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yourlibrarian

1) Curious to know, for anyone who has taken part in

3weeks4dreamwidth activities, what did you enjoy doing?

2) Turns out my expected trip to Michigan later this year won't happen, but I am instead planning a trip that will spend some time in Cleveland and Buffalo. Any recommendations? (The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was a big draw).

3) I've begun playing in the tournaments on Board Game Arena, in part because my favorite game has been increasingly hard to find players for during certain hours. I started late during the last tournament round but still did ok, finishing in the top 100. I started early enough in this round that I was in the Top 10 for a little while, but started falling as more people joined in.

But then I started an incredible losing streak that dropped me over 150 spots. There was one common factor, ( Read more... )

4) I'd been hearing that Matlock is not a typical procedural, and I had tried out the first episode a while ago, soon after it launched. I could see why the ongoing series arc might make it a significant change. ( Read more... )

4) What I really enjoyed this past week was getting to see the play "Suffs" on Great Performances. (This is in contrast to my dislike of the PBS app, which is a pain to work with and apparently never added 4 or 5 other Great Performances episodes to my watchlist). It's so great to be able to see theater at home. ( Read more... )

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pauraque

This wordless graphic novel follows a man who travels to a new land in search of a better life. He doesn't speak the language or recognize the strange foods and fantastical creatures he encounters, and has to rely on kind locals and other immigrants to help him find his way.

huddled masses arrive on a steam ship to a harbor with a giant pair of statues shaking hands

huddled masses arrive on a steam ship to a harbor with a giant pair of statues shaking hands

Setting the story in a fantasy world is obviously intended to help the reader understand how confusing and disorienting the immigrant experience can be. But although the language, culture, and animals are alien, the people are all ordinary humans, and the focus is on common humanity transcending our differences. The protagonist encounters people who tell harrowing stories of having survived war and escaped slavery, but the immigrant characters don't seem to experience much discrimination beyond locals sometimes getting frustrated with them for not understanding things, so I think there is an aspirational element. Coming to a new place is always going to be hard, but we don't have to choose to make it harder for people than it already is.

I have a hard time following wordless sequential art, so I'm sure there are aspects of the story I missed or misunderstood, but I think I got most of it. The detailed pencil art is beautiful to look at. You can see some more of the illustrations on Tan's website.

This is one of the books that sat on my shelf unread for years (and I just moved my bookcase so I am now highly conscious of that category). I have no idea why I have it! But now it has been read, so check that one off.

osprey_archer

It is probably foolish to read a book called Studies in Words and then complain “Gosh, C. S. Lewis is really getting into the weeds here on the fine points of meanings of specific words.” However, I must admit that there were times when I simply couldn’t follow the book’s argument about, say, the fine shades of distinction between different meanings of nature at different times, possibly because I just haven’t spent enough time reading things like Piers Plowman and The Canterbury Tales to have seen these meanings in action.

However, despite sometimes getting completely turned around in the weeds, I did manage to extract a few interesting general principles.

1. Words always and inevitably have multiple meanings, particularly if the word is culturally important. If a writer from a time period sits down to explain “this is what X word really means,” that’s actually a pretty good sign that X was rarely or never used to mean that. (In fact, in other contexts, said writer will probably use X in a manner that contradicts the explicit definition he wrote elsewhere, because he’s fallen into the general usage.)

2. In general, usage has a tendency to move from descriptive to evaluative. For instance, “villain” originally described a social class (peasant), began to be used as an insult, and at last lost its original meaning entirely and came to mean simply “bad guy.”

3. If a word becomes REALLY culturally important, this can paradoxically drain it of most of its specific meaning. Lewis uses the example of the word “wit” in the 18th century - the concept of wit became the center of such a highly charged discourse that often when a critic says a work or a person is “witty,” they mean little more than that they approve it. (When a word has reached the stage of casting this glow of approval all around it, Lewis says it has acquired a “halo.”) Once we agree that a word defines our cultural ideal, we will therefore never be able to agree on the specific details of its definition until that ideal is dead.

regshoe

Watch on YouTube

( I commemorate the anniversary of the Appin Murder, and go for a ramble through Mainly Norfolk )

yourlibrarian

1) This was a new one. Finished a game on Board Game Arena, and the person says in the chat window that they're asking this because they wrote a novel and many short novels, would I be interested in reading them? They're in Italian but I can use Google Translate. We had had no other interaction during the game. Um sure, we're all so incredibly short of reading material these days that random offers to read novels of unknown topic (which we must translate) will no doubt be jumped on by many a random card player…

2) Speaking of books, apparently Barnes & Noble is doing well and expanding.

