hrj

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ETA: Hmm, it looks like there should be an easier way to subscribe. If you go to the DW Alpennia feed page (https://alpennia-feed.dreamwidth.org) There should be a place up in the top header display that says "subscribe to this feed". If this works for someone, could you post a note here to confirm?

ETA (2018/04/16): I feel like I should note explicitly that I'm not regularly posting links to my Alpennia blog in this account. So if you're using Dreamwidth to follow my blogging, please use the RSS feed as detailed above. I sometimes post things here that are too informal or more personal than I want to put on the Alpennia website, so there will still be occasional content.

ETA (2020/04/15): Revised notional date to keep this at the top of the feed.

ETA (2025/04/15): One again revised the notional date to keep this pinned to the top of the feed.

This is the sort of trip I never felt able to schedule before retirement: put together several purposes and just take a couple weeks to see people and do things.

I flew out on a red-eye because I always have this dilemma when flying east that I can either get up at an ungodly hour of the morning (which means either leaving my car at long-term parking, or getting an airport hotel room the night before), or I can arrive later in the evening than I want to be dealing with unfamiliar transit systems, or I can take a red-eye and have the logistics at both ends done at a reasonable hour of the day...at the expense of losing most of a night's sleep. I did sleep for several hours, but then spent most of yesterday vegging around L's appartment. (Which worked out because she had several online things to do.)

Today is L's big-number birthday celebration (one of the aforesaid "several purposes"). Then I have five days in NYC in which I have two items scheduled, which gives me a chance for more spontaneity than I usually have on trips. After that, it's up to Maine for the family part of the trip.

I was able to get all my blog/podcast stuff set up for the rest of the month--only need to switch things to "live" on the web--so any "work" I do on this trip can be on less urgent (i.e., actually writing on book projects). I think I've been managing better at avoiding having short-term deadlines rule my creative life, but somehow the non-fiction projects have called to me more strongly than the fiction. I suspect that's because the non-fiction is more in the revisions phased than the "creating text out of nothing" phase.

Periodically I pick a series on Netflix to...not exactly "binge" which implies large volumes in a short period, but to use as my default background while doing evening things. Murder mystery series tend to be my preference. (Other types of series I tend to play more attention to.)

So currently I'm watching The Closer, a police procedural centering around an eccentric deputy chief of a murder investigations unit, starring Kyra Sedgwick.

Now, to be sure, this show is copaganda because you're invited to see the cops as the heroes (by virtue of being the central characters). But it undermines the copaganda angle on a regular basis, by highlighting the unbelievable volume of lies and intimidation used by the police. (The central character is even overtly depicted as a compulsive liar who misdirects even her family and love interest in order to avoid confrontation and dodge responsibility.) But there are occasional episodes where the show solidly critiques when cops go "beyond the line," while still allowing their tactics to be effective.

Kyra Sedgwick's character is also clearly depicted as having ADHD, which interacts toxically with her workaholism. She's scattered, clumsy, and highly distractable. She also has severe problems with authority and regularly dismisses safety regulations, both in her own job and when interacting in other contexts. (The event that inspired me to finally post this review was when she was told not to use a cell phone in a hospital cardiac unit and she pooh-poohed the request as unimportant. And then there was the episode where she re-entered an apartment that had been evacuated due to a bomb threat to try to retrieve evidence in the face of direct orders to the contrary.)

So...I'm not sure whether she's supposed to be a sympathetic character or not. I'm just glad I don't work with her. And I'd hate to be involved in any incident, whether as victim or perpetrator, that she was investigating. But I keep watching with train-wreck fascination.

So yesterday I was checking my calendar to make sure I was keep track of things and had a "wait...what?" moment when I realized that I fly off to the east coast for a couple weeks...um...next Monday. And that means I"m popping down to Monterey for a family ting on Saturday. And that means...

So I spent a large chunk of yesterday evening drawing up my compulsively -detailed itinerary/schedule and making some additional reservations. I got the plane tickets months ago, but my plans also include some Amtrak travel, a rental car, and a motel room. I didn't want to leave any of that to chance (despite it being off season) but I hadn't previously nailed down exactly when I was doing the non-NYC parts of the trip.

The conjunction that inspired this trip is a friends large-number birthday (hi Lauri!), the Emma Stebbins exhibit at the Heckscher Museum (which I did a podcast interview for), it having been too long since I've seen my brother and family in Maine, and the chance to meet my grand-niece (also in Maine). Alas, the grand-niece contingent had since decided to do the snowbird thing for several months and won't be in scope on this trip.

So I'll be in NYC for 7 days (including two planned-but-not-yet-calendared events) then Augusta ME for 4 days. Currently it's looking like no blizzard, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed as that would make the driving parts annoying.

Unlike most NYC trips, I have plenty of unscheduled time this trip, and I'd love to meet up with folks if it works out.

Today I gritted my teeth for cold-calling a utility customer service line, expecting massive chat-bot runaround and frustration. You see, I recently received the first PG&E bill that has my "solar billing" and, having reviewed my billing for the year and taking note of the point when my system came online, I had some confusion about exactly what I was being charged for.

Of course, untangling solar power billing comes with complications, since the amount of power used and the amount of power generated fluctuate by the seasons. And the monthly statement I get from the solar monitoring company (which is different from my solar energy provider) goes by calendar month, while my PG&E billing period starts mid-month.

But it only took me one repetition of "give me a human being" (at normal tone of voice) and about a minute on hold to talk to a knowledgeable human being. She was patient when I wanted to explain the detailed chronology of my solar installation (which turned out to be directly relevant to some of my questions). I got answers to all the questions that PG&E were relevant for and the answers were satisfactory.

One of the mystifying aspects was that, during August and September, and to a lesser extent, October, the solar report says I was putting more energy into the grid than I was consuming. And yet PG&E was charging me for energy -- less than my previous consumption, but not a negative amount. Turns out this is because my solar system shouldn't have been connected "live" to the grid at all until the final approval in November. (You may recall me posting about all the delays in getting the final inspection done.) So I shouldn't have been getting any advantage at all. I'm guessing that I was being billed for consumption during the part of the day when I wasn't generating, but that during the hours when my panels were keeping up with consumption, the PG&E meter registered it as "no consumption."

I really hope that PG&E was, in fact, monitoring calls for quality, because I gave the representative a long thank you, explaining in detail how satisfied I was with the experience.

Since I have another hour before heading off to a New Year's Eve party, I might as well bring the reading notes up to the current date. I read a lot of books in December, but only a couple were thoroughly enjoyable.

