As the summer movie season ramps up, JustWatch reveals the most eagerly awaited films landing in theaters and on streaming platforms through August 31, 2025. Drawing from user behavior data—trailer views, watchlist and likelist additions, and overall page engagement—this exclusive … Continue reading →
I just learned about a new series called K-pop Demon Hunters that premiers on Netflix on 20 June. It looks great, and it features a song by Twice's Jihyo, Jeongyeon, and Chaeyoung. I'm really looking forward to it!
Hello fellow fiber arts people. Does anyone know if there is a tool out there that can be used to turn an image into a cross-stitch pattern (which would also translate the colors into colors of thread)?
Thanks everyone! Stitchfiddle premium has done the trick. Now I just have to execute. Ha ha.
Hello fellow fiber arts people. Does anyone know if there is a tool out there that can be used to turn an image into a cross-stitch pattern (which would also translate the colors into colors of thread)?
(1) WRITE ON DEMAND PUBLISHING. Chuck Tingle wasted no time capitalizing on the Chicago Sun-Times’ gaffe of including numerous AI-hallucinated titles on its summer recommended reading list. He has slightly adjusted the author’s name from Andy Weir to Andy Mirror, … Continue reading →
Shawn and I have made this trip to Connecticut (and back again) five times. Once to move Mason in, and then four times now to move him out. We have never, ever been able to see anything more off the coast of Connecticut than mist. I was pretty sure that the whole fog-of-nothingness/evil was supposed to be a Stephen King thing for Maine, not Connecticut, but here we are, our fifth trip, and there is clearly NO OCEAN OFF THE COAST. It is all greyness and LIES.
But, we managed a fun sight seeing trip anyway.
We went to Mystic, CT, bringing along with us both Mason and his partner Jas.
Mason, our grad, (left) and Jas (right) at the Black Sheep in Nantic, CT.
The Seaport Museum was probably an interesting choice given the foul weather, and, honestly, I would have hoped that pouring rain would mean that we'd have the place to ourselves. No, every school group in the history of school groups were all there, making trying to get into the litttle faux village shops somewhat of a crapshoot. It was a lovely little space, though. Mason and I explored the whaling ship and I got inspired to do a better job explaining how cramped berths on sailing ships (in my case space ships) can be.
I'm going to say, however, that my favorite thing was seeing a family of geese and their three little goslings.
And getting to see Mason hanging out with the person he calls "love."
We did not get any packing done today, but the four of us got very moist and a little cross, so it's back to the AirBnB for us. Clothes are in the dryer and my wet toeies are tucked under the covers. We are giving up for the day, with only dinner out for plans. I wish we'd had better weather, but we had excellent company and that's what it's all about.
For those who have signed up for the Nebula Awards Conference next month, whether in person in Kansas City or virtually from anywhere in the world, I’m going to be doing a few things—parties, signings, panels, workshops, giving a speech (see my event schedule)—but the two main things will be my speech on Saturday night (you will be shocked—shocked!—to hear I Have Things To Say), and my 90-minute Grandapalooza on Friday afternoon.
Here’s the official description of the Grandapalooza (all times are Central Time):
Friday, 7 June. 1:00 P.M. – 2:30 P.M.
Grand Master Nicola Griffith, “A Long, Strange Trip (So Far)”
Join 41st Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Nicola Griffith, in conversation with the one who knows her best, wife and fellow writer Kelley Eskridge, for a 90-minute love letter to SFF and the wild ride of a career that’s still evolving. Come listen, laugh, and AMA—in person or online—about the importance of figuring out who you are and what you want, how to get there, and the joy of finding your people.
I might read some snippets from various books but mostly I’ll be trying to figure out in conversation with Kelley how my long strange trip of a career has ended up here—and where ‘here’ is (and isn’t—I have never, for example, been a bestseller). I’ll talk a lot about joy and about digging deep to cope with challenges, and of course I’ll answer everyone’s questions so I can’t say for sure how the conversation will evolve. Having said that, I suspect that I’ll tell a lot of stories that tend to follow the same essential pattern: Against the expectations and advice of some agent/ editor/ friend/ publisher/ instructor I do not do the usual sensible, reasonable thing; I then wonder with a sinking feeling if, this time, my career really *is* over…until I get told by some ‘helpful’ pompous ass that they told me so: You’re just not allowed to *do* that! At which point I stare, burst out laughing, and say, “Hold my beer…”
So do come. There’s still time to sign up and tune in from anywhere in the world. I promise not to be boring.
The world can be a dark and scary place. It would be foolish not to acknowledge this, but to author Christy Climenhage, it’s also important to acknowledge the ways in which we all keep on keepin’ on in the trying times. Follow along in the Big Idea for her debut novel, The Midnight Project, and see how the world is ending, and yet still going.
CHRISTY CLIMENHAGE:
There are lots of themes underlying my debut sci-fi thriller, The Midnight Project: genetic engineering gone wrong, man-made ecological collapse, what it means to be human, what exactly is wrong with late-stage capitalism and the commodification of science. But for me, the Big Idea behind my book lies in the resilience of the two main characters who just keep going as everything collapses around them. The book asks: how do we live a good and meaningful life in a crumbling world? How do we muddle through the pre-apocalypse?
