silver

The indie bookstores here organized a book crawl this year again, and I completed it! Last year my friend and I only found about it late, so we blitzed about twenty stores in two days (don't recommend this). This year, fantasy book club organized Saturday bookstore crawls so it was spread across 4 weekends, which worked out really nicely. People dropped in and out as schedules permitted - I missed one because I was sick - but it was really great. Most of the bookstores we took transit or walked, with one day being carpooled driving to hit the more outlying/hard to get to ones. I ended up going to 25 bookstores in total.

The bookstore crawls made me realize there are a lot more indie bookstores than I realized! Despite the much bemoaned deaths of Borders, Barnes and Noble, etc, many of the indie bookstores are doing well. Some of them are quite general, but some were small and tightly focused on e.g. feminist lit, Italian culture and lit, the cat cafe was mostly cat-related books, several bookstores plus gaming stores had nerdy/D&D/games novels. My favourite of the focused bookstores is the romance bookstore, which is always absolutely hopping on weekends. It's got a coffeeshop inside - another great pairing, there's always people there chatting, some dates I think too - and it's well laid out with romance subgenres on different shelves instead of all crammed together. I'm also impressed a fair amount of men are there, browsing. Woohoo! Romance keeps publishing going and is a lot of fun and joy.

I mostly kept a lid on it and didn't buy 1,492,765 trinkets and books, but it was tough. I did end up buying a locket necklace shaped like a book. Now I just have to think of something to put in the two frames...maybe if I paint something tiny...

Since I got all the stamps and then went back to some of the stores on Apr 25, Indie Bookstore Day, I got a lot of random prizes too. Lots of stickers - I love a sticker - a tote bag, an ARC, etc. Honestly I don't care that much about prizes but I LOVE to fill out all the stamps in a passport. This is why I try to be careful what challenges I embark on. But it was great to meet up with people in book club, and I also finally convinced the book club leader to start having in-person meetings again. We went Zoom during COVID and I've really missed being able to interact with book club people in person. Not to mention the issues with Zoom and monologuing, which is tough. So I am excited about the next meetings!

Something that I just don't usually do well with in sf/f is unnatural monsters presented in a scientific-ish context.

Admittedly I'm not into horror for horror, so I'm definitely missing a piece of the enjoyment that lets a fan of e.g. monstrous characters/enemies overlook other stuff - "OK the plot isn't great but I really liked the minotaur so it was worth the trade off!" which is definitely something I do for stuff that I care about, like interesting worldbuilding. Everyone's got their preferences and IMO it's not worth interrogating past that, sometimes you just like what you like. But the problem is the suspension of disbelief and the way that it breaks mine when sf tries to talk about horrifying supernatural monsters in a scientific context because then: WE HAVE BROUGHT IN BIOLOGY. (Oh no.)

I find a lot of horror wants to play off that fear that this monster is so much better than humans so we are helpless against it. OK. But unfortunately I cannot stop thinking about biology, and also, what underpins biology: energy. First, the biology part - there are lots of animals and not-animals here, today, in the past, that are better than humans on just about any axis. It's kind of what happens when you compare 1 species against, you know, several hundred millions of other species. There isn't really an apex of all apexes, there was no cosmic race to do that, and also no reason to do so. A species exists in a time and place and its unique constraints. Pretty much nothing is adapted to every conceivable environment - why should it be? And every species and individual makes trade offs because energy is not infinite. There are lots of advantages to being warm blooded like a human (being able to move! running from danger! actively capturing things!) but also lots of disadvantages (the number of calories you have to consume is staggeringly more than cold blooded, not to mention plants! you're limited by the productivity of the prey you eat!) There's not exactly a hard-and-fast rule that says anaerobic life forms are better at life than aerobic, I'm sorry. Each of them generally does extremely poorly in the wrong environment. As you add complexity you add to the number of ways things can go wrong, you add to the cost of maintaining all that infrastructure...It's always bothered me when the aliens are so much better for monstrous reasons just because Doylistically, that makes them scary. OK, but what does make them able to exist better than us in hard vacuum and in a hyperoxygenated environment like Earth? (Have you seen what oxygen does to stuff that has never been exposed to oxygen before? What it did to all the rocks that were present on the planet when it happened? The effects are still visible several billion years later. Have you thought about fire and why it does really well here and not elsewhere?) If they move faster than us, does that mean they need more energy? What about their joints? This is a part of my brain I am apparently unable to shut off if the context invites any kind of biological scrutiny. We are humans writing for other humans, we know our limitations imposed by biology and physics because obviously, we inhabit these bodies and have first-hand knowledge, which is unconsciously integrated into our art. When monsters are written this way, they appear to have no limits, and I find that weirdly frustrating. Not to mention the worldbuilding pretzel I find hard to respect when the monster is actually custom-designed to be extra scary or good at killing/destroying humans, when they did not know about humans - it's just too much Ah How Convenient, Humans Are The Center of the Universe (Negative Edition) to me. I'd respect it more if a monster was like "oh I have discovered Humans are a great snack, didn't know they existed!" rather than some cosmically horrifying this has always been out there to hunt you, a Very Important Organism from the Center of the Universe* statement. I don't think these concerns bother other people who like the genre, or use these concepts, it's just me. They wake up every ounce of my but actuallyyyy instincts and then I stop enjoying it as a book**.

