LightGetsIn

Just got a work email with unqualified good news in it.

I am confused by this.

Entertaining and page-turny whenever I bother to pick it up, and yet that is not very often, somehow.

Book checkpoint

Last: The Everlasting, Alix Harrow

Current: I mean, how much time you got? Let's stick with Slow Gods, Claire North; Will of the Many, James Islington; Lone Women, Victor LaValle; Chain-Gang All-Stars, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Next: Lol, you're asking me?

Can able-bodied people just, like, not?

oh jfc the six seven yelling.

My corner of the office (lawyers, pragmatic, risk assessors) now taking bets on how long until it becomes, "hey we can't tell you not to travel, but maybe reconsider taking yourself across the border."

we've gone from "secure your devices when crossing the U.S. border" to "actually don't carry your work laptop across the border" to "also your work phone, do not bring it" to "okay not any personal devices either." There have been....incidents.

I kept hearing about how bad things were getting on bluesky re alt tags and I didn't get it because my feed was very consistent about it.

Then I started following people who reskeet critical role art.

Oh.

I get it now. Maybe 1/10 has an alt. Maybe.

Feeling a certain not good way about that.

You say that now. 12k of fic about the clone spell coming your way eventually.

we do! choir of angels, etc.

it's pretty typical for me tbh. the busier I am in general, the more I produce. what I wish I understood better is why the more *stressed* I am, the more I produce.

I have been working a huge amount because [points at the news] and there were giant holes in my kitchen for a third of the month, but I figured this was the time to secretly do nanowrimo. And I just finished today so hey, the month is not a total loss.

Sometimes waiting for the seizure is more annoying than just having the damn seizure.

This sounds like I am proclaiming a metaphor about life but I am being entirely literal.

I did not come up with it to be clear, but you're welcome!

It's a great form when done well. I'm always so impressed by good examples.

Cleat Cute was the big one last year. I didn't read it so can't report on quality.

Yeah, *something* happened and I get the idea it wasn't just to us. our units simply did not arrive. because.
...
...

Screams in the key of kitchen renovation.

2-3 days without fridge/freezer now an indeterminate 7+? days.

this is my question: who the fuck builds a heating system where the overflow tank is positioned such that if it leaks, the drips will land on the control panel and short the whole thing?

Yes cool great. the morning the kitchen reno starts (kitchen currently in pieces) is definitely the New England morning the heat should go out.

I'm cold, and if I'm cold, you know it's bad.

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande. Another 'finally read this.' Manages that trick of being terribly bleak and terribly hopeful at the same time. will help hugely I think in caring for someone elderly in my life.

Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I'm rarely mad when he takes another cut at a story he's done before because he's got a new thing to say on the old rails. First contact, survival horror, end stage capitalism horror. Very good.

yes, there are alien bug-ish creatures. naturally.

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh. Magic school from the perspective of faculty, sapphic, about class and privilege and personal demons. On everyone's lists and rightly so.

She got an award nom for it (Nebula, maybe?) so I keep thinking surely....

Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson. Finally read this post-apocalyptic fantasy. It's doing a lot in a short novel, but I liked it most for a messy, thorny, hard look at intergenerational trauma.

I am told it's a different vibe, but haven't read her other stuff myself. I hear she has range.

Arboreality by Rebecca Campbell. Mosaic novella of climate change future in the Pacific northwest. Doing stuff with the relation of humans to trees that I did not expect.

Asunder by Kerstin Hall. Fantasy about being a loner who gets a stranger's soul magically attached to you. Rich, lovely, the characters make the whole thing go. If there's no sequel it's a crime.

Best books I read this year thread, starting with:

Where the Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler. Intense near-ish future European scifi-adjacent thriller about fascism and AI. Beautiful writing, short and all the better for it. Thought about this one for months.

hmm, I got it from the library and was pleased with that route. it's an interesting thought exercise of a book, and did make me have a feeling at one point, but I won't reread it. you'd like it more if you like cosmic horror and weird shit more than I do.

Find myself wanting to add some new recipients to my usual list of charities. Anyone want to sell me on an org you feel strongly about? (It does have to be a real charity with tax status because I give out of a DAF)