I’m slightly appalled by how familiar this fictional dystopian world feels – powerful billionaires, dying pollinators, corporate greed, off-the-charts scientific possibilities but everything is spiraling into disaster. These days (today, I mean), I can read about ultra-rich men with a messianic complex who want to save humanity while carelessly destroying the environment, or mining companies that want to strip the ocean floor before even bothering to map its ecosystems. Philip K. Dick and Octavia Butler would weep. J.R.R. Tolkien would be mightily pissed off at the companies stealing words from his realms to name their businesses.
I suppose the world of The Midnight Project is rooted in reality as well as fiction. I wrote it and re-wrote it during the darkest part of the covid-19 pandemic when we were all just getting up and getting on with it. The bad news “out-there,” until it encroached on “in-here.” The work piling up even while the stores closed, the hospitals filled and everyone stayed home. The kids still in school, online, then in-person, with the rules changing every five minutes to try to keep them safe. No enrichment, no entertainment, just everyone hiding under their rock, trying to get by, putting food on the table, getting the laundry done. I suppose it’s typical of late-stage capitalism that even as the world was crashing down, everyone still needed their paycheque to cover groceries.
Of course, when I talk about today’s world in pre-apocalyptic terms, I’m not being prescient. I’m recognizing the fear and anxiety that underlays much of what is happening in the world right now. And the feeling of powerlessness that might make a person desperate enough to attempt to create an oceanic hybrid human just to feel they could make a difference. In Frankenstein, the monster’s creator is motivated by a dark ambition to create life and then is horrified at the result. In The Midnight Project, Raina is motivated by money and ambition but also wants to salvage something good out of the circumstances she finds herself in. In her heart, she is motivated by a desire for redemption.
In the midst of cataclysmic problems around the world that just keep piling up, our two genetic engineer heroes see an opportunity to do some good in the world, or at least try to prevent someone else from doing worse. It’s not much, but it’s within their control, and their abilities.
Going back to the today’s reality for a second, I think it’s normal to wonder how to live a meaningful life in our current circumstances too—how to lead a life filled with hope, ambition and purpose. And I can’t deny how much I relate to the two main characters of The Midnight Project, Raina and Cedric, just getting up and going to work every day, in spite of everything barreling toward them. So, according to the story, and my own experience, how does one muddle through the pre-apocalypse? Let’s take a lesson from our plucky heroes.
First, Raina and Cedric hold onto their comforting routines. They drink coffee together every morning out of the same mugs, watch the Holo-News and compartmentalize their lives. Then they turn to the hard work of inventing deep-sea human hybrids. The big bad world out there, the safe world inside their laboratory. They keep tabs, they know what’s happening in the outside world, but they hold it at bay and get on with the things they need to do to get by. They ignore some things. As Raina says, “They were trying times and I only wanted to try in certain ways.” They get up, they go to work, they keep solving their problems. One step at a time. One foot in front of the other. With perseverance. With persistence. With, occasionally, steely-eyed determination.
Second, at the heart of everything, Cedric and Raina hold fast to meaningful relationships, even if they’re isolated and cut off. Even if those relationships are themselves imperfect. They cling to comfort and each other and keep drinking their coffee to the bitter end (bitter, get it? Because it’s coffee).
And finally, through it all, they try to do just a little good in the world, even when it feels like the world is too big and too far gone to make much of a difference. As Cedric says, “We cannot fix the world. But in this tiny corner of it, perhaps we can control our own destiny, at least for a while.” This little bit of agency and momentum is the way they light a candle against the darkness. This is the way they cleave to hope in the pre-apocalypse.
And maybe there’s something in that for our trying times too.
I've been playing ukulele for years now, but never really felt like I knew how to play. But I just had an experience that really changed the way I feel about it. Back when The Talented Mr. Ripley first came out, I learned the words to "Tu Vuò Fa' L' Americano", and then I forgot about it for a long time. Today S. mentioned the song and I discovered I still remembered the words, so I pulled up the ukulele chords. To my surprise, I was able to play a passable version with literally five minutes!
Yesterday was L.'s 21st birthday. And of course everyone else was wiped out by flares in their various illnesses. Fortunately, birthdays in our house are low-key affairs: The birthday person gets to choose where we order food from and what movie/show we watch, and then we have cake and ice cream. Yesterday that meant ordering delivery from Burger King and watching Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (which was extremely cheesy and entertaining).
Fortunately, L. has tried alcohol and decided she doesn't like it, so she wasn't missing out by not going out for her first legal drink yesterday, but I still wish her birthday could have been better.
Since I see this is dated 2020, I may have posted it before: but hey, let's hear it for C18th women scholars of Anglo-Saxon Elizabeth Elstob, Old English scholar, and the Harleian Library. I think I want to know more about her years in the household of Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (1715–1785), duchess of Portland, who I know better through her connection with Mrs Delany of the botanically accurate embroidery and collages of flowers.
***
I like this report on the 'Discovery of Original Magna Carta' because it's actually attentive to the amount of actual work that goes into 'discovering', from the first, 'aha! that looks like it might be' to the final confirmation.
Not a plumbing emergency, thankfully, but we need to replace some things, and as it happens the (multiple) plumbers needed to replace these items all had today available, so: Plumbingpalooza! The backing up of computers is coincidentally timed, but, you know, today is as good a day as any. While I’m dealing with that, here are some photos of flowers from the house and Camp Krissy. Enjoy!
