E. A. Fredericks

My thought: seems like a very easy prompt to plug into an LLM 🫤

Also not (but go hawks)

I also just feel so uncomfortable with the TBI Industrial Complex of it all. Sports are hard on the body in general but most others don't drive you into early dementia.

it's going to be hilarious when he's interviewed about this in some eventual career retrospective.

Truly!! They're all so easy to like and such a joy to watch.

It was a real case of no matter who wins I will be both happy and sad.

It is so funny to me and really reminds me that he is, in fact, the same age as my students, who are also ridiculous people at times.

Shun was so good! And seeing him heartbroken for not beating Ilia makes me sad. He was incredible (and the whole Japanese team seems so, so likable).

Yes he is, haha

Patricia McKillip's The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, which has a beautiful recent anniversary reprint.
Deirdre Sullivan's Savage Her Reply.

Both beautiful standalone fantasy novels under 300 pages.

Reid's great skill is vibes, or, well, atmosphere. She also has a knack in some of her novels (though not Evelyn Hugo) for a framing device that gives the story more weight. I wish her knack for character matched it. Anyway, it's a good dog-walking listen. 📚💙

Joan & Vanessa are certainly likable, their romance winning, though without the frame narrative of the shuttle disaster providing external urgency & investment, I think they'd come across a little flatter. Barbara (unlikable) & Frances (perfect moppet) are pretty one dimensional, alas. 📚💙

Finished this afternoon while walking the dog: Taylor Jenkins Reid's Atmosphere. As usual, Reid is pretty compelling & the story hauls you along smoothly. But even as I was listening, the secondary characters in this one feel even more like stock types than usual. 📚💙

Madewell and J Crew personally, and when you know the style you want you can stalk the resale sites for cheaper versions.

Probably Amber, through Chris Lillis was also pretty emphatic in a similar way at a press conference and Chloe Kim expressed similar sentiments on Insta. Love them all.

Scott Horton © 5h In Minneapolis ordinary people with no connection whatsoever to Mexico are now fying Mexican flags, so ICE officers will waste hours pulling them over and questioning them. They call it “ICE fishing." H/t Mayra 2 106 2 1051 vy 4238 99 i) 145 Quote Reposted users Liked users

1,000 reskeets and it's totally made up, that's a photo from Los Angeles, stop sharing this disinfo-spreader

But if you're going comedic, hmmm, now I must think!

I am always a sucker for the hollow crown speech from Richard II.

I've been cleared for all normal activities! And it wasn't so bitingly frigid and it was maybe 5-7 minutes of work, so I just hopped out in my sweatshirt. 😂 I've gone native in this regard.

A scruffy little grey and tan dog standing on a concrete path between piles of snow.

Someone decided that Saturday should start with barfing and she's not sorry.

It's fine, she immediately wanted bacon afterwards and settled for the sensitive stomach wet food, which has stayed down. She's just literally sick of winter, I guess!

Truly they're so good! I miss Stater's meat counter out here in the Midwest.

I don't think so. I think they're at the end because USA is hosting in 2028 and I think the next host enters right before the current host?

100% true and delightful

(archival practice for handling books is WELL WASHED HANDS, btw)

Winter is making me a grumpy reader, maybe.

There is also a structural element that is straight from current streaming TV shows, where right before the climax, there's an extended flashback that, of course, CHANGES EVERYTHING, a trick that a lot of TV shows do with their penultimate episode. And it made me grumpy to see that. 📚💙

And sure, this is fiddly little stuff but idk, if you're gonna center books, get the book stuff right as well as the Antarctic research station stuff. (One character begins there.) 📚💙

There are two needle-scratch moments that yanked me out: one when characters put on white cotton gloves to handle books, because that's not archival practice, & later when a character says Hamlet kills his uncle in Act 3. It's Act 5, of course. 📚💙

A screenshot of the cover of Ink Blood Sister Scribe. The title is superimposed over an illustration of a fountain pen posed over an open book. Braches are sprouting from the pen.

Finished today: Ink Blood Sister Scribe. A fantasy novel set in the current day in which there are magic books written in blood and of course bad people seeking to control that power. It was fine? I wish I'd like it more. 📚💙

At the very least, hand off summer to someone more lively and interesting because the summer opening looks especially always blow. Ideally hand off both but I'd let RL keep winter if push came to shove.