The Case of the Missing Maid by Rob Osler -- (audio) Sapphic historical mystery. Well-researched, but with a bad case of researcher's disease. There's too much showing off on details that a narrator wouldn't normally be expected to provide. The psychology of the characters is also rather anachronistic, or perhaps overly clinical. Also, the narrator regularly tells us about the protagonist's desire for women, but doesn't really demonstrate it in a believable way. Also, there's a possible scenario that is set up but then the character never acknowledges or explores it (i.e., that the Evil Suitor has kidnapped the victim and is lying about it). All in all, I spent too much time yelling at the book while listening to it.

A Plague on Both Your Houses by Susanna Gregory -- (audio) I picked this up in a series-sale on Chirp. Historical mystery focusing on a physician in medieval Cambridge. There was a time when historical mysteries were just beginning to be a thing when I'd read everything I could get my hands on. And then a time when there were enough of them that I felt like I was allowed to begin disliking some of them. Yeah, this falls in that category. Ugh. The writing is ok but OMG it drags, especially during the endless details of the plague. And it has a bad case of "this medieval doctor magically knows what treatments will eventually be proven effective by modern medicine." There's endless repetition of the clues and details of the mystery, though maybe that's a deliberate technique. I have three more volumes in this series, but I'm not likely to continue listening.

Saint-Seducing Gold by Brittany N. William -- (audio) Sequel to That Self-Same Metal, which I read a couple months ago. (YA historic fantasy set in the early 17th century.) Very enjoyable for the representation and worldbuilding. But it felt very repetitive, as if all the emotional beats needed to be hammered away at to make them stick. Maybe this is a YA thing? I enjoyed it, but I'm not necessarily eager to pick up the third and final book.

The next few books were read specifically to do an updated version of my "sapphic spin-offs of Jane Austen books" podcast, so I was reading some things that I was dubious about going in.

Emma: The Nature of a Lady by Kate Christie -- (text) I regularly mention that I’m very much not a fan of the approach of taking an existing public domain text and making only minimal changes or additions to create a new story. Which is exactly what this book does. As far as I could tell, we don’t run into any alterations to the original text until chapter 5, and I’d say that maybe 99% of the text is simply identical to Austen’s original. The premise is that Emma and Jane Fairfax were childhood sweethearts, sabotaged by Mr. Woodhouse confiscating their letters to each other while they were separated. The eventual resolution is for Jane to enter a lavender marriage with Knightley who much prefers male partners. If you like this sort of pastiche, this may be the sort of thing you’ll like, but I don’t, I’m afraid. (After checking past reading notes, I noticed that I had exactly this same reaction to this same approach for a previous Christie book.)

The Scandal at Pemberley by Mara Brooks -- (text) On the surface, Jane Bennet doesn't seem an obvious candidate for a sapphic take given how central her attachment to Bingley is to the original story, but Mara Brooks has followed that thread in The Scandal at Pemberley. I have a mixed reaction to this novella—maybe short enough to be a novelette? The prose is elegant and full of rich sensory imagery, but the plot is a bare skeleton on which to hang a series of erotic scenes. There are also a few logical holes in the plot where the characters have some unfortunately modern attitudes about public displays of affection between women in the Regency era. Really gals, it’s not actually a problem for you to be in each other’s bedrooms and even to share a bed! (See my trope podcast about the “only one bed” thing.)

The Shocking Experiments of Miss Mary Bennet by Melinda Taub -- (audio) This is far more ambitious than the other books I read in this Austen-spin-off binge. I confess this book utterly blew me away after an uncertain start. The cover copy misleadingly suggested that it might be a slapstick mashup of Pride and Prejudice with Frankenstein in the same vein as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but it was much more thoughtful and nuanced than I expected. It takes quite some way into the book before the sapphic thread is made overt, and the characters have a lot of obstacles to get past for their happy ending. (One of which is an additional fantasy twist that seemed to come out of nowhere, but I’m willing to go with it.) While the plot and trappings stray outside the realistic nature of Austen’s work, the social and psychological aspects of the plot rang true to the times for me, including the meandering path Mary and Georgiana take to recognize what they’re feeling as romantic love and to decide it’s worth fighting for.

The Lady's Wager by Olivia Hampton -- (text) Evidently a number of authors share my interest in seeing Mary Bennet get some love, because this is yet one more book that addresses that angle. This one gives Mary a secret life as an author and pairs her with an original character: a former governess struggling to make a living in London. While the set-up of the plot is clever and plausible, the execution stumbled on numerous points. The characters have anxieties about their budding friendship that are out of place in the early 19th century—a time when it was utterly normal for women to express appreciation for other women’s beauty and to engage in physical affection in public. It would also have been utterly normal for two spinsters to set up household together for economic reasons, so I found their subterfuge unnecessary. These are elements that really spoil a sapphic historical for me, when the characters have 20th century attitudes, anxieties, and reactions.

We move out of the Austen books for the last two.

Earl Crush by Alexandra Vasti -- (audio) I thought I'd give this a try, despite being so-so about Vasti's f/f Regency in the same continuum. (One of the characters from Ladies in Hating is a secondary character in this one.) Alas, this ended up being a DNF, though for idiosyncratic reasons that might be a strong plus for other readers. The story has some interesting ideas and characterization but around midway slides into about 80% sex by volume and I just got bored. Some authors can write such excellent characters and plot that my indifference to sex scenes is overcome, but the balance was too badly off for me in this book.

Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite -- (audio) This was a nice finish to the year's reading. Murder mystery on a colony ship where bodies are renewed from memory backups. So what happens if your backup gets erased and then your current body gets killed? Interesting chewy ideas. The protagonist is sapphic, but sexual orientation isn't a marked feature in this continuity so it's just background. (I've previously enjoyed Waite's sapphic historical romances.)

There. I'm totally caught up with my reading notes. My "in process" spreadsheet (which is where all these notes have been living) has a couple dozen titles in it that either need to be officially marked DNF or that I had put on the list as a to-do and then never read. I think I'll clean that up so I can start fresh.

November was a relatively skimpy month, though only in comparison to the surrounding months.