Who is the secret traitor? The former boy wonder, the wonder girl, the alien princess, the cyborg, the shape-shifter, the spooky witch, the speedster, or the geokinetic who frequently brags about being evil and betraying the team?
The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny: Volume 6: The Road to Amber, Edited by David G. Grubbs, Christopher S. Kovacs and Ann Crimmins (NESFA, 2023) Review by Paul Weimer: And so we come to the sixth and final volume of … Continue reading →
but Paramount Plus won't cooperate at all. So I finally convinced E to watch some Prodigy with me!
Man, I really love that theme song. Also, I'm gonna just say, maybe it's because it's aimed at a younger audience but this show does the best technobabble - just enough to explain, not enough to confuse or bore.
(1) STURGEON AWARD NEWS. The 2025 finalists for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short science fiction story have been selected. File 770 has the list here: “Theodore A. Sturgeon Memorial Award 2025 Finalists”. (2) LUCAS MUSEUM, DUE … Continue reading →
The 2025 finalists for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short science fiction story have been selected. The Sturgeon Award was established in 1987 by James Gunn, Founding Director of the Gunn Center for the Study of Science … Continue reading →
Shawn and I have arrived in Connecticut for our son's graduation FROM COLLEGE (I know. I also don't know where the time went.) I will detail the entire trip, but per usual and since it is Wednesday, I will first bore you with my reading.
This week was slower than last, but I finished up what is currently available of Nghi Vo's Singing Hills Cycle: Mammoths at the Gates and The Brides of High Hill. Of the two, I think I enjoyed Brides a little bit more because it flips the classic horror story of the imperiled bride and adds fox spirits. Plus, while Brides has all the magical Chinese-influenced characters and mythos, it has a slightly more Western storyline? The plot is plotty in the ways that Western readers, like myself, are familiar with. I loved all of these novellas, to be clear, but I think the people for whom When The Tiger Came Down the Mountain has been a favorite, this one should also work for them in a similar way.
Then, because I was unable to download one of the murderbot books I hadn't read yet (Exit Strategy) right away, I started on an audio book from 2016 which kind of fits the vibe of the current crop of Hugo nominees, davidlevine 's Arabella of Mars. It's a Regency SF book in the same way that A Scorceress Comes to Call is a Regency fantasy. It's a shame, in a way. I think that David was ahead of his time. This book (which I'm only 34% of the way into) is to science fiction what romantacy is to fantasy. It's kind of high personal drama, low stakes and I'm super into it.
Okay, so the rest of my life....
We set off on the road on Sunday. Sunday was our big push across country to Valparasio, Indiana. Shawn still has some remaining relatives in Indiana, namely her stepsiter Karen and her husband Don. I was not looking forward to dinner with them because we had been assaulted by dozens of pro-Trump signs as we drove across country and Don is... at BEST a libertairan of the sort who listens to Rush Limbaugh. But, he was mostly on good behavior, I think due to being exhausted from an extended bout of pneumonia. But, we still managed to have one interaction that was typical of him. Don is from the Chicago area originally and Catholic, so thinking this had to be a safe subject, I asked him what he thought of the new pope. He said, "Fine, except he's a Communist." I gave him my best "??" face and then said, "Uh, isn't that the point of Catholicism? What with the feeding of the poor and sharing of loaves and fishes?" Which, did, at least, give him pause.
Monday we drove from Valparaiso to Youngstown, OH. On this trip we did a bit of sightseeing as is our wont. Shawn picked up a brochure that suggested that there were some things to be seeing in Amish country, spectifically Middlebury and Shipshewana, IN. We never actually made it to Shipshewana, as it happened, because we found a lot to explore in Middlebury, specifically this lovely little park called the Krinder Gardens
Image: Me (left) and Shawn (right) all smiles in the gardens
This little garden was genuinely charming, and I always love getting off road to see something new and/or interesting.
Image: Lovely, weird bird sculpture in the garden
This being spring, we also got a chance to see a ton of lovely flowers in bloom.
Image: these one flowers I love (which I also grow in my own garden), but whose name I have blanked on.
So, that was fun. We saw a lot of horse drawn buggies, of course. My favorite thing about those was watching the horses very expertly knowing which stalls belonged to them in various parking lots. We even saw one buggie go into a... gas station??? (Shawn noted that the driver got out to fill a gas can, so probably fueling a generator or something. Not, as I'd hoped, gassing up the horse.)
We ate a rather boring meal at a place that advertised itself as Amish-inspired. Alas, it was only SLIGHTLY inspired. But, still, it was nice to have a sitdown meal before heading out for more hours of driving.
Yesterday, we drove from Youngstown, OH to Milford, PA. The very Milford where Daimon Knight used to hold his famous worskhop, where we spent the night in an actual MOTEL. The lady behind the counter there was a little bit... "Are you sure you don't want an extra bed?" but I refrained from pointing out that we'd hardly be sinning in that bed since we're quite legally married. But, the motel was actually very charming and I think attracts a lot of queer folks? There were some men on motorcycles who were extra friendly to us in a very 'family' way, if you know what I mean. I'm sure that lady behind the counter has a lot of disapproving to do.
Then, this morning we did the rather short hop between Milford and Middletown, CT, where we will be for the next several days as we pack up Mason's dorm and watch him get his diploma. I shall try to post pictures and such BEFORE next Wednesday, but I guess we'll see how well I manage that.