3) This discussion of how a Deep Space Nine tie-in series both anticipated our current political situation, and at the same time had to have its final installment posted to AO3, was interesting in various ways. A tale of how stories come together as well as the difference between writing fanfic and working for publishers.

4) Speaking of our current political situation, I've been trying out CIA, which is an ok show for background stuff. What caught my attention is that their episode airing February 23rd had reference to a weapon that could be sold to Iran to control the strait of Hormuz. Unsurprisingly, Trump has been watching the wrong TV shows.

5) Apparently our dystopian future is already here, given this story of what it's like to work as an AI trainer. Although not the main point of the article, the insight it gives into what's happening in the entertainment industry is also grim.

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osprey_archer

Work has been a madhouse this week, so Wednesday Reading Meme is alas a day late.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Emi Yagi’s When the Museum Is Closed (translated by Yuki Tejima), a short novel about a woman who is hired to chat in Latin with a bored Venus statue, and inevitably ends up falling in love with her. High hopes for this one, but did not end up liking it as much as I hoped. ( ”Spoilers” )

However, I approached E. F. Benson’s Queen Lucia leerily, and I ended up really enjoying it! The omnibus at the library includes the cover blurb that Benson’s Mapp and Lucia novels are “the most enchantingly malicious works written by the hand of man,” which put me off, but I can only assume that either the books change radically in character over the course of the series, or Mr. Gilbert Seldes and I have very different standards for what malice looks like.

Queen Lucia is a social comedy about English village life, like a slightly more biting Miss Marjoribanks or Miss Read. The characters can be petty, at times even spiteful, and Benson is certainly poking a bit of fun at Lucia’s cultural pretensions (she likes to pretend she can speak Italian, for instance) - but despite their foibles they’re basically decent people, who can imagine no higher level of cruelty than snubbing someone’s garden party. The human species would be greatly improved if that was the worst thing we ever did.

Finally, I read Clay Risen’s The Crowded Hour: Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Riders, and the Dawn of the American Century, a chronicle of the bungling incompetence with which the US Army approached the Spanish-American War in 1898. Fortunately for them, the Spanish bungled even harder. A striking number of military conflicts seem to be decided on this scale of “which side displays slightly less shambling incompetence?”

What I’m Reading Now

Stephen Brusette’s The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World. Like many small children, I loved dinosaurs, so I thought it would be fun to catch up on the latest developments in the field. So far we’re in the earlier Triassic, which is marked mostly by non-dinosaurs species, like the salamanders the size of cars.

What I Plan to Read Next

I’m just about to wrap up the last 2026 Caldecott book, and then I’d like to turn my attention to the 2026 Newberies.

vriddy

Mentally returning to this tree and listening to the water flow by, while I juggle a suddenly busier than expected time.

A tree with exposed roots near a shallow river stream surrounded by vivid greenery

I woke up from such a cool dream this morning. Like, I considered for 3 seconds closing my eyes again, then remembered and sat up, like, WOW I DO NOT WANT TO FORGET THIS. There was a prophecy, which I failed to stop, and DRAGONS flying against a night sky, stunning and overwhelming and terrifying. Incredible sight.

Been turning prophecy thoughts in my head all morning since, like poking at a loose tooth. There were so many different reactions to the prophecy coming true in the dream. Absolute panic, of course, but also "guess the castle from the prophecy was this one *shrug*" and I'm just... poke, poke.

Current Mood: contemplative

vriddy

Community Thursday challenge: every Thursday, try to make an effort to engage with a community on Dreamwidth, whether that's posting, commenting, promoting, etc.

Over the last week...

Commented on common_nature.

