What I read
Tremontaine Season 3 Episode 2 - felt this went a bit choppy between the various characters and strands catching up/setting up.
Ruthanna Emrys, Winter Tide (2017) - well, I am someone who all I know about Lovecraft is works by people who have riffed off/subverted the Lovecraft mythos or pointed out his horrendous views, but I enjoyed ( Read more... )

I suppose a 'visionary historian' might find this out by, you know, having visions?* rather than being able to substantiate the claim from empirical evidence?
But really, when someone comes out with the following: [W]e have gained enormous power over the world and it doesn’t seem to make people significantly more satisfied than in the stone age.
my ( Read more... )

Spotted on somebody's post and catching at me: apparently Kafka once said something to the effect that I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for?.... A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
Which would be a ( Read more... )

Yes, it's Jonathan Jones again, this time dissing on Sir Terry Pratchett and people who write popular books (that is, people of this present day who write books that are loved by the public)*, in comparison to oh, ye Gr8 Canonykle Wryterz of Gr8 Litrachur -
Is this not, my dearios, a tiresome affectation that The Past Was Good, the Present Is Crap ( Read more... )

What I read
Points of Departure was lovely - thought that the stories here hung together as a group even if I might at some point go dig out my Liavek anthologies to remind myself about various characters who were on the peripherals here.
More reading for Wiscon panels - finished the Melissa Scott trilogy which did not quite match up to the fond ( Read more... )

Possibly exacerbated by having to get up at an unwontedly early hour to go into the workplace and put on the famous shirt to record a TV interview in a particularly chilly area of the building.
Anyway, travel angst status is currently = rereading Jane Duncan My Friend books, and contemplating the fact that tomorrow I have to get up at the same hour ( Read more... )

Every so often, people with opinions (esp prob people paid to have OPINIONZ) will wring their hands and declare that Those People On the Internet Exist In A Cosy Confirmation-of-their-Views Echo Chamber.
Well, hell, yeah, most of the stuff I see on DW/LJ, FB, Twitter, etc, is coming from a position that is usually one that I can sympathise with.
( Read more... )

Further to that earlier discussion of comfort zones, I came slap up against this in what is probably an otherwise meritorious piece by The Default Person about a conference that was very heavily emphasising and practising diversity. And boy did it make him uncomfortable.
(NB I can't quite see why, because what is discomfort-making about the access ( Read more... )

Various people have been posting this in various places and I think it has some really strong points to make about how problematic exhortations to step outside one's comfort zone are: “Do One Thing Every Day That Scares You”: Comfort Zones, Vulnerability and Success.
Thinking about it further, the idea that one should step outside one's personal ( Read more... )

What I read
Following various recs across my rlist, I succumbed to Courtney Milan's Trade Me (if people who loathe the billionaire trope nonetheless loved it...) and then went out and downloaded The Duchess War (which was actually a freebie), A Kiss for Midwinter, The Heiress Effect, all of which I galloped through and while I could pick historical ( Read more... )