What about you all? Do anything fun this week? Read anything new, exciting, or good?
Inspiration can come from anywhere, even from a nautical legal case from the 1700s. Author Adam Oyebanji lets us glimpse into some marines’ tragic pasts in the Big Idea for his newest novel, Esperance. Dive in and see where the waves take you.
ADAM OYEBANJI:
If I were ever reckless enough to confess my faults, I’d admit to being nosy, easily distracted and addicted to tea. To my mind, at least, these are forgivable foibles. People in glass houses and all that. However, I’m also a lawyer and pretty freaking unrepentant about it. A wig and gown in England, charcoal suits in Illinois, juries in both places. Feel free to judge, but if you do, remember that judges are lawyers too. I’m just saying.
Before I was a lawyer, though, I was a law student. In England. Which is important, because law in England is an undergraduate program in a country where the legal drinking age is eighteen. Torts in the afternoon, tequilas in the evening, and who has time for mornings? The high-pressure seriousness of a US law school is mostly missing. I say “mostly” because some people are incapable of a good time at any age. So, let’s acknowledge them in passing and move on. Law school English style is one part learning, one part good times with a dash of heartache. Oh, and get this. In my day it was ABSOLUTELY FREE. We got paid to go there. Hand to God.
Admittedly, this was a long time ago. So long ago, in fact, that we cracked open actual books instead of laptops. Books that, in addition to the assigned reading, contained hundreds of cases that were of absolutely no interest to my professors.
But if one happened to be a hungover law student who was both nosy and easily distracted, the assigned reading could rapidly lose its allure. Who cares about the rule against perpetuities anyway?
Now that I come to think about it, and having practiced law for more years than I’m going to admit to, I still don’t care about the rule against perpetuities. But I digress.
The point about a nosy, easily distracted law student poking about in a book is that it’s a book. Books, unlike a computerized law report, are completely non-linear. You can riffle the pages and land on something completely different almost without conscious effort. Forward, backward, upside-down if you like, it’s all too easy to get lost in other people’s long-ago legal troubles, because those, let me tell you, are way more interesting than whether X has created a future interest in property that vests more than twenty-one years after the lifetimes of persons living at the time of the creation of the interest. (You cannot make this stuff up).
Rather than deal with the assigned boredom, I spent a chunk of this particular afternoon in the Eighteenth century: duels, infidelity, murder and, of course, marine insurance.
Now, when it comes to boredom, the law of marine insurance is hard to beat. Except for this. If a marine insurance case makes it into a law report, the underlying disaster, the thing that triggers the insurance claim, can be kind of interesting. In this particular case, from 1783, the claim arose out of a voyage of such incompetence and cruelty that just reading about it took my breath away. People died. A lot of people. And all anyone seemed to care about afterward was the value of the claim. I had nightmares about it. Even now, I sometimes have dreams so vivid I can hear the waves slapping against that ancient, wooden hull, the screaming of lost souls as things go horribly, irretrievably sideways.
And that might have been it, had it not been for my addiction to the stuff that made Boston Harbor famous. I’m standing on my front porch, well into my sixth cup of tea when it hits me: the big idea. Why not use the facts of this nightmarish shipping claim as the inciting incident of a novel? And not a historical novel, but a sci-fi one, where the consequences carry forward to the present? A story about a Chicago cop who’s in way over his head, chasing a seemingly invincible criminal dead-set on writing an old wrong. A story about a woman out of her own time and place prepared to do drastic things in expiation of sins that are not her own. A story where human justice clashes with inhuman crimes in a deadly conflict of values. Why not, once I’ve finished my beverage, go back inside and write that story?
Finished The Life Revamp - okay, not mind-blowing?
Having another bout of lower-back misery, re-reads of KJ Charles, Any Old Diamonds (Lilywhite Boys, #1) (2019), Gilded Cage (Lilywhite Boys, #2) (2019) and Masters in This Hall (Lilywhite Boys, #3) (2022). Still querying the understanding of the divorce law at the time.... (there seems to be an assumption at one point that spouse in prison was grounds??).
On the go
Started Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth (Lanny Budd, #3) (1942). This is the one with spiritualism taken in the serious experimental fashion of the times along with New Thought, besides the whole international political situation. Also, spot-on fashions in child-rearing, though I don't think Truby King was actually name-checked over the strict 4-hour feeding regimen!
Set to one side as Vivian Shaw, Strange New World (Dr Greta Helsing, #4) came out yesterday.
Still dipping into Melissa Scott, Scenes from the City.
Still working on the book for review, which is rather dense: excellent work but not exactly light reading.
Up next
Should get to Anthony Powell, Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (1960) in preparation for online discussion group.
Discovered that there is a new work by Gail Godwin, Getting to Know Death: A meditation (2024), a memoir generated by a serious accident at the age of 85.
Still have not got round to latest Literary Review.
The Romantic Novelists Association presented the 2025 Romantic Novel Awards at a ceremony in London on May 19. The awards celebrate excellence in romantic fiction in all its forms. The complete list of winners is here. The winner in the category of genre … Continue reading →
Kanye West was supposed to have a concert in Korea at the end of this month, but after he released a song called "Heil Hitler" on VE Day, his concert was canceled and — perhaps even more devastating — sales of his merch were stopped. Hopefully we'll see more of this sort of thing going forward.