Signal boosts:

gifs_at_dw, a new comm for posting gifs and gifsets (via maevedarcy)
thecluster, a fan comm for Sense8 fans :) (via maevedarcy)

Current Mood: contemplative

pauraque

Éalú (Irish for "escape") is a puzzle game where you play as a mouse trying to find a way out of a diabolical maze. What caught my eye about it is that it's stop-motion animated—not digital art in the style of stop-motion, but actual video clips of physical hand-built rooms and models made of wood and wire.

wooden mouse with a wire tail examines a wooden puzzle box with three symbols and three buttons, with closed doors beyond

wooden mouse with a wire tail examines a wooden puzzle box with three symbols and three buttons, with closed doors beyond

It's a simple one-click interface where you just interact with things. The puzzles are, unsurprisingly, of a very concrete physical nature: Turn a handle in this room to change something in another room, or press buttons on a box to rotate a mechanism until things line up. Successful puzzle solves unlock doors to new areas. Thorough exploration is rewarded, as you may find clues to puzzles in distant rooms—but also punished, as seemingly innocuous and even attractive objects may instantly kill you and send you back to the start of the maze. (If you cannot handle the thought of the cute wooden mouse dying, do not play this game.) But you get unlimited second chances, armed with new knowledge each time you venture out again.

( cut for length )

Éalú is on Steam for $14.99 USD. It's advertised as taking 2-4 hours, which is probably about right. I completed it with all achievements (well, except the one achievement that's currently bugged) in a little under three hours, but I've played a lot of puzzle games. The price may seem high for the duration, but on the other hand, stop-motion animation is incredibly laborious, so I feel like it's fair to give some leeway for that, and I don't think it feels incomplete or needed to be more than what it is.

regshoe

I found this in a shop near Ballachulish and thought it would be fun to read another book about the Appin Murder, so here we go. James Hunter is uniquely well-placed to write such a book, being both a professional historian and originally from Duror; in the introduction to this book he describes playing as a child in the ruins of Acharn farmhouse and being told by his older neighbours that someone called James of the Glen once lived there, and then reading Kidnapped and being thrilled to find places he knew well in real life in a book.

( John, John, before too long it will be me they hang this on )

vriddy

A lot of editing thoughts as I find my feet with the new method.

General status/Learnt last week:

I suspect this more extensive way of doing structural editing might be merging two rounds of editing compared with what I did with the cursed witch. Last time, the "structural" round focused on general cohesion for plot and characterisation as well as pace. Then in the following "prose" round, I added a lot more descriptions and enhanced the worldbuilding, with the occasional new background character. This time, it feels more natural to include a fair bit of worldbuilding where it fits as well (and that's great, because there's the occasional plot impact, and getting that in early is helpful!). Even if this round takes me a fair chunk of time (especially when including the month of prep), this could still be significant time-wise because I usually need at least a 6-week break between rounds. But tbc since I still have to see how long this will all take anyway!

In general, I'm very happy because I'm adding loadsa new words, haha. I've already written more than March and April COMBINED! This is not actually very impressive!! Because I only wrote 520 words in March (was doing revision preps, which I don't count yet) and 1.5k in April (was mostly proofreading) XD

I feel like the pacing for this novel is going to be a lot better. With every scene, I'm being more deliberate about having questions and putting down puzzle pieces and also setting up smaller reveals on the way. I'm realising just how effective revealing something can be for raising curiosity. One of my big faults is trying to keep things secret for the sake of "the mystery", but that can also make the stakes way too vague at times. The reader doesn't know why they should care.

Having said that, I've only revised 4 scenes out of 47 48 (had a bit of scene mitosis this week!), so that might not sustain itself well, but I'm super excited to find out. I'm moving slowly but this all feels super cool.

Another discovery/experiment: I thought that because I did so much preparatory work, it would maybe be easier to edit in the evening when my brain is not as fresh, but that hasn't really happened. For example, I had to consider which PoV to use for the new scene the evening I tried, and I just couldn't answer the question. Like, what are the stakes for each character? What's the impact for the order in which the information is revealed in the story? Where else or in how much time can I bring up the information that PoV X won't know?

However, if/when I try again an evening session, I'd like to remember to look at the smaller questions I skipped. For example, there's a plot-relevant flower I must describe, and what it looks like exactly isn't super important but it needs to be specific. I need to sit down with that and return to the description I skipped soon. (Because it's so important to the world, I think inworld people would use it as a comparison point for colours or shapes or other things.) I've also got some slang to make up!! Like I've got a few swear words, but I want a worldbuilding-relevant equivalent to "thank god" too, considering what this population has gone through. And there's a missing nickname for a childhood friend. It should be charming and evoke closeness, but also be embarrassing to an adult. Lol.

I know I mentioned before I wanted to improve my sentence craft but that will have to wait. My head is too full already with all the new stuff I'm learning to apply in this round of revisions. Maybe during the 6+ weeks break, whenever I'm done with this round? Who knows!