Raised for the Sword by Aimée -- (text) Aimée’s Raised for the Sword immerses the reader in the religious wars of 16th century France, when people at all levels of society were split between the majority Catholics and the protestant Huguenots. The story follows three central characters between the courts of France, Navarre, and England as their lives are buffeted by politics and violence. This is something of a slice-of-life tale, where the plot is supplied by the tide of history. The historical details are meticulously accurate, as are the varied depictions of how same-sex romances could find a place in the era and the logistics of long-term gender disguise. The several plot-threads are braided together tightly and resolve in as happy an ending as the times allow. The title, perhaps, implies more swashbuckling than the book delivers. The martial action is more gritty and realistic than picturesquely heroic, as is the depiction of gender politics. This book will appeal to those who want an emphasis on the “historical” side of historical fiction. (Disclaimer: The author of Raised for the Sword was the French translator for one of my novels. I was provided with an advance review copy at no obligation.)

The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott -- (audio) I like when a book plunges me into the world without too much explanation, but I did have to scramble a bit at the beginning to figure out the basics. Once it got going I was thoroughly sucked in. Secondary-world fantasy where the world has been devastated by a lingering magic, but most people are fixated on everyday social politics. Then a figure out of the magical past shows up and makes things very complicated for the protagonist. Ends at a point that is both a resolution and a cliff-hanger.

A Mouthful of Dust by Nghi Vo (audio) Definitly on the horror side, similar to the previous book in the series. The plot concerns what famine does to social rules. Part of the Singing Hills Cycle.

System Collapse by Martha Wells -- (audio) This brings me up to date with the Murderbot series. We're back to "lots of action language, not so much character interactions and plot."

Back to mostly audiobooks (except when that format isn't available).

Ladies in Hating by Alexandra Vasti -- (audio) While I'm delighted that we're getting more sapphic historical romances from major publishers, too often I'm disappointed about the execution. This Regency-era romance pairing two competing authors of gothic novels spent too much time on repetitive build-up (frustration, coincidences, longing), and not enough time on plot There were so many cycles of desire > sex > betrayal > grovel > forgiveness > repeat that I have little confidence in the stability of the relationship. On the other hand, the historic grounding was solid.

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells, Exit Strategy by Martha Wells, Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells, Network Effect by Martha Wells -- (audio) Continuing my binge of the Murderbot series. I don't have specific reading notes on most of these other than finding them enjoyable. Network Effect was a re-listen as that was the one I read first from the series and bounced off at the time. On re-listen, I think my impression was skewed by listening to it out of order, because a lot of the interpersonal stuff makes more sense now that I have the background. But it's still definitely fairly heavy on the blow-by-blow fight scenes. I reiterate that I can see why the people who love these love them, but I'm just not quite the ideal audience.

Ochre, Quartz, or Ivy by Jeannelle M. Ferreira -- (text) (Read to blurb, not yet published.) Sometimes a story unfolds like a vision emerging from a heavy mist. Glimpses of shifting details appear then are obscured again, but gradually the mist thins and you find yourself in an unexpected landscape. Jeannelle M. Ferreira’s Ochre, Quartz, or Ivy is just such a story, embedded in a mythic early British setting, but not fully temporally bound. It takes a bit of reading for the characters, their relationships, and their fates to solidify within the poetry of the narrative, but when the plot has fully unfolded, as it dips in and out of the time-stream, the pieces fall solidly into place. I have consistently maintained that Ferreira’s prose is best read with a poetic protocol: allowing the imagery to build in its own fashion and this work is a solid example of that principle.

Angel Maker by Elizabeth Bear -- (text, audio) I started reading this in text but the heavy use of dialect meant that I ended up subvocalizing as I read, so I decided to simply switch to audio which worked much better.
The continuing adventures of Karen Memory. A fun romp through alternate history with all the steampunk bells and whistles but addressing real historic social issues as well.

A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher -- (audio) Horror fantasy about dealing with legacies of the past. Great for the sense of growing menace without feeling too scary. The awfulness of people, artfully depicted.

I read a shit-load of books in September, in part due to the New Zealand trip. On most overseas trips, I keep myself so busy I don't do much reading, but this time we planned for a laid-back schedule and most days spent a lot of time just hanging out doing parallel play. This also meant that more than half the books were text rather than audio.

Copper Script by K.J. Charles -- (text) Usual lovely K.J. Charles book. M/M historic romance with excellent character work. The middle feels a bit rushed or foreshortened, though the climax works. I like the conceit of handwriting analysis on an almost psychic level, even knowing it's fantastical. Great pun in the title.

The Rosetti Diaries by Kathleen Williams Renk -- (text) F/f cross-time story (historic story unfolds via a modern person doing research). Alas, this was a DNF (did not finish) for me. The historical premise is intriguing, but the writing style - ugh - perfectly literate but it reads like a textbook. I found it especially problematic, given that it's formatted as a diary, that the protagonist is always explaining things. To whom? This isn't the sort of stuff you'd put in a diary. And some of the technical details are implausible, like reading archival documents in a vault using a candle. It all just added up and threw me out.

That Self-Same Metal by Brittany H. Williams -- (text) YA historic fantasy involving malevolent elves and West African-based magic in the England of King James I. There were a few logical inconsistencies, but quite enjoyable. Queer-normative, racially-aware, lots of room for further adventures, and a "why choose" bi romantic polygon.

The Illhenny Murders by Winnie Frolik -- (text) Another DNF, alas. I'm in one of my periodic phases of allowing myself to drop books if they're just not working for me. In this case, it's was just that the prose was so very pedestrian. In theory there was a f/f romance in there somewhere but I never got to it.

Problems and Other Solutions by Allie Brosch -- (text) Ok, so I started reading this several years ago. This is a collection of semi-comedic personal sketches by the author of Hyperbole and a Half. Although the individual pieces are interesting, they work best taken in separate bites, hence the long time to finish.

Illuminations by T Kingfisher -- (audio) Solidly YA in tone. Secondary world fantasy with an eccentric family of magical artists and a kid who looses and then needs to fix a Problem. Complex, with a focus on life lessons of cooperation, honesty, grit. It was interesting listening to this in alternation with the Diana Wynne Jones Chrestomanci books, because there's a very similar feel: a kid in a magic-working family feels marginalized but needs to solve a big problem. Family then pitches in.

The Lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones -- (audio) And speaking of which... Part of my semi-random DWJ reading program. An interesting story but I want to slap the protagonist silly. I probably needed to have read this book when I was a bratty kid. Oh wait, I never was.

Hemlock and Silver by T. Kingfisher -- (audio) Loosely inspired by Snow White, but only in terms of the MacGuffins. A standard Kingfisher heroine (complete with standard Kingfisher romance arc), but the plot is fun. There are lots of twists and turns trying to figure out the rules of the magic. In the end, the worldbuilding logic all comes together and makes sense.