(1) SUN-TIMES PRINTS FAKE READING LIST. [Item by Steven H Silver.] On Sunday, the Chicago Sun-Times published a recommended reading list. The problem is that only 5 of the 15 books exist. The other 10 were AI hallucinations. The list … Continue reading →
WisCon 47 (2025) is fast approaching! The entirely online convention will occur over the Memorial Day weekend, stretching from Thursday May 22 to Monday May 26 with pay-what-you-can tickets available at WisCon2025. The guests of honor for WisCon 47 are … Continue reading →
We're pretty clear on the cause, she got tangled up in some vines, and we've washed her foot carefully with soap and water. We'll wash all of her later and maybe soak her foot with some epsom salt, that should help. Well, I mean, the bath will just make her smell better, but the soak should help. I really, really don't want to go to the vet this week if I can avoid it, but if the swelling won't go down we may have to.
Got a notice from Campus Health that I may have been exposed to measles in Hagey Hall on the 8th, between 5 PM and 11 PM.
Oddly, that's not a one-to-one correspondence with my shift on the 8th. My shift started at 3:45 PM. The client's company was there before me, so if they were the source, the warning should begin earlier. I wonder what time Plant Ops evening shifts begin?
One of the things I do for fun when I’m not working, writing, spoiling cats, or playing the Sims is… singing in Jewish choirs. Kind of a niche hobby, I suppose. But as such, that means I’m pretty familiar with Louis Lewandowski. He wrote a lot of Jewish choral music. Like, a lot.
He was born April 3, 1821, Września, Poland, and died Feb. 4, 1894, in Berlin. Lewandowski was the first Jew admitted to the Berlin Academy. (They didn’t change the rules for him, they made an exception.) Those of you who have read my book might be feeling a moment of familiarity at this point. This is not a coincidence.
As I said in the back of my book, Abraham is not Lewandowski. They just share a birthday–moved a day during edits–a birth place, and a desire to attend the same institution.
But Lewandowski was legitimately admitted at the request of his friend (and rumored crypto-Jew) Felix Mendelssohn. I thought it was more dramatic for Abraham to make the choice many in his position made, and lie. The Spanish Inquisition didn’t consider conversion at swordpoint to be “forced’–they insisted that one could choose to die instead. Abraham didn’t fake-convert at swordspoint, and arguably Prussia had more pressing heresy issues than Jews pretending to convert for academic reasons, what with the whole Protestant Reformation thing going on. But it’s a thing he definitely comes to regret.
Lewandowski, on the other hand, wrote hundreds of songs and had a long, productive mortal life. He’s stylistically very much like Mendelssohn, as you might expect from two friends of similar backgrounds from the same time and place.
Abraham’s pretended conversion owes more to Mendelssohn’s father, Abraham, a banker and the son of Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. At the age of seven, Felix and the rest of his family converted to Christianity in a private home baptism. This was done less out of any religious fervor–Abraham Mendelssohn reportedly raised his children without religion prior to their baptism–and more to a sense that Judaism was doomed. He even tried to get the children to change their last names to something less Jewish. This was unsuccessful; Felix was proud of his Jewish heritage.
As to his actual religious convictions: Felix Mendelssohn was highly reticent on the topic. People have debated his faith, but in the absence of an actual statement from Felix himself, nothing can be proven.
Here are the Lewandowski pieces I’ve sung the most (note: to my Abraham’s horror, Lewandowski was pro-organ-music)
Today partner and I did make it through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered (actually, 2 Tubes, 1 Overground, and a walk through Belair Park) to Dulwich Picture Gallery for the Tirzah Garwood exhibition.
Also a certain amount of queuing even if we had timed entry tickets, as due possibly to the way things were laid out there was a certain amount of clumping up around the early parts of the exhibition.
But really rather good - got the impression that Garwood was an artist who was having fun with her art rather than Suffering For It, as well as, like so many female artists of her day, working in a whole range of media and crafts. E.g. her work on marbled paper seems to have been a significant contribution to the family income at certain points. Also did embroidery, quilting, collages, etc and there's a lot of playfulness to her work. Though also I found a number of her 'house' pictures verging on the unheimlich (a certain Shirley Jackson-esque note?)
Did a fairly quick walk round the rest of the gallery after we'd done the exhibition (not our first visit) and then home by a different route - the other Dulwich station, Overground plus Tube. Nostalgia of train passing through vistas of South London.
Do you like cats and coffee? Of course you do! And so do I, which is why I’m here today to tell you all about Dayton’s finest cat cafe, Gem City Catfé. If you’ve been reading the blog for a long time, you may remember I mentioned this catfé back in 2020, where I showed off a pretty enamel pin I got from the catfé the first time I went back in 2019.
It had been so long since I’d visited again that it totally fell off my radar for a while there, but I remembered it existed thanks to my friend Lauren, when she said we should go together. So we did! And it was so awesome that I went back the next day with Bryant, and honestly I’m ready to get back in there again already! Between the delicious drinks, friendly service, comfy decor, and, well, the cats, there’s no way you won’t fall in love with this place.
Gem City Catfé opened back in 2018, and is partnered with Gem City Kitties, a non-profit rescue, to provide plenty of kitties for you to come and pet and play with while enjoying a beverage. Whether you’re in the mood for matcha, a specialty latte, bubble tea, or even a cocktail or wine, they’ve got you covered. Personally, I really love their maple turmeric latte, and recently tried their Bee’s Knees matcha, which is a lavender honey matcha that was absolutely divine. I got it both days I went last week, iced of course. And have you ever seen such crazy combos for boba before?
