Brenna Bychowski

Spooky Season is the worst time to get new books I want to read, because I have my Spooky Season lists to get through, but dang I am excited about this book 🐳🐋🚀 (4/4)

Examples:
-Dedication to Nathaniel Hawthorne
-Etymology
-Extracts (compiled by a sub-subroutine, no less)

But what really killed me was one of the extracts being a quote from Jupiter Ascending (though my Trekie heart wishes Lily’s Ahab rant from First Contact were included, lol)
(3/)

I hope this book will be delightful for folks who haven’t read Melville, but it’s clear from the first pages that there’s going to be some jokes that will mostly land for folks who have read or attempted the original (2/)

I just got an e-ARC of Hell’s Heart by Alexis Hall from @tordotcom.bsky.social, which I’ve been excited about ever since it was announced. I read Moby Dick for the first time during lockdown in 2020 and I unironically love it (1/)

A bottle of wine, a plastic cup, and a hardcover copy of The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling on a train seat tray table

Train wine and a book getting me through the final leg of travel to teach at @rarebookschool.bsky.social this week! I’m so excited to meet the students taking my class this year ☺️

We are hiring! Looking for both a general cataloger and an Arabic cataloger.

I think we’re a great group 😉, and I’m happy to chat about cataloging at Beinecke and working at Yale!

I just want to give a shout out to my grocery delivery drivers from Stop and Shop. I’ve been getting delivery since lockdown, and they are a uniformly kind and pleasant group of folks who always enthusiastically wish me a nice day and are happy to commiserate about bad weather

A Lego Brick Headz figure of Eeyore looking quite despondent

A Lego Brick Headz figure of Batman, in the grey and blue outfit of the early comics

Friday Legos!

Emotional support Eeyore and the world’s greatest detective

Sometimes life gives *gestures broadly*, and sometimes, life gives you an ancient Egyptian stone map to catalog

Boss was like, You want to tackle this? And my inner child who never left her ancient Egypt phase went OMG YES!!

Link to a beautiful pic from the museum currently borrowing it

I uniformly love T. Kingfisher! And now I want to reread A House with Good Bones …

Cover for Issue 62 of Uncanny Magazine, art by Maxine Vee titled "Mermay - Golden Hour." In a forest of brown, orange, and golden leaves, a mermaid with orange/gold hair sits on a rock in a small light blue pond. She stares at her open palms, illuminated by a beam of sunlight. Purple flowers in shade lie scattered on the ground in the foreground. The words "January/February 2025" and "Issue Sixty-Two" are at top. The list of credits is on the bottom

ICYMI, Space Unicorns! There are many ways to support Uncanny Magazine! Patreon! Subscriptions from Weightless Books! Late Pledges to Kickstarter! SPREADING THE WORD FAR AND WIDE!!! https://www.uncannymagazine.com/support-uncanny/

Cover for Issue 62 of Uncanny Magazine, art by Maxine Vee titled "Mermay - Golden Hour." In a forest of brown, orange, and golden leaves, a mermaid with orange/gold hair sits on a rock in a small light blue pond. She stares at her open palms, illuminated by a beam of sunlight. Purple flowers in shade lie scattered on the ground in the foreground. The words "January/February 2025" and "Issue Sixty-Two" are at top. The list of credits is on the bottom

Space Unicorns! There are many ways to support Uncanny Magazine! Patreon! Subscriptions from Weightless Books! Late Pledges to Kickstarter! SPREADING THE WORD FAR AND WIDE!!! https://www.uncannymagazine.com/support-uncanny/

A kindle showing the cover of Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries next to standing copies of two books with the spines forward: Mexican Gothic (a tall hardcover with white text on a green and pink background) and Kristin Lavrandsdatter (a fat trade paperback Penguin edition with the titles bracketed between two orange decorations on a black background)

What are folks reading for fun/to take care of themselves right now?

I’m reading:
-Mexican Gothic, for the 4th time
-Kristin Lavransdatter, slowly
-The first Emily Wilde book for Book Club

Also, Heavenly Tyrant and Velveteen vs. the Early Adventures are paused but in progress

Jellyfish made of felted wool, with a pink body, pink snd white tentacles, and slightly crazy eyes

A needle felted shark, blue, with white teeth and an eye staring into your soul

A needle fried anglerfish with a red and pink body, pink and grey fins, large teeth, and eyes focused on it’s dangling light antena

Timeline cleanse: a friend recently convinced me to give needle felting a try. Please meet my jellyfish, shark, and anglerfish friends!

Let me tell you, a craft that involves an insane amount of stabbing is extremely cathartic

It doesn’t get much more Monday than walking over badly shoveled sidewalks to get a root canal for an infected tooth

But it went smoothly and I was able to pick up my antibiotics before coming home to flop on the couch and watch Miss Fisher

On one hand, you have something! I’ve had to deal with issues that had literally no way to put them in order

On the other hand, this is why everyone hates serials (said in the same tone of voice as “this is why everyone hates moral philosophy professors”)

I genuinely enjoy how often the punchline of off topic conversations with my boss is an article he read in the New Yorker or the Economist. Last week, it was Legos in the Economist, today it was romance novels in the New Yorker (watching as he tried to find the word “romantasy” was also hilarious)

A morning text conversation with my sister just escalated from “the new Franz Ferdinand album is out, and it’s good” to “let’s get tickets to see them on tour!”

What a way to start a Tuesday 😆

A hand holding a round metal pendant with the word Fuck on it in all caps

If ever there was a perfect time for wearing the Fuck necklace, it’s flying at the holidays for a funeral

Dang it, NPR!

@blumenthal.senate.gov Shame on you, my senator, for taking health care away from military families' children. Really terrible move.

As ridiculous as it sounds, I thoroughly enjoyed The Nightmare Before Kissmas by Sara Raasch. Definitely bananapants and extremely queer.

The princes of Christmas and Halloween work through a fake engagement and shenanigans ensue!

I’m looking forward to the sequel, Go Luck Yourself 🤣

Map of the United States as it was in 1816; it shows the states and territories of the time, which were east and slightly west of the Mississippi River

First thing today, I have an 1816 map of the US (mostly states and territories east of the Mississippi). Boss walks in, comes over to look, and says, “Nice to see a map of Illinois first thing in the morning” 🤣
(2/2)

This week, I’m working in our main library building on maps too large to take to the tech services workspace. Boss is joining me today, and, like me, Boss is a Midwestern expat. (1/2)

A cranky looking walking bird with the caption “Going on a stupid walk did my stupid mental health”

Me this afternoon when I’d rather be playing Dreamlight Valley:

A Lego set of plum blossom branches in a pot sits on a shelf above a desk

We can’t have plants at or desks because special collections, so I brought in my latest Lego build to add some color to my desk

Chart from Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Cartographic) showing a range of map scales indicating which are larger and which are smaller and indicating the specificity of coordinates called for at different scales

One day, I will remember which end of the scale spectrum is large scale and which is small scale without referring to this chart

Today is not that day

Four paper clipped printouts of articles and book chapters and a blue bound book lying on a desk

Because cataloging special collections often involves research, I have a stack of reading on Marshallese stick charts and Pacific islander navigation for my work from home day next week

Dice Envy makes a great selection of the pill-shaped ones; they call them infinity d4s