Projects:

Only Soul Thief, and happy with that! :D I'm in the phase where it feels nice to be working on a chunky project and knowing exactly what I'll be working on next.

Next week?

Just keep it up with the revisions in general.

Additionally, I did send the Cursed Witch to a couple of beta-readers, but everyone is busy so I don't expect to hear anything until next month. Still working out technical kinks for 2 more beta-readers, so hopefully resolve that by the end of next week! I should try Ellipsus again at some point and investigate if my beta-reading issues from last time were resolved...

And that's me! Lots of learning so I'm very happy. Any creative plans for the upcoming week??

pauraque

Economics has been defined as how self-interested actors compete in response to scarcity. In this short book, Indigenous botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer argues for an alternative model of human economy inspired by the abundance and interdependence found in nature.

Scarcity in the human world is largely manufactured: There actually is enough for everyone, we just act like there isn't. Hoarded resources are wasted, like unpicked berries whose seeds are never scattered. While reading Kimmerer's thoughts on artificial scarcity, I found myself also thinking about the interpersonal scarcity mindset which leads people to cling to damaging relationships because they're afraid they'll never find anyone else. The commonality is a refusal to see the abundance that's right in front of you.

The impersonal competition of capitalism is contrasted with gift economies which build community and reciprocal relationships rather than cutting them off; status is gained by how much you give away rather than how much you keep for yourself. Birds and people enthusiastically gather around the serviceberry tree because of how generously it gives to them—and through animal seed dispersal and human husbandry, the plant gets it all back and more. (This discussion reminded me again that I want to re-read David Graeber's Debt. In gift economies there is an obligation incurred, but it's ongoing, mutual, and unquantified.) Gift economies do already exist alongside the money economy at small scales, and I appreciated the mention of digital economies, where information is what's exchanged. It made me think of how fandom can function as a gift economy, with creative works and resources being shared without expectation of a fixed payment—but the community can only continue to function if others are also sharing in kind or at least offering recognition and support.

One framing that was new to me was the comparison of colonizer capitalism to environmental succession. Disturbed natural environments like clear-cut forests are first taken over by fast-growing species that rapidly consume resources, but this constant competitive growth is unsustainable and is eventually replaced by a more stable ecology of interdependent species. We live in a disturbed environment, but that doesn't mean that stability isn't in the future.

The book is an expansion of a previously-published long-form essay, and it's only 100 pages, so obviously it can't offer a comprehensive exploration of these ideas, but I found it an inspiring and hopeful read. (If you like this, definitely read her essay collection Braiding Sweetgrass!)

I bought this book from the bird sanctuary gift shop on our trip to Rhode Island; I'm trying to keep my personal library under control, but I figured the profit went to a good cause. I want to keep the book because I think I'll re-read it, but I'm also tempted to get another copy and put it in a Little Free Library.

yourlibrarian

1) I find the results of this research on people finding medical information to be sad but unsurprising. "Certain groups are particularly likely to say they get health and wellness information from influencers, including adults under 50; Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans; and those without health insurance."

The thing is though, the topics revealed in the study have very little to do with health and medicine and a lot more to do with appearance and weight (plastic surgeons are influencers!) This makes sense, both because women outnumber men as both influencers and viewers, and also because this area of "health" is particularly apt to be a source of revenue for influencers, whether trolling for clients or selling people stuff they think will help them. The number of people who even claim a medical background or auxiliary medical training are outnumbered by people who don't.

2) I mentioned in my last post watching the Roku Soccer Comes to America documentary. Although not that enlightening to somebody who lived through virtually all of it, two things were singled out as being critical to truly establishing the sport which I hadn't thought about. I found it an interesting coincidence that Ted Turner should die at the same time I was seeing it. ( Read more... )

3) Saw all of S2 of Percy Jackson and I think I enjoyed it more than S1. ( Read more... )

4) Daredevil's second season is more of a favorite for me than the 1st. ( Read more... )

5) I speed watched High Country. ( Read more... )

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pauraque

A pair of Rose-breasted Grosbeaks have been visiting our feeders for the last couple of days. This was a new addition to our yard list and a lifer for

sdk! I've seen them in the woods before but never such close looks.

I think the male looks like he's on his way to a vampire LARP event. (He has a black cape, though you can't see it here.) The female reminds me of a female Purple Finch with the white eyebrow, but much bigger with a more prominent bill.

I didn't update about local birds before the Rhode Island trip, and spring migration is now in full swing for us, so my year list has a bit of a backlog to clear out here.