I am definitely going to have to try one of these at some point because they sound wild.
If this all sounds great to you, but you’re allergic to cats, there’s no need to worry. The catfé actually keeps the café and the cats separate. The café itself and the sealed off cat lounge have different air filtration systems. And, you can still watch the cats play and sleep and be cute through the glass if you decide to stay on the café side.
If you want to visit, they do accept walk-ins when they can, but there is a capacity on how many people can be in the cat lounge at one time, so I highly recommend booking a time slot online ahead of time. The cat lounge fee is $10, but you can actually get a membership that’s $25 dollars a year, and then after that initial $25 it’s only $5 for entry for yourself and anyone visiting with you, too.
Alright, I’m done yapping, and now you get your reward… cat pictures!
What a distinguished gentleman!
Look at those beans!
A pink nose and pink beans, a double feature.
The windows are popular spots, apparently.
And here we have my absolute favorite cat from the catfé, Nola. She was the sweetest, friendliest, chillest cat. She was so cute and just wanted to be pet. I love her so much, and unless her adoption fell through last minute, she should be in her new home as of yesterday. Whoever got her is truly lucky.
I am so serious about coming here more often now, so y’all can be expecting some cat photos on my Bluesky or Insta. Speaking of Insta, be sure to follow Gem City Catfé!
Have you ever been to a catfé before? Are you allergic to cats? Which is your favorite from the photos? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
Nominees for the 56th Seiun Awards, the Japanese speculative fiction award honoring the best works of the previous calendar year, were announced May 11. The winners will be announced in mid-July 6 and the awards ceremony will be held August … Continue reading →
I realized I never posted about my reread of Volume 3. It’s now many weeks after the fact, but still, here are the bonus thoughts that I remember.
That description of Jane starving in the countryside is still hard to read and I really wonder about the relationship between that episode and the famine in Ireland, which in 1847 was hitting its miserable peak. What’s going on in Charlotte’s head as she puts her respectable middle-class brainworker through four days of starvation and exposure? Still not sure.
The St. John situation was much more interesting to me this time around. Of course the first time I read the novel I was really rushing through Volume 3 to get to the happy ending (or bittersweet or whatever but basically if Jane and Rochester had not ended up together I would have been devastated). But for whatever reason, this time around the following things struck me:
Before St. John ruins it by proposing to her, Jane really gets to enjoy her relationship with St. John. He’s the first person she’s been able to spar with the way she did with Rochester. I think she really enjoys sticking the needle in and puncturing his self-importance; and he kind of enjoys being punctured.
Having made it partway through a 1988 biography of Charlotte Bronte I now see the St. John episode as being about the kids’ struggle with their autocratic evangelical father and his evangelical friends. From the beginning there’s this clash between two versions of Christianity represented by Brocklehurst, the evangelical hypocrite who only wants to talk about mortification and punishment, and Helen Burns, who believes in a loving God who wants people to strive for improvement but won’t punish them by sending them to Hell. Brocklehurst is easy enough to take down. St. John is a bigger challenge because his evangelism is actually sincere. He’s willing to sacrifice himself to his own principles; he takes his duty to the poor seriously; he has the courage of his convictions and he has a bracing contempt for money, fame, and respectability. So if Brocklehurst is the ugly underside of evangelism, St. John represents evangelism at its most attractive.
And–and I’ve come to see this as the point of this whole episode–the BEST version of evangelism is STILL despotic, crushing, autocratic, and soul-killing. You can be friends with it at a distance but if you get too close to it, it will annihilate you. Once you become one with it, you lose yourself, because it does not tolerate disobedience or disagreement. And it will also never, ever admit that its gospel of love is destroying you, nor will it ever acknowledge the cruelty of its demands.
Charlotte has to almost break the narrative to save Jane from this monster. The telepathic message is a massive authorial intervention that must have been motivated by a really, really intense desire to defeat the power, not of evangelical hypocrisy, but of evangelical sincerity. Not by out-arguing it, but by accepting the primacy of her emotional connection to Rochester.
Yeah, Rochester’s 20 years older. Yeah, he’s a wannabe bigamist. Yeah, he lied to Jane and gaslighted her. But you know what he doesn’t do? He doesn’t try to destroy her capacity to resist him. He doesn’t play the You’re Going To Hell card, as St. John does immediately after Jane’s first refusal. (Rochester does try to make Jane feel like it will be her fault if he goes to Hell after she leaves him, which is low in a different way.) He wants her to be who she is; his problem is that he refuses to understand that she can’t be who she is if she runs off to Europe to be his mistress. He has to figure that out before she can go back to him.
Anyway, those are my bonus thoughts on Volume 3: St. John is a bigger temptation for Jane than I initially though the was, and I’m extra glad that she kicks him to the curb.
So, during the pandemic we have revived our tradition of reading books out loud in the car. We finished The Picture of Dorian Gray a few weeks ago (family tagline: “The original be gay, do crimes story”). Reading out loud is a good way to introduce PJ to the pleasures of 19th century storytelling; she tends to find the diction a barrier when she’s reading on her own. She did not go for the idea when I first said, “How about we do some sensation fiction?” But I brought Lady Audley’s Secret along and I said, “Give it one chapter and if you don’t like it we’ll do something else.”
