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andrewduckerNew behaviour from Gideon.
Every so often he'll see a small trinket he can spend some pocket money on. A waddle-dee or a Yoshi toy.
And he'll buy one, take it home, and carefully place it on Jane's bedside table, for her to enjoy.
oursinInvolved in proving, for certain life admin purposes, that partner and I are real people who are who we say we are, involving downloading an app, which one then has to validate by entering one's ID and they will send a code by text 'may take a few minutes', they have a very capacious definition of 'few minutes', ahem. Then entering various details, scanning various documents to a satisfactory quality (don't ask, just don't ask, I have done screaming now, thanks), and taking a selfie.
***
Do we even wish to detain ourselves over Michael Billington's ranking of the works of the Bard? I pretty much Dorothy Parkered, as much as one can with a newspaper, when I saw he had not only put Much Ado 20th out of 35, but considers B&B the subplot.
Light the barbecue in the marketplace, I have a heart to eat there!
***
Though it is hardly anywhere near the same class for utter crassness of this - honestly, why are these people? A tourist has been charged after allegedly climbing a colossal marble statue in Florence to touch its genitals for a pre-wedding prank.
james_davis_nicolljames_davis_nicoll
tamaranth
“You’re the shock absorber. From the Titans’ point of view, you stop the masses from realising the extent of their subjugation. You relieve them of the need to exercise raw financial and political power in the protection of their interests where those interests collide with the law. But ... you also protect ordinary humans from the consequences of that subjugation as best you can. Yours is an equivocal profession. But I hear you’re not entirely an asshole.” [loc. 2879]
Cal Sounder, consultant detective, is hired to investigate the murder of a reclusive scientist, Roddy Tebbit, who died in his own home and apparently by his own hand. Complicating the matter is the fact that Tebbit was a Titan -- a recipient of a genetic therapy called T7 (possibly something to do with telomeres) which reverses ageing, increases muscle and bone density, and incidentally makes Titans literally larger than life. On the downside, it's extremely expensive; it affects memory; and the process can be very painful.
( Read more... )
james_davis_nicoll
ffutureshttps://bundleofholding.com/presents/Voidrunners
oursinWhat I read
Finished The Tortoiseshell Cat, which was Royde-Smith's first novel, and rambles around a bit before it gets going, and the protag is really somewhat unbelievably naive about the world and its ways, but it's still pretty good and readable. Okay, there is character who turns out to be a Predatory Lesbian with a backstory of relationships with other women with masculinised names, and it got namechecked by Lilian Faderman for being bad representation of the period (1920s) but there is a certain ambivalence (VV is awful but is the sapphic desire itself bad? Gill seems to feel a certain reciprocity.). And there is a certain amount of evidence that Royde-Smith had leanings at least, and did write another novel with v sympathetic lesbian lead. Anyway, quite aside from Here Is A 1920s LGBTQ Pioneer Who Is Not Radclyffe, would read more of her if it was only available.
Some while ago picked up Le Guin's The Books of Earthsea omnibus as a Kobo deal and while I think I have all except maybe some short stories on my shelves or somewhere, it's handy to have them all together with Ursula's commentaries. Made my way through the initial trilogy, found the narrative style rather reminded me of the various myths and legends recounted in works of my youth (and probably hers too). I do wish, see earlier post, she had had some contact with Mitchison's works but I don't know if they were even published in N Am.
On the go
Took a break from going straight on to Tehanu to do my re-read of Dorothy Richardson, The Tunnel (Pilgrimage, #4) (1919) - the text I originally downloaded from Project Gutenberg was no longer playing nicely with the ereader but I downloaded the most recent version and it's fine. This is the one that is embedded in bits of London very very familar to moi - even if Euston Station looks quite different these days.
Up next
Probably back to Le Guin and Earthsea.
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dw_maintenanceHappy Wednesday!
I'm taking search offline sometime today to upgrade the server to a new instance type. It should be down for a day or so -- sorry for the inconvenience. If you're curious, the existing search machine is over 10 years old and was starting to accumulate a decade of cruft...!
Also, apparently these older machines cost more than twice what the newer ones cost, on top of being slower. Trying to save a bit of maintenance and cost, and hopefully a Wednesday is okay!
Edited: The other cool thing is that this also means that the search index will be effectively realtime afterwards... no more waiting a few minutes for the indexer to catch new content.
purplecatjames_davis_nicoll
andrewducker
tamaranth
...how much of our human feeling can we dispense with in the name of freedom, would you say, before we cease to feel either human or free? [loc. 3719]
Published in 2017, and very much a post-Brexit novel: at one point Smiley says to Peter Guillam "was it all for England, then? Of course it was... But whose England? Which England? England all alone, a citizen of nowhere? I'm a European."
Told from Peter Guillam's point of view: he's an old man now, retired to his family's farm in Brittany, but he's called back to London to explain his actions during Operation Windfall( Read more... )
james_davis_nicolljames_davis_nicoll
2022 2024 2025 2026
Novel 1151 1420 1078 1153
Novella 807 962 739 807
Novelette 463 755 394 414
Short Story 632 720 610 507
Series 707 677 621 687
Graphic/Comic 340 457 265 362
Related 453 775 431 479
Dramatic, Long 597 763 610 650
Dramatic, Short 386 490 451 471
Game -- 334 298 357
Editor, Short 319 530 322 305
Editor, Long 182 254 162 234
Pro Artist 233 270 214 228
Semiprozine 312 338 334 324
Fanzine 243 286 243 224
Fancast 384 693 376 370
Fan Writer 368 363 329 308
Fan Artist 230 180 186 176
Poem -- -- 219 202
Lodestar 451 345 268 244
Astounding 416 349 341 290oursinThat is, I have finally knocked off a review that has been hanging over me for months, probably needs a little more fiddling with but it was very much I had got to the stage of 'just sit down and write the bloody thing' and did it. It's a book I'm fairly lukewarm about, doing fairly useful work with what it does but it feels a bit all over the place and hard to get a proper grip on.
Also, yay, am feeling rather less washed out than the past few days following vaxx.
We have appointment to see solicitor about our Testamentary Dispositions next week - finally found one in the fairly close vicinity through the Law Society Find a Solicitor facility.
Have just been getting Documentation from the local authority who are actually paying me to go and talk about johnnies in their collections in just under two months, so I guess that's sort of the next thing on my agenda.
Though am gradually making my way through ms by deceased colleague, though there is not major urgency on this as my collaborator is still in academic life and overwhelmed with the responsibilities of that at present.
andrewducker - Life with two kids: For the love of the motheroursin - Expense of spiritjames_davis_nicoll - The Science Behind Torchshipsjames_davis_nicoll - A novel approach to proton-boron 11 fusionjames_davis_nicoll - Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banksandrewducker - Interesting Links for 23-04-2026oursin - (no subject)tamaranth - 2026/060: Titanium Noir — Nick Harkawayjames_davis_nicoll - Bundle of Holding: Voidrunner's Codexffutures - Another RPG Bundle - Voidrunneroursin - Wednesday saw two magpies on the back fencemark in dw_maintenance - Search maintenancepurplecat - Reading, Listening, Watchingjames_davis_nicoll - O Maidens in Your Savage Season, volume 2 by Mari Okada & Nao Emotoandrewducker - Interesting Links for 22-04-2026tamaranth - 2026/059: A Legacy of Spies — John Le Carréoursin - (no subject)james_davis_nicoll - The deadline for the bundle is pretty short this yearjames_davis_nicoll - Hugo Finalist Votes 2022 - 2026oursin - Rejoice, we triumph, sort oftimeasmymeasure