( More additions to the year list since last update )

So that's 103 species for me in 2026 so far.

osprey_archer

The last of my already-finished reading lists. A bit less exciting to post these when I’m not asking for advice about what to read for some of the authors, but I'm still glad to have the complete record on here.

Susan Fletcher - Journey of the Pale Bear

Adam Gopnik - A Thousand Small Sanities. Didn’t review this one. No longer remember it very well. I keep reading Gopnik because I love Paris to the Moon SO much but none of his other books are the same.

Rosemary Sutcliff - Rudyard Kipling. Not a biography of Kipling so much as an overview of his children’s books. A useful source if you’re interested in Kipling’s influence on Sutcliff.

Francesca Forrest - “Semper Vivens.” A short intense story about a terraforming accident that has created a patch of land where all life is constantly transforming into other life, which recently became the focus for a cult which decided to land there even though it meant death-by-transforming-life; a story of an awe-ful place in the old sense of the word. Hard to get a hold of, which is why I didn’t review it, but so memorable.

Rumer Godden - Premlata and the Festival of Lights

William Dean Howells - Literary Friends and Acquaintances

Barbara Cooney - The American Speller: An Adaptation of Noah Webster's Blue-Backed Speller. A picture book loosely based on Noah Webster’s iconic speller. Like many picture books, I didn’t have enough for a whole post about it, and so it fell through the cracks.

Sarah Orne Jewett - A White Heron

Dorothy Sayers - Lord Peter

Hilary McKay - The Time of Green Magic

Jane Langton - Paper Chains

Rachel Bertsche - The Kids Are in Bed: Finding Time for Yourself in the Chaos of Parenting

Angela Brazil - A Popular Schoolgirl

Annie Fellows Johnston - Cicely, and Other Stories

Zilpha Keatley Snyder - The Treasures of Weatherby

C. S. Lewis - The Great Divorce. Apparently I never reviewed this one? This shocks me. Surely I meant to review it and it just fell by the wayside. Clearly I’ll have to reread and review properly at some point.

Ben Macintyre - Operation Mincemeat

Elizabeth von Arnim - Elizabeth and Her German Garden

vriddy

Community Thursday challenge: every Thursday, try to make an effort to engage with a community on Dreamwidth, whether that's posting, commenting, promoting, etc.

Over the last week...

Posted and commented on

bnha_fans.

Commented on

booknook.

Commented on

worderlands.

Commented on

getyourwordsout.

osprey_archer

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Mark Helprin’s A Kingdom Far and Clear, a single book containing all three books of Helprin’s Swan Lake trilogy, the first of which is a retelling of Swan Lake (tragic mode), and the second and third of which are a continuation of the story based on the question, “But what if Rothbart wasn’t defeated at the end of Swan Lake? And also Rothbart wasn’t just a garden variety sorcerer, but a totalitarian dictator, but in a weirdly whimsical way where (for instance) our ten-year-old heroine spends an entire Joan Aiken-esque sequence working as a yam curler, wearing a special orange and black yam kitchen uniform to roll yams off the yam conveyor belts, and the yam kitchen is so gigantic it has 6000 employees?”

Bizarre. Bleak. Beautifully written! Beautiful but sometimes strangely static illustrations by Chris Van Allsburg. As a retelling I felt this was this not so much engaging with the original as using it as a springboard to deal with its own thematic preoccupations. ( spoilers )

Conclusion: books two and three could have done with a LOT more swans.

I also read Michiko Aoyama’s The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park, translated by Takami Nieda. Like Aoyama’s Hot Chocolate on Thursdays, this is a warm, gentle book about a series of loosely linked characters, linked in this case by the fact that they recently moved into a new condominium development near a park with a concrete ride-on hippo named Kanahiko, the eponymous Healing Hippo. He probably doesn’t actually have healing powers (this book has less of a fantasy undercurrent than Hot Chocolate on Thursday), but even just hearing about these healing powers helps people reexamine the problems in their own lives.

What I’m Reading Now

I’m reading Clay Risen’s The Crowded Hour: Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Riders, and the Dawn of the American Century. I got to the part where the whole army starts converging on Tampa for the invasion of Cuba (Tampa had only one railway line and no port, but an entrepreneur had suggested using it at a staging ground and Washington said “Yes” without actually checking into the details), and the officers are hanging out at the hotel with thirteen silver minarets… “I’ve been there!” I shrieked. This hotel is now the flagship building of the University of Tampa.