The Magicians of Caprona by Diana Wynne Jones -- (audio) A gripping and well-written magical family saga. (This is the one that felt most parallel to Illuminations.) The only down side was the annoying use of Italian ethnic stereotypes.

(This is the promised separate review of my favorite book from 2025.)

Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer is not simply my favorite book of the year, but is my candidate for Best Book of the Year overall. This is not simply a book about history but is a book about the process of history. It demonstrates the fractal messiness of the people, places, and events that we try to tidily sort into specific eras, and especially how all those people, places, and events are braided together into a solid fabric. Palmer doesn’t shy away from pointing out how thoroughly our understanding of history is shaped by the prejudices and preoccupations of historians; she embraces this aspect noting at every turn how her own take is shaped by her love of the city of Florence and especially its most controversial son, Machiavelli.

But what makes this book great is the humor poured into the cracks around the politics, violence, and art. (A recurring feature is little comic dialogues that summarize key events in a narrative style familiar to anyone on Twitter or Bluesky. I desperately want to see these presented in visual format, whether as live theater or animated shorts. It’s hard to pick a favorite line, but the top two are “Maria Visconti-Sforza: I’m standing right here!” and “King of France: You Italians are very strange.”)

The book concludes with what I can only describe as a stump speech for the importance to the contemporary world of studying and understanding history, embracing the necessary messiness of “progress,” and the hope that we can indeed continue the Renaissance project of reaching for a better world.

This is a very long book, though paced in manageable chapters. When I decided to read it and found that the audiobook was the same price as the hardcover, I went for audio (at over 30 hours!) and listened to it while taking the train home from the International Medieval Conference. The narration is top-notch, capturing the emotional range of the text perfectly. The side benefit is that the combination of material, voice, and length made it perfect to add to my “sleep-aid audiobooks” collection, which means I get to enjoy it over and over again (in the bits and pieces I consciously hear). But of course I bought the hardcover too, not only so I could get Palmer to autograph it, but because I needed to be able to track down my favorite bits and check out the footnotes.

Actually the one book I finished in May is going to get its own separate entry (Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer) because I've decided it's my favorite book of the entire year.

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman -- (audio) The entire Invisible Library series came up on sale as a set on Chirp, and since I'd heard interesting things about it I picked it up. I've only listened to this first volume. Although I find it interesting and imaginative, I kept not getting back to listening to it (hence it took me an entire month to finish). That's made me less interested in trying the next book in the series. I didn't dislike it--it just didn't grab me.

The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet by Lindz McLeod -- (text) I actually bought this one in both text and audiobook, but since I was already listening to a book of similar genre and setting (see next entry) I went for the text version to keep psychological separation. This is a sapphic Jane Austen-inspired story (as one might guess from the title). I've always felt that Mary Bennet got short shrift in the original book. This story begins well after the end of Pride and Prejudice and has paired her with the now-widowed Charlotte Collins (née Lucas). Mary has the advantage of having acquired a mentor in London who runs a not-very-covertly queer household, which eases the way for Mary and Charlotte to be able to share their attraction and provides a short-cut around the economic challenges for a female couple. I found the story cute and emotionally satisfying although Charlotte occasionally shocked me in blowing off the expected social isolation of recent widowhood.

A Rare Find by Joanna Lowell -- (audio) Another Regency-era sapphic romance, involving an amateur archaeologist and the love/hate relationship with her neighbor. Enjoyable, though a bit over-packed with subplots similarly to the previous book of hers that I've read (A Shore Thing). Lots of occasionally improbable hijinks on the quest for Viking-era artifacts and recognition. There were a few places where my historic sensibilities were trampled on. (You do not just "park" a horse and carriage overnight while you're off canoodling. I mean, maybe a groom was summoned to take care of them? But something it didn't get mentioned.) The conclusion seemed a bit contrived but overall I liked it.

Servant Mage by Kate Elliott -- (text) I have no idea how Elliott managed to pack so much plot and worldbuilding into one tiny novella! Secondary-world quest fantasy with a very relatable protagonist and lots of peril. There are unexpected and satisfying twists. I really hope this is a set-up for more fiction in this world.

The Tapestry of Time by Kate Heartfield -- (audio) Historic fantasy set during World War II focused around the war efforts of a family with various psychic powers who are connected in some way to the Bayeux Tapestry. Told through multiple viewpoints, the novel gradually builds up a fragmentary picture of how all the parts relate until it all comes together. There’s a fair amount of violence and peril, as one might expect in a wartime espionage story, but the ending is satisfying. A strongly woman-centered story with positive queer rep (and resolution). Heartfield writes dense, twisty books that can take some concentration but I’ve enjoyed every one that I’ve tackled.

Murder by Post by Rachel Ford -- (text) This fairly short story introduces the continuing detective couple, Meredith and Alec Thatch, set in the wake of World War I in England. Alec is passing as a man in order for them to marry, but is not presented as transgender as far as I can tell. This adds an extra element of risk and danger when the resident of a neighboring flat is found dead with signs of poison. This is a classic cozy-style mystery, with lots of clues and red herrings, allowing the reader to think just one step ahead of the characters. This initial story—really just a novelette—is free on the author’s website. I hope that some day she’ll decide to release the rest of the series more widely than just Kindle Unlimited. It deserves a wider audience. It's really testing my resolve not to buy Amazon-only books unless I'm committed to doing a review.

In August I started two long-term reading projects. Having enjoyed the tv adaptation of the first Murderbot book, I decided to give the series another try (after having bounced off one of the middle books). And I've been enjoying Rachel Fraimow and Emily Tesh's podcast, The Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones so much I decided to do a (possibly non-exhaustive) reading project of Jones's books. I have twelve of her books on my shelves, though I'm not entirely certain I've read all of them, and I hadn't quite connected up which ones were in series and what order they came in. Having very belatedly acquired a local library card, I've been taking advantage of Libby audiobooks to tackle these two projects, which spaces them out nicely, given wait times.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells, Artificial Condition by Martha Wells -- (audio) It's hard to evaluate the first book separate from having seen the tv series first. It was interesting both how closely the series followed the plot and the places it diverged. Having more details on all the characters (and there are a lot of them for a novella), the story began to grow on my seriously by the second book. It helped that it didn't feel like it was wall-to-wall combat scenes like my first (out of order) encounter with the series. Artificial Condition had a more mystery-like plot, which I enjoyed.

A Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones -- (audio) Young adult. This seems to be a very typical Jones set-up: a disfunctional family with the least-regarded kid as the protagonist. (That's all my notes say. I confess that some of her books have now run into each other in my memory.)