It began with a very long description of one of the novel’s important settings, Audley Court. I thought: this is not good, PJ hates descriptive passages. And yet, the way Braddon does this description, PJ picked up immediately that this is a place where bad things will happen. Because a) the description is about how beautiful and peaceful and rustic and lovely in every way Audley Court is. But then b) you get paragraphs like this one:
“A noble place; inside as well as out, a noble place–a house in which you incontinently lost yourself if ever you were so rash as to go about it alone; a house in which no one room had any sympathy with another, every chamber running off at a tangent into an inner chamber, and through that down some narrow staircase leading to a door which, in its turn, led back into that very part of the house from which you thought yourself the farthest; a house that could never have been planned by any mortal architect, but must have been the handiwork of that good old builder–Time…”
…and it was at about this time that PJ said, “This is a MURDER house, isn’t it?”
Sensation fiction was designed to hook the reader and never let her go; and this novel from 1862 has still got it.
And the further we get into it–I’ve read it before, but it’s been a long time, and Mrs. P and PJ are new to it–the more we all wonder: why isn’t there more contemporary interest in this novel? Why isn’t it up there with Dracula and Dorian Gray and all the other Victorian novels that came out of sensation fiction and are more famous?
So, below the cut-tag there are going to be spoilers, but before we go there:
One of the things I personally appreciate about Lady Audley’s Secret is that it illustrates one of my theories about how a good reveal works. Your reading enjoyment is not harmed in the slightest if you guess the “secret” ahead of time. In fact, it is enhanced; and I’m sure Braddon wanted it that way. Below the cut tag, I’m going to be talking about this, which will mean giving away the “secret” of the title; but I will try to keep other spoilers to a minimum.
(1) BRITISH BOOK AWARDS. The Bookseller reports The British Book Awards “Book of the Year Winners 2025”. One is of genre interest, while James, a retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the viewpoint of Jim, has been discussed here for its … Continue reading →
This is an excellent question, and as there is no one right answer, I invite others to weigh in.
In some ways I'm the wrong person to ask, because to me it came naturally. I was a big reader as a child, and since I was born the year of the moon landing, when I reached adolescence, books were still largely the only game in town when it came to narrative. I mean, there were movies, which you had to go out and see in theaters unless you were good enough at handling your unnecessarily complicated VCR system to tape them from TV. And of course there was TV, but...have you ever watched 80s TV? It was...yes, I'm going to say 100% awful. I mean find me a 1980s TV show you would gladly watch again today. Computer games were (depending on whether you lived through this era) either laughably or adorably simple--and many of the ones I played the most, which were interactive fiction games, worked more or less like novels: you read a block of text, you made a decision, you got another block of text.
But that world is gone! So here are some suggestions for reading long nineteenth century novels in the 21st century.
This got long. The TL:dr here is: Unlock the sensory and imaginative pleasures available from the Very Long Book, and they will compensate for the frustration occasioned by unfamiliar vocabulary and complicated sentence structure.
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Find an edition of the book that is a (sensory) pleasure to hold and to read.
If you're not used to reading physical books, give one a try. Purchase an edition of one of these classics from your local bookstore in an edition which feels good to handle, where the layout is inviting, and where the print is easy on the eyes (literally and figuratively). Don't just buy the cheapest print edition available. A well-made book will make itself a pleasure to read; a cheap book will shove all the text into as small a space as possible, and that alone can make the book something that feels bad to even open and look at. If money is an issue for you, find a local used bookstore and browse. You'll get more book for your money that way, and there's more chance of your finding an edition that predates the general enshittification caused by the emergence of Amazon.
If you have a good e-reader that doesn't give you screen fatigue after 30 minutes, and which feels good to hold, that's also a good option. You can customize the print size, and on my Kindle, anyway, I can look up unfamiliar vocabulary, which is very helpful.
2. You control the density!
You can't do anything about how long these books are. What you can do is spread them out over time so that they become less dense. And in fact this is how many of these novels were intended to be enjoyed.
Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Alexandre Dumas, and many other 19th century novelists wrote for serialization in periodicals. Critical editions--books prepared for classroom use, which include things like introductions and footnotes explaining now-obscure references--will often indicate where one serial instalment left off and the next began. I think this may be one reason why Dracula Daily has been so successful (even though Dracula itself was not serialized). Yes, it helps that they've straightened out the timeline; but that rhythm of getting one snippet of the story, then having to wait with increasingly bated breath for the next one, helps maintain engagement and suspense; and that gets people through those long, complicated sentences and the unfamiliar vocabulary.
Long ago some friends of mine organized a project called "Dickens By Inches" where they read Dickens's novels according to the schedule of the original serialization. This is a little too hard-core for the average reader; but my point is that these books were designed to be consumed in small chunks over a long period of time with rests in between, and you should feel free to read them that way.
So, one suggestion is that you figure out what's a manageable chunk for your to read at one sitting--it could be a chapter, a section of a chapter, a single page, a single paragraph--and work your way through the book one chunk at a time, resting between chunks. You will need a bookmark (if you're using a physical book), and bookmarks can become part of the sensory pleasure of reading (there are so many beautiful bookmarks out there!).