What I Plan to Read Next

Michiko Aoyama’s What You Are Looking For Is in the Library, which looks similar to Aoyama’s other books in that it is about a bunch of loosely linked characters (connected in this case by a library) who figure out a way forward through their problems. Then I’ll be out of Aoyama books until Matcha on Monday comes out in July.

vriddy

yourlibrarian is hosting a point gift event this year again as part of Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, and enough donors have pledged to gift up to 68 people! See this post on

3weeks4dreamwidth for all the details.

Quoting from

yourlibrarian directly:

"Paid features are the only way to support Dreamwidth financially, but people who want these services can't always get them for financial or logistical reasons. Thanks to donor pledges, we can now provide points to as many as 68 people, but in order for this to work, people need to step forward! Follow the link above to find out more. Donors and giftees both participate anonymously through screened comments."

and

"Remember, paid features is the only way to support Dreamwidth financially. Having giftees means we give Dreamwidth financial resources for all they do."

pauraque

This is part 2 of my book club notes on This All Come Back Now. (Here's part 1.)

"In His Father's Footsteps" by Kalem Murray (2022)

( A father and son trying awkwardly to bond on a hunting trip are threatened by a monster. )

"Myth This!" by Lisa Fuller (2022)

( A mother and her three kids encounter a supernatural being and try to warn outsiders of the threat. )

"Jacaranda Street" by Jasmin McGaughey (2019)

( A family gains the ability to manifest apparitions with their thoughts. )

Excerpt from The Kadaitcha Sung by Samuel William Watson (1990)

( A guy hooks up with a girl and then goes and talks to some spirits. )

yourlibrarian

1) Hopefully everyone has been enjoying

3weeks4dreamwidth activities! Your help is now needed for a new one, finding Dreamwidth point giftees.

Paid features are the only way to support Dreamwidth financially, but people who want these services can't always get them for financial or logistical reasons. Thanks to donor pledges, we can now provide points to as many as 68 people, but in order for this to work, people need to step forward! Follow the link above to find out more. Donors and giftees both participate anonymously through screened comments.

If you do not need points yourself, please share the information and above link to others on your own account or in communities. There are lots of helpful features offered in paid accounts, such as the polling functions (which I use below in every post 🙂). So it's a win-win!

2) Speaking of Dreamwidth, I know someone else recently mentioned these issues too, but I have been having recurring problems for months now. The main issue is that it takes a really long time for pages to open when I click on them. I'll click on a link and nothing will happen. ( Read more... )

3) Some of the birds seem pretty clear that the scary hoomans inside are responsible for refilling those plates. Nothing like getting shade from a morning dove who hasn't been fed.

4) For May the Fourth, rewatched part of S1 of The Mandalorian. I can't remember when we watched it the first time, but having searched my account, apparently we finished the season in mid-July 2020 (so I'm guessing we started it either that month or in late June). ( Read more... )

5) Roku got me by promoting its Soccer Meets America documentary, which covers for the umpteenth time the evolution of soccer as a national sport. ( Read more... ) Apparently the 1994 men's team, having just been eliminated from the Cup, had gone to a nearby restaurant after the loss. The U.S. official with them said everyone was very down, not only because of the loss, but because a decade of work had gone into developing the team for the competition. All of that for just four games.

Then a few minutes after being seated, Robin Williams comes through the door. He goes over to the table and knows all the players' names. They're all amazed as he begins to tell jokes and chat with them, feeling that they must have arrived after all. Having turned the mood around entirely, the official said that, of all Williams' performances, that the half hour with the team was his most impressive.

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Reading

Profile

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Happy Discoveries

The Arrival by Shaun Tan (2006)

Book Review: Studies in Words

And met with my downfall on the fourteenth of May

The Depressing and Bizarre

Wednesday Reading Meme on Thursday

Energy-saving mode activated

Community Thursday

Éalú (2025)

The Appin Murder: The Killing that Shook a Nation by James Hunter

Wickedly Not Weekly Writing Logs - May 10th, 2026 - thoughts on the slow structural edits method

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer(2024)

How About Some Real Health Care?

new visitors in the yard

Revisiting My 2014 Reading List

Community Thursday

Wednesday Reading Meme

Signal boost: Want paid account features, but cannot afford it at the moment?

This All Come Back Now, ed. Mykaela Saunders (2022) [part 2]

Ask For Some Points!