Oops, almost forgot one of my August books!

Lake of Souls by Ann Leckie -- (audio) A short fiction collection, with some stories tying in to her Imperial Radch universe and others feeling like they're part of some other connected setting. Leckie writes the most vivid and believable truly alien characters I've encountered since back when I was reading a lot of C.J. Cherryh in the '90s. The title story is a great example.

On Audiobooks

One of the things I cut back on in preparation for my retirement was my Audible subscription. (I had the three-books-a-month level.) That's changed my audiobook consumption somewhat. What I borrow from Libby is a bit random, not simply because I tend to only put one book at a time on my wait list, rather than having several lined up in Audible, but because the types of books available are different. As I've previously mentioned, I've also been buying audiobooks from Chirp, but primarily using it for random discovery within their sale books. When I decide to outright buy a audiobook these days, I'll try Apple Books first (because: Amazon). Very much like my approach to ebooks, I dislike having books on multiple platforms because I lose track of what's where. But I can't really escape that, alas.

Why do I do so much of my reading in audio? Mostly because I do so much print and e-text reading for the Lesbian Historic Motif Project. Also, between bicycling a couple hours a day and yard work, I have a lot of contexts when I can multi-task audio. Another factor is my aging eyes. When I'm focusing on something close up for an extended period of time--whether it's my LHMP reading, or needlework, or whatever, my eyes take up to an hour to recover and be able to focus at other distances properly. It's annoying. And I can't avoid it for the LHMP work. Audio avoids adding annoyance. (Unintentional alliteration.)

Anyway, enough for now. Tomorrow I'll do my Inventing the Renaissance review, which I plan to post widely. When I first started doing this catch-up book posts, I also disseminated them to several review sites, but that got a bit exhausting and awkward. (I discovered that there's a limit to how many book reviews you can post to Amazon on a single day. A good thing, probably, but hard to keep track of when I'm doing catch-up reviews.)

It's going to be a bit trickier to create this post while visiting at my Dad's place since my process involves three different windows (spreadsheet of reading notes, Dreamwidth entry, and database for finished reviews) which I can normally pull up on different screens.

A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher -- (audio) The plot is...well, let’s call it “allusive of” rather than “based on” the fairy tale of the goose girl and her talking horse. There’s a horribly abusive mother (whose comeuppance is similar to the climax of my fairy tale The Language of Roses), a sympathetic ingenue, and a lovely second-chance romance involving an older woman (a Kingfisher specialty). Big content notice for violence and coercion. It's a very painful story, so I'm not sure that "enjoyable" is the right description, but I'm glad I read it.

Murder in an English Village by Jessica Ellicott -- (audio) I was exploring some sale books to see if I could find any interesting historic mysteries and thought this book looked interesting. It’s set between the World Wars and involves two old school chums—-one an English spinster and one an American adventuress—-who stumble into several mysteries. It’s a pleasant enough mystery, though I was unwarrantedly hoping for a touch more sapphic subtext, along the lines of Miss Buncle’s Book.

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf -- (audio) Picked up from an audiobook sale, in part because I'd done an interview where the interviewee made the assumption that of course every feminist has read Woolf and I realized I hadn't. A Room of One's Own is broadly about the difficulties of being a woman writer. Pair this classic with Joanna Russ’s How To Suppress Women’s Writing and then sink into a deep depression about how little has changed since those books were written.

All the Painted Stars by Emma Denny -- (audio) A pleasant enough medieval f/f romance with competent prose, but the historic grounding is exceedingly thin and occasionally annoying. Horses aren't cars. Parchment isn't post-its. Village brewers don't work at industrial scale. It wasn’t a matter of large inaccuracies, but of a constant flow of small details that kept distracting me from the endearing main characters. This book is a follow-on from her previous one which focused on a gay male couple. The two stories are connected by family ties.

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older -- (audio) The second in a sapphic space-mystery series. These are novellas set in a colony constructed around Jupiter after humanity fled an uninhabitable Earth. Murder mysteries get solved by a detective and academic duo who are also negotiating a revival of their romance. The books are enjoyable and have a fun time grounding the mysteries in the worldbuilding.

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker -- (audio) I finally got around to reading this highly praised book, which came out a number of years ago. The novel asks the question: can a naïve and brilliant golem who has lost her immigrant master on the voyage to America, and a metal-working Jinni newly freed from magical entrapment find their way together in early 20th century New York and foil the schemes of the sorcerer who wants to re-enslave them both? This was beautiful and heartbreaking and ultimately triumphant and I don’t know what took me so long to come back to it, given that I’ve owned a hard copy since it first came out.

Gentleman Jack by Anne Choma -- (audio) I don’t usually consume books for the lesbian history blog via audiobook -- it makes it hard to take notes! It made sense in this case because it’s more of a narrative history rather than a scholarly analysis. This is a narrative history of Anne Lister’s life between November 1831 and March 1834, the period covered by the tv series Gentleman Jack. The book was written specifically as a companion to the tv series, giving the actual details of Anne’s life during that period, which differ in various details from the tv series. (The tv series both omitted and invented significant details.) Interspersed in the narrative are extensive quotes from Anne’s diaries. The account is very readable and will give you a solid background of Anne’s life and times. It is neither a scholarly historical analysis (for that, you might try Jill Liddington) nor an extensive and contextualized survey of significant portions of the diaries (for which you want Helena Whitbread). But it hits a sweet spot for the general reader. And if you’re a fan of the tv series, it makes an interesting “compare and contrast” to understand how history gets adapted for the requirements of drama.

The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison -- (audio) I think this finishes up the Cemetaries of Amalo series, set in the same universe as The Goblin Emperor. As with previous books in the series, there are a number of plot threads that braid together in the resolution. Our protagonist, a "witness for the dead" who can communicate with dead souls finds himself representing a murdered dragon. One of the other major plot threads about an escaped insurgent ties back in at the climax in a way that feels a little too convenient. And there's a surprising twist to a hinted-at romance arc that's been developing across the series.

The Suffragette Scandal by Courtney Milan -- (audio) I've read several Courtney Milan historic romances in the past, with mixed impressions. This one worked very well for me, centering around Victorian-era feminist movements and one of her favorite tropes: aristocrats who are desperately trying to escape their fate. But the reason I picked it up was for the very-much-background sapphic romance that has been slipped into the cracks of the main story.