I'm OK with totally magical (often in fantasy) monsters, since it just says OK, ignore all physical realities, this is something else. That's fine. I just can't with the halfsies position here.

(Indeed I did not enjoy Blindsight [I believe this is Peter Watts' exercise in despair], nor Into the Drowning Deep, nor right now, Leviathan Wakes.)




*Pretty sure we're in a backwater actually

** Actually I also don't appreciate, this time from a narrative perspective, the way many of those also do a late-book shift into re-examining the horrifying bits as Actually This is Beautiful, which I find both twee and irritating. THIS IS JUST NOT FOR ME

Ratings out of 5

Too Like the Lightning - Ada Palmer - 0.5 stars
Divine Rivals - Rebecca Ross - 1.5 stars
Story of a Murder: The Wives, the Mistress, and Dr Crippen - Hallie Rubenhold - DNF ugh
On Basilisk Station - David Weber - 2.25 stars
I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith - 4 stars (phew)
My Inconvenient Duke - Loretta Chase - 2.25 stars
Tooth and Claw - Jo Walton - 3.25 stars (recovering)

I didn't set out to do this, but I accidentally ended up reading the majority of Lois McMaster Bujold's novels this year. I read all 16 Vorkosigan novels plus all the short stories (though not Dreamweaver's Dilemma since it's not really canon). I also read both Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls. With the exception of one novel (Gentleman Jole & the Red Queen), I had fun reading everything, and overall her work has given me so much joy and happiness this year.

It was also the 250th birthday of Jane Austen on December 16th. In consequence I also read all of her novels, including two I had not read before: Emma and Lady Susan. I enjoyed them all to varying degrees, and hopefully will get round to more written down thoughts, but what struck me most is the difference in how I felt about Mansfield Park. I first read it around age 16, and I hated it so much. In the intervening time I think I also merged it with some of my feelings from Jane Eyre (which I do like) and the scenes from Lowood. But this time many of the elements like Fanny Price's meekness did not bother me nearly so much, and I did enjoy a lot of it. I think it's a combination of being prepared, a much higher tolerance of maddening characters, and also a taste for difficult female protagonists.

Marvel things I have watched:

( things I have watched )

( babbling )