[I'm just noting here that I'm also aware of the lending library system and the three volume novel; I just don't think that system is worth replicating on your own time. No letters, please.]
People also used to read these novels out loud at home to their families and friends. This is something we're replicating by reading these novels out loud to PJ on long car trips. Reading out loud, of course, takes much longer; but as the designated reader, I have to say, it's a lot of fun and you pay a lot closer attention to the text.
3. Learn how to immerse yourself.
Again, this came naturally to me but I am antediluvian. One of the main pleasures these long novels offer is immersion--entering the world, spending time there, and returning refreshed to this world here. I understand you can now achieve immersion through gaming, bingewatching, and doomscrolling; but I think these novels offer an experience of immersion that I, at any rate, find more restorative--partly because it combines mental stimulation with physical relaxation. Restorative solitude as opposed to digitally-enabled loneliness. It's magical.
Tips for a successful immersion experience:
Unitask. Whatever you own that beeps or does push notifications, silence it or put it away. Put on music if silence makes you antsy (it helps if it doesn't have words).
If you have time and privacy to read at home, make yourself a little sensory nook. I mean this can be overdone--as with everything else we now have Instagram book nooks to make us feel inadequate--but honestly if you have a comfortable chair, a blanket you like, good reading light, and a satisfying beverage at hand, that's a little piece of heaven right there, and if your book is also pleasant to hold and look at, then just open it up and dive in and if you fall asleep great, just go back to the last thing you remember reading. You can be on the field of Waterloo in your imagination, but your body is still chilling and not being assailed by light and sound.
Be patient and trust the author. I would say one of the main barriers to modern readers with the 19th century novel is that they are often very slow starters. For the first 100-200 pages, they're laying the foundation, and this can become tedious. BUT. The payoff will come later, as we get deeper into the world and the characters and their relationships get more and more entangled. Done well, the crisis and resolution phases of these novels are exciting and intensely satisfying in ways that faster fiction isn't. (Not knocking the faster fiction; but we all know what pleaures faster fiction offers.) So instead of going oh my God WHY when an author spends three paragraphs introducing a character by describing not only their temperament, family, and personal history, but every feature of their physical appearance and exactly what they're wearing, read it like a detective: this is all going to become important later on, we just don't know exactly how or why yet.
4. Don't put pressure on yourself to find Deep Meaning at every turn.
Read for pleasure. Cannot stress this enough. You will not get through one of these novels if you think of it as homework. If searching for Deep Meaning increases your pleasure, then have at it. If you just want to enjoy the story for plot and characterization, fantastic; those are two things 19th century novels are GREAT at and they are highly enjoyable.
Anyway, that is enough out of me. I invite others to offer their suggestions!
So, this post is circulating a bit again, and I have also seen--of course--that study those two professors did about how undergraduate English majors can't read. The test they designed involved asking students to summarize, sentence by sentence, the first seven paragraphs of Dickens's novel Bleak House. Most of them failed badly, and there's been a lot of back and forth about what that means, which I'm not going to get into because I haven't actually read the study. What I'm intrigued by is the fact that the first seven paragraphs of Bleak House are actually a perfect example of why reading these Classic 19th century novels can seem so daunting to 21st century readers. Thoughts upon this below the cut tag.
I really don't want to get into a conversation about the study itself since a) I haven't read it b) I don't really feel like reading it and c) I have a hunch that this article has the potential to be polarizing. But there it is, for anyone who wants it.
I named her that, not the company. I thought it was a pretty, old-fashioned name, something buoyed by the fact that Charlotte in Charlotte Sometimes is told by her 50-years-ago counterpart's younger sister that it's funny that she has such an old-fashioned name - and that book was written in the 1960s!
There's a few people in that thread adamantly going up and down asserting that, duh, how could the rest of us be so dumb as to not know that certain types of toilets are specifically designed to be flushed with the foot. None of them have provided any sort of evidence for this claim, which makes me think that their evidence boils down to "Mommy told me when I was a kid" or "Well, I flush with a foot so I just sort of assumed", and - man, I hate when people do that. Fucking back up your claims, or at least qualify them. "I was told by my preschool teacher, but I've never verified it" would be a lot more honest and less annoying.
Anyway, I have emailed the manufacturer most often mentioned in the comments to ask for their opinion. Mostly because that is how things ought to be done, but also because if these flushers are designed to be flushed with the foot, great, but if not then we have to ask if the other contingent, which is equally vociferously asserting that foot flushing increases wear and tear on the mechanism and causes breakdowns, needs to be taken seriously. Because what's really not okay is breaking the toilet for everybody who comes after you - and sure, you'll say that you are not the sole person responsible for breaking the toilet that much faster, but c'mon, everybody says that.
So let's see what we see, and in the meantime, let's also all wash our hands. With soap and water, thanks.
In this case, in order, the ARC for Constituent Service, the UK ARC for The Shattering Peace, and the Italian edition of the 20th anniversary reissue of Old Man’s War, all of which arrived within a couple of days of each other. It’s kind of neat to see my publishing history represented thus.
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Do you like cats and coffee? Of course you do! And so do I, which is why I’m here today to tell you all about Dayton’s finest cat cafe, Gem City Catfé. If you’ve been reading the blog for a long time, you may remember I mentioned this catfé back in 2020, where I showed off a pretty enamel pin I got from the catfé the first time I went back in 2019.
