you're actually comparing. For instance: if you ask for writers like Austen and someone suggests Heyer, that could work really well if what you're looking for is "romance set in Regency England written by someone who isn't just writing about Regency England via osmosis of reading a thousand other Regency novels" but it would simply be frustrating if what you're looking for is "gorgeous early 19th century prose and keen-eyed commentary on human foibles and social expectations." See?

So I'd like to have a discussion about what itches particular writers scratch that are difficult to find in other writers' works. That's not elegantly phrased, but maybe examples will help.

I'll probably make several posts about this featuring a handful of favorite writers or perhaps favorite books and I would be VERY interested to hear what itch-scratchers you're always looking for, whether in the comments or in your own posts. And if you can think of any writers or specific books that hit any one of the points I'm looking for below, please, please share recs! Recommendations are my love language!

When I say that I want more books like Eva Ibbotson's (adult) books (and Star of Kazan), what I mean is one or some combination of the following:
+ golden descriptions of pre-WWII Europe (particularly Hapsburg territory, particularly Vienna) with its sense of how diverse Europe was with dozens of different cultures all jostling with each other
+ colorful, eccentric, specific characters (mostly these are supporting characters in her books, not the leads, but I am happy whenever they arise) evoked through amazing details
+ beautiful writing about love for the arts, including moments of transcendence and grace in the midst of sorrow

What I'm not talking about:
+ the romances, which I find only partially convincing most of the time

When I say that I want more books like Robin McKinley's, what I am saying:
+ close attention to the domestic details of life from baking to raising newborn puppies to creating fire-proof dragon-fighting gear
+ an atmosphere that is warm without being saccharine--there's sorrow, pain, loss, etc. alongside the coziness
+ wonderful evocations of magic
+ wonderfully realized female characters (Beagle's Tamsin did this for me, if you want another example)

What I'm not talking about:
+ any particular one of her settings--I like them all but I don't go searching for them
+ fairytale retellings--these can be good! but often are not

When I say I want more books like Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January series, what I mean is:
+ vividly evoked specific historical settings, a strong sense of place, settings that are rare and not over-visited (look, I love Victorian London as much as anyone, but sometimes I'd rather have a story set in Central Asia or the Incan Empire or something)
+ close attention to how power affects how people move through the world (without getting preachy)
+ focus on how marginalized people find agency and build lives despite the limits enforced on them by those forces of power
+ depictions of people trying (sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing) to build relationships across those societally-enforced lines

What I'm not talking about:
+ historical mysteries, necessarily (I love historical mysteries when done well but SO many of them just do not work for me)

When I say I want more books like Susanna Clarke's, what I mean is:
+ magic that is beautiful but untamable, wild and fey
+ delightful footnotes or digressions
+ love for scholarship, history, books, etc.
+ a sense of wonder
+ a sense of the writer's deep understanding of the literature and history of the era she's writing about

What I'm not talking about:
+ conflicts between men wielding magic in different ways
+ Regency-era fantasy, necessarily (again, most of this does not hit for me)

osprey_archer

I went into John Le Carre’s A Legacy of Spies with a certain trepidation, as the book is a late-career novel that retreads the events of Le Carre’s first break-out hit, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Years after the events in the earlier book, Smiley’s right-hand man Peter Guillam finds himself the focus of a legal investigation into what exactly went down during that mission.

Frankly, the premise struck me as a tired rehash of an earlier success. But this is not a fair assessment of A Legacy of Spies, in which Le Carre cheerfully twists a few knives that he had hitherto left untwisted in the general Smiley saga. As such, this review will feature ( spoilers for all the Smiley books )

Despite my doubts, a perfect end to the series, really. Brings the story full circle, updates us on all the most interesting characters, continues the exploration of Le Carre’s favorite themes. Were we the bad guys? - by “we” meaning not England, or Europe, or the West, but the international brotherhood of spies.