If you would like to do this meme yourself and don't want to undo all my formatting:
<b>Bold = Watched Entirety</b> <i>Italic = Watched Part</i> * Watched more than once. † Watched in the first few weeks of release (at least initially, for TV shows). <u>Phase One:</u> Iron Man (2008) The Incredible Hulk (2008) Iron Man 2 (2010) Thor (2011) Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) The Avengers (2012) <u>Phase Two:</u> Iron Man 3 (2013) Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV 2013–2020) Thor: The Dark World (2013) Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) Ant-Man (2015) Daredevil (TV 2015–2018) Agent Carter (TV 2015–2016) Jessica Jones (TV 2015–2019) <u>Phase Three:</u> Captain America: Civil War (2016) Luke Cage (TV 2016–2018) Doctor Strange (2016) Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) Iron Fist (TV 2017–2018) Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) The Defenders (TV 2017) The Punisher (TV 2017–2019) Inhumans (TV 2017) Runaways (TV 2017–2019) Thor: Ragnarok (2017) Black Panther (2018) Cloak & Dagger (TV 2018–2019) Avengers: Infinity War (2018) Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) Captain Marvel (2019) Avengers: Endgame (2019) Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) <u>Phase Four:</u> Black Widow (2021) WandaVision (TV 2021) The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (TV 2021) Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) Eternals (2021) Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) Loki (TV 2021-2023) Hawkeye (TV 2021) Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) Moon Knight (TV 2022) Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) Ms. Marvel (TV 2022) She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (TV 2022) <u>Phase Five:</u> Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) Secret Invasion (TV 2023) Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023) The Marvels (2023) Echo (TV 2024) Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) Agatha All Along (TV 2024) Daredevil: Born Again (TV 2025-2026) Captain America: Brave New World (2025) Thunderbolts (2025) Ironheart (TV 2025) <u>Phase Six:</u> The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) Wonder Man (TV 2025) Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026) Vision Quest (TV 2026) Avengers: Doomsday (2026) Avengers: Secret Wars (2027)

Immediately starting the entry with spoilers, so it all goes under the cut.

( Mirror Dance )

Continuing through Cetaganda and two short stories:

( Cetaganda )

I would first like to say, I should have read these YEARS AGO, I only read Shards, and somehow didn't go on. But now I have read everything except Ethan of Athos/Falling Free. My friend C proposed The Warrior's Apprentice for one of my small book clubs back in January. C is not only very thoughtful about figuring out whether so-and-so might like a book, she and I overlap in book tastes the most of anyone I know, with only one or two exceptions (only really notable because of how rare this is). She just scored 58 on the 100 formative novels list I posted, ha. Flist, I lost my mind. I feel like I've been thinking about these books, and/or flat out reading non-stop, for about two or three months. I pulled my other small book club into reading these, too, since both C and the third person love the series, and I sat down at book club and monologued like a villain (from my copious notes) about all the things I liked.

While I'm babbling about the series as a whole - I guess I'll do a full summary afterwards - I read a lot of the commentary on Reactor formerly Tordotcom, which start here: https://reactormag.com/tag/vorkosigan-saga/?sort=newest¤tPage=17

Jo Walton does a post per book plus a couple character posts, and I really like her analysis. Well worth reading, and the link above starts from her summation. She did finish up the whole thing prior to Gentleman Jole & the Red Queen (the only book I do not like) and she doesn't have a post about that novel, but her posts are insightful, enjoyable, and very, very worth reading. Reactor also has Ellen Cheeseman-Meyer do a full read-through. Her posts are the vast majority of the posts about Vorkosigan on the site, and...well, I have reached a level where I am scrounging for any kind of discussion/commentary, but in many places I disagreed with her take, felt she went on not just unnecessary but dumb tangents, and sometimes she was flat out factually wrong, even about facts she had just read. I am a little irritated by that; forgivable in whole-novel/series summations, but surely you can recall the fact from the chapter you just read. Also - this offends me most, I think - she flies through Mirror Dance's juiciest and most important parts by just doing chapters 9-17 in one post, then 18-33 in a second. Other works like 'Winterfair Gifts' short story she did in three separate posts, and C-M simply elides all the yes painful, yes difficult, but really good stuff in Mirror Dance, one of the best of the series. So it offends me. There is both interesting comments and stupid comments in the re-read as well.

With that being said! Shards of Honor and Barrayar!

( Shards of Honor )

( Barrayar )

I'm so incredibly late to reading this and very much should have read it so much sooner, but it's been eating my brain. I read Shards of Honour years ago and enjoyed it, but was stymied by the knowledge that most of the series is about Miles - I generally hate it when book sequels go to the next gen, so I never pursued the further books. I really should have, because it turns out I really like them! I really like space opera/military SF in general, and these are just so good.

I'm in a bunch of book clubs and for one of them we decided to read The Warrior's Apprentice, based on C's recommendation on where we should start. So I read it. And I loved it. A few days later I was getting dinner with another friend in another book club (I have too many book clubs) and was telling K about how much I enjoyed The Warrior's Apprentice & The Vor Game, the next in sequence, and K was like "oh, I love those books!". K is in another book club with C with me, so when we met, we discussed the actual book we had chosen, and then devoted the rest of the time to Vorkosigan. The next meeting is going to be "whatever book I can get to", with K saying she'd like to discuss Memory, but only if I can make it there. Both C and K have read them all, so we tentatively set Memory as a goal, and this book club may temporarily just turn into us discussing Vorkosigan until I suppose I read all of them. As of Feb 15, I am absolutely going to make it to Memory, as I've just finished Mirror Dance. Though I need to force myself to take a break. I finished The Warrior's Apprentice on January 18th, and since then I have read Mountains of Mourning, The Vor Game, Cetaganda, Labyrinth, Borders of Infinity, Shards of Honour (having forgotten all the plot from my first reading, this felt just like a new book), Barrayar, Brothers in Arms, and Mirror Dance. I took a break in the middle in various places to try to read other books, but it was kind of difficult because I just wanted to keep going with Vorkosigan. I have copies of a bunch of omnibus editions, which also makes it so easy to just keep going.

I have so many feelings.

One thing that both fascinates and annoys me about fashion and the perception of what is cool is the way fashion is related to ingroup/outgroup, exclusivity, signalling, etc. This intersects in a predictable but still weird way with money and the price of things. Which is a pretentious way of saying that the thing that you use as normal, workaday, cheap/reasonably priced things today, which you bought because they are reasonably priced for the usable value you get out of it, may blow up eventually into expensive fashion items in the future. Including for people who will never use the object for its original use! For me this is most evident in watches, which I approach from the outside and which have a jewelery/collector/wealth signalling aspect to (and which has very high ceilings in price + the actual time-telling is superseded for most people by other tools). Getting a watch that tells time accurately and is waterproof is fairly inexpensive. Quartz watches are very accurate and stay synced for a long time as long as you don't require GPS-levels of coordination, watch batteries are not expensive, mass manufacture drives down the price hugely, the materials can be strong, durable and waterproof quite cheaply. But there's expensive watches that are designed to look like or imitate what were once workaday timepieces, but because aviators/divers/whathaveyou in this era looked cool and manly, that's something to emulate visually today, at a much higher price point. It's a marketing thing, where you look beyond selling an object for the practical use (tell time) and sell an aspiration, or an object that props up the perception of yourself. Or look at fountain pens. Undoubtedly even when they were daily items, there were still some people who bought super expensive ones, but now the proportion of people who buy the high end kinds is much higher, because the bulk of the people who just wanted "cheap reliable writing implement" switched over to ballpoints. But fountain pens have this upper segment of people who are really, really, really into them, and are willing to fork over thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. There are very usable and nice fountain pens for under ten dollars, too. Some of the expensive ones look pretty much like any regular pen someone might have used in 1920, without being encrusted in diamonds or some other expensive material. Just emulation. It's the triple whammy for me: wanting to emulate something in the past, the emulation being fashion only, and paying very high prices for it.

It makes me wonder what things I own or do today which, given 50 or 100 years' distance and nostalgic (or historical) gloss, will look cool and historical. My binoculars which are expensive (but proportionate to their cost of manufacture)? The mirrorless camera - I mean, these days film cameras are now worshipped by a tiny fraction of people who are extremely into them, and are expensive to get, and I'm literally seeing this happen now with cheap digital point-and-shoots from the 2000s - will the shortcomings I currently find about it glamourized? What about my work, or the tools I use for them? The workhorse laptop which is sturdy but might become emblematic of $industryin2020s era nostalgic? Will people 100 years from now all get laser eye surgery and glasses become worn with clear glass to look like people like me? It's weird to think about!