I was originally going to do just January and February in this post, but then there were only two books I finished in March, and none in April, so it made sense to expand the official scope. (April was, of course, my last month on the job and I was a bit distracted.) Looking ahead in the spreadsheet, I may do another four-month set in the next post and then do one post each for the final four months of the year, based on numbers.

Not all audio in this group, though in part because three of them don't exist in audio (as far as I know).

You're the Problem, It's You by Emma R. Alban -- (audio) This is the same author as Don't Want You Like a Best Friend, and in fact this book is in the same continuity, with characters from the earlier book showing up in this one. M/M historic romance. Honestly, the things that bothered me about the previous book continued to be annoying in this one. The characters are modern teenagers dressed up in costume. The social dynamics, conversation, and language in general are intrusively contemporary. On top of that I didn't find the plot interesting and the final twist was obvious from a mile away. That said, the writing is technically competent, and if you like your historicals to be modern teenagers in cosplay, you might enjoy it.

The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo -- (audio) Part of the Singing Hills cycle, in which cleric Chi wanders around collecting stories with their sentient hoopoe bird. This one partakes strongly of horror elements. The climactic twist wasn't a surprise to me, though the details weren't obvious earlier. Quite solid, although not my favorite book in the series.

A Sweet Sting of Salt by Rose Sutherland -- (audio) Lovely writing! This is a not-revealed-until-very-late-but-obvious-if-you-know-the-tropes selkie story. F/f romance. The plot is both sweet and menacing, though the protagonist has a few "are you really that dense?" moments. Content notes for animal death and for main character peril but a happy ending.

Harvest Season by Annick Trent -- (print) I have loved everything I've read by Trent and should really track down the works of hers that I haven't read yet. Historic f/f romance short story. Sometime lovers get involved in labor activism for the weavers and find their chance to be together when they need to flee the law. The history feels very solid and the writing is gorgeous.

The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3) by Tasha Suri -- (audio) I had so very many thoughts when reading this, but my notes just say "very satisfying ending" (to the series). Alt-India. High politics, warfare, magic, and creeping infiltration by an alien presence whose goals are extremely different from what any of the humans might want. It gradually becomes apparent that this is a science fiction setting rather than a fantasy setting, without dropping any of the trappings of high fantasy. There has been a f/f romance thread throughout the series, with the pair alternating between lovers and deadly enemies. The romance wraps up in a much more satisfactory way than previous events led one to believe was possible. I loved loved loved this series.

I Shall Never Fall in Love by Hari Connor -- (graphic novel) I was charmed this graphic novel taking a queer twist on Jane Austen's Emma, which presents the Knightley character as a transmasculine age-mate to Emma and gives Emma a cousin who is mixed race and becomes the primary focus of Emma’s misdirected match-making. Much of the plot involves the Knightley character coming to terms and acceptance with their gender identity and Emma recognizing her romantic attraction to them. While the cast changes take the plot in some new directions, there are also parts where the story follows the beats of Austen’s original rather strongly.

Masters in this Hall by K.J. Charles -- (print) M/m historic romance. A short caper-style adventure involving characters related to the "Lily-White Boys" series, which ties in various characters seen in that continuity. Clever.

Bold Privateer by Jeannelle M. Ferreira -- (audio) Short f/f historic romantic adventure, written in Ferreira's usual poetic/impressionistic style. There is violence but no tragedy. This appears to involve characters related in some way to the protagonists of The Covert Captain, but who receive only a brief passing reference in that book.

A Ruse of Shadows (Lady Sherlock #8) by Sherry Thomas -- (audio) One of the things I've enjoyed about this Sherlock-Holmes-is-a-woman mystery/adventure series is how the non-linear presentation and severely unreliable viewpoints keep you guessing...and then you want to read it all again immediately to see how it fits together. Unfortunately I just wasn't feeling it in this one. The non-linearity shifted into incoherence I kept losing the plot (and I normally love that sort of thing).

The Duke's Sister and I by Emma-Claire Sunday -- (audio) I don't know what it is with so many of the current crop of sapphic historicals from major publishers being so...so MEH. The plot is generic and there isn't enough of it, the characters spend too much time angsting over their relationships, and it's only tenuously grounded in its alleged historic setting. It's not exactly *bad*, it just isn't *good*.

And that finishes up the 2024 reads. Only another whole year to go!

I'm chunking these posts based roughly on the number of books, so some cover one month, some two.

Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton -- (audio) What if Regency England social politics but murderous dragons? I found it a fascinating worldbuilding project. My notes say "peculiarly interesting." I felt that things wrapped up too tidily at the end with the "good guys" all getting rewarded and escaping consequences. I recall having some other thoughts about the gender politics but I'd have to go back and re-read to recall specifics.

The First Rebellion by M.C. Beaton -- (audio) I had signed up for a new audiobook outlet (Chirp) that often has significantly reduced sale prices, so I've periodically taken the opportunity to try some books that I wasn't specifically looking for. (In general, I've tended to be unsatisfied with the books I've picked for that reason, but you never know.) Straight historic romance. Supposedly a "naïve bluestocking rebel wins the heart of a rakish nobleman by being unruly and rude to him" but I found it really hard going. The characters were childish and unlikeable and the male lead isn't worth winning. DNF.

Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein by Anne Eekhout -- (audio) Spotted this one when pulling titles for the podcast. An imaginative story coming up with a (fictional) backstory for events that inspired details in Frankenstein. My notes say "very literary and more than a bit Freudian." There is a sapphic plot thread but it doesn't have a happy ending. Content note for sexual grooming and abuse.

The Duke at Hazard by K.J. Charles -- (audio) A delightful homage to Georgette Heyer's The Foundling, featuring a naïve young duke and his quest to prove himself competent and independent. Utterly charming and satisfying. It combined enough parallels with the original to amuse the reader while diverging in enough points to be its own thing. Certain characters in the conclusion cross over with The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting. (I've occasionally noodled f/f Heyer-homage plots and reading this got me thinking strongly about the social and economic logistics of how to do a sapphic version of Cotillion. To the extent that I have an outline-and-notes document for it.)

Craze by Margaret Vandenburg -- (audio) A history lesson about queer life in 1920s New York City, dressed up as a novel. Entertaining and informative, if occasionally overly erudite for some readers. Read in the context of interviewing the author for my podcast.

The Fire and the Place in the Forest by Jeannelle M. Ferreira -- (audio) Short fiction and poetry focusing on sapphic relationships, especially in historic settings. Even though my main format for fiction these days is audio, I'd buy Ferreira's work in that format no matter what because even her prose is poetic and that's the best way to receive it. (Advisory: I am not exactly unbiased as she has sold me stories.)

The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells -- (audio) Secondary world fantasy. I'd been wanting to check out some of Wells' earlier work and this came up on sale (if I recall correctly). Amazing worldbuilding, though with a bit of a "generic fantasy" feel in the prose. I did have the same issue I had with the first Murderbot story I read, which was feeling like it was overloaded with blow-by-blow fight scenes. (But maybe I'm alone in finding that a negative?) This is a romance novel at heart, with many standard tropes gender-flipped due to the social structure, which resembles that of social insects.

If I do one of this posts per day, I should be caught up by the end of December. That will be my goal.

The subject line is a lie -- I finished no books in August 2024 due to spending the entire month traveling (Worldcon and sightseeing).

A Shore Thing by Joanna Lowell -- (audio) Sapphic (sort of? one character is transmasculine but still somewhat female-identified?) historical romance. This had beautiful writing and a much more complicated plot than a simple romance, involving artists and bicycle touring in Victorian England. It did feel on occasion that there were a few too many progressive issues crammed into the plot, as if all the bases needed to be covered at once. The author has several other books that braid lightly with this one in terms of characters.

A Liaison with her Leading Lady by Lotte R. James -- (audio) Lesbian historic romance involving a theater company in early Victorian England. The title had led me to expect something more leaning towards erotica and I was pleasantly surprised to be mistaken. The writing was, overall, very nice though sometimes just barely short of over-the-top in style. On the whole, it felt well grounded in the history, though sometimes the concrete everyday details felt thin. There were several "theater culture" aspects that felt highly anachronistic, like they might have been mapped backwards from modern practice. The romance plot was both formulaic and believable.

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler -- (audio) Character is trapped in a "Groundhog Day" cycle in a fantasy role-playing-like world and must figure out how to succeed through trial and error when every error means death and starting from scratch. It's...ok? I guess? I DNFed this after a few chapters. I'm not a fan of "D&D look-and-feel" books and I just couldn't get interested in the story. I read this around the same time as John Scalzi's Starter Villain and felt the two had a similar feel, so if you liked the latter you might like this one?

Can't Spell Treason without Tea by Rebecca Thorne -- (audio) This is more or less the archetype of the "D&D-world coffee shop AU". Two women escape their roles in a fantasy kingdom and run away to start a combination tea and book shop in a remote village. Plausibility does not come into the question, so I don't judge it on that point. But I just couldn't find it in myself to care about the characters and it was another DNF, which is a shame because "lesbian light fantasy" should be catnip for me.

Netherford Hall by Natania Barron -- (print) Regency-esque fantasy with sapphic romance, in a world featuring magic, vampires, etc. I wanted to like this more than I did. It felt like there were a lot of unconnected details and the conversation-to-action ratio was a bit high. Very imaginative. Don't go into it expecting a historic setting though.

Going to finish up this post with "all K.J. Charles all the time" though I didn't actually read them back-to-back. (I was working on trying to fill in the gaps in the catalog.)

Gilded Cage by K.J. Charles -- (audio) Gay male historic romantic adventure. A sharp, fierce, polished little gem of a story. It kept teasing me with cross-references to characters form the Sins of the City series and now I want to see relationship charts.

Any Old Diamonds by K.J. Charles -- (audio) Gay male historic romantic heist adventure. Comes before Gilded Cage in series order and it was interesting to read this one out of order. See previous comments about wanting to trace connections to Sins of the City. Oh, and excellent as usual.

Rag and Bone by K.J. Charles -- (audio) Gay male historic romantic adventure with magic. A lovely little sweet relationship and a plot where people who do questionable things for good reasons get rewarded. Not sure if this ties in with any of her other series.

Hopefully I'll continue posting a few months every day until I'm caught up, rather than getting distracted and letting it lapse.

Yeah, yeah, it's been a year and a half since I posted these review-like-objects. I keep reading notes in a spreadsheet, so I'm not entirely writing these from memory. I figured I'd try to get caught up as a year-end project.

Saint of Steel books 1-4 (Paladin's Grace, Paladin's Strength, Paladin's Hope, Paladin's Faith) by T. Kingfisher -- (audio) Delightful, if formulaic, fantasy romance series in which broken people find wholeness with each other. They don't necessarily have typical HEA endings, though sufficiently to meet Romance (with a capital R) requirements. There's a series through-line, and other books/characters in the world get passing references. The romance threads involve significant amounts of people obsessively thinking about sex, destructively pining, and then enjoying significant amounts of on-page sex. Gender pairings included m/f and m/m but no f/f.

Rose House by Arkady Martine -- (audio) Interesting "what if a smart house...no a really smart house" story, not so much horror as suspense and mystery. Well done, though it didn't blow me away.

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older -- (audio) I was doing a bunch of reading for awards and was finishing up the novella category. My initial notes indicate that the story didn't really hook me and that for an exotic exoplanet setting I wasn't getting a lot of clear sensory impressions. I think that impression was wrong, because (having read further in the series) I have very strong sensory memories of the setting and enjoyed it enough to keep going with later books. There's a mystery and a f/f "second chance" romance between college sweethearts, and a strong Sherlock Holmesian vibe for the primary detective character. I'm going to contradict my initial notes and give this a strong rec. (Getting ahead of myself somewhat, I particularly liked how the meaning of each title in the series becomes clear late in the book with a bit of punch.)

A Bluestocking's Guide to Decadence by Jess Everlee -- (audio) Lesbian historic romance. I liked this better than I was expecting to (since I was expecting another cosplay historical). The setting made good use of an existing community of non-conformists (in several senses), offering an acceptance of queerness while the plot conflicts are entirely separate from sexuality.

The Perils of Lady Catherine De Bourgh by Claudia Gray -- (audio) This is part of a light mystery series focused on two original "next generation" characters spun off of Jane Austen's novels. (The male and female protagonists are very tentatively working their way toward a romantic relationship, with the main barriers being class differences and the male protagonists being neuro-atypical.) A very likeable story, though I confess I spotted the culprit in the mystery very early on, based on the one potential suspect that the protagonists never seriously considered. I like the gradually advancing overall arc of the series.

Unfit to Print by KJ Charles -- (audio) Gay male historical romance. This one has a rather sweet second-chance romance, though I found the resolution of the non-romance plot to feel rather rushed. The sexual dynamics were more to my taste than in some of her books (where I don't always feel that the characters actually *like* each other very much, but are just horny for each other).

Lately I've been thinking about starting a Scrivener file of memoirs. Not necessarily with specific plans to do anything with it, but just to organize some of the writing I've done that I think other people might be interested in.

One thing contributing to these thoughts is my "analyze the Best Related Work" category and looking at published memoirs, but it's not like I think I'm operating at that level.

I pulled up my Dreamwidth tag "personal history and philosophy" and laughed to see that the second most recent post under that tag was a similar rumination where I noted that I'd put together a spreadsheet of links to DW posts that I thought fall in the category of memoir-worthy. Well. So. That will make assembling the Scrivener file easier!

As I noted in that post, I have a lot of posts on writing philosophy and technique in my Alpennia blog that I'd need to identify separately, but that might be of more interest to people than random natterings.

What I don't know is whether that interest actually exists. I mean: *I* think I'm pretty darned good at a turn of phrase and interesting angle on things, but maybe I'm deluded? I'd like to think I write a lot of interesting things in this blog and in the Alpannia blog, but how can I tell unless people have interacted with me about them?

ETA: LOL, and of course, having followed up on that supposed "list of memoir-worthy blog posts" I can't for the life of me figure out where, or under what name, I saved it! Fortunately, I guess I can reconstruct it using the same process.

So one of my current projects-in-rotation is doing an extremely geeky analysis of the history and dynamics of the Best Related* Hugo category.

The initial stage was to create a spreadsheet of all the known nominees (finalists, long-list, and any additional available data), track down additional data related to them, and categorize the nature and content of the works from various angles.

The second stage was to describe and document the procedural activities behind the creation and modification of the category, as well as to do the same for other Hugo categories that interacted with its scope in some way.**

The third stage was to put together simple descriptive statistics for nomination patterns, comparing the three "eras" of the category scope and (to the extent possible) comparing chronological changes within each era that give evidence for the evolution of nominator attitudes. (Graphs! We have graphs!)

Now I've moved on to a more narrative analysis of each of the various category axes (e.g., media format, content type, etc.) examining what they tell us about how the nominating community thinks about appropriate scope and noteworthiness. As I've hoped would happen, some interesting thoughts and observations are showing up as I work through the discussions, and I'm making notes towards an eventual Conclusions section.

To some extent, I have three sets of questions that I'd like to answer:

1) On a descriptive basis, what have people nominated for Best Related? How have changes in the official definition and name of the category affected what people nominate, and where are the places where nominators have pushed the edges of the official scope and, in so doing, affected future decisions about changing the official scope?

2) Can we determine what makes nominators consider a work worthy of nomination for Best Related? How do factors including format, subject, and creator visibility interact in the nomination dynamics? To what extent are larger socio-political currents reflected in what is nominated?

3) On an anecdotal basis, there are opinions that the Best Related category has "jumped the shark" in terms of works being nominated that are frivolous, trivial, out-of-scope, etc. Some ascribe this to the open-ended definition of the scope under the Best Related Work label. Are there quantitative or qualitative differences in what is being nominated currently that would support an opinion that the category is becoming less relevant in terms of recognizing "worthy" work? And if so (not saying I hold this opinion), does the data point to approaches that might discourage "outliers" from an agreed-on scope without the need for procedural gymnastics or ruthlessly excluding worthy works purely on the basis of format? (Works that would have no other route to recognition under the current Hugo Awards program.)

Please note that my purpose in doing this analysis is scientific curiosity (and a desire to keep my analytic brain in practice). I tend to be solidly on the "let the nominators decide" team outside of the scope definitions enshrined in the WSFS constitution (which Hugo administrators have often subsumed to the "let the nominators decide" position). But at the same time, I'm interested in answering the question of "how has the body of nominations/finalists/winners changed as the scope of the category has broadened?"

It will be several more months (at least) before I'll have a draft ready for anyone else to look at. At which point I'll be looking for some beta readers, not only for intelligibility and accuracy but for any points of context that I may be unaware of. I anticipate publishing the resulting work in my blog, though I may be looking for some other venue to mirror it for a wider audience.

*"Best Related" is my umbrella term for the three stages of the category: Best Non-Fiction Book, Best Related Book, and Best Related Work. Part of my analysis is to examine how changes in the category name and scope affected what got nominated.

**For example, how the creation of categories for Best Fancast, Best Game, etc. interacted with the nomination of those types of works under Best Related.

The up side is that I have lots of flexibility in my schedule to fit things in. The down side is that doesn't prevent all of time from happening at once. In the next two weeks I have the following items on my schedule--all highly desired and deliberately chosen events:
- Interview for podcast
- Website working session
- Cheese crawl
- Temporally relocated family Thanksgiving dinner
- Friendsgiving dinner (due to previous)
- Classroom visit as a Real Live Author (they were assigned one of my books)
- Replacement of my kitchen recessed ceiling lights (which have been giving me issues for the last decade, but kept falling short of "this is critical)

I also still need to write some music for this month's podcast fiction episode and record it. (Although Audacity has all the functionality needed for multi-track sound recording, I don't do it very often, so it's always a matter of re-learning things.)

There were a lot of items where I said, "After retirement, I'm going to try doing X." Most of them were things I was already doing, but I wanted to do more regularly or more intensively.

One new items was: I want to learn how to knit socks, which also involves learning how to read knitting instructions.

You see, although I learned how to knit at age 10 and have been knitting regularly since then, I mostly "reverse-engineered" stuff. This includes reverse-engineering how to do cabling and moebius scarves. (I also focused a lot on doing charted color patterns on garments with not much shaping.) But socks--socks need a bit more intentionality.

The first step, over a year ago, was to learn to read knitting instructions, which intersected nicely with making a baby blanket. I found a book of blanket square patterns, so I could do 16 different knitting patterns in one project. Very useful.

Now I'm starting my first pair of socks. And, just to complicate things, I figured I'd try a toe-up pattern, knit both socks at the same time on a circular needle, and do a lace pattern on the uppers and legs. Easy peasy.

I'm not sure that the specific "create the toe" method I followed is the most intuitive (though the reverse-engineering idea I got would probably work best if working on separate needles, not the circular). And there are only a couple places in the process where I found I had the wrong number of stitches and just fudged it with a random decrease. (That hasn't happened since I moved on from the toe to the foot.) I'm not entirely sure that the sizing will be perfect, but hey, they'll be socks. (They may be a smidge large around the foot, but maybe not?)

Anyway, I'm attending an online conference today and making good progress on the socks.

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It's up to you New York, New York

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Contemplating Memoirs

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That Relaxing Retirement

Retirement Project